He’s a Fox Ch 23

Chapter 23

Contrary to his concern, what Hohyun saw in the man’s eyes was nothing more than curiosity, interest, and a faint hint of surprise.

The man smiled in a sly, almost mischievous way that didn’t match his broad, open features and spoke.

“I missed the right moment, so my greeting’s a bit late. I’m Kim Hyunseok, 31 years old.”

“Ah, I’m Yeo Hohyun. I’m 21.”

“So you’re Mr. Hohyun~. Come sit over here. If Yuri went to get ready to go out, Kangwoon will probably be along in a bit.”

The wolf, who had been elongating the ends of his sentences as though speaking to a child, patted the empty spot on the sofa next to him.

He had the kind of boundless sociability that looked like an MBTI test would peg him as 100% “E” type without fail.

Maybe you have to be this outgoing to get along well with a tiger, Hohyun thought.

Realizing his tail had been drooping at the thought of being left alone with a stranger, it began to rise again little by little.

Inhaling lightly, Hohyun caught the man’s scent without thinking.

For an ordinary human this might seem like strange behavior, but for a wolf from the Canidae family, it wasn’t hard to understand a fox doing so.

Judging from the circumstances, it seemed Hohyun had been stuck in fox form because of the collar—another reason the wolf easily accepted it.

Seeing Hohyun relax under his friendly reaction, Hyunseok’s eyes brightened.

“So, when did you first meet Kangwoon?”

“Uh… about a month ago?”

“A month? That’s why I didn’t know. But how did you end up wearing something as nasty as that? Kyung-seok Kim’s crazy, sure, but even he wouldn’t mess with Beom Kangwoon’s lover.”

“…Excuse me?”

The wolf tapped the shopping bag containing the removed collar as he spoke, and the single word “lover” made Hohyun freeze.

Lover?! There was nothing between him and the tiger. If anything, they stood as prospective employer and employee at best.

Before Hohyun could correct him, the wolf supplied his own explanation, as if it clarified everything.

“Oh, right—you probably didn’t catch his name. Kim Kyung-seok, my cousin. These days, he’s been making money pulling crap stunts. You’ve seen it on the news, right? The big fuss about human trafficking.”

“WHAT?!”

It was perhaps the most shocked Hohyun had been in his life.

The unexpected revelation hit like a bomb—this wolf was cousins with that scumbag, the one so vile he could make the devil himself demand resignation.

Being mistaken for the tiger’s lover was bad enough—

but now to learn the connection to the biggest misfortune of his recent life… Hohyun brought a hand to his forehead.

This double strike left him dizzy.

He decided to clear up the first misunderstanding before anything else.

“For the record, I… I’m not in any kind of relationship with him.”

“Gasp—seriously? No way.”

This time it was Hyunseok who reacted like he might faint,

his mouth open wide enough to reveal sharp canines poking out—evidence of partial transformation.

The change wasn’t limited to his teeth; the tips of his neatly rounded nails sharpened, and the leather sofa tore with an audible rip.

The tear was bad enough to expose the stuffing inside—finally explaining why the big tiger hadn’t batted an eye at a snagged thread in his own sofa earlier.

If a wolf reacted like this, a tiger would be the same or worse.

A scene like this was probably so common to Kangwoon that a single loose thread hardly registered.

Startled, Hohyun flinched, and Hyunseok quickly apologized—though he still wore a clear look of confusion.

“Sorry for scaring you. …But really—really—you’re not dating?”

“No…”

“No way… Are you sure?”

It wasn’t baseless skepticism.

Hyunseok and Kangwoon had been friends since they were three years old.

Over nearly thirty years of knowing him, Hyunseok had learned that Kangwoon was not the type to be openly affectionate—not even as a pretense.

He was generally indifferent to others, and on the rare occasions he did take interest, it rarely manifested in a positive, gentle form.

Yuri’s birth had mellowed him somewhat, but his base nature remained the same.

So when someone like that not only brought someone into his home but also carried them everywhere in his arms without putting them down, Hyunseok had immediately assumed they must be lovers.

If they weren’t, then what on earth explained that behavior?

Baffled by his friend’s uncharacteristic actions, Hyunseok’s thoughts shifted as he recalled that the fox before him was also a victim of his cousin’s vile trade.

A tiger who’d sooner shut himself in his own territory than meddle in anything else wouldn’t have extended a helping hand lightly… so what happened?

“Then how did you end up here at this house?”

“The baby—oh, I mean Yuri…”

Hohyun briefly recounted the infamous “dog-picking” incident.

