He’s a Fox, But Got Puppy-Rescued - Chapter 1

The first thought that came to mind as soon as he regained consciousness was that his stomach hurt. How much had he drunk last night to feel like this? He tried hard to recall, but since he couldn’t remember anything after the second bottle, it seemed he had blacked out. Still, blacking out after just two bottles didn’t sound right, so he must have downed several more after that.

The last time he drank had been six months ago. Maybe his stomach had gone into full rebellion after suddenly being hit with alcohol again, because the pain was no joke. With the sensation that something invisible was tearing through his insides, Ho-hyun groaned and instinctively burrowed toward the warmth.

Soft sheets and pillows, and something warm. Startled by a strange warmth he wouldn’t have felt if he’d fallen asleep alone, he snapped his eyes open. As his blurry vision cleared, a shocking scene unfolded before him.

Sunlight was streaming through a gap in the slightly parted curtains. A narrow beam of light slowly settled on a man’s face. His sharply defined features, cast in distinct shadows, looked more like a sculpture than a living person.

Staring at those delicately carved features—like they’d been painstakingly chiseled by a renowned artisan—made it hard to tell whether this was a dream or reality. Only after staring blankly for quite some time did Ho-hyun finally realize that what he was hugging was a large man.

Swallowing hard, the young man quietly lifted the sheet that was covering them. One, two, three, four legs lying in their natural state. The two thin ones were his own, and the other two… Once he grasped the situation, Ho-hyun tightly shut his eyes.

Two fully grown adults had slept in the same bed. Naked. Even that alone was enough to make him guess what had happened between them last night, but the pain in some hard-to-describe parts made it even clearer. His arms, legs, waist, and even between his legs—it all hurt. As a sensation rose from an area he’d never imagined could feel pain in his entire life, Ho-hyun’s face went pale.

The fact that he had slept with someone wasn’t that big a deal in itself. In modern society, where meeting and parting is free, it wasn’t uncommon for two consenting adults who got along to get physical. It was even one of the most frequently used tropes in dramas. The problem here was that Ho-hyun and the man weren’t drama characters.

The man and he had a sort of mutually beneficial relationship. Ho-hyun provided labor, and the other offered compensation. In simpler terms, they were employer and employee. In this capitalist society, he had apparently, in a drunken haze, slept with someone akin to a god—the employer. The young man quietly buried his face in his hands. At this very moment, a single sentence consumed Ho-hyun’s mind.

“I’ve screwed up.”

As if mocking his tearful expression, sunlight streamed down. Unaware of the turmoil inside him, the mercilessly bright light brought tears to his eyes.

Ho-hyun had always been unusually unlucky since he was a child.

He had never once won at rock-paper-scissors, and every lottery or drawing he participated in ended in a miss. Getting splashed with water out of nowhere while walking down the street, or getting into minor fender benders, were small mishaps that happened at least once a month.

People who had witnessed him getting swept up in all sorts of incidents always said the same thing: “You’re the kind of guy who would fall backwards and still break your nose.” The general consensus about Ye Ho-hyun was that his luck was abysmal.

He had lived as a universally acknowledged icon of misfortune for a solid 21 years. Time enough for the land to change twice over. After experiencing all kinds of mishaps, he’d learned to take most things in stride.

Even so, the events of the past few months forced even someone like Ho-hyun to admit: “This is a bit much.”

It all started with a single text message. The time was 3 a.m. He had just returned home after barely surviving yet another late-night shift. While sluggishly changing out of his clothes, squeezing out the last of his energy, a message came in from a colleague who had joined the company at the same time as him.

The message, long enough to fill the entire phone screen, had a surprisingly simple content: the boss had fled in the night. The employer, who had a habit of withholding wages as if it were nothing, had finally evolved into a full-fledged bastard.

Ho-hyun’s company was what you’d call a black company. It was so tiny that there weren’t even ten employees. Yet the greedy boss accepted every freelance project he could get his hands on. There was always too much work and not enough people, so it was common practice to work people into the ground.

Even that alone was enough to make the place a trash heap, but the boss’s atrocities didn’t end there. As payday approached, he would become visibly irritable. He’d nitpick over mistakes that wouldn’t have mattered otherwise, and it wasn’t rare for him to delay wages beyond the scheduled payday. All Ho-hyun wanted was to be paid for his work, but he was treated like a robber for it.

The repeated delay of payment, despite what was clearly stated in the employment contract, had made him want to quit more than once. But the resignation letter that sat tucked in a drawer never saw the light of day. There was simply nowhere else to go.

