PUPPY 53

“Smell of blood? What do you mean…”

“You smell like that.”

Juwon, his face hardened, approached Seowoo’s side, lowered his head, and spoke.

“But… I didn’t get a nosebleed or anything today.”

At Juwon’s words about the smell of blood, Seowoo shook his head and replied. Even after hearing Seowoo’s words, Juwon remained focused on the act of smelling.

The way he brought his face close to Seowoo’s shoulder and neck and took a deep breath was very different from his usual playful self. Seowoo became tense at the unfamiliar sight.

“Tell me slowly.”

Juwon asked Seowoo. This time, his voice was a little more gentle.

“What…?”

“Who you met today, what happened, from the beginning, slowly…”

Juwon looked at Seowoo and asked again. He seemed to have taken a deep breath and calmed his heart, as his voice had returned to its usual gentle tone.

“First, today I met a noona who is interested in adopting the dog. At the cafe on the main road intersection over there.”

At Seowoo’s words, Juwon gave a small nod. The faint floral scent was probably the perfume worn by that ‘noona’.

“…And?”

Juwon said to Seowoo, as if telling him to continue his story.

“While the two of us were talking at the cafe, Jae-ha hyung joined us.”

“Jae-ha hyung?”

At the unfamiliar name that came from Seowoo’s mouth, Juwon made a puzzled expression. It was a name that sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t remember it.

“The one who broke my phone… the handsome hyung.”

He wondered how to explain Seo Jae-ha, who had no connection to Juwon, and just explained him as ‘the handsome hyung’. In fact, there wasn’t a more fitting modifier than that.

“…Handsome hyung?”

At Seowoo’s question, Juwon’s eyes narrowed. He unknowingly clenched his jaw so tightly that a grinding sound was made. At Juwon’s somewhat murderous expression, Seowoo added an explanation. He felt like he had to appeal that Seo Jae-ha was a good person.

“He’s a bit older than me, so it was a little awkward and uncomfortable, but after talking to him, he was a really good hyung.”

Juwon, who had been mulling over the reason why he had felt momentarily displeased when Seowoo described Seo Jae-ha as a ‘handsome hyung’, finally realized the fact he had been overlooking.

That he had to be wary of human men as well.

“……”

“I’ve met that hyung a few times…”

“Haaa…”

Juwon lamented his own carelessness. After hearing Seowoo’s words, he finally remembered that Seowoo had said he was in contact with the man who broke his phone.

Busy turning into a pitiful and cute puppy to seduce Seowoo, Juwon had so far only been wary of guys who seemed to be using the same strategy as him. For example, the youngest son of the Ha family, a brown-furred dog hybrid, or Gureum, who always wore a wistful expression. In doing so, he had missed the truly important thing.

That Seowoo was in the process of becoming gay.

That he was being drawn to a human male, Cha Juwon.

He was showing interest in him now, but he had been overlooking the fact that if he let his guard down, he could be snatched away by another human male. It seemed his judgment had been clouded by the recent string of rosy moods.

‘I should have been fucking wary of human men too…!’

Juwon let out a deep sigh that seemed to be pulled up from the depths of his lungs. He was clenching his fists, and so much force was put into it that his short fingernails were about to leave marks on his palm.

“And then…. On the way home, I met a dog meat trader.”

Seowoo, who was slowly talking about what had happened today and the people he had met, finally brought up the dog meat trader. At the unexpected character that came from Seowoo’s mouth, Juwon frowned slightly and asked back.

“…Dog meat trader?”

It was a being that had been coming up in conversation with unusual frequency lately. Talk of dog meat traders was a very unpleasant thing for Juwon, so his expression naturally hardened.

“Remember what we talked about with our friends the other day? The missing cat and dog from Haetae Apartment…”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“Kim Dongwon showed us the picture from the CCTV, right? Do you remember that too, by any chance?”

“……”

Instead of answering, Juwon nodded his head. He had only seen the picture for a moment, but it remained in his memory for a long time.

“He was wearing a black hat and a dark green outfit. Made of a material like a raincoat.”

“Are you okay, Seowoo?”

As Seowoo spoke more about the dog meat trader, his face was turning paler and paler, as if deep in thought. Juwon asked, holding Seowoo’s cold hand. Warmth was transferred through Juwon’s hand. Seowoo, after taking a breath, looked up at Juwon and said.

“The dog meat trader I saw today… was wearing the exact same clothes.”

