A few days later, Vera lies on her chest on the mattress and eats spoonfuls of a tub of Neapolitan ice cream placed on the floor. Her new hoodie hangs beside the door this time, and she's wearing the pink shirt and also her old uniform's white utilitarian slacks. She stretches forward and meows. She stares at Maddie and smirks.
Maddie is sitting at the table, doodling in her sketchbook.
"Hey, save some for me. I like that stuff too, you know!"
Maddie gets up from the table, grabbing a spoon that's taped to the wall. She pulls it free and then begins to scoop down into Vera's ice cream tub.
Vera soon slides the ice cream away from Maddie. Her tail bobs from side to side. She prepares to dart away if she needs to.
"It's mine. You should get your own later. Which variety of ice cream is your favorite flavor? I'm guessing it's chocolate—it has to be."
"Actually, my favorite is mint. Specifically mint with Heath. Chocolate ice cream doesn't taste like chocolate. It tastes like the sound of dropping a rock into a patch of grass."
Maddie drops into a low crouch, tail waving. Spoon at the ready, she darts her arm into the tub, digging up a chunk of ice cream and eating it.
"That's an odd thing to say. There's a word for describing things like that. Mint is more boring, though, so you would be wrong."
She walks over to the microwave and leans against its tabletop, enjoying even more of the ice cream. Her ears perk up, however. The distant noise of a scratchy speaker resonates through the tunnels again.
Vera bursts out of the door.
Maddie perks up as well, noticing the same noise. She darts after Vera, following the catgirl. She moves surprisingly quickly, although Maddie is just as fast.
"Oh, he must have come back. See, maybe there is hope!"
Maddie plucks the ice cream tub out of Vera's hands, eating some as they walk towards the noise.
Vera catches up to Reese and lies on the tunnel floor beside his speaker, turning the volume dial down between two of her fingernails. She's letting them grow out.
"Welcome back. What's the ongoing status on curing me? Have you found anything that can help? Oh, got me that phone?"
Her cat-like slits for eyes almost glow compared to the subterranean darkness. Hope...
He lowers his guitar and reaches into his bag. He gifts Vera an older smartphone with physical buttons by placing it in front of her.
"Really, I'm sorry I took so long. I'm not so sure why I was nervous the other day... Well, my mother's friend had some exciting connections to real cat people like yourselves just like I thought. One of them even says she knows you herself, Maddie. Which—the point I'm trying to lead up to—she wants to take you to dinner when you've got a chance. She says she might be able to help your friend here too, but she says she doesn't want to get your hopes all shot straight up. She's humble I guess."
Maddie looks confused for a moment, and then her eyes go wide.
"It couldn't be her... could it? I haven't seen Irina in years. I wonder if she's okay after what happened. It'll be nice to see her again. Where does she want me to meet her?"
Maddie's tail is wagging excitedly now, with the prospect of meeting her old acquaintance and potentially a new lead.
Reese hands Maddie handwriting on a tear of paper. The name of the buffet restaurant listed below the address, "Tan Chinese," is familiar to her.
"She said she'll be there at five."
Vera stretches her back and hisses. She swipes the cellphone into her pocket after a button check.
"Sounds like she can't really help me. Perhaps I'll simply wait for Shape to respond to some messages now. Why should I waste my time on any more promises? Anyone else will probably just make things worse—make me a hamster or something. Maybe I'll wait a little longer... It's not been so bad I guess..."
She stands up again and leans against Maddie. This has been her way of communicating that she wants to be petted.
Maddie gives Vera a loving head rub, rubbing the top of her head with one hand and her cheek and chin with the other.
"You really are getting more needy, huh. We'll be out of this mess soon enough."
Maddie folds up the paper and nods to Reese.
"Thank you so much for the help, it really means a lot. I know where this place is, I'm going to head there as soon as I can."
Maddie turns and begins leaving, gesturing for Vera to follow.
Vera purrs, and she closes her eyes.
"I don't believe I'll ever get enough of that. I suppose that makes me needy by definition."
She follows Maddie, bored and unimpressed with Reese's information. Her eyes glaze back to him, and she points a finger gun to her own head.
"See you later."
"Sure. It's good to help. Anytime. I should study for AP biology before I go forget."
Reese packs up too. He checks his cellphone, and he warns Irina with a text message.
> the other one is worse than I thought (edited)
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Maddie and Vera walk through another quiet neighborhood, looking for the restaurant. It's only three in the afternoon, so they still have a couple of hours to look for it.
"So, are you excited for this? You might finally find the cure! Isn't that great?"
Maddie has been bubbling with excitement, although it seems more directed at meeting up with Irina rather than towards curing Vera.
Vera's flip phone is almost pressing up to her nose, and she spams texts messages to Shape and Town about the curse and her efforts. Judging by the length of the messages the Field Research Department has returned to her, they're probably disappointed.
"I don't believe your ex will cure me," She says. She shrugs.
"Am I paying again for our dinner?"
