"Cake, cake, cake…"
The child was a little loud.
Origami glanced down at Yimi, who walked beside her while maintaining a deliberate small distance—wariness apparently born from the earlier threat.
It wasn't only that. Yimi hadn't forgotten that "the non-freeloader" used to go by the nickname "cat trafficker."
Yimi gripped the small stick she'd been snubbing, keeping pace at Origami's side. Utterly useless as it was, it happened to be perfectly straight—and for no reason she could identify, her hand had simply closed around it.
Cake was the thing "the non-freeloader" had given her the very first time she was brought home. Soft and sweet.
Yimi had a serious sweet tooth. The affinity had only appeared after she arrived in this world, because back home she had never tasted anything sweet. Even the cakes her mother brought held no flavor for her.
"You tell me where the cat is first. Then I'll buy cake." Origami wasn't going to let the child trick her.
"It's in a tube."
"A tube?" Origami frowned. Other than a few horrifying images, she couldn't imagine what tubes had to do with a cat.
"Several tubes. Sand beside them." Yimi did her best to describe a children's sandbox. The description was bare-bones—but in a city like this, there weren't many sandpits to choose from.
Origami nodded and took hold of her free paw. "Take me there."
"I'm not going." Yimi tried to pull free—and failed. In her weakened state, without drawing on her Reiryoku, she had roughly the strength of an adult man.
"Why not?"
The kitten's gaze drifted sideways. "Cake first. No cake, no cat."
"You're bluffing." Origami pinched her cheek.
Cheeks squished flat, Yimi managed a garbled protest: "Shiori's just a small fry anyway."
"…"
Origami's mental reconstruction: Murasame-sensei carries the cat back to her office → Murasame-sensei's daughter, out of school before the high schoolers, runs over → she spots the cat and asks her mother for it → Murasame-sensei leverages her authority to confiscate the student's cat, then tells the student it ran off on its own.
Her fist tightened. This child already had a prior offense—getting Cuộn Cuộn dirty.
My cat has been kidnapped. Cake is the ransom.
Origami raised her phone and took a straight-on photo of Yimi's face. "What style of pot do you prefer?"
She was weighing whether to use this little thing as leverage—trade the child back to Murasame-sensei in exchange for the cat.
"Pot?" Yimi stared up at her, baffled.
"…"
In the end, she took the child to buy cake—and deliberately chose a cheaper shop.
Custom orders aside, most shops had ready-made options in the display case. The moment they walked in, Yimi was plastered to the counter, stretching on tiptoe to watch the bakers work, because she understood that learning to fish was better than being handed one.
She wanted to learn—but none of the equipment was familiar, and her basic cooking skills hadn't covered any of this.
"What flavor do you want?" Origami looked down at her.
"All of them."
Origami nodded. "One children's set. Make that two."
She wanted some herself.
"Of course!" The attendant smiled and packaged the order, then produced a small toy from behind the counter and held it out to Yimi. "Here you go—free gift for children twelve and under!"
"Oh?"
Yimi reached out and took it.
A plain, ordinary wind-up dog. Exactly what you'd expect from a freebie.
Unimpressed. The cat reserves goodwill exclusively for Golden Retrievers (Uncle Nuomi's breed).
The little girl held it up to Origami. "For you."
"I don't need it."
"For you." The kitten stretched tiptoe-tall, holding it higher.
"…Thank you." She took it with visible reluctance.
The cheerful clerk laughed. "Are you two siblings? You really do look alike!"
"No."
"Oh? I'm so sorry—"
Origami looked down at the little brat in the baseball cap. Same white hair. Same blue eyes—with a single dark streak woven through the hair, and pupils that carried just a hint of a vertical slit.
Out of nowhere, a dangerous thought crystallized in her mind. Every Spirit sealed by Shiori had ended up by Shiori's side—and the last Spirit to live alongside Shiori was the white light Spirit she despised most…
Shiori's introduction had been insultingly vague. "Distant relative" barely counted as an answer, and this child had never once appeared near Shiori before.
Then there was the more tenuous guess: this girl's hair was white—the same white as that beam of light…
Ssk—the sound of Yimi tearing the packaging open.
Origami forcibly pressed down the suspicion rising in her gaze. "Not eating at home?"
Yimi glanced at the three cakes inside, took one, left two, and answered something entirely off-topic: "The rest are for Mommy and Grandma."
Yimi was a clever little cat. As mentioned, she had never tasted anything sweet back home—not even from her mother's cakes.
She knew it was because that world simply had no real sweets. She wanted to save two for her mother and grandmother to try.
"…"
Right—Murasame-sensei's daughter. She'd almost forgotten.
Origami pinched the bridge of her nose. She'd been overly paranoid.
Not entirely her fault. She had finally gotten a cat to bring some peace into her life, only to cross paths with a teacher like that.
Her irritation toward the little girl began creeping back—only for Yimi to reach out and take her hand.
She placed it on top of her own head, turned slightly, and rubbed against it to complete the headpat ritual on her own terms.
Now it's okay to eat.
Wait.
The kitten gnawed her thumbnail. She'd just given Origami a toy—which meant it cancelled out the feeding.
She stretched on tiptoe. "Lower your head."
Origami obliged, puzzled. Yimi reached up and patted her head.
The kitten recalled her headpat.jpg
Utterly incomprehensible.
"Now give me my cat back."
Yimi's eyes shifted. "Go check the tubes. The cat's there."
"It had better be." Origami took her hand.
Yimi spun around—and the instant Origami's guard dropped, she was gone. Those short legs were impossibly fast; she vanished in the blink of an eye.
Origami's fists tightened.
Yimi hadn't been deliberately setting her up. The cat simply didn't understand why Origami was so determined to find her, nor why Grandma (fake) had first told her to leave and then sent her back to keep staying with "the non-freeloader"—but she also hadn't forgotten the two warnings from Shiori and Grandma (fake): don't reveal yourself.
She tucked the small cake into her storage space, shifted to cat form, and curled up inside one of the sandbox tubes to wait quietly for her reliable food source to come find her. The wait stretched longer than expected.
She was nearly asleep by the time Origami finally arrived.
"Cuộn Cuộn—she really is here…" Origami beckoned.
"Meow." Yimi walked over on her own and jumped into her arms.
Origami held her for a long moment, then started toward home.
Too strange. Just lying there waiting—that alone was too strange. A coincidence?
Passing a utility pole, Yimi spotted the reason Origami had been so late.
A missing persons notice—bearing the straight-on photo Origami had taken of her human form not long before.
Missing child. Generous reward to whoever finds her. Contact: … (Murasame Reine's phone number)