In the eastern region where he lived, fox beastmen didn’t have a great reputation. For ages, it had been common belief that foxes were sly and cowardly creatures, and that stereotype had spread like common knowledge.

As a result, not only ordinary foxes, but fox beastmen who descended from them were often met with suspicion. For Ho-hyun, who had been born a black fox beastman from a black dog beastman father and a red fox beastman mother, this was deeply unjust.

Add to that the sluggish economy and a declining employment rate for young adults, and finding a job was like plucking stars from the sky.

He had sent out resumes without discrimination, applying to anything and everything, and had barely managed to land the job he currently had. So even if the company was a dump, he hadn’t dared leave.

His coworkers were in similar situations. Rats, crows—even cockroaches. All of them were species that arguably had even worse reputations than foxes, which explained the bizarre phenomenon of zero resignations despite the terrible conditions.

So what else could he do but set a bowl of water out and pray to the gods for nothing to happen? Half a year passed like that. And then Ho-hyun came to a conclusion:

God was dead. And even if He did exist, He certainly wasn’t in his life.

If there really were a god, this wouldn’t have happened. As he stared at the palm-sized screen, a heavy feeling settled in. A sigh escaped his lips.

At first, he tried to deny the reality thrust in front of him. Fleeing in the night? Maybe there had been some kind of mistake? He hoped that his sleep-deprived coworker had heard a false rumor, but that delusion didn’t last long. Based on what he’d seen so far, that damned boss was more than capable of such a thing.

Losing the job he’d struggled so hard to get in less than half a year was upsetting enough, but Ho-hyun’s misfortune didn’t end there. His landlord suddenly notified him that the rent would be raised by 200,000 won.

When he first heard it, Ho-hyun couldn’t believe his ears. Having lived there for a little over a year since becoming an adult, he knew well that even the original rent hadn’t exactly been cheap.

The nearest convenience store was a thirty-minute walk away, and since the place was located at the very top of a hill, the moment it snowed or rained, it would transform into a natural ski slope crafted by Mother Nature. And that wasn’t all. The interior, barely four pyeong (about 13 square meters), was so cramped that it felt tight even with just a single bed inside, and the furniture that came with the place as “options” were so old they could be rightly called antiques.

The one saving grace was that it had been close to his company. But that company had gone under just a while ago. Now that the only advantage it had was meaningless, Ho-hyun saw no reason to pay extra money to renew the contract. In the end, he gave up on renewing the lease, and in the blink of an eye, found himself at risk of losing not just his job but also his place to live.

Of course, he had some savings, so it wasn’t like he’d end up on the street just because he didn’t work right away. But housing costs in the city were higher than he had imagined, and if he just lazed around without doing anything, it was obvious he’d burn through his money in no time. However, finding a full-time job right away wasn’t feasible either, so Ho-hyun began urgently looking for a short-term part-time gig.

His requirements were simple. A job that wouldn’t skimp on minimum wage and wouldn’t force him to work until dawn. Those conditions were born from the trauma of his last job. Thanks to those easy conditions, it didn’t even take a week before he found a decent job. It was a part-time position at a logistics center about an hour away from where he used to live.

The working hours were from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., experience wasn’t necessary, and room and board were provided free of charge. On top of that, although only by a few hundred won, the hourly wage was higher than the minimum. For Ho-hyun, who had to vacate his current place in just a few days, it seemed unlikely he’d find a better offer.

Maybe it was thanks to his extensive part-time work experience before his last job, or maybe because the general manager was young. Whatever the case, after a short interview, Ho-hyun ended up signing the employment contract. Everything had gone smoothly without any hiccups, but perhaps because his life had always been steeped in misfortune, he couldn’t shake a sense of unease.

There’s no way this could be all good. The suspicion didn’t last long, though, because the moment he arrived at the assigned accommodation, he felt genuinely relieved. The place was very different from what he had imagined.

The “group housing” they provided was slightly bigger than the one-room apartment he used to live in alone. And yet, they crammed in anywhere from seven to nine people. The space was so tight that it was hard for anyone to lie down properly in human form, so a rather unique rule had emerged in the dorm.

Except for large species whose true forms were bigger than their human ones, all beastkin had to shift the moment they entered. Since most of them were either small or medium species, the dorm was always covered in fur.

Others grumbled that it sounded like some kind of employment scam, but Ho-hyun actually preferred it this way. If even the dorm had been good, it really might’ve been a scam. Having never experienced good luck in his life, the young man took quiet comfort in the small misfortune hidden within this stroke of fortune and worked diligently. And then, at that time, the third misfortune struck.