Adopting a Cat

"U-umm, hello…" As he felt someone tap his arm, Zhan looked down towards a person with a grey hoodie totally covering their head and face. A slight twitching could be seen below the hood, identifying the person right away.

"Nui? Why did you come out of you room, didn't we agree that it would be best to stay hidden for now?" Shia asked in surprise.

"I, I tried calling you manager, but you didn't answer…" Nui said helplessly.

"Ah!" Shia exclaimed. "I forgot, I've been busy all day! I'm sorry Nui, really. Anyway, what is it that you want, should we go back to your room and speak there?" Shia asked gently.

"No, t-that's ok. I, actually, I just wanted to…um, Zhan's…Zhan's…"

"You want to come to my place?" Zhan asked with a smile.

"Mm." She nodded lightly and answered quietly, her voice barely audible. Zhan could just imagine the adorable expression she was making under that hood.

Shia was troubled by the way Zhan looked at Nui. The way she saw it, Nui was like a little baby lamb, whilst Zhan was a massive wolf, a mutated wolf, or maybe a genetically engineering and mutated wolf.

She ended up following the two of them up into Zhan's apartment. She let herself in as Zhan showed Nui towards his door, but then just stood there awkwardly, not sure about the next part of her plan.

"Are you staying too Shia?" Zhan teased. "There's plenty of room, so I guess it's fine."

At this moment, Shia thought of something. A smile slowly spread across her face, giving Zhan a bad feeling.

"Oh, thanks for offering! Alright then, I'll stay here also."

"…"

Zhan was honestly not expecting that. He thought that Shia was teasing him, until she really returned that night after finishing her manager duties.

Shia found Nui sitting alone in the lounge, watching tv on what was perhaps the city's largest 4k television. The room was extremely spacious, whilst there were multiple expensive leather sofas and wool rugs covering the wooden floor. Everything about this room screamed 'pricey', leaving Nui feeling somewhat awestruck.

"Where's Zhan?" Shia asked after finding Nui on her own.

"Oh, Shia!" Nui stood up and happily greeted her. "Zhan's busy…um, so, do you, do you want to hang out with me?"

Nui mustered up a large amount of courage to say that. She finally did it, the famous 'inviting a friend to hangout' line that she had practising in her head for years before coming to university! She hadn't made any friends at university yet, even though she'd been there for three months…alone. But that was fine! She could just make friends with Shia!

"What, he left you alone all of this time?" Shia frowned. "What's he doing alone in his apartment…?"

Nui's heart dropped. Shia didn't even reply to her invitation…not wanting to get disheartened, she resolved herself to continuing hanging out with Shia, even if she needed to force it somewhat!

"He said he's training…" Nui said after remembering what Zhan told her 6 hours earlier.

"I'm going to go train, so do whatever you want. Just call room service if you want food, you can watch TV or whatever to pass the time." Zhan had said.

"Training?" Shia paused, then decided to go find him to see if he really was 'training'.

When Shia left silently, Nui quickly followed after her like a kitten following its new owner.

Zhan didn't intend to lift weights for 6 hours straight. Really, it shouldn't be possible to train this long so easily, especially not the way he was doing it right now.

Building strength was achieved by activating muscle fibres by lifting heavy weight, then resting to allow the muscle to recover, then repeating. After the training session was over, the muscles would be truly exhausted and filled with micro tears, they would then become stronger after they healed and compensated for the strain.

Usually, a weight training session completed by an ordinary human who didn't use drugs to enhance their performance would be an hour or two each day, 3-6 days a week. Too much more than this and it would wear down the body and central nervous system over time. It was also normal to wait between 30 seconds and 5 minutes between each set of lifting, depending on the weight being used.

But today, everything changed for Zhan. He realised that his strength was boosted to the extreme, he could now left 70% more weight than he could manage just five days earlier! This wasn't even the main point though. With his enhanced stamina, he could complete more repetitions with each set. This meant his improvement would be faster than others, as his stamina was literally inhuman!

Even more importantly was his vitality. Especially, his 'flesh vitality'. His recovery speed was so incredible, such that he now only needed to wait for a third of the time between each set! It also meant that he was able to train at his highest intensity for 6 hours straight without experiencing a significant decline in strength!

He was also certain that he wouldn't need a full day for full recovery, if he even needed this 'off' time to recover anymore!

It was really shocking, but just a single 6 hour training session increased his strength by 0.1 points!

This kind of improvement was addictive to Zhan, meaning he ended up totally forgetting about Nui whilst he trained continuously. When Shia walked in, he didn't notice and continued deadlifting.

He was lifting 50% more than his maximum weight from 5 days ago, only this time he was able to execute ten complete repetitions before his body gave out! Shia watched silently, as did Nui besides them. Zhan rested for less than a minute, then placed more weight onto the bar and continued.

After he finished the next set, Shia finally caught his attention.

"Hey, even if you really are training, is it really alright to just leave Nui alone like this?"

"Huh?!" Nui didn't realise that Shia had marched in here for her sake! She only thought that Shia wanted to find Zhan!

"Ah, my bad, I got carried away…" Zhan glanced at the girls as he panted for breath. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, then approached them with a smile.

"Nui, if you get bored on your own then you can always come join me in the gym."

Shia sighed and realised that this was as good a solution as he would provide.

"O-ok then!" Nui stammered.

"Nui, do you really want to train with Zhan?" Shia asked doubtfully.

"Ah, that, I, I don't mind…"

"That's a 'no' then." Zhan chuckled, then without thinking about it, he patted Nui's head. She was completely taken by surprise and froze on the spot. Zhan's large hand covered her head, and as he stood there in front of her, she realised that he was so much bigger than her.

