Cat Scratch Fever

Chapter 1

Issei was sitting in his bedroom reading when he heard a crash. He flung down the book he'd been reading and dashed into the room with the source of the noise, his kitchen.

As he suspected, the window had been completely shattered; what he hadn't suspected, is what broke it.

A girl with black cat ears and two black tails lay on the floor amidst the broken glass, unconscious and bleeding. Issei gasped as a torrent of thoughts flooded his mind.

Who was she?

Why did she have real cat parts? Was she human?

Why had she broken into his house and collapsed? Was she running from someone?

Should he call the police? An ambulance?

Issei grimaced, not knowing what to do. She probably wouldn't want an ambulance, going off intuition.

"Uhn...!"

The unconscious girl cried out in pain, clutching at her right leg.

At that point, Issei's protective instincts overrode any apprehensions he was having, and he picked her up bridal style.

"This is insane..." He mumbled.

Issei carefully carried her into an unused guest room, laying her on the bed. She was wrapped in what looked to have previously been an extravagant black kimono before whatever had happened to her happened.

Now, it was tattered and ragged, damp from the light rain and slick with her own blood. Any Obi that might have accented it was long gone.

Issei wasted no time in pulling it off her, caring more for the girl's safety than her modesty. She wore nothing under it, but Issei did her the courtesy of not looking anywhere he didn't have to.

Once he could see clearly, he was astounded; her body was covered from head to toe in slash wounds of all kinds. None of them looked particularly deep except one, though, on her right thigh. It went down from the top of the thigh to a few centimeters above her knee and was the source of most of the blood.

Before he did anything, he had to first make sure it wouldn't be a waste of time; he bent down and put his right ear to her mouth, listening for breathing and watching for the slow rise and fall of her...impressive chest, which he was just now noticing and definitely wasn't looking at the whole time.

Definitely.

Hearing a tiny, almost imperceptible breath, Issei had confirmed that she was still alive and therefore doing nothing to help the odd catgirl would be the same as killing her.

Setting his jaw, he ran to his bathroom and collected an advanced first aid kit, retrieving from it a roll of bandages, some sterile needles, suture wire, disinfectant, scissors, and tweezers. Everything he'd need for a makeshift surgery.

Rain began to pour outside as he set to work. It had been quite a while since he'd stitched a wound, and he'd never done it on a human, but he remembered the basics. Thread the needle, insert, pull through, continue until finished.

After a grueling several minutes, he pulled the needle up for the last time and tied a surgeon's knot, then cut the thread off. The worst of the bleeding had stopped, but she was still coated in scrapes and scratches, so Issei began to disinfect and bandage them all.

"Unh..."

As Issei has wrapped the final bandage around her last wound, one on her wrist, the girl groaned, consciousness stirring within her. Issei looked like a deer in headlights as she slowly began to open her eyes.