Unaware of whatever nickname the little girl had invented for her, Origami came to a stop in front of Yimi, said nothing, grabbed her hand, and started walking back the way she had come.
In her weakened state, Yimi clearly didn't have the raw strength to outpull an AST elite. She tried to apply her shoe as a brake.
Feeling the resistance, Origami paused and looked at her with mild puzzlement.
"Where are you taking me?" Yimi yanked her hand twice. It didn't give.
"I'm bringing you home."
"Home?" The little cat stopped resisting and let herself be led.
"That woman is a trafficker." Origami delivered the slander at Kurumi's retreating back with a perfectly flat expression. "Keep your distance when you see her."
It wasn't that she was a warm-hearted person—it was only because Shiori had said this child was her younger sister.
Yimi looked up at Origami's face. "You look more like the bad person."
Origami's step paused. "Why?"
"She gave me food. You didn't." The cat was still holding a grudge over the freeloading.
"..."
Had no one taught her not to accept food from strangers?
Origami turned with Yimi toward a nearby street stall, bought a taiyaki, and pressed it into the cat's hands.
Yimi sniffed it. "You're a good person (＾-＾)."
In the cat's estimation, Origami had just been upgraded from "freeloader" to "non-freeloader"—and non-freeloaders deserved recognition.
"..."
But more than the food, what Yimi actually wanted was to be taken home. The System had told her that her home wasn't in this world—left to her own devices, she could only complete tasks and accumulate energy to go home herself. The problem was that she was still too weak to risk attempting the main quest.
Even so, despite gaining human-level intelligence only after crossing over, the little cat still remembered what her home looked like from the outside. Maybe the impression had blurred from being away for days—but at the very minimum, she was certain her home was in a tall building. She wouldn't have forgotten that.
So when Origami brought her to a small one-story house with "ITSUKA" printed by the door and pressed the bell, Yimi finally felt something was off.
The door cracked open. A wisp of lightly-curled light-blue hair appeared first, and from a height somewhat shorter than Shiori's, half a small face peeked cautiously through the gap.
This was the Spirit codenamed "Hermit"—her name was Yoshino.
She looked like a thirteen-year-old girl with blue hair and blue eyes. On her hand sat a rabbit puppet she had named Yoshinon, which was linked to her Reiryoku and manifested as a second personality.
Seeing Origami at the door brought out more wariness than usual—because before Shiori had sealed Yoshino's power, Origami had chased her with a blade.
But now, as a result of her promise to Shiori, even when she ran into these already-sealed Spirits outside of work, Origami would look the other way.
Of course, that applied only to Spirits other than "Disaster."
It seemed Shiori wasn't home yet—not very surprising. Shiori was always off on a date with one girl or another.
"This isn't my house."
Origami ignored Yimi's protests, grabbed her by the underarms, deposited her into Yoshino's arms, and left without a backward glance. Mission accomplished—her merit and fame safely hidden away.
"..."
"Something quite unexpected has occurred," Yoshinon said, the puppet's mouth opening and closing in its peculiar cadence.
Yimi's mouth fell open. "The stuffed cat talked!"
"How rude—any way you look at it, Yoshinon is clearly a rabbit!" Yoshinon crossed her arms with pointed humanlike dignity. "Now then—whose child are you, exactly, and why have you been delivered here?"
"Mom's kid." Yimi reached out and poked the rabbit, and felt Yoshino's finger through the cloth.
Leaning closer, she caught a faint scent similar to Shiori's—but where Shiori was like a blend of many scents, Yoshino carried only one faint kind.
"That tells us absolutely nothing... Honestly! Poke me again and I'll bite you!"
"You'll bite me?" Yimi stepped back immediately at those words, raised her paws in a ready-to-pounce stance, and let out a warning hiss at the puppet.
This successfully startled Yoshino—who had not spoken a word through all of this—into taking a step backward.
"Yoshinon isn't a bad bunny..." came Yoshino's barely audible murmur.
"Wait." Yimi reached into her inventory, pulled out today's winnings, flipped through card by card, and finally held out the one she had used for the decisive victory: "Let's play slam cards."
"Hm? What's that strange thing?"
Yimi pointed at the skill text and explained: "It says I can attack you directly."
"I'd rather not! Really—boys and their obsession with violence."
"I'm a girl." Yimi fiddled with her baseball cap, suddenly feeling less attached to it.
"Then even more so! Children your age should be bouncing a rubber ball, jumping rope, dressing up dolls, or playing tea party." Yoshinon attempted to snap her fingers for emphasis—then remembered she had no fingers.
"Ah—speaking of which, Yoshino was just having afternoon tea. Would you like to join? There are snacks."
"Snacks? Yes." Yimi put her cards away like a good child and brought her head toward the rabbit. "Pat my head."
Give a pat first, then eat your food—that was fair.
Yoshino's hand stiffened slightly. She raised her other, empty hand and gave Yimi's head a gentle ruffle. This puzzled the little cat greatly—she could not understand how the rabbit was controlling its big kitty.
"Oh my~ A child who actually asks for affection! How unexpected. Please, sit."
What followed was a very bizarre scene: though the puppet appeared to be operated by Yoshino's hand, it used both its tiny stubby arms to lift the teapot by the handle and pour Yimi a freshly brewed cup of black tea with practiced ease.
The little cat watched the wisps of steam rising from the surface. She blew on it lightly. She knew it was hot—but some deep cat instinct compelled her to take an impetuous little sip anyway.
˚‧º·(˚˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅)‧º·˚
Her lips hadn't even touched the liquid before she was tearing up from the steam alone. She immediately used the tiny sliver of recovered power to redirect the burning sensation to a polar bear fishing somewhere far, far away.
"It bit me. I'm not drinking it."
"Really—you knew it was hot and went in anyway." Amid Yoshinon's complaints, the silent Yoshino sat down beside Yimi and carefully parted her lips to check for burns.
"No burns. It doesn't hurt anymore." Those were Yoshino's own words, delivered softly. She gave Yimi a small pat on the head in comfort.
Yoshinon clapped her little hands. "Oh! What a gentle, wonderful big sister Yoshino is!"
The blue-haired girl shyly tugged her hat brim down over the top half of her face.
"—Wait, how did we end up having afternoon tea together? Whose child are you, exactly?!" Yoshinon clutched her head in both hands, circling back to where they had started.
"Call Shiori." Yoshino said it quietly.
With just the two of them, Yimi caught every word with perfect clarity. She sprang to her feet in alarm.
"Don't stand on the sofa in your shoes!" Yoshinon scolded immediately.
"I'm leaving." Yimi jumped off the sofa and headed for the door.
Yoshino hesitated—then followed behind her, voice barely above a whisper: "I'll walk you home."
Yoshino was a good big sister.
Hearing those words, Yimi didn't wait even a second and ran straight out, desperate to avoid being delivered to Shiori the Demon King's lair once more.
"I'm back— oh? Yimi, how did you end up here? I was just—ahem!" Shiori appeared in the doorway for no apparent reason, swallowing the words I was just looking for you.
"I'm not Yimi. I'm Quanquan."
"No, you're definitely Yimi."
Yimi covered her face and crept past Shiori at maximum distance—then broke into a run.
The cat understood now. That white-haired person was not a "non-freeloader." She was a cat trafficker—one who kidnapped little cats and sold them to bad people.
"..."