"Of course you are. I don't have any money, remember? I steal rotisserie chickens for fun, actually. Well I actually do find it fun but also yeah I don't have money."
They turn a corner, walking on similarly empty street. There's one or two people walking by who seem so uninterested they don't even notice the cat ears.
"Have you at all been looking for the restaurant? Stop looking at your phone we need to find it!"
"I won't have any money either if you give it a few more weeks."
She points at a handful of stores they pass. She then stands by one. She snaps the clamshell phone shut.
"Red and yellow trim. I believe this is it? They also have one of those cheap aquariums with the coloured pebbles."
A young woman standing inside the lobby of the restaurant walks out, however, immediately confirming Vera's guess. Irina is wearing a green qipao dress and a little shivering smile. She hugs Maddie and then takes them inside, and her tail sways behind her.
"Maddie! I'm so, so sorry it's been so long. So much happened, one thing led to another, and—right, right. I'll tell you. Let's eat at a booth."
Maddie hugs her back, following her into the restaurant. Her tail is wagging now, excited to see her old friend. They sit at a booth, and Maddie beings speaking to her.
"Hi Irina! It's been so long since I saw you! How have things been going? Sorry about the cat ears. Oh by the way this is Vera! She's my friend who I accidentally cursed!"
Maddie lets out a torrent of questions and other words, nearly bouncing in her seat with excitement.
"I'll be honest—I really didn't jive with the being turned into a neko suddenly back then. It ruined my whole life. For a while."
Irina folds her arms on the table and then lays her chin down nested inside them. Others sit in tables across from them and, while they keep Vera and Maddie at the edge of their vision, they'd rather eat.
"Then, some stuff happened—and then I found Ms. Guo! She told me my ears and tail are a blessing. She told me some interesting stories about that, like folklore. And she let me work here. The regulars think it's cute. I guess you would still say it's a curse? Still live in the subway? Sorry Vera. Hey—uh, what do you do?"
Vera leans against Maddie. They're across from Irina.
"Nothing. Waiting for someone to fix this. Meow. My career was important work, but I can't even focus now. So Iet's be brief."
She tugs on her own ear.
"Can you cure me, Irina?"
"Oh, when I called it a curse I meant it in the literal sense. Some scientist catgirl we found claims it originated from some wizard in the middle ages. So it literally is a curse! Isn't that cool?"
She looks at a menu, pretending to be able to read.
"The scientist said she's close to developing a cure but can't quite get the last step. She researched some old scrolls and stuff to figure out the recipe but parts are missing. So we're looking for anyone who might know something."
"Yeah! I can. Correction—I have something that can. I used to write some things Ms. Guo told me because I knew I'd forget. I close my eyes and it's just gone. I think I wrote a cure. But really, please, let's eat. You're starving, right?—It's a buffet."
She saunters to the clean plates and slides one across the laminate surface. An oily aroma rises from the warm metal trays of the main courses. Irina uses the tongs like wide ice cream scoops.
"That's pretty cool. It really is like an ancient idea. Should it pass down to children? Oh and what if, uh, some of us already are cursed and don't even know it?"
Maddie scoops up hot food from the buffet, piling it onto a plate as she speaks.
"I have no idea how it really works! I don't think a cursed person wouldn't know, with the ears and all. The cat parts seem to show up right after the curse is applied, from what I've seen."
She continues to get food, taking from pretty much everything on offer at the buffet.
"What do you mean about forgetting? I don't have any memory problems. Does it have to do with something other than the curse?"
Irina combs her long, brown hair back from her broccoli and beef smothered in MSG.
"Like, oh, it could be my fault—I shouldn't blame the curse."
Vera takes only a small portion of beef, imitation crab, and four of those miniature, cube, coffee-flavored cakes. She sits down before Maddie and Irina do and chews while glaring at the latter.
"Find me that stupid paper. Or let me talk to Ms. Guo. She's your boss?"
Maddie sits down at the booth, giving Vera a gentle slap on the shoulder.
"Be nice. Just because you've lost your marbles doesn't mean you can be mean to Irina."
Maddie turns to Irina, looking over her plate piled high with food.
"So, do you have the paper on hand? That'll probably make things a whole lot easier. Maybe we can go get it after we eat?"
"I'm not being mean. I'm being firm. It'd be mean if I requested you shut up, Maddie."
She checks the cellphone for messages, and then she picks at a morsel of beef wedged between her teeth.
"Yeah—she's my boss. She's like my mom though! Well, my second mom—I was going to meet with Caitlyn Monday. Getting sidetracked sorry—Maddie's right. We can find it at my house after this. I get it, Vera, I really do."
Irina eats a lot and fast. She clumps several napkins into a greasy ball, and the ends of her hairs are dipped in the sauce of it all.
Maddie happily devours her meal, not used to having so much fresh, warm food available to her. When she's finished, she lets out a sigh of satisfaction.
"Food's really good, wow. Do you do any of the cooking? I don't really know how restaurants work. They're hard to steal from."