The dog meat trader who had been roughly pulling on the Jindo dog’s leash was wearing a dark green raincoat and a black hat pulled down low, just like in the CCTV footage. As if to hide his existence.

There were black stains on the trader’s clothes, and Seowoo didn’t even want to imagine what the identity of those stains might be.

“I think it’s the same dog meat trader the guys were talking about.”

Seowoo came to a conclusion by combining what he had witnessed himself today with the conversation he had with his friends.

“…The person who stole the cat and dog from the apartment complex?”

“Yeah.”

“But…”

After hearing Seowoo’s story, Juwon fell into deep thought for a moment. He understood that a dog meat trader might have taken a stray cat. Of course, that wasn’t to say he understood such an inhuman act, but an understanding that a situation where a dog meat trader would carelessly take a stray cat could occur.

However, he didn’t understand the part about specifically stealing a purebred dog, a Shetland Sheepdog. He had often seen people fuss over a dog’s breed, its pedigree, whether it was purebred, or whether it had genetic diseases, and assign a price to it. But he didn’t think a dog meat trader would bother with a dog’s pedigree. Stealing a purebred dog would likely cause more trouble than it was worth.

“Why would a dog meat trader specifically steal a purebred dog? Surely, he’d know the owner would be looking for it.”

At Juwon’s words that hit the core of the matter, Seowoo let out a gasp of realization, “Ah—.”

“…Was that dog special?”

Or coveted. At Seowoo’s added words, a certain cat suddenly came to Juwon’s mind.

“Among the cats that used to come to your house.”

“Yeah.”

“There was a cat with a scar on its face.”

To be precise, it was a cat with a long scar above its eyebrow that limped. Because they weren’t the same species, and he had only seen it from a distance, he couldn’t tell for sure if it was a hybrid or just a cat.

“…Ah, the skinny cat?”

“Yeah. Does he still come to your house to eat these days?”

At Juwon’s question, Seowoo immediately shook his head.

“No, that cat doesn’t come to our house anymore.”

“I see.”

Juwon nodded at Seowoo’s answer. The reason for stealing a purebred dog despite the risk of being noticed, and the cat that had disappeared from sight at some point.

And recalling the warning his parents had given him a while ago, the conclusion was singular.

The missing animals were probably all hybrids.

As the uneasy hypothesis seemed to be solidifying into fact, a deep sigh automatically escaped Juwon’s lips.

🦴

That evening, Juwon turned into a puppy and visited Seowoo’s house. He hadn’t explained in detail, but from the words that he had met a dog meat trader, it wasn’t hard to guess what kind of scene Seowoo had witnessed. Seowoo’s eyes as he looked at him in his puppy form were filled with worry.

“Jjokko.”

“Woof.”

‘Yeah.’

“Do you have an owner?”

“……”

At Seowoo’s question, Juwon just looked up at Seowoo with his black eyes and didn’t answer.

“You usually chatter as if you’re answering everything, but you’re not answering this one.”

“……”

Seowoo’s face, looking at the small Juwon who was named by dropping the last syllable from Jjokkomi, was full of sorrow. The shock of directly confronting the dog meat trader who had made the neighborhood uneasy remained greater than he had thought. He would probably not be able to forget it for quite a long time.

Even a large Jindo dog couldn’t resist and was dragged away. When he thought that Jjokko, who appeared out of nowhere every evening and then disappeared stealthily late at night, could also be in a dangerous situation, his worries grew.

“If you don’t want to answer, shall we try this? What Jjokko is good at.”

“Woof?”

‘What?’

At Juwon’s question, what Seowoo brought out from the drawer were the cards with O and X drawn on them that they had played with last time. I thought he threw it away, but he kept it. Juwon looked at the cards as if fascinated.

“Jjokko is hungry right now.”

Seowoo asked Juwon as he placed the cards on the floor.

“Woof.”

‘I had dinner with you.’

Juwon shook his head and pointed to the X card with his front paw. It was too easy a question. As Juwon stuck out his tongue and panted with a laugh, Seowoo also smiled and asked the next question.

“Jjokko wants a kiss from me.”

“Woof!”

‘I’d love one.’

Juwon promptly placed his paw on the card marked O. And he looked up at Seowoo with sparkling eyes. Seowoo’s soft lips touched his forehead with a peck—.

“Does it feel good, Jjokko?”

“Woof!”

There was no need to describe how he felt. It was paradise.