As he listened, Hyunseok began piecing things together.

On the day Hohyun first met Yuri, the baby tiger had actually been expected at Hyunseok’s ordinary pet shop.

At Kangwoon’s request, he had prepared a dog that looked exactly like one from a certain fairy tale—but instead of taking the dog, Yuri had mysteriously gone straight home.

Now it made sense: she’d been sidetracked because she’d picked up someone from the illegal beastman market his cousin was running.

“…Our princess really is pure Beom bloodline,” Hyunseok murmured, half to himself.

Hohyun didn’t know exactly what that meant, but could guess—

and just as he wondered about it, the baby tiger herself appeared.

From afar came a rapid dodododo of footsteps.

Both canids turned to look.

There came Yuri, fully dressed for an outing—cute dress adorned with a ribbon, hair tied in twin-tails—running toward them.

As she hurried along, her eyes met Hohyun’s.

In that instant, she screeched to a halt like a statue.

Even the following crocodile looked taken aback.

“Young miss, why did you stop all of a sudden?”

She’d been excited to go see “Moongmoo” after hearing her brother had finished talking with “uncle”—yet now she froze.

Seeing no visible issue in her neat attire, the crocodile followed her gaze upward…

…and spotted a familiar wolf on the sofa beside an unfamiliar human.

The instant his eyes landed on Hohyun, the crocodile’s own widened in shock.

Hohyun had never known they could stretch that far.

The young man gave an awkward smile—and the crocodile yelled.

“AAAAAAH!!”

Even with such an intense reaction, Yuri didn’t turn to look—she was still staring fixedly at Hohyun.

So was the crocodile now, all thought of checking for the cub’s safety forgotten.

Their jaws hung wide enough to display every tooth, gleaming white under the ceiling light.

Watching the two of them frozen like statues, the last to exit from Yuri’s room—Kangwoon—tossed out a dry remark.

“You’ll start drooling. Close your mouths.”

At her brother’s voice, the cub finally reacted.

Shutting her gaping mouth tight—just as instructed—she shuffled nervously backwards, then tucked herself behind him completely.

Small as she was, and with his size, nothing but a sliver of her dress hem peeked out.

Tugging on his pant leg, she whispered a question.

“Where’s Moongmoo?”

“He’s right there.”

“…That’s not Moongmooni.”

“Pretty sure it is.”

“No!”

She shook her head emphatically, lips firmly sealed—and even gave a hiss.

It was a pitiful, half-hearted hiss that barely made a sound, but Hohyun still felt a pang of hurt.

She hissed at me… the baby hissed at me…!

Glancing at him, Kangwoon offered reassurance.

“She’s just unfamiliar. Your scent hasn’t changed, so if you leave it be, she’ll be fine.”

To “Oppa,” this wasn’t serious.

From his perspective, Yuri wasn’t angry so much as uncertain—unable to quite reconcile what she was seeing.

The cub was used to transforming at will, but still couldn’t fully comprehend that others could change forms, too.

She was young, and relied more on what she saw than on understanding the underlying phenomenon.

Because of that, she reacted warily to sudden changes in appearance.

The household staff—Kangwoon included—had agreed to limit transformations around her until she got older.

In fact, when she was younger, still living with her parents, he had once changed into his human form in front of her—

and the reaction then had been far more extreme than today’s mild wariness.

From his perspective, this wasn’t even hostility—

just pre-emptive distance in case someone she wasn’t yet sure of came too close.

If she could watch him change into “Moongmoo” right in front of her, it would solve the problem instantly—

but for now, stuck in an awkward in-between state, that wasn’t happening.

With the quick fix unavailable, the only option was patience.

Her sense of smell was fine, so gradually, as she caught his scent again, she’d come to know that this gentle-faced young man was indeed “Moongmoo.”

Relieved by the caretaker’s confidence, Hohyun’s expression eased.

Kangwoon sent the three ahead—

the crocodile carrying the still-wary cub in the lead,

and Hohyun following at a safe distance so as not to make her tense.

The moment the fox left, the wolf still in the living room let out a low, disbelieving click of his tongue.

Glaring at his uncharacteristically gentle friend, Kim Hyunseok raised his voice.

notes

* Moongmoo (멍멍이) — Korean onomatopoeia for a dog’s bark, used by the baby tiger as her personal name for Hohyun.

** Dog-picking / 멍줍 — Slang/fandom shorthand for casually picking up a stray dog (or here, a person in dog form) and keeping it; used humorously to describe how Yuri brought Hohyun home.