Kaito opened his eyes, checked the calendar on his phone, and felt a wave of relief so profound he almost smiled. Almost. The muscular effort required to smile seemed unnecessary that early in the morning.
He got up, stretched, and went to the kitchen to brew his coffee. Peace reigned supreme. The silence was golden.
Then, he looked down the hallway. The bathroom door was open.
Kaito froze. A cold, terrible logical realization washed over him like a bucket of ice water.
Tomoe Koga hadn't come to clean his bathroom. She had spent the day at the beach having an emotional breakdown and then at school destroying her social life.
Logical conclusion: The bathroom was still dirty. The cleaning she had performed existed only in a deleted timeline. The gleam of the porcelain, the scent of lavender... all lost to the quantum vortex.
"How..." Kaito gripped his coffee mug tightly, "...cosmically troublesome."
He walked over to the bathroom and peered inside. Yes. The chaos remained. Dried soap stains on the floor. It was a monument to inefficiency.
Kaito wouldn't clean that. He refused to. He had already paid for that service mentally. The universe owed him a clean bathroom.
His gaze shifted to the closet near the entrance. The "Divine Containment Unit."
Inside resided the original source of the filth. The entity that had flooded the floor.
Kaito walked to the closet. He opened the door with a brisk tug.
Fia was inside, curled up in her blanket, sleeping with her mouth open and drooling slightly onto the vacuum cleaner.
"Wake up," Kaito said.
Fia snored, mumbled something about "infinite pudding," and rolled over.
Kaito sighed. He walked to his side table. The TV guide—now quite tattered and held together with tape due to excessive use—was there. He picked it up. He returned to the closet.
He nudged the goddess's ribs with his foot. "Get up. Work day."
Fia opened one electric-blue eye, confused. "Hmm? Kaito? Is the loop over? Did we win? Can I have my victory bonus?"
"We won," confirmed Kaito. "Your bonus is the opportunity to correct your karma."
He pointed to the bathroom. "Clean it."
Fia blinked, processing the order. She looked at the bathroom, then at Kaito, and then let out a nervous laugh.
"Ah, you're joking! How funny, Chosen One! But look, I am a High-Class Spirit Guide. My hands were made to weave destinies and point paths, not to... scrub sanitary porcelain. Besides, didn't Koga-san do that?"
"That timeline was erased," Kaito explained coldly. "Her work was voided. The dirt, however, persists in this reality. You caused the dirt. Causality demands you remove it."
Fia stood up, smoothing out her frilly dress, trying to recover some dignity. She puffed out her chest.
"I refuse!" she declared, striking an anime heroine pose. "This is beneath my station! I saved the world with you! I provided moral support! I am a deity! You can't treat me like a maid just because you're lazy!"
Kaito stared at her. "Is that your final answer?"
"Yes! And if you insist, I will report this to the System as Abuse of Divine Resources and..."
Kaito didn't wait for the end of the bureaucratic threat.
He raised the magazine. The movement was fluid, trained by weeks of repetition.
Fia saw the paper weapon coming. Her eyes widened. "WAIT! THE PEACE PROTOCOL! YOU SAID THAT..."
THWACK.
The sound was dry and satisfying. The magazine hit the top of Fia's head with millimeter precision.
"Ow!" she screamed, bringing her hands to her head and crouching instinctively. Tears welled up in her eyes instantly. "Why?! Why always violence?!"
"Because violence saves time on arguing," Kaito replied, impassive. "And because you dirtied my bathroom."
He pointed the magazine at her like a sword.
"You have two options, Fia. Option A: You clean the bathroom now, using manual methods, until it shines. Option B: I continue testing the durability of your physical form against rolled paper every five minutes until the bathroom is clean."
Fia looked at him. Looked at the magazine. Looked at the dead, merciless eyes of her Chosen One. She knew he wasn't bluffing. Kaito Tanaka was a man of his word, especially when that word involved minimum effort for himself.
"You are a tyrant..." she sobbed, grabbing a bucket. "A gray-hoodie dictator..."
"Less crying, more scrubbing," Kaito said, returning to the living room. "And don't use magic. If you explode the toilet, you're sleeping on the balcony."
He sat on his beanbag, listening to the sounds of weeping and scrubbing coming from the bathroom.
"Justice has been served," he murmured, sipping his coffee.
School felt strange on that 28th of June.
The atmosphere was no longer one of open hostility, but of baffled caution. Koga was there, at her desk; she had new friends surrounding her. When she saw Kaito, she didn't smile, nor run to him; she just gave a brief nod.
Kaito appreciated that. The contract was terminated. The drama was over.
________________________________________
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