"What an ugly mug—who'd you inherit that from?"
For a moment, Natsumi heard her mother's voice echoing in her ears—words repeated to her a thousand times over.
"What are you looking at me like that for? I might be a homewrecker, but at least I've got a face worth something. You—nobody would take you even for free."
This was what she had been raised on, those words drilled into her until they seeped into her bones—and so, even after losing her memories upon becoming a Spirit, she still unconsciously fixated on her own appearance and on what others thought of her.
All of this...
So, so—
Unable to reconcile a reality that contradicted everything she had always been told about herself, she just wanted to scream and rage and shut her brain off entirely for a while.
"I don't know what happened, but I am extremely grateful!"
The voice from outside the door cut right through her spiraling thoughts.
"Stop, stop—stop it! You're making him enjoy this!" Kotori yanked Yimi away from Kannazuki, staring at the small fist-print on the vice-commander's face with absolute exasperation.
Turn the other cheek? That expression had been coined for this man.
"He has something with sharp fangs!"
"Where are there any 'sharp-fanged things'? I have cake here... Reine, stop watching, come help calm her down!"
Interrupted mid-tantrum, Natsumi gradually returned to something resembling equilibrium. Not fully.
She turned back to the mirror, pressing her face and comparing obsessively—checking whether some kind of beauty-filter effect was in play. But even after tears streaked down and smudged her makeup, her looks were barely affected.
She really had gotten prettier. The little brat hadn't lied to her. And yet nothing seemed to have changed.
"What's wrong—you don't like it? I'm sorry, I should have asked first—did I go overboard?" Shiori crouched down in front of her to apologize.
Oh right. Her.
"Did you think I'd forget you're a deviant who goes out without underwear?!"
"?"
...
...
Apparently the product of some nonsense Yimi had made up, Natsumi had become unshakeably convinced that Itsuka Shiori was a pervert whose every action ultimately aimed at some kind of indecent act.
Every Spirit seemed to be a problem child in their own particular way—and Natsumi was clearly the low-self-esteem, persecution-delusion variety, the two feeding into each other.
The "indecent act" part was something Shiori couldn't entirely argue with—sealing required a kiss for reasons nobody had ever explained satisfactorily, and while she could maintain some resistance when dealing with girls her own age like Tohka, sealing a young child like Natsumi, Yoshino, or Kotori did leave her with a certain prickling sense of wrongdoing.
But the rumor that she was an exhibitionist who went without underwear? Shiori would die before acknowledging that. To clear her name, she had voluntarily demonstrated to Natsumi that she was, in fact, wearing underwear—to absolutely no effect. Natsumi flat-out refused to believe her.
And gave her four claw marks for her trouble.
All things considered, the whole ordeal was chaotic enough—but the fact that Natsumi had lost most of her spiritual power meant there was no major incident. That same powerlessness also meant she had little choice but to passively accept Ratatoskr's arrangements for her housing. A small mercy amid the mess.
Affection and mood had at least grudgingly crept up to somewhere in the vicinity of Yimi's baseline—no longer outright hostility, just not quite close enough for a sealing. Still, it was clearly going to be a gradual process.
When it came down to it, the whole "go on dates and make them blush and fall for you" thing—that was never going to be a first-day, second-day affair even with a perfectly ordinary person, was it? What was this, a whirlwind marriage?
"There are one or two people in the world who look alike, or sound alike—that's perfectly normal. And please don't bring cartoon logic into real life. Sharp-toothed birds don't exist in the modern world..."
Reine delivered this monologue directly to Yimi. Reine did seem to bear some resemblance to the grandmother Yimi sometimes mentioned—because after the lecture, the little girl dutifully pressed her feet together, put her back to the wall, and arranged her face into a picture of pure innocence, pretending not to understand a word of human speech.
Maintaining a child's sense of wonder was admirable. Acting out cartoon plotlines needed to be corrected promptly.
Sometimes Shiori thought: how nice it would be if her sealing ability worked the way Reine's manner did—even little Yimi would probably pucker up and offer herself for sealing without any fuss.
"And the blue rabbit—it's also called 'D4C.'" Yimi stood firm in her firsthand conviction.
Reine shook her head without mercy. "That doesn't exist either..."
Yoshino happened to be passing by and raised her hand. On her arm, Yoshinon spread both arms wide in cheerful demonstration: "D4C!"
Reine: "..."
Things with Natsumi hadn't progressed much further for now. The next challenge was the small girl right in front of them. Shiori had taken a calculated gamble by bringing both girls back at once—not every Spirit had an arrangement like the Yamai twins, where simultaneous routes were possible.
But thinking it back, she really couldn't have just taken one and let the other find her own way home.
Noticing that Reine had finally gone quiet, Yimi wasted no time slipping away from in front of her. Back home, when her real grandmother's scolding got interrupted, it usually meant the lecture was over.
To put Yimi in a good mood, Kotori had prepared a trolley cart loaded with every kind of sweet imaginable—no two duplicates.
Yimi stood on her tiptoes to reach for a pork floss bun on top, and in doing so noticed a bottle of black liquid sitting in the middle of the spread. Having unscrewed bottle caps before, she popped it open with ease and took a sip.
"Rua!"
Spicy, but not quite spicy—a mysterious sensation, and inexplicably, completely delicious.
Stars lit up in Yimi's eyes. She grabbed the bottle with both hands and gulped it down in one breathless stretch, then reached for the mineral water beside it for comparison.
Just plain water.
The gap in quality was so catastrophic that the little cat felt a deep personal grievance. Some nameless instinct drove her to stroke the mineral water bottle with her paw.
Reine, watching from the side, raised an eyebrow.
No spiritual energy signature—and as if by magic, the mineral water beneath Yimi's hand was replaced by that same dark liquid as before.
Simultaneously, somewhere in a supermarket, a sealed, unopened bottle appeared on a shelf—labeled as cola on the outside, but filled with mineral water inside.
This appeared to be a new development following the Holy Corpse's complete fusion: mechanism unknown, significance unknown—but after executing it for the first time, Yimi finally understood why she couldn't feel any earth-shattering change.
The Spear of Longinus—a spear with no special properties beyond having been touched by sacred blood, not truly the weapon responsible for the Divine death—had nonetheless accumulated such weight through centuries of legend and tradition that what had once been an ordinary spear came to possess an extraordinary countermeasure against divinity: a kind of true-weakness effect.
And that suppressive effect applied to Yimi herself—naturally even more so given that the power she now housed was that of the Saint whose flesh the Spear had once pierced.
From now on, the little cat could drink this black stuff whenever she wanted. (^_^)
Yimi stored the dark drink into her inventory space, planning to bring some back for Mama and Grandma to try. Unfortunately the inventory had limited room, and she would probably need to carry much more in the future—she couldn't take it all.
Done with that, she caught sight of Shiori appearing around the corner out of the corner of her eye, and immediately tugged at Reine's sleeve: "Grandma, I'm going home."
With the Holy Corpse fully fused, her spiritual power recovery rate had shot up dramatically—it would likely be fully replenished in about a day.
"Grandma?" Shiori's gaze went searching and uncertain. Last time it was "looks like grandma"—now she was already calling her that directly.
Without waiting for a response, the little cat ran over to the transport device, and—having watched others use it only a handful of times—had a fair go at imitating what she'd seen and hit the switch, teleporting herself out.
"Yimi, wait—!"