Because she'd been afraid the cat would follow, she had personally stuffed the cat into the cage and locked it before running to the shelter. Unless some emergency had forced the pet shop to reopen that cage, an animal had no way to open a padlock on its own.
The shelter itself was fully sealed—once the doors closed, they only reopened when an alert was lifted. Unless, of course, something with unusual abilities was involved.
And on top of that, she'd been woken by a mouse in her bed this morning. Origami was meticulous about hygiene. Under virtually any other circumstances, there would be no mice or cockroaches anywhere in her apartment.
Thinking back: Ms. Murasame had been suspiciously evasive when she'd gone to check on the cat, and then Yimi had appeared. Yimi had run off, and Roly had materialized in the sandpit. Both Yimi and Roly had turned up on her route home before. Yimi was a Spirit with special abilities. Yimi and Roly had never been in the same place at the same time.
Origami narrowed her eyes and called out, testing the water: "Takamiya Yimi."
"Mrrp?"
A flat reaction. The cat answered to Yimi—not Takamiya.
She tapped the cat's nose. "Stop pretending. I know you're a Spirit."
"Mrrp~?" The cat tilted its head, then opened its small mouth and gave Origami's fingertip a light bite—because the cat did not appreciate being pointed at.
Did I guess wrong?
Origami withdrew her hand, picked up the cat teaser, and waved it in front of Yimi. Yimi's head tracked it left and right. She batted at it with a paw.
So. Ms. Murasame's evasiveness had been because she'd arranged the kidnapping of Roly from the very beginning—a complete breach of professional ethics. And the kid didn't seem the scheming type at all.
Perhaps there was a small measure of relief in that realization. She wasn't even sure.
Just as she wasn't sure of something else: she'd considered herself on excellent terms with Shiori—close enough to overlook the Spirits she'd sealed, even. And yet Shiori had arrived at trusting Spirits on her own, and wanted Origami to arrive there too, without a second's hesitation.
A little lonely, honestly.
She roughhoused the cat for a while, then finally picked up her phone to check the AST message—one line of vague, bossy non-information asking her to come in without specifying why.
Origami locked the screen and pretended she hadn't seen it. She was a wounded soldier, after all. She'd been taken down in front of all her former colleagues.
The irony was that a different Spirit appeared to have saved her.
There was no question—no CR-Unit stronger than Mordred existed anywhere. She also rated her own combat skills above Tohka Yatogami's. And still she'd been crushed. Her true enemy might possess something approaching divine-tier absolute defense—
Origami reached toward the nightstand and then remembered: she'd locked the last family photo in the drawer.
Irritating.
She glanced at Yimi, who was completely full of energy—she'd slept all day, so naturally she wasn't tired now.
At least pets had that one advantage.
Origami dug out the laser pointer that had come bundled with the cat teaser, loaded the batteries, and cast a small red dot on the floor in front of Yimi, moving it back and forth.
Yimi curled into a tight ball and gave the floor a single disdainful glance.
A red dot she can't catch? Her real grandmother had caught one of those before.
Origami: "?"
She'd only just begun to dismiss her suspicions, and now the cat was acting fake again.
She threw aside the pointer, produced a small ball, dangled it in front of Yimi, and tossed it into the corner.
"Fetch."
Yimi didn't move.
"Never played fetch before?" Origami had assumed Roly's previous owner had covered the basics.
She walked over, retrieved the ball, held it in front of the cat's nose.
"Mrrp?" Yimi batted it away with one paw, sending it rolling back to the corner.
Origami frowned, retrieved it again, and sniffed it—wondering if there was some irritating scent on it. Nothing she could detect. She held the ball in front of the cat again, threw it, retrieved it herself, and demonstrated the game.
Yimi watched. Understood. Batted the ball away again.
"That's not how it works." Origami picked it up.
Yimi batted it away.
Origami picked it up.
"..."
Something dawned on her. She turned to look at the mirror on the wall and felt as though she'd somehow grown dog ears.
She dropped the ball, kicked off her shoes, lay down, and went to sleep.
No breakfast for the cat tomorrow.
"Mrrp?" Yimi hopped onto the bed and began kneading the duvet.
"Go to your bed." Origami lifted a foot and nudged her off.
"Mrrp!"
A sharp protest. The cat turned and ran to the living room. A rustling sound followed. Curious, Origami went to look—and found the little fur ball chewing open the corner of the cat food bag and tilting it to pour some into her bowl. Self-sufficient.
"..."
Fine.
Origami closed her bedroom door and lay back down, staring at the AST message on her phone screen.
She could say goodbye to that useless organization.
Different worlds, but both were the best and most expensive cat food available—the taste wasn't all that different.
Yimi finished eating and flopped into her bed, staring at the cat food bag while contemplating the weight of cat existence. Every day: kick up a fuss, stand by the bowl, watch the same cat food rattle in from the same bag. Somehow it felt like this was just... it.
The cat had become a cat who could cook.
Yimi glanced toward the kitchen, then at Origami's closed door.
This time the non-freeloader had gone straight to sleep the moment she got home—just like when she'd been sick before. Did she still need nutrition? And besides, the cat herself wanted to eat something good.
But she couldn't let the non-freeloader find out she could transform.
The little cat tilted her head, tiny mind turning. As long as the non-freeloader can't get out, she won't find out. Simple.
She recalled the cages at the pet shop, each with a padlock hanging on it.
Yimi rummaged through the living room until she found a bicycle lock, closed in its loop. She grabbed it in her teeth, ran to Origami's bedroom door, and—with considerable effort—hooked it over the door handle.
Foolproof. The wisdom of the big cat was truly something to marvel at.
The little girl reappeared. No one was watching, so she let her tail out for comfort, then ran to the fridge on tiptoe and started searching for usable ingredients.
Even before crossing over, she'd often watched her grandmother and the maids putting raw ingredients into the refrigerator. This was the moment to register a complaint—the cat had followed the big cat's example and placed the mice she'd caught in the fridge, and been pinned against the wall and scolded for thirty solid minutes.
Cat: good. Human: bad.
Only a modest selection of ingredients, as expected—one person lived here, and Origami generally didn't stock many. But at minimum, tomato-and-egg soup was doable.
Yimi pushed the step stool into the kitchen and started working on tiptoe, her tail swishing steadily behind her.
The boiling water and the gradually blooming aroma of the soup masked the dulled sense of smell that came with human form. She didn't notice the bedroom door had opened behind her at some unknown point—the bicycle lock having failed to do its job at all.
Origami stared at her back, expressionless.
The long blade of Mordred materialized in her hand.