Chapter 4: Cat Scratch Fever (1/3)

“Mom, I want a cat!” Mike’s little brother, Danny, cried as he scraped the rest of his scrambled eggs into the garbage bin.

Mike rolled his eyes and went back to his oat bran. This was going to turn into another argument. He couldn’t exactly blame his brother for being annoying, the kid was only eleven and he shuddered to think of how cringe he was at that age. Still, he wished his brother could find another topic to fixate on.

“Danny, honey,” his mother replied with superhuman restraint, “we’ve been through this, the answer is no, and you know why.”

“But mooooooooom.”

“Danny, this isn’t one of those things you can whine your way to,” Mike said after he took his last bite, “mom’s not going to budge.”

“But Mikeyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,” Danny whined as he walked to his brother.

“That wasn’t an invitation to bug me, dumbass,” he muttered.

“Michael, that’s enough of that language,” his mother said sternly, “Daniel, stop pestering your brother. Get ready for school.”

After his brother walked downstairs, he turned to his mom. “Mom, why do you let him do that? Can’t you get him to stop doing that annoying whining voice?”

“I seem to remember when you were at that age, you kept pestering me for three months for a skateboard I’d already bought you for your eleventh birthday,” she replied with a smile, “patience is the most important thing for raising children. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“I don’t want to be older if it means I have to deal with a kid like Danny,” he said with a groan.

“Michael, listen. I know you don’t get along well with your brother, but family is all we have sometimes. You don’t have to enjoy being near him in the morning, just, please try to get along?” his mother asked him gently as she put her hand on his shoulder.

“Okay, mom,” Mike replied as he pulled his backpack on and gave her a hug, “I’ll try, for you.”

“That’s my boy!” she said with a smile, “I know you’re planning on having a sleepover tonight with your little club, could you please make sure to text me when you get there safely?”

“Okay, mom! Love you!” he said as he walked out the door and to his car. He honked the horn to signal to Danny that he was going to leave his sorry butt if he didn’t hurry up and get in. While waiting, he checked through his bag to make sure he had all the snacks for the anime club that night. Finally, his brother found his way to the car, and slammed the door closed beside him.

They drove silently for a few minutes, before Danny spoke up again. “Mikey, how do you think I can get mom to get a cat?”

“Danny, mom already told you, our landlord doesn’t allow cats. Do you want to be homeless, dumbass?”

“Mom told you not to call me that.”

“Well, she also told you to stop bugging me.”

“But you don’t want to talk about anything with me!”

“I’d be okay talking with you if it weren’t for you fixating on talking about getting a cat. Why do you care so much, anyways?” Mike asked as he pulled closer to the school.

“I just want someone to cuddle with!” his brother answered, quietly.

“You know you could just ask mom, right?”

“It’s weird for your mom to cuddle with you, though.”

“Who told you that?”

“Terry H.”

“Well, tell him he’s stupid. It’s not weird.”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

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“I don’t like people touching me.”

Danny poked him as he pulled into a parking spot, causing Mike to raise an eyebrow, before realizing what his brother was trying to test.

“Not like that, I mean like, I don’t like people getting near me,” Mike said, “it happens when you get older.”

“Oh…okay,” Danny said as he climbed out of the passenger’s seat.

Danny waved to him as he walked across the street to the upper elementary, leaving Mike alone in the car. Mike sighed as he turned off the engine and got out, dragging his backpack out from behind him on the way.

School seemed to just drag on endlessly through his classes, which none of his friends were in. People and teachers seemed to ignore the boy in the baggy hoodie, and he was mostly fine with that. After all, he didn’t really get along with the other kids, so what was the point? He had his group, and that was that.

At lunch, he met up with them at their usual spot: a table far in the back, as far away from the lunch line as possible. He wasn’t the type to really eat lunch, which was perfect, because he hated getting up in the morning to make it.

He was soon joined by his friends Kya, Will, and Lily. Kya was hosting the ‘sleepover’, which none of them really intended to do any sleeping during. They unpacked their lunches and began to eat, making conversation about nothing much in particular, until they reached the subject of what they’d be watching that night.

“I think I’d like to watch a few episodes of this new isekai!” Will said, excited.

“And is it going to have another mediocre boy as the protagonist?” Lily asked, snorting, “We watched that same song and dance last time.”

Will glared at her and took another bite of his sandwich. “Maybe it is, but that’s the fun thing, as a mediocre boy,” he replied.

“We could always go with more action stuff! Dodo’s Odd Shenanigans is always a winner,” Kya suggested.

“How long do we have left before we’ve watch it all, though?” Will asked.

Kya scrolled on their phone for a bit, finding the website the group had been watching it on the past few sleepovers. They sighed and shook their head “Like two more episodes.”

“Okay, so we need something else,” Will said, “Mike, how about you? I never hear your suggestions.”

Mike blushed. He only had been watching magical girl stuff. Magical catgirl stuff. He rummaged through his mental inventory to find one that he wouldn’t be called weird for. Aha! He knew just the thing!

“Neko Motorcycle Club!” he exclaimed nervously.

“The one with catgirls on motorcycles? Sounds fun.” Lily said, “I’ll always go for a girl on a motorcycle.”

“Does it have Isekai?” Will asked.

“Well, kind of? You’ll see, it’s complicated,” Mike replied, not wanting to reveal that the plot had not only Isekai, but waking up in a body of the opposite sex, partly for his own embarrasment’s sake.

“Sick!” Will said.

“Well, if you got those two to agree on something,” Kya said with a nod, “we’ll settle on that.”

As Mike thought about the plot, he realized how much of a mistake this was. There was so much he loved about Neko Motorcycle Club that he’d never admit to anyone. Sure, the plot was great and the action wasn’t half-bad either, but the part he really loved was even more personal than that.

He didn’t know why, but the way Jessie, the main character, spoke so confidently of how comfortable she felt being a woman…it resonated with him. He felt at peace, almost entranced by watching it. He worried it was some kind of weird sexual thing, he’d looked up more stuff like it and found a lot of stuff like that, and he vowed never to tell anyone about it after that.

It was probably because Jessie enjoyed what happened to her, and on some level, maybe it’d be nice for that to happen to him too. Whatever the case might’ve been, he could not let the group find out about it. But, as he turned back to the conversation, he found them already packing up their lunches and leaving. It would be too suspicious to bring it up now.

After a few more hours of classes, Mike shuffled his way half-heartedly back to his car. Today was going to be the day when his friends left him for being a weirdo. He thought back to this morning, how easily he’d told Danny to tell off the kid who’d told him cuddling with his mom was weird. If only it were that easy to do in high school.

He turned the key in the ignition and drove off to Kya’s house. As he drove there, he couldn’t help but wonder, what was so bad about wanting to be a girl anyways? Girls wanted to be girls, obviously, and there was nothing wrong with it for them. Ah, but they were born girls. Of course, Kya was born a girl but wasn’t one, and…could he do that too? Could he just stop being a guy?

He decided to put a pause on pondering these questions as he pulled his car into Kya’s yard. Their parents lived in the woods in what looked to him like an oversized cabin. Still, it made it really fun to watch things outside in the summer months. It seemed like it would rain tonight, though, so they had opted to watch things inside instead. He parked his car and stepped out, just as Kya pulled in next to him.

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