It was a morning just like any other.
The sky over London was as foggy as ever.
Mr. Evans, who lived on Christchurch Road, opened his small shop at seven in the morning, just as he always did.
The shop Mr. Evans ran was a very common sight in England—a modest fish and chip restaurant. Although it wasn't a famous old establishment, his place was quite well-known in the area around Christchurch Road. Office workers nearby who didn't have time to cook often came here to satisfy their hunger.
Unlike most fish and chip shops, Mr. Evans didn't use cod as the main ingredient for his fried fish. Instead, he made the unconventional choice of using larger bonito.
And the reason Mr. Evans chose bonito…
Was, of course, because bonito was cheaper!
As for the taste… well, the fried fish he sold was both cheap and plentiful. Was taste really that important? After all, once it was battered and fried, everything tasted more or less the same.
Besides, it wasn't that Mr. Evans was being self-deprecating, but with the palates of most of his countrymen, telling the difference between bonito and cod was no easy task.
After opening the shop door, Mr. Evans hummed a tune that barely resembled its original melody and headed into the kitchen to start preparing the ingredients.
Although he chose the cheaper bonito, Mr. Evans still maintained his own standards—all the fish he used were fresh and alive.
The bonito in the kitchen had just been delivered by Old Wright, and they were still jumping vigorously.
Reaching out, Mr. Evans skillfully grabbed one, slammed it onto the cutting board, and knocked it unconscious in an instant. With a few swift strokes of his kitchen knife, he butchered it neatly and arranged the pieces on a plate to the side.
After processing about a dozen bonito the same way, Mr. Evans finally stopped, picked up the plate of fish, and prepared to coat them in flour and breadcrumbs before dropping them into the fryer.
However, the moment he lifted the plate, he immediately noticed something was wrong.
It felt lighter.
Having been in this business for over ten years, Mr. Evans had a precise sense of how much fish he had prepared. The weight in his hands now was clearly less than what he had cut.
"Strange…"
Mr. Evans looked around, but there were no fish on the floor.
Could he have accidentally thrown some into the trash along with the guts and bones?
Scratching his increasingly thinning hair in confusion, Mr. Evans didn't dwell on it. Only two or three pieces seemed to be missing, and it wasn't worth wasting time over such a small loss—the first wave of customers would be arriving soon.
Shrugging it off, Mr. Evans continued with his routine and began frying the fish and chips.
Even after the customers arrived, he casually mentioned the incident to his regulars as a bit of morning conversation.
What Mr. Evans never expected was that today was only the beginning.
As the days passed, the mysterious disappearance of fish grew more frequent and the amount missing grew larger. He even dug through the trash can to make sure he hadn't thrown any away himself by mistake.
No matter how carefully Mr. Evans guarded the cut fish, pieces kept vanishing. He even placed the plate right under his nose, yet the fish still seemed to grow legs and disappear in the blink of an eye.
After yet another unexplained loss, Mr. Evans finally reached the end of his patience. He spent the "huge sum" of fifteen pence to hire seven-year-old Little John from his neighbor's house to help uncover exactly how his fish was disappearing.
On another ordinary morning, Mr. Evans brought Little John to the shop. He had the boy crawl into a cardboard box he had prepared, while he himself went about his usual routine of processing fresh bonito.
Little John hid inside the box, peering intently at the plate on the table through the gaps.
At first, nothing happened. But as the pile of fish on the plate gradually grew, a ghostly figure suddenly appeared on the cabinet above Mr. Evans' head.
It was a silver-grey tabby kitten. Little John couldn't tell whether it was a British Shorthair or an American Shorthair. The little cat didn't look very old—barely larger than an adult's palm—and its emerald-green eyes stared fixedly at the fish on the table through the gap in the cabinet.
The kitten twitched its ears, seemingly aware of Little John's presence. Its big emerald-green eyes turned toward the box where he was hiding and lingered there for a moment.
Little John met those emerald-green eyes through the gap. He pressed his small hands tightly over his mouth and nose, terrified he might accidentally make a sound and scare the kitten away.
Seemingly sensing that Little John had no intention of stopping it, the tabby kitten withdrew its gaze and refocused on the bonito.
Confirming that Mr. Evans wasn't paying attention, the kitten floated down from the cabinet like a ghost, landing silently on the table.
With one quick glance at the busy Mr. Evans, the little cat swiftly picked up a piece of fish, tossed its head back twice, and swallowed it whole. Then, using the same method, it rapidly devoured an amount of fish almost equal to its own body weight. Finally, it leaped lightly back onto the cabinet, scurried along the top, and slipped out through the kitchen skylight.
Only after the tabby kitten had vanished did Little John burst out of the box in excitement.
"Uncle Evans! I saw it! It was a really beautiful little cat!"
Little John gesticulated wildly, describing the kitten's appearance to Mr. Evans and pleading on its behalf. "It doesn't eat that much anyway, Uncle Evans, so please don't hurt it! If you have to, I can pay for the fish with my own pocket money!"
Looking at the excited boy, Mr. Evans rubbed his head in amusement. He knew Little John had been dreaming of a new soccer ball for months and had been saving up for a long time. The boy's recent frugality had even rivaled that of the old miser who ran the corner tailor shop.
What kind of magic did that fish-stealing cat possess to make Little John willing to give up his beloved soccer ball?
But…
Wasn't that cat's appetite a bit too large?
According to Little John's description, it was just a tiny kitten. How could it eat so much?
Perhaps the gap in the box had been too small and Little John hadn't seen clearly.
Mr. Evans shook his head with a smile, patted the boy's head, and said, "Keep your money for the soccer ball, kid. I can afford a bit of fish."
And so, Mr. Evans' shop gained a new topic of conversation that day: the mysterious silver-grey tabby kitten that only Little John had seen.
(Silver tabby American Shorthairs are quite famous, but silver tabbies exist among British Shorthairs too. As for the protagonist's exact breed… it doesn't really matter.)
...
Camelot, who was sacrificed in the previous chapter, was actually the protagonist of a transmigration story I wrote for fun years ago. It was never published, and I gave up after writing about twenty to thirty thousand words. I don't even know where the draft is now.