silhouette | jhs ✓

23. Protection

"Bathroom. And I'm really hungry, so I'll probably make food." She expressed, shutting the bathroom door.

"It's like six in the morning." Jimin advised, confusion rippling in his tone. "Isn't it a little too early to be eating?"

He received silence as his answer, Seren being too busy in her bathroom.

Jimin huffed, raising from the bed.

He decided to search around her kitchen, wanting to see if there was anything in her fridge that would ease his hunger for the time being while they decided what to cook. Jimin skimmed through her cabinets, finding nothing that would appease him.

He crouched, squinting when he saw a bulk pack of canned cat food at the bottom of the shelf.

"Since when did Seren have a cat?" He muttered to himself, shutting the door.

He went over to the fridge, pulling out a cold water bottle from the collection she had stored away.

She traced down the stairs, seeing her brother raiding her fridge for something else to pair with his water.

"I have granola and yogurt in there." She informed, stepping over to the front window by the dining table.

"Bleh." Jimin responded with no appetite for yogurt, shutting the fridge.

He looked over at his sister, who was staring out the front window.

"Are you expecting someone?" He wondered out loud, stepping over to the table.

Her voice was a whisper, not stepping away from the window. "Yeah, I'm waiting for Pluto. He usually comes around at this time." She informed, rubbing the side of her arm.

"Pluto?" He repeated, opening his water bottle and taking a sip.

"Yeah. Remember? The cat." Seren tried refreshing his memory, her fingertip silently tapping against the fiberglass.

"I don't remember any of that." He answered honestly, shrugging his shoulders.

Seren sighed, her tense shoulders falling into a despondent response to Pluto's absence.

It had been about four days since he had last paid her a visit, and it was strange that he didn't. Normally, he would visit Seren quite frequently, not only to get food and water but to just bask in the ambiance.

She removed her phone from her pocket, quickly entering the app for the camera she set up on her porch.

Seren searched through former clips where motion was detected through the night. However, there wasn't much, just a few times her camera caught cars that passed by sporadically.

She decided to look through the seven clips that were motion detected through the night. One of the clips was recorded around three in the morning the night before.

Her eyes squinted when she saw a small black figure moving near her driveway.

The figure moved to the front of the camera, and that was when she was finally able to see that it was a black cat. It could have easily been another black stray cat since those were rather frequent. But, something told her that this cat, in particular, was Pluto.

It was rare, but there were a few times when he would settle on her porch through the night, and she would wake up to Pluto by the front door — waiting for his breakfast.

Her heart eased when she saw his small figure enter the frame, consoled to see that he was well, and alive.

Her consoled heart soon began to beat industriously against her chest as she watched Pluto come to a sudden hold. His ears fold back, and his back slowly arched.