Yukinoshita's Correction Method

By the end, as if she noticed the mood was gradually sinking, Yui Yuigahama laughed twice and brushed it off with a "haha."

That was probably the first time Yui Yuigahama learned what parting meant.

There could be many reasons why a cat suddenly disappeared.

But now...

"It was probably taken away and adopted." The pen in Dong Yunshan's hand spun rapidly. "I have a friend who's been doing this for a long time—catching stray cats, raising them and taking care of them, then giving them to adopters once their temperaments have mellowed."

Yui Yuigahama looked at Dong Yunshan hopefully. "Really?"

"It cost quite a lot at first. Only after it got famous did it break even." Dong Yunshan explained it unhurriedly. "The cats in the shop have endorsed a lot of cat food, and they also stock all kinds of snacks and cat toys. Adoption is free, but adopters usually buy a ton of things to take home, and they'll keep ordering cat food long-term. There are also partnerships with pet hospitals... I'll contact them later. Want to go have a look when we have time?"

"Okay... no." Yui Yuigahama shook her head gently. "That's enough. Thank you, Dong Yun."

Seeing the bitter look on her face, sadness and regret intertwined, Dong Yunshan realized that maybe every time Yui Yuigahama saw a cat, she would remember that parting.

So she wasn't afraid of cats, but of the sadness from back then.

She didn't want to awaken that painful memory.

Thinking of that, Dong Yunshan suddenly let out a short "ah."

Crap.

"So you don't dislike cats. Instead, you chose to run away because you hated parting?" Yukino Yukinoshita's gaze sharpened. "In that case, tell us everything."

Dong Yunshan pressed a hand to his forehead as if he had a headache. "I knew it would turn into this."

"Um..." Komachi Hikigaya looked worriedly at Yui Yuigahama. "Maybe it's better not to remember it in detail."

"Compared with avoidance, talking is a better way to overcome psychological trauma," Yukino Yukinoshita corrected. "So it's better to say it."

"Don't listen to her." Dong Yunshan looked at Yui Yuigahama. "Everyone has memories they don't want to touch. There's no need to force yourself."

"I want to say it." Yui Yuigahama took a deep breath, then repeated it as if firming up her own resolve. "I want to say it."

Komachi Hikigaya held Yui Yuigahama's hand. "Yui..."

"I've tried to forget it, but I've never been able to. Maybe I was waiting for today... waiting for someone to help me find the courage." Yui Yuigahama smiled a little forlornly. "Yukinon is right. I should face it and try to overcome it... instead of fearing even the things I like because I'm afraid of parting—will you listen to me?"

Dong Yunshan put down his pen and nodded.

Yukino Yukinoshita closed her book and looked at her intently.

Komachi Hikigaya gently hugged Yui Yuigahama and stroked her head with pity.

"Mm... then I'll start from the beginning." Yui Yuigahama lightly bit her lower lip. "I found it in September."

That was the autumn of Yui Yuigahama's fourth year of elementary school.

On the way home from school, she heard a cat meowing, not far from the apartment building.

But she couldn't see any trace of a cat nearby, so she thought she had imagined it and didn't pay it any mind.

The next day, when she left for school, she heard the cat meowing again.

It was in the same place as yesterday, so Yui Yuigahama felt the cat must be hiding somewhere.

She followed the sound and searched carefully, only then discovering that the cries were coming from underground.

Inside a drainage ditch covered by an iron grate, there was a tiny calico cat.

It had probably been washed down from a roadside gutter. In the ditch, it meowed while clawing at the wall.

Yui Yuigahama wanted to rescue it, but the iron grate over the ditch was firmly stuck in place and couldn't be lifted.

She had originally planned to get an adult to help, but then she remembered something a classmate had said: "If a stray cat gets picked up by an adult, it'll apparently be sent to the health center. You don't even know what the health center is? It's the place where they kill stray cats and dogs."

Yui Yuigahama was only ten at the time, so of course she believed it completely, thinking that as long as adults found out, stray cats and dogs would be taken away and killed.

But she couldn't just leave it alone, so she ran home and, without telling her mom, stole a fish sausage from the refrigerator, tore it into little pieces, and tossed them into the ditch.

The kitten gobbled them down.

Yui Yuigahama was very happy and watched the kitten until it finished the sausage.

Then, naturally, she was late.

After school, she went home again, got another sausage, and fed it to the kitten.

From that day on, she went to feed the cat every morning and evening.

When she heard that eating only sausages wasn't good for a kitten's health, she even used her allowance to buy canned cat food.

She fed it for about five days.

Even though the ditch grate meant Yui Yuigahama couldn't touch the cat at all, she was still very happy.

But it couldn't go on like that forever.

It was too pitiful for it to stay in such a dark, narrow place all the time.

One person's strength was limited, so Yui Yuigahama decided to ask her friends for help.

After school, she brought three friends to the drainage ditch where the kitten was and, working together, they pulled the grate open.

But the drainage ditch was too deep for children. Even if they reached inside, they still couldn't touch the kitten.

They tried every method they could think of, lowering a jump rope, building a ladder out of branches, but the kitten stayed wary and refused to come up.

