Doubler || NCT || Completed

31

"I think that she's there", Jisung's hesitant voice pierced through Yujin, completely shattering her hopeful plan of getting away by hiding and being quiet. She had underestimated Jisung's instincts, that much was sure.

Once again, the fear coursing through her veins froze Yujin's body, making it impossible for her to move or even think. Only part moving were her whiskers that twitched as her human and animal sides fought over the control of her mind.

The sound of footsteps was getting closer, and Yujin could feel them on the cold ground beneath her paws. She could smell them. Recognizing Jisung's scent and smelling the faint scent of cigarettes from the older guy sent a new wave of horror through her.

"Where is she?" the older guy whispered, as if the sensitive ears of a harvest mouse couldn't have heard his every word.

Yujin gained the control of her tiny body when she heard rustling of shoes against the ground only one or two meters from the pile of thrash she was hiding behind. She took steps backwards, trying to get away from the sounds.

"She's here", Jisung didn't bother to whisper.

Cold panic flushed through Yujin when she heard that someone had grabbed one of the trash bags. She backed away even quicker but had to stop when she hit a corner where the dirty brick wall was met with another one that extended to her left. That wall was blocked with an air condition unit and more trash.

No no no...

With her heart in her throat, Yujin's eyes flickered from side to side, as she tried to come up with a way out.

"You're too slow, boy", the older guy complained, as Jisung was taking his time removing the bags.

"If she's small enough to hide here, I might kill her if I move something too quickly", Jisung explained but increased his pace anyway.

As the smelly plastic walls of her hiding place were crumbling down, Yujin stood up on her hind-legs, looking at the brick wall behind her. Harvest mice were excellent climbers but she still wasn't sure if she could climb the wall, no matter how many uneven bricks with ideally jutted out edges it had.

"Are you sure that she's there?" the man asked, clearly suspicious of the tracker. "Or are you just stalling because you can't do your job properly?"

Yujin turned her head towards their voices, hopeful glint igniting her mind with a possibility of getting away after all.

Jisung hesitated. "She's against the wall, I think", he said.

His words were the last straw for the nerves of the harvest mouse, and before Yujin could stop herself, she had jumped against the wall.

Her paws were made for climbing and they seemed to find the optimal edges to grab with ease in order for her to ascend quickly. As her tail balanced her climbing, Yujin moved up against the wall, hoping that Jisung wouldn't be fast enough to catch her.

A quiet gasp behind her made Yujin's round ears spasm and she sped up, praying in her mind that it would be enough. The bricks were sharp against her paws.

"There!" The older man's angry voice reached Yujin's ears only one millisecond before something slammed against her minuscule body.

As she fell down, as dread and nausea swirled inside her, as she realized that she hadn't been quick enough, Yujin remembered how, weeks ago when she'd seen Jisung for the first time, Renjun had stated that the younger kid was most likely a feline of some kind.

And what cats are good at?

She had been an idiot, thinking that she could escape so easily.

The pint-sized mouse was caught mid-air by the same hand that had seized her getaway. The hand didn't flatten the impact of her fall at all so her body crashed against it. There was, however, no room for pain as Yujin tried to clear her head after the fall and understand what was going on.