Pako and Rin

It was dark, and though he felt it less than before, Akira was still in pain. He felt something rough and wet was scraping against his right cheek. Was someone licking him? Who could it be? The last person he had seen before coming to this dark, painful place had been Rin, the new girl. Was she the one licking his face? The picture of her licking him could have been either gross-but-funny or not-so-gross-but-still-funny. Akira couldn't decide between the two.

There was only one way to decide the winner, Akira thought, I'll have to see it for myself and decided how I feel about it.

Akira Ito opened his eyes, and the first thing he was black fur. His mind was groggy. He couldn't process his thoughts nor the images his eyes were receiving.

"W-what are you doing?" Akira asked, blinking, trying to get things into focus.

The furry face moved back. "This is how we if someone is doing well or not..."

Akira blinked hard, and everything slowly came into focus. In front of him, on an expensive-looking, red-carpeted floor, sat a fluffy, black cat licking its paw. He looked around him. It seemed he was lying on the floor of a big room lit by dim yellow lamps. Paintings, some as big as him, covered the walls, and the furniture looked old but expensive. The room reminded him of Kenji's mansion, where his granny worked.

"Yo."

Did someone just speak? Akira looked back at the cat--at its tail. It had three bronze rings.

"I-I had checked for it vitals..." Akira muttered as if trying to convince himself. "It should have been dead."

The cat raised his left paw. "Yes. But I came back to life-yo."

"IT SPOKE." Akira jumped to his feet, tried to get away from the cat, but something tugged at his stomach and snapped him back to the ground. "Ahh."

Some kind of plastic cloth was wrapped around his stomach, and weird white tubes were coming out of it and going into an egg-shaped machine.

"I was told that you saved my body," the cat said. "I don't believe someone like you could have done it, but whatever-yo."

"Wait. Was that supposed to be a thank you?" Akira asked and pointed a shaking finger at the cat. "Why are you talking? Why are you not dead?"

The cat opened his mouth to say something, but Girl's voice cut him off. "Because he is a Kitod, and Kitods have nine lives."

Akira looked in the direction of the voice and saw Rin standing in the doorway. She wore a blue headband and light blue pajamas. "The new girl," he muttered.

"I didn't believe the machine would be able to heal fast enough for you to wake up before the dawn... but guess the wound was not deep as I had thought."

So the egg machine was there to heal. That answers why the pain was sinking away. "Uh... Thanks for healing me, but don't you think that beds are better than the floor?"

"Shut up," Rin said, walking toward him. "You lower life form." She grabbed his collar. "Now that I've found you alone... what were you thinking? Saving me from a paper ball? You completely ruined my perfect image."

"Haaah. Is this the time to bring that up? Aren't weirded out by that talking cat, which I think is probably an alien?"

Rin looked at him, squinting. "I was expecting your head to blow up... but you also don't seem that surprised?" She was looking at him the way a mother would look at her kids after finding a broken vase.

"Nothing can surprise me now." Rin was still holding him by the collar, and her face was hovering dangerously close to his. "After meeting the green..." He trailed off, remembering that enormous lady had told him that he shouldn't mention her name or his quest to other people.

"Hmmm?" Rin was squinting so much that her eyes looked like slits.

"A-after getting attacked by that thing, nothing can surprise me," Akira said. "And I always believed that aliens existed. Whenever I looked up at the stars, I always felt like someone was looking down at me?"

"Looking down at you?" Rin said. "Probably the whole world."

"They should have thrown stone wrapped in papers instead of just paper."

Rin glared at him but left his collar. She turned to face the cat. "You. Were you able to remember anything?"

The cat nodded. "No-yo."

"Hey," Akira snapped. "Your body language didn't match your answer. But what are you guys talking about anyway?"

"Kitods have nines lives," Rin said. "Whenever they die and come back to life, they forget some part of their past lives. The more times they die, the more they forgot. Considering that this Kitod has forgotten everything about his past life, he must have died several times. But he will remember something soon. They never forget anything completely."

"Wow," Akira said. "That's inten--"

"I think I remembered something important," the cat said. "My name. It's Pako."

Rin smiled. "That's great. With your name, we'll be to find something about you. Where you came from, and why was that droid chasing you and trying to kill."

"What do you mean by 'We'?" Akira asked. "I know! You work for some kind of a secret society..."

"How did you know that?" Rin asked.

"Well, that's what they show in the mov--"

"Forget it," Rin snapped. "Nevermind. You two, come with me to the headquarters. There are people there who will be able to help you, Pako."

Pako licked his paw. "Alr--"

"Wait," Akira said. "Why are you taking a normie like me to your headquarters? Isn't it a secret place whose location is known to only a few people?"

Rin smirked. "Why? If I won't take you there, how will I make you forget your last twenty-four hours?"