The sound of the bathroom door slamming still rang in Louis's ears.
His ex-girlfriend's final words before walking out kept tearing his self-esteem to shreds:
“You're a good guy, Louis. But we can't keep going. You never manage to satisfy me. You're small, and you come after barely getting started. I thought maybe our experience would be better this third time, but it wasn't.”
Two years together with Mina since they graduated high school collapsed in an instant because of those words.
At twenty-four, with a sturdy, mixed Asian and Latino build, taut six-pack abs, and a trendy mullet haircut, Louis felt that his image as the perfect food delivery courier meant absolutely nothing in bed.
His confidence was utterly destroyed, leaving a burning shame in his chest every time he remembered how quickly he had given in in his ex-girlfriend's arms. ...
(Present Day—Louis Has Just Delivered His Last Food Order of the Night)
To shake off his exhaustion, Louis rode his scooter at high speed, cutting through the capital city's streets as they began to empty out. His courier jacket was soaked with sweat and night air. However, as he crossed the city's main bridge, he began slowing down when his eyes caught a black shadow leaping into the middle of the road, followed by a heavy impact and the screeching tires of a car speeding away.
Louis instinctively slammed on the brakes, making his scooter scrape across the asphalt. He jumped off without paying any attention to the horns of the other vehicles. In the middle of the road, a gray-furred cat lay sprawled, covered in blood.
As a true cat lover, Louis's chest tightened instantly. He hurried over, half-running as if chasing the car that had hit it, though it had already disappeared around the dark bend.
Louis's shoulders drooped. He knelt on the cold asphalt, mourning the stiff body of the sweet, innocent animal.
With violently trembling hands, he took off his jacket and placed it on his scooter seat. Then he tore off the white undershirt clinging to his perfect body and carefully wrapped the small, bloodied, lifeless creature. With what little strength he had left and tears held back, he put the bundle into the scooter seat compartment, planning to bury it as soon as he reached the apartment building.
When he arrived at the quiet backyard of his apartment building, Louis opened the scooter seat compartment with stiff hands. He intended to bury the cat right away so it could rest.
But his brow immediately furrowed deeply. The storage compartment beneath the seat had opened by itself. His undershirt was folded neatly in the corner without even the slightest bloodstain, perfectly clean as if it had just been washed. What made his heart pound even harder was that the cat's corpse inside had vanished without a trace. There wasn't a single hair or any sign of it left.
“What the hell was that?” he muttered, his voice hoarse with terror.
Driven by a mixture of panic and curiosity, Louis immediately started his scooter again. He turned around and retraced the bridge road where he had found the cat, searching for more than an hour.
His eyes scanned every corner of the dark sidewalk. But it was still useless. There was no cat and no clue whatsoever. Something felt strange. The streets, usually crowded with several cats, had suddenly become silent, without even a single meow.
Louis's thoughts were a complete mess. With his body limp and his head spinning, he was forced to go home and collapse onto his narrow bed, hoping this was all just the effect of being exhausted from work.
“How come all these stray cats are gone? Where could they have gone?”
A moment later, he fell into a deep sleep as strange shadows began flickering through his mind.