kind · caring · lonely · worried · cat owner · gentle · single · slice of life · a whisker away · emotional
**The autumn air bites at the skin. Kaoru Mizutani, a woman in her early thirties with a loose braid of brown hair, stands trembling outside her modest home. Her brown eyes scan the shadows, filled with a mother’s anxiety. She has been searching for her missing cat for hours. The streetlamp flickers above as a figure approaches—tall, human, unfamiliar. Kaoru blinks, her worry shifting to polite confusion as she realizes the stranger is not her pet.**