In March, the sounds change | Shirokuma Literature Club | Theme: "In March"

In March, the sounds change.

On days when white dots were falling, the room was quiet.

Those dots turned into lines. The ground began to vibrate.

Round patterns began to multiply on the transparent wall. Mia's whiskers twitched forward. She followed them with her gaze, which served as her fingertips.

The sound of hard paws gripping the floor. It was louder than usual.

There was a sound like someone shaking off cold water droplets from their body.

She sat on the edge of the raised floor and waited.

Her ears twitched at the sound of metal turning. Even so, she did not run away.

A sliver of bright light shone in, and her territory began to unravel.

Usually, the door would close with enough force to cut through the air, but today, its movement was sluggish.

The sound of the lines passed behind her and entered the depths of the room. The noise of cars and human voices could be heard from afar.

The door closed with a click that was gentle on the ears.

"Mia, I'm home." The man who returned greeted her before anyone else. Mia's paws made no sound, but the rhythm of this room always started from there. Mia brushed against his leg just once, and returned to the window as if to say that was enough.

Sounds erupted around the man who had returned. He didn't take off a coat that rustled with muffled sounds, but a jacket that made a dry, flapping noise. He didn't take slow sips of air, but gulped it down all at once.

Their eyes met.

Mia looked away, pretending to watch the round patterns on the window.

He came over to the window, too. In front of the window where the cat tree stood, he sat soundlessly on the floor, which was absorbing the room's warmth and the cold air from outside simultaneously. He sat with one knee up, not puffing out his chest, his breathing steady. He traced the round patterns Mia was watching with his fingertip. His fingertip moved away from the window. He tried to touch Mia gently, so the small friction sound of the fabric as he stretched his arm was slow and audible. He moved his eyes before his fingertips. Their eyes met, and Mia blinked. His fingertip touched the tip of Mia's nose with a soft tap. It was cold, so Mia turned her face away and rubbed it against his warm, sweet-smelling wrist. His mouth softened, and she was closer to him than anyone else, close enough to hear his breath escape just once. She entrusted her head to his enveloping palm and closed her small eyelids.

"Oh, the rain has stopped."

As he stood up, Mia was lifted into his arms. Mia felt as if her whole body had suddenly floated, and she stretched her front paws out like hooks to catch onto his shoulder, but she instinctively looked back when the window let out a groan.

Light was dancing on the street trees bathed in sunlight. Mia's eyes were tickled by the sparkle, and she leaned forward.

"It's already March, isn't it."

"March" was a sound he had been saying often lately.

He turned his face toward the sky and blinked several times from behind the bangs hanging over his upper eyelids. As his chest expanded and then contracted, a white breath escaped his mouth.

Mia kept her eyes fixed, but her ears quickly turned in different directions, left and right. Mia strained her ears toward the sky.

There were no shadows flying overhead, but she could hear the chirping of birds. Ah, that's right, memory relaxed Mia's ears. While the cold season only had signals between companions, now that the sunlight had softened, their songs passed through the clear air so that the long-awaited partners, still far away, could find their way to them. Her ears caught fragments of that chirping.

The moment the chirping stopped near Mia's ears as she began to doze off, he shook his upper body and squeezed a breath out of his mouth. Startled by his sneeze piercing her ears, Mia used his shoulder as a springboard and landed on the step of the cat tower.

He scratched under his nose with his fingernails, then slid his fingers into her soft fur to offer an apologetic grooming. There was a sound of his finger pads touching the fine, fluffy hair at the base of her ears. Mia swayed her tail in place of a voice.

I participated in this project.

I brought back the two from my previous work. Mia is a mackerel tabby, and he is a single man.
This is a story of tsundere vs. tsundere.

#ShirokumaLiteratureClub
#ShortStory
#March
#Cat
#Neko