Summary
One late evening, Ayako and her parents are on their way home from their relatives. As Ayako admires her new years money and her parents bicker over how spoiled she is they are unaware of the black object that darted in front of the car. Ayako's father swerves and crashes into the object, immediately pulling over to check on it. But as he steps out, Ayako quickly argues with him by saying that if it's dead anyway there's nothing to do about it- not only that, but she has a show she doesn't want to miss. He remains uncertain but when she begins throwing a tantrum he eventually gives in.
A month passes and having returned back to school, Ayako and her friends discuss how much money they got and what they did with it. Ayako enviously listens when her friends make plans to have a puppy play date, then grumpily points out how her parents decided to put away her money for now, rather than let her use it. She takes off for home afterwards and comes across an abandoned black kitten sitting in a box. She is quickly smitten and brings it home after noticing how dirty it looks. Her mother quickly refuses though, considering how lazy she is to handle the responsibility, but with some convincing from her father she is allowed to keep the kitten and names it Saya.
In this time, Ayako fondly takes care of Saya. She learns how to properly take care of her, gets her a collar, and even shares the bed with her.
One day, she arrives home to find her parents in the middle of packing. They inform her of her grandmother was recently hospitalized so they need to go and check up on her. Her mother refuses to let Ayako come, saying that she has to focus on school so in the mean time, they got the neighbor to babysit her.
The following morning Ayako awakens to see that Saya has gone missing. She sees that her parents have already left and expresses frustration that they didn't wake her up beforehand and heads into the living room to find Saya's collar laying on the floor. She worriedly attempts to locate her when she bumps into someone; to her surprise it's her mother!
Her mother explains that because they were beginning to feel bad for abandoning her, she decided to stay home while her dad went to see her grandmother. She also sent the neighbor home since they didn't need her anymore. Ayako gets over her initial shock, bringing up how Saya went missing but her mother quickly explains that she got loose and ran away. She ran after her but she wasn't able to get her to stop. She suggests Ayako sits down for breakfast, but Ayako is left depressed over Saya leaving. She observes her momentarily before preparing her coffee and bringing it to the table, where her mother rejects the drink. Ayako points out that she always drinks coffee though; causing her mother to suddenly knock the drink to the floor and insult Ayako, startling her further.
At school she remains perturbed, but when her friends bring it up she claims it isn't important and they prepare to eat lunch. She continues to think about how strangely her mother has been until she looks to find a cute bento has been made for her... full of strange black hair. Her friends are horrified as it dons on her, and she realizes its cat fur.
The oddities continue to increase when Ayako awakens that evening around 2:30 am to hear a strange sound. She heads towards it to find her mother in the living room scratching the walls and furniture up with her sharp fingernails. She stares in shock until realizing she has seen her, and she rushes back to her bedroom and hides beneath the blanket. In this time, she realizes that this cannot be her mother; especially seeing as her eyes resembled that of a cats- like Saya's.
Is it possible this is Saya?
Hearing "her mother" make her way up the stairs, Ayako attempts to make sense of this. Before Saya seemed to be a normal, cute little kitten. But now she's somehow transformed into her mother and appears to be very hostile. It's then she comes to another important realization...
Saya was the cat that they hit a month ago...
The following morning Ayako quickly prepares to leave when she runs into the neighbor on her way out. She's come by to bring over a bunch of pumpkin she doesn't need and thought the family would enjoy them, but when Ayako attempts to explain what happened her "mother" shows up and throws her backwards. The horrified neighbor is met the door after Ayako's "mother" slams it to find the girl trying to call the hospital to contact her parents. Realizing the phone line has been cut, Ayako confronts Saya and she observes her face change to that of a cats. She asks Ayako why they abandoned her and Ayako runs past her and out the front door in an attempt to escape. She runs for the nearby alleyway unaware of an oncoming car that collides with her.
As Ayako lays in a pool of blood she finds herself suddenly on a road at night. She recognizes it as the night he incident occurred and finds her family vehicle nearby, calling to them and begging for them to find her. She hears herself from that night as she forced her dad to keep going, and when they drive off she begins to cry before noticing a bright light. She turns to find another car coming and is run over!
In an instant, Ayako awakens in the hospital with her worried parents standing above her. They express relief and explain how they tried calling her but were unable to, and when they spoke to the neighbor she behaved weirdly. When they arrived home they found her unconscious. However the doctors believe she will be okay so they can take her home now. Ayako is joyous until they ask her about Saya, causing her to weep and bring up that Saya died.
After arriving home, Ayako prepares a grave for Saya when her parents arrive with a brand new pet in hopes of cheering her up; a hamster just like she's always wanted. Excitedly she gets up to observe it and admires its cuteness, revealing herself to have gained Saya's eyes and sharp teeth. As her parents head inside to set up its new home, she finishes covering the grave and gets up to join them; with the bloodied hand of the real Ayako sticking out.
Several years have passed since that day. A group of girls are on their way to school when they observe the run-down remains of Ayako's home and begin chatting about the couple who previously lived there. Twenty years ago they randomly vanished; however their daughter was alive, with one of the girls claiming that her dad's sister was in the same class. They wonder if Ayako is still alive and deduce that she would be an adult now.
It's then they spot an old family picture that was left behind. They observe the happy couple and Ayako -with one girl noticing her cat eyes and fangs- and wonder what happened to Ayako's parents when an adult woman approaches them with a scolding. She reminds them that they need to get to school, and how they were told by the staff of the school not to approach this home. She begins leading them away when the topic of lunch comes up. They ask their Teacher what she likes eating, unaware of her chilling expression as she responds "meat"...
Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: Ayako's parents often bicker over how Ayako is being raised. If they had forced her to pipe down or ignored her to check on the cat they hit then this whole ordeal might have been avoided.
- Yamada, the neighbor wasn't much better. After witnessing Saya (disguised as Ayako's mom) injure Ayako she avoided the family when her parents tried to speak to her later.
- Cats Are Mean: But to be fair she probably wouldn't be had Ayako not abandoned her.
- Cruel Twist Ending: The side story features a time skip that implies that Saya eventually ate Ayako's parents, and her current job as a teacher is just to give her access to children to eat.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Saya and Ayako aren't shown making contact with the cars, but they are shown afterwards.
- Hellish Pupils: Not only the first sign of Ayako realizing something is off about her mom, but also how she looks at the end of the story. The same eyes show up in the bonus portion of the story when a group of young girls find a family picture left behind at Ayako's old home.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Adverted, the story began just after celebrating New Years.
- Karmic Death: Before killing Ayako and replacing her, Saya chased her into the path of an oncoming car, then made her experience how she died after.
- Kids Are Cruel: For a young child, Ayako is so spoiled that her selfish Lack of Empathy forced her dad to abandon a helpless, injured animal. An animal that could have been saved or at the very least given a proper burial.
- Never Found the Body: Technically nobody would think to look for Ayako because Saya took her place. It's also implied with her parents because everyone assumes they moved away.
- Would Hurt a Child: Saya, who seeks revenge on Ayako and is implied to eat children as a means of supporting herself.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Ayako was run over, but appears to be saved and awakens in the hospital with her parents standing over her. Turns out this is Saya and Ayako is in the grave she made, with her having taken over Ayako's life. The epilogue shows that Saya has taken a liking to eating human flesh, too.