It was a little dangerous, but Yui Yuigahama still decided to jump down into the drainage ditch and rescue the kitten.

The friend helping her stopped her. "It's really dirty."

And that was true.

The drainage ditch was covered in moss and mud, and the space was narrow. If she went in, her clothes would definitely get filthy.

"If your clothes get dirty, what are you going to tell the adults?"

"Someone will save it."

"Once we leave, it'll climb out on its own."

"Let's go..."

A torrential downpour.

The very next day after Yui Yuigahama and her friend left, it started raining hard.

Had someone really rescued that kitten?

Could it really climb out on its own?

If... if only she hadn't cared about her clothes yesterday and had saved it.

After leaving school, Yui Yuigahama ran through the rain toward the drainage ditch.

She carefully looked inside.

In the drainage ditch, where the water level had risen, the kitten struggled to keep its head above the surface.

This time... Yui Yuigahama did not hesitate.

She jumped into the ditch and held the kitten in her arms.

The ditch was cold and dark. When she thought of the kitten staying in a place like this all this time, she could not stop feeling sad.

Yui Yuigahama used every bit of strength she had to climb out, brought the kitten home, gave it a bath, and fed it milk.

She wanted... to be with it forever.

But she could not let the adults find out. It would be killed.

After drying the kitten's fur, before her family came home, Yui Yuigahama carried the kitten outside the apartment building and let it go.

The kitten looked back at her, meowed once, and ran off.

She had thought she would never see it again, but to her surprise, a few days later, Yui Yuigahama found it in the courtyard of the apartment building.

The moment their eyes met, it came running over.

Yui Yuigahama stroked its head, and it purred comfortably.

She decided to secretly keep the kitten in the apartment building's courtyard.

Though she called it keeping it, in reality, it was the same as before.

She only fed it on her way to and from school, and played with it on holidays.

Every day, the kitten appeared in the same place to wait for her, and it would even crawl onto her lap and knead with its front paws.

Its claws pricked a little, but Yui Yuigahama was very happy.

Because cats were forbidden in the apartment building, Yui Yuigahama panicked badly when a child who lived in the same building discovered her.

It was a girl two years older than her, the class monitor at school.

Yui Yuigahama felt like class monitors were on the adults' side.

But the class monitor was not, because she was secretly keeping a cat too.

Not only Yui Yuigahama and the class monitor—there were lots of children in the apartment building secretly keeping cats behind the adults' backs.

The class monitor told her many things she needed to watch out for, like what she could feed them and what she could not, not to tell other children about keeping cats, that the fewer people who knew the better, and that she also had to be careful of the apartment building's manager.

She heard the manager hated cats very much, and if he saw a stray cat, he would immediately catch it and take it to the public health center.

Yui Yuigahama kept the class monitor's teachings firmly in mind, and the days passed one by one like that.

One day after school, Yui Yuigahama saw a girl with braids playing with a calico cat.

After asking, she learned that the girl was also a child who lived in the same apartment building, and that she also wanted to secretly keep a cat.

The two of them quickly became friends, and often played with the kitten together after school.

Yui Yuigahama told the girl with braids all the things the class monitor had said they needed to be careful about, and the girl with braids also shared her own story with her.

The girl with braids had two good friends, but recently neither of them would play with her anymore. When she was wandering around alone, she discovered the little calico kitten.

A few more days passed after that, and the girl with braids suddenly said, "Can you let me take care of your cat, Yui? Cat food seems really expensive, so leave it to me from now on."

The cat was basically a stray, so it did not necessarily need anyone to feed it.

But Yui Yuigahama felt that if she did not feed it, the cat would run away.

So she kept using her own allowance to buy cat food.

The girl with the braids seemed to come from a better-off family, and she had more allowance too. Compared with Yui Yuigahama, she could shoulder the cost of cat food more easily.

Yui Yuigahama refused.

She was the one who had saved this cat, so she had to take care of it to the end.

She did not want to hand it over to anyone else.

Besides, Yui Yuigahama had already decided to tell her family about it.

Even though adults would send stray cats and dogs to the public health center, Yui Yuigahama believed that her mom and dad were different from other adults.

Maybe her mom and dad had some other way. Maybe they would talk to the building manager... Holding on to thoughts like that, Yui Yuigahama confessed everything to her parents.

Her parents agreed. They were willing to discuss it with the building manager, and if that went nowhere, they could board it at a pet shop, or leave it with another relative. Anything was better than letting it stay a stray.

But... the kitten disappeared.

Yui Yuigahama searched desperately through the apartment building, the parking lot, the rooftop, inside the drains... but it was nowhere.

She went outside to look for it too, and still found nothing.

After two days without being able to eat anything, she was still searching on the third day.

Then she ran into the class president.

"My cat seems to have run away too," the class president said. "It's a shame, but that's just what cats are like."

When her family was finally able to keep pets, Yui Yuigahama did not get a cat.

She got a dog instead.

"...Yeah, that's about it." Yui Yuigahama took a big gulp of her drink, her voice a little hoarse. "Because it left, I was sad for a long time. I thought it had stopped wanting me. Later, I heard a little fact about cats, that when cats feel death approaching, they disappear because they don't want their owners to see them looking weak—it was probably trying to spare my feelings."