Something wasn't right. Yimi had her own bed now—and yet here she was, squeezed into the small single bed alongside Origami.
Origami lay with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. The little cat sprawled across her stretched luxuriously, evidently having slept beautifully.
Which made it all the more unfair that Origami's face had just been kicked by that same stretch.
She raised one hand, palm open—and found nowhere to put it.
Sharing the bed was one thing. The sleep posture was another matter entirely. Yimi had rotated through every orientation multiple times during the night.
"Miao?"
Yimi rubbed her neck. Something ached from her shoulders down to her lower back. She gave Origami a deeply suspicious look, privately convinced that the other party must have been thrashing around in the night.
But magnanimous Kitty was not going to hold this against someone who wasn't freeloading off her. She generously transferred all the blame for her stiff back onto a snake in some distant tropical rainforest.
Notably, Love Train had triggered passively last night—and this morning, not once.
Her Spirit power had fully recovered. Compared to the restricted state before, the difference was nothing short of twenty times over.
The little cat glanced at Origami.
"?"
There it is again—that look.
Origami reached out and caught her tail. "What are you plotting now?"
Yimi's eyes slid away. She pretended not to understand human speech.
Not that Origami was planning to press it today. Her mind was going to be preoccupied with other things.
She tucked her hands under Yimi's arms and carried her to the bathroom, setting her down on a small stool that had been prepared in advance.
"What are you doing?" Yimi tilted her face up.
"Brushing your teeth."
Origami produced a freshly unwrapped cartoon cup and a child-sized toothbrush with paste already applied, and laid it sideways in Yimi's mouth.
Scrub scrub scrub—
The foam built up.
Gulp. Yimi swallowed it. It tasted quite bad.
"…" Origami searched online to confirm whether swallowing a small amount of toothpaste would cause problems.
It wouldn't. She exhaled, patted Yimi on the head, and issued her instructions for the day: "Stay home. If the Spacequake alert goes off, follow people out to the shelter. Don't wander. If I find you somewhere you shouldn't be, no food."
"Okay."
A last look back at Yimi. Origami changed into her shoes and stepped out.
Should be fine.
Probably.
She paused, counted three full seconds, then opened the door—to find Yimi standing perfectly motionless on the sofa.
"Don't stand on the sofa with shoes on."
Not running off. Good.
This time she really left.
Kitty hadn't given her a proper goodbye, because System had said she could come back and visit, and it wouldn't even be that long.
Yimi produced the Spear of Longinus, flung it aside, and maximized her divinity. "System. Gacha."
Preparation before the battle.
"Auto-skipping gacha animation—"
"Congratulations, Host, you have drawn the item: [Squirting Water Gun]."
A water gun appeared before her—only slightly thicker than her own forearm.
[Squirting Water Gun]: Point the nozzle at any water surface and press the button to auto-refill. Don't be fooled by the size—internal capacity is three times what the exterior suggests, and the spray force is strong enough to put out a fire. That said, please treat it as a normal toy. Hoping to injure someone with this would be more efficiently accomplished by picking up a stick and swinging it like an Insect Glaive.
Even the item description outright stated it can't hurt people.
Yimi's ears drooped. She'd thought keeping Love Train active during gacha draws would guarantee good rewards.
"Demon."
"It appears you have made your preparations in full, my lady." The devious Greed Demon surfaced through the floor, its enormous bulk making the previously spacious living room feel immediately cramped.
Yimi stowed the Spear of Longinus. "Take me there."
"With the greatest pleasure." The demon opened its unbelievably large mouth and swallowed Yimi whole, then plunged headfirst into the floor—which had inexplicably become damp the moment the demon appeared—and vanished.
Celestial Spirit—the Greed Demon's collective term for the First Spirit and for Yimi alike. The word came from its own world of Valoran, referring to beings equivalent to deities.
Why apply this name to the First Spirit? The answer lay thirty years in the past, when the largest Spacequake in history—the first of its kind—erupted at the center of the world.
DEM's four founders—Westcott, Ellen, Karen, and the current head of Ratatoskr's board, Elliot—were among the last naturally born, full-blooded Wizards in existence.
Having resolved to take revenge on the world after years of persecution by ordinary people, they pooled the entirety of the world's magical energy at its center and forged something that rivaled the divine. That was the First Spirit.
As for what distinguished her from ordinary Spirits—roughly speaking, ten Spirits combined constituted only a tiny fragment of the power she had split off from herself.
"What are you doing here?"
"My lady, petty deception is how one loses a devil's trust."
Right. The demon had been tricked again.
…not entirely tricked.
Kitty was no fool. Hand over part of your power, then let a weakened Kitty fight the First Spirit?
The actual terms of this deal: the demon would deliver the little cat to the extremely dangerous proximity of the First Spirit, and only after the little cat defeated the First Spirit would the Zero Crystal—representing the First Sephira—pass to the demon.
The Greed Demon left behind nothing but an indignant declaration and dove back through the floor without pause.
As for the so-called location of the First Spirit—it was nothing as remote as the Neighboring World or some other unfamiliar place. Though Yimi had never been here before, the metallic walls and ceiling made it immediately recognizable.
The interior of a Ratatoskr vessel.
More specifically: Ratatoskr's changing room. And only one person occupied it.
"Grandma?" The little cat chewed on her fingertip, staring at Reine Murasame—wearing only her underwear, sitting there with dark circles under her eyes for reasons not immediately apparent.
"Did you track me down because you're hungry?" Reine rustled through her locker and produced a lollipop. "This is all I have on me."
"I'm so sorry!" The changing room door was flung open from outside with a palm-slap.
Shiori stepped in with an apologetic expression and scooped Yimi up. "This kid keeps wandering off."
She marched firmly out with Yimi in her arms, leaving Reine alone in the changing room with something clearly turning over in her mind.
"Wait—Shiori, aren't you supposed to be—"
"No time, sorry!"
Shiori hauled Yimi all the way to the teleporter and transported them both to the surface.
The little cat's processing finally caught up.
Demon delivers her to the First Spirit → only one person was there: Fake-Grandma → Fake-Grandma is the First Spirit.
That damn idiot Shiori was sabotaging her again.
But before Yimi could do anything, Shiori dropped to her knees and pulled her into a crushing hug—tight enough to feel genuinely suffocating.
"Thank god. Thank god… you're alright…"
Two tears traced lines down the blue-haired girl's face. Her form flickered with instability.
At the same moment, in the café—the same private booth.
Shiori swallowed, staring with barely concealed alarm at the person across from her. "Origami, you're not planning anything… unusual, are you?"
"No."
Shiori looked down at her coffee. "But normally coffee doesn't foam up like that, does it?"
"It does."
Shiori inched toward the edge of her seat. "Er… there's also a smell that, uh, coffee shouldn't really have…"
"That's normal."
Shiori suddenly pointed over Origami's shoulder. "Origami, look behind you!"
Origami didn't move. "There's nothing behind me."
Five minutes later, Origami walked out of the booth carrying an unconscious Shiori.
Perfect. Shiori had gone down without the slightest suspicion.
Not that Origami had any intention of following DEM's instructions. She wasn't an idiot.
First: get Shiori somewhere safe. Then: go and find every Spirit orbiting her, one by one.