The nightmare of spiritual contamination dissolved. In its place came a warmth she hadn't felt in a long time—the peace of a child pulled into a mother's arms and lulled by gentle fingers through her hair. A place that felt like home.
Was it a dream?
Even as her subconscious understood just how bleak and lonely her life was, her mind chose to be deceived—drinking in the sunlight, unwilling to wake.
Well. That, and the cat had kept her up half the night.
This 'warmth' carried something subtly wrong about it, though—a vague sensation, like sleep paralysis, of being unable to move. Unable even to breathe properly.
"Mm?"
Yimi, sprawled on top of Origami, tilted her head. "Why isn't she waking up?"
"Host, the body may simply need time to recover. An initial illness often leaves the patient in a weakened state for a period afterward. Eastern tradition typically involves preparing certain foods to help restore the ill..."
Yimi climbed off and hopped down, hazy memories surfacing of the basic culinary skills she'd absorbed in her last world. There had been instructions on making congee.
She'd learned it and never used it.
The little girl ran out of Origami's apartment, ignored the elevator entirely, and climbed down the stairs floor by floor.
She sniffed at the air. Her sense of smell was diminished at the best of times, and after that rain it was even worse—but apartment complexes usually had a convenience store at the ground level, which spared Yimi a lot of searching.
At the foot of the building's steps she nearly walked into a puddle. And just like the ancient tug-of-war between devil and saint, two instincts clashed inside her head.
Childlike impulse: STOMP IT.
Cat instinct: NO!!
Yimi checked her reflection in a nearby glass panel. Right now she was in her human form.
Thwap.
Dirty water splashed across her relatively clean clothes. Satisfaction bloomed in the little girl's chest—full, complete, unambiguous.
Then her feet left the puddle, and the satisfaction was instantly replaced by the damp, miserable regret of wet shoes.
Whooooom—
That regret received an unwelcome upgrade. A motorcycle came tearing down the road ahead without slowing, its rider deliberately angling the wheel across the puddle to drench her from head to toe.
The little cat raised her fist and let loose in a clear, bright child's voice: "Fuck you!"
The Stand flared and vanished in an instant. The motorcycle immediately went into a skid, fishtailed at a bizarre angle, and launched itself headlong into a roadside public restroom—making an intimate but entirely harmless landing against the rear end of a man whose expression strongly suggested he had spent his whole life afraid of school bullying.
Considerably more balanced emotionally, Yimi bounced on her heels and ran toward the supermarket.
It was lunchtime, and only a drowsy cashier staffed the register.
Yimi crouched low, slinking inside with the practiced caution of a house cat that sometimes escaped to roam. In her experience, people who stood in places like this were the type whose job was to shoo her away.
"Millet and pumpkin congee..."
She found pre-weighed millet in a plastic bag and a pumpkin on the vegetable rack with a price sticker directly on the skin—fortunately, both were on lower shelves within reach of her height.
Yimi looked down at her small pale hands, then picked up the smallest pumpkin she could find.
When she turned around, she froze. The woman who was supposed to be chasing her away had shaken off her drowsiness at some point and was staring straight at her, expression full of confusion.
Yimi went completely still, doing her best impression of someone with nothing to hide.
Then she watched as a dead-eyed office worker placed a lunch box in front of the cashier. The young woman lit up immediately: "That'll be 830 yen—thank you so much, please come again!"
The ears hidden under Yimi's hat perked up.
So this is how humans exchange things.
She imitated it to the letter—trotted over, placed the pumpkin on the counter, and carefully laid out a handful of her favorite cards beside it, pulled from her spatial inventory.
"?" The young cashier's confusion returned in full.
No reaction. Yimi held the cards up higher.
"I'll trade you these." She looked at her cards with reluctance. "Can I trade these for those two? Someone's sick."
"Um?"
The cashier caught herself and managed a polite smile. "Little boy, we can only accept—"
She stopped mid-sentence, because she'd finally worked out why this small child had caught her attention in the first place. The clothes were completely soaked and splattered, as though the girl had rolled through a mud pit. Even if a child had simply gotten dirty playing, those cards—laid out with barely a smudge on them—told a different story. You could see how carefully their owner treasured them. A child this age wouldn't be unaware that buying things required money.
Whatever story she'd constructed in her head, the cashier felt a sting behind her nose.
"Of course you can..."
"Thank you." The little girl's eyes crinkled into a smile.
The cat had learned how humans trade.
Watching the muddy little figure leave, the cashier quietly covered the cost from her own pocket and felt entirely at peace with it. The cheap trading cards—the kind you'd barely see in low-ranked play—quietly became a limited-edition badge of honor.
——————
Gloop, gloop, gloop—
Something was simmering on the stove. Was that Mom cooking?
Exhaustion let Origami's eyelids part only the barest sliver—just enough to glimpse, through the open bedroom door, a small figure balanced on a step stool to reach the stovetop, busy with something in the kitchen.
Dad. Mom. Both of them, a good many years ago...
"Who's there?"
The words didn't make it out. The long-missed comfort lured her back under.
Like the kind of low blood sugar haze where you wake up, get dressed, and pack your things, only for your consciousness to keep fading—then you actually wake up to find you never moved at all.
At some point her subconscious finally registered that something was wrong, and she snapped properly awake. What she found was a curl of white steam, and following it to its source—a bowl of pumpkin congee left on the nightstand.
She didn't touch it. She retrieved the short knife from under the bed and moved along the walls, checking the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom. No sign of anyone.
"Nobody..."
She turned back toward the bedroom.
"Mrow!"
And immediately stepped on a paw.
Origami crouched down and gently rubbed it in apology—she'd nearly forgotten she wasn't living alone anymore.
"Shiori came by." It was a blunt conclusion. She straightened up and looked at the uncovered congee.
But if it had been Shiori, she would have put a lid on it to keep it warm, and waited by the bed for Origami to wake up.
While she was still puzzling it out, the little ball of fur she'd only taken in yesterday padded over and placed a front paw on the top of her foot.
I'm stepping on you. So now you know exactly how it felt when you stepped on me.