She tosses a couple of greasy paper napkins into the ball.
"Nope—I could never cook! The little stuff is kinda prepared from a warehouse—but those main courses? Those are made in-house... I wonder if you could get a job here too? That so you can buy things?"
Her hand glides across the table and then rests on top of Maddie's. She smiles.
Vera stands from the booth and plucks the remaining two cakes from her tray.
"Irina. Today you decided to arrive here without your notes on the cure, which must be bollocks in the first place, despite your information being the reason we needed you?"
Vera growls. She swallows one of the cakes and walks to exit.
"Enjoy yourselves, girls. I need more than 'hear-say.'"
"Vera, get back over here right now. I get that you've gone a bit crazy but that doesn't give you the right to throw your manners out the window. She struggles with the same things you do. She's not just going to show up to work with the notes now, is she? She still has a job to do and it's much easier to just go home with her."
Maddie moves her hand to give Irina's a gentle squeeze, the two of them still not quite over each other all these years later.
"Sorry Irina. I know you're trying your best. Vera really needs this and she's just frustrated about her decline. Into cat insanity."
"Shut up! Let me speak."
The strangers seated around the restaurant murmur among themselves and try to ignore the meltdown. The bell chimes on the door. Vera opened it.
"You, then, go back home with her and grab it. Don't tell me what to do. Our struggles have so little in common. You understand that if she wished to be a human, and she truly had a working cure, that she would have cured herself by now?"
She flees.
Irina pushes a fork around her plate. It's a grating noise, metal on ceramic, for their sensitive ears. She then pushes it all forward.
"Vera really isn't taking it well. You should want to consider—well, hold on. We'll fulfill her idea and go grab the notes. I can find and get them. It's fine. I'll, uh, pay for you and her."
She helps Maddie up and leads her toward where she lives further in these faded outskirts. She bites her nails and whispers to herself.
"Hey, you seem really worried. Are you alright? Vera's not usually this irritable... she's a bit grumpy, but not to this degree. Do you need me to help with anything?"
Maddie fidgets a bit nervously, feeling the need to help Irina but not sure how to do so. She follows Irina to her house, looking around as if Vera might appear at any moment.
"You seem to be doing better than I am, at least. I still have been living alone in an abandoned train. I suppose it isn't so bad, but it'd be nice to have a real house."
It's a pale house in the suburbs with a trimmed lawn. She leads Maddie into the open garage and through its hallway, past the laundry crook, into her bedroom. A bin of dirty laundry is tipped over on the yellow carpet, and the first drawer she opens in her closet is overstuffed with faded, loose pieces of paper.
"I need help—yep. So, are you sure Vera isn't, like, going to hurt you? If no cure happens, what'll happen, you think?"
She pauses, and she rips up one of the papers.
"You deserve to be here too, but my brother and mother would have to agree first. I didn't say that did I?—they accept me being like this because I'm a part of this family. Thank my lucky stars they understand."
"I don't think Vera would hurt me... not that I think she could, even if she tried. I'm much more used to my agility and reflexes from the curse. I think I'll be alright. I'm glad your family understands... mine didn't. That's why I live in a dilapidated train station."
Maddie pounces at some of the shreds of paper, nimbly catching them out of the air and rolling gracefully after landing. She steps back over to Irina, looking at the house.
"So, do you have it easily on hand? I would really like to get this done as soon as possible."
Irina stops digging through the drawer to nod at Maddie. She then deposits whole bricks of paper on the floor and fiercely flips through those.
"I'm sorry, Maddie. I'll—I'll do whatever I can. Um, it's in here."
She shows Maddie one of the many examples of her chicken scratch. She scans it, and she scans it again.
"Frog something... Legs! I remember now. She said frog legs. I'll lend you some at the restaurant—no one will miss 'em. Then, yeah, prove it to Vera I'm right. Or show her she's right about what she said about that stuff Ms. Guo told me..."
That's an odd thing for the cure, but I guess it lines up with a curse from a wizard."
Maddie takes the note, and begins to head out of the house.
"Do you want to come with me? I don't know if you want the cure or not, if all of this works out. I personally won't take it; it's just a part of who I am at this point."
Irina bites her lip and grabs Maddie's arm before she escapes too far ahead of her. She thinks of how Vera ran away.
"I, please—go come back and cure me, if it works! I guess I must have didn't think it'd work when she told me frog legs. I was right… She missed stuff that your scientist probably isn't. I miss being human. I—I'll work there forever if it doesn't work."
Maddie takes one of Irina's hands in her own, and stares into her eyes.
"I swear I'll come back and bring you the cure. I caused this mess and I should fix it. I'll go get the frog legs and bring them to the scientist."
She pauses for a moment and then pulls Irina into a hug, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
"I'm sorry nothing ever worked out. I promise I'll fix this."
She heads for the restaurant, seemingly more serious than she's ever been in her life.
She nods and wipes some sparse tears away. The stress caught up to Irina.
"Thank you."