Chase had been feeling something was wrong with his body for about a week.

Vomiting accompanied by dizziness came first. The moment I got out of bed, my vision completely blacked out, so I rolled around on the floor. My eyes started spinning, and I barely regained consciousness after vomiting everything inside me.

After that, he couldn’t eat anything and couldn’t sleep properly. One day, he had a nose bleed that didn’t stop all day. After a few days like that, he started to get scared. Maybe he had a serious illness. If he collapsed, there was no one to take care of his hospitalized mother. Chase wasn’t in a position to get sick

 After some thought, I decided to head to the hospital. It wasn’t the Kaisa Medical Center where my mother was hospitalized, but a small clinic run by a close senior colleague.

“What’s wrong with your face? Are you in a lot of pain?”

“I just don’t like it.”

“It’s not just a little bit. It is like you’re all dying. Let’s do a blood test first. Just sit down.”

The senior was very surprised to see Chase’s condition and hurried to do the test. His mouth was parched when he heard that if the results were not good, he would do additional tests.

I sat alone in the clinic waiting room, blankly waiting for the results. As time passed slowly, all sorts of thoughts came to mind, making my head noisy.

Chase, 24 years old, is long past his college graduation age but has yet to complete his senior year. He has been taking time off to earn living expenses. And even though he is receiving support through a sponsorship program, his mother’s medical expenses are not insignificant.

If his father had been alive, things might have been a little different. Chase thought back to his father who had passed away when he was young, but he quickly shook his head. As far as he could remember, there had never been a time when the household was well – off.

But despite what others may think, Chase had a fairly happy childhood.

His father was the youngest son of the head of the Arteon Group, a large corporation. He was a leopard-man who inherited the family’s traits and lived up to the expectations of the elders in the family, but he fell in love with a desert fox-man servant and was completely kicked out of the family.

The family of three always lived together in a rented room in an old house that was decades old. My father, who graduated from a prestigious university and even studied abroad, never got a proper job. Chase found out much later that Chairman Arteon had taken steps to ‘educate’ his youngest son who dared to rebel against him.

His father worked as a day laborer at a construction site, carrying bricks and laying cement without a day off, until he died instantly in an accident at the construction site when Chase was eight years old.

The Arteon family took action after hearing the news of their son’s death. They came to take the child, knowing that Chase was a black panther, the best of the panthers.

He abandoned his youngest son without any regrets as he had no hope of recovery, but it turned out that the young child still had potential.

His uncle came with an arrogant expression and said that Chase needed to receive a proper education.

His mother held Chase in her arms, her face pale, and she trembled. But Chase was unmoved. He had heard countless stories of what might happen when his father was alive.^[1]Won’t change ‘her’ to him, but remember that his mother is a male fox.

“You understand, baby. They are very scary people, so you have to protect Mom and Dad.”

“Don’t worry. Just trust me, Dad!”

Chase, who was four years old at the time, immediately transformed into a black panther. roaring and raising his claws. Then his father added very seriously:

(Since you can’t communicate with him, just ask him right away when you meet him.)

(Kaang!)

(What are you teaching your baby?)

His mother burst into laughter, and Chase nodded with a broad face.

So Chase did just that. The eight-year-old Suin, who had turned into a black panther, rushed at the eldest son of the panther clan and bit his leg, refusing to let go. In return, he was beaten until his ribs and legs were broken, but his uncle eventually clicked his tongue and backed off.

So I protected my mother safely. But did I really protect her?

His mother refused the astronomical sum of compensation offered by Chairman Arteon as Chase’s ransom. Instead, she raised Chase by doing all the dirty work on her own. The void left by his father was great, but even then, Chase was able to be happy.

At least that was the case until my mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

20 years old, I didn’t have time to celebrate my admission to my father’s alma mater until found out about my mother’s illness. She said it was the result of overwork, stress, and malnutrition accumulating over many years. It was a rare disease with no cure, and although research was being done, it was not easy to produce meaningful results.

At that time, Chase often thought about it. If he had followed his uncle, would his mother not have gotten sick? Is it ultimately my fault that my mother is sick?

Fortunately, a national support program for rare disease research was established, and my mother was able to receive support and be admitted to the Kaisa Medical Center. But before she could relax, a new threat arose.

It was just three years after his mother began receiving treatment at Kaisar Medical Center through the program, when Leoruca. a freshman in college, confessed that he fell in love with Chase at first sight.

I refused because I had neither the time nor the interest, but the kid was persistent, and before I knew it, he had finished investigating him and was threatening me by bringing up my mother.