The five days leading up to the cultural festival were a logistical hell.
Fia's ban from the kitchen didn't solve the problem. It just displaced it. Like a leak in old plumbing, Fia's need to "help" found other cracks in the apartment's routine through which to gush chaos.
Day 1 Post-Egg: Kaito was gaming. The silence was almost perfect. That's when he smelled it. Something floral, sweet, and chemically potent. He paused the game. Mai looked up from her book, wrinkling her nose. The bathroom door opened and Fia emerged, beaming, enveloped in a cloud of foam. Behind her, the washing machine was overflowing with a mountain of soap bubbles spilling onto the floor. "I used all of your cleaning products for a 'Purifying Wash Cycle'!" she announced proudly. "It increases clothing durability by 3%!" Kaito spent the next two hours drying the bathroom floor with the only clean towels left.
Day 3 Post-Egg: Kaito woke to the buzzing sound of his game console. He sat up and saw Fia with her hands outstretched over the machine, which was glowing with a golden light. "I'm applying an 'Optimization Buff'!" she explained. "This should reduce loading times by 0.8 seconds!" The console let out a small puff of smoke and shut down. It didn't turn back on. That day, Kaito read his console's instruction manual three times.
Day 5 Post-Egg: The festival was tomorrow. The tension in the apartment was palpable. Mai was visibly anxious, pacing back and forth. Fia, sensing the anxiety, decided the atmosphere needed a "Feng Shui Adjustment." Kaito found her trying to levitate his beanbag chair to the opposite corner of the room. "The energy flow will be much more harmonious here!" she said, panting from the effort. The beanbag floated for a second, spun, and dropped onto the small television, cracking the screen with a sad pop.
It was the last straw.
Kaito stood up. He said nothing. He just walked to the television and unplugged it, plunging the room into silence. He turned and faced the goddess, who froze, sensing the shift in the atmosphere. Mai retreated to the kitchen, sensing what was coming.
"Fia," Kaito said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "We are going to have a talk about your terms of service."
He sat on the floor, cross-legged. He pointed to the spot in front of him. Relutantly, Fia sat.
"Question," Kaito said. "Can you stop being... physical? Can you go back to just being an annoying voice in my head?"
Fia shrank. She looked down at her own hands, which were glowing softly. "I... I can," she admitted in a low voice.
Kaito waited. The answer wasn't complete.
"But..." she continued, her voice a whisper. "I don't want to. When I'm just a voice, I'm just the System. I'm directives and notifications. But like this..." she looked around the tiny, chaotic apartment, "...this way I'm... me. I can feel the warmth of the tea. I can feel the floor. I can... see you both. Really. I'd rather stay like this... with you."
There was a vulnerability in her confession that anyone else would have found moving. Kaito processed the information like an engineer analyzing a bug report. The bug had feelings. How inefficient.
"Your preference is logistically unsustainable," he said, bluntly. "You broke my TV."
"It was an energy flow accident!"
"You flooded my bathroom and fried my game console."
"They were optimizations with a margin of error!"
"You are a hazard," Kaito concluded. "However, locking you in the closet 24/7 requires me to remember to unlock it, which is mental overhead. Therefore, a compromise."
He leaned forward. "Inside this apartment, you can be a physical problem. I will manage you. But tomorrow, and on any other day we go out, you will return to being ethereal. A voice. Invisible and untouchable. Outside, you are an auditory problem, not a physical liability. Understood?"
Fia stared at him, her chin trembling. It was an order. One that went against everything she wanted. "But... but the System says physical contact and visible presence are crucial for bond-formation at public events! How can I guide you if I'm not there? How can I apply charisma bonuses or detect affinity fluctuations in real-time? It's against protocol! I have to be there to..."
Kaito didn't let her finish.
He stood up, picked up the same TV guide from the side table—now slightly crumpled from prior use—and, before Fia could even scream, he hit her.
THWACK.
The sound was identical to the first time. Dull, firm, and final.
Fia froze, her mouth open mid-word: "pro-to-col." Her eyes went wide. The bump on her head, which had receded in recent days, found a new friend.
"The rule is not a suggestion," Kaito said, dropping the magazine. "It is a condition for your continued existence outside the closet."
From the kitchen, Mai watched the scene, no longer shocked, but with a sort of resigned admiration. She looked at Fia, who now had silent tears streaming down her face as she held the top of her head.
"Tomorrow is the day," Kaito said to the room, as if nothing had happened. He looked at Mai, then at the whimpering goddess. "All of this," he gestured to the chaos of his apartment, to the broken TV, to the humiliated deity, "ends tomorrow."
He sat down on his beanbag.
His peace depended on the plan.
His sanity depended on it.
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