It should be obvious, but it was even more so in his gym gear. His casual clothes displayed his muscles, but not to the same extent that you would see when he wore this sleeveless vest.

'Huh…?' She was startled as she got a closer look at his arms. It was impossible to see from a distance, but up close, she realised that his left arm was completely covered in scars! Looking at his right arm, this was also covered in scars!

Most of the scars were old, but some were more recent. In fact, she saw many that looked like they were only gained a week or two ago.

Actually, these were from yesterday, but Zhan's vitality had already healed it all over. As for his old scars, they were gained so long ago that they were now permanent decorations on his body and not affected by his newfound vitality.

Shia noticed that Nui was staring and realised that she had noticed it too, his scars that is.

'Sigh, I wonder what she would think if she knew that his entire body is like this, totally covered in scars. Well, there are none on his face…ah, there might be a couple of really faint scars on his forehead…or maybe not, I need a closer look to tell for sure…'

With the two girls now staring at and examining him silently, Zhan was baffled. Did they agree to stare at him like this beforehand?

"Ahem." Finally, after a full minute of being silently stared at, Zhan coughed to get their attention. Shia and Nui both looked startled and looked up at Zhan, making him smile wryly.

"Alright, if you're done staring at me, how about we go get something to eat."

"Ah…ok then." Nui smiled brightly. Zhan was distracted for a moment, not by her smile, but by something lower down her body.

He had been wondering for a while now; why was she was wearing such loose fitting leg wear? She was still wearing pink starred pyjama bottoms and didn't seem to plan on changing out of this. When he mentioned eating together, Zhan noticed there was some movement within one of the legs of her pyjamas…certainly unusual. After glancing at the ears atop her head, he had some suspicions.

"Nui…could it be that you also have a tail?"

Nui's body stiffened.

"Right, I was also wondering that, but you seemed self conscious enough about your ears alone so I didn't mention it." Shia added, glancing at Zhan accusingly.

"Is it really obvious?" She asked quietly.

"Well, I can see it moving in your pyjamas." Zhan laughed.

Nui turned red. She then suddenly ran away into a separate room, startling Zhan and Shia.

"You really went and said something unnecessary…" Shia sighed.

"What, were we just supposed to pretend that she didn't have a tail? It was too obvious." Zhan shrugged unapologetically. Shia was about to say something else, but Nui quickly returned.

Shia realised that she had spoken too soon in critiquing Zhan, once again. Nui didn't just run away, she was simply changing her clothes. She was now wearing a pair of light blue shorts, whilst behind her back, a pink cylindrical limb moved gently.

Her tail was a bit shorter than her arm, it was half way between being thin and being bushy, and like her hair, it was a pale shade of pink. It extended up and out behind her in an S shape, swaying slightly as she turned to Zhan as if waiting for something. He realised quickly that she was waiting for him to comment on it.

"Cute." He nodded with a smile. "Exactly how I imagined a real life-cat girl would be."

Since this 'cat-girl' was mentioned a couple of days ago, Nui had since done her research and learned that there was somewhat of a fandom surrounding the made up half-human creature. This slightly relieved her anxiety towards her appearance, though she knew that reality and fantasy were two very different things.

Hearing Zhan compliment her like this made her feel relieved…and 'secretly' happy. Her tail swayed more freely along with her good mood though, so it wasn't much of a secret.

'This girl is so easy to read.' Zhan had to stifle a laugh. Nui was a breath of fresh air compared to the usual type of people he dealt with. Honestly, her naivety and shyness almost felt surreal to return to, especially right after dealing with the syndicate and their violent mutated beasts.

They ended up ordering room service to bring up some food, since Nui was still remaining hidden for now. She seemed happy to eat with Shia and Zhan like this, despite not being able to think of anything to say. She ran through the research she did to prepare herself for making friends after leaving home, and managed to come up with something eventually.

"So, Zhan, what have you been doing since that…event." She asked. Between Zhan checking on Nui the first time and him returning from the arena, she had been shut up in her room and didn't know that Zhan had been out.

"I was training. Preparing." He replied simply.

"Eh, preparing for what?" Nui blinked and asked. Her expression showed that she really couldn't think of a reason that Zhan would be hastily training as hard as he could to prepare for something.

"The second wave of the cataclysm." He almost found it difficult to break the news to such an innocent looking face, but it wouldn't do her any good in the long run to be unprepared.

"The first wave lasted a day and only affected Blackwater City, but the second wave will last a month and cover the entire planet."

Shia became silent and her face turned grim. She didn't know how Zhan came across this information, but she could feel his seriousness from the intensity of his training earlier alone. She had known Zhan for long enough to understand that even he was feeling a sense of pressure.

"Second wave…?" Nui didn't seem to understand at first, but when her brain started working again, she dropped her cutlery on the floor.

Clang!

She jumped to her feet with a frightened expression.

"There's, there's going to be a second wave?! This, ah, what, what are we going to do?!"

Zhan blinked, surprised that she didn't question the legitimacy of his claim even slightly. Did she trust him that much, or was she seriously so naive as to believe everything anybody told her?

He was starting to wonder just how this girl had survived until now.

"Well like I said earlier, you could train with me." Zhan said calmly as he took another bite of his barbecue chicken. "Or perhaps you could try eating mutated beast meat, some people developed superpowers that way. Eh, maybe you actually already have a power, thinking about it…"

"Me, a superpower? No…I, I don't think so anyway…"

Shia seemed to think of something and turned to Nui with bright eyes.

"I've heard that most mutated humans were affected in some way other than just appearance though. Even if they don't develop a unique ability, thousands of people have experienced a boost to their strength, speed, reflexes, things like that."

"It's settled then!" Zhan laughed. "You're definitely training with me tomorrow, we can see if you become stronger in any way."