Night fell, and the temperature in Gensokyo seemed to plummet all at once. Thin blankets like the ones Reimu kept stashed in her closet would need an extra layer. If that ice fairy showed up to cause trouble in weather like this, she'd get worse than dangling from a tree for a few hours.
Sleeping with a warm little cat in her arms helped, though it wasn't exactly toasty. With Yimi there, Reimu couldn't tuck the blanket edges tight enough to seal in the heat—the little thing kept tossing and turning through the night, and her mouth had a habit of chewing on Reimu's clothes while she slept.
Still, the bitter cold made it that much easier to sleep in. Pair that with the howling wind outside and the rhythmic patter of rain on the ground, and there was no better sleeping weather.
Yimi rubbed her eyes and wriggled out of Reimu's arms. She nudged the still-unwilling-to-wake shrine maiden. "Reimu, I'm leaving. I'll come back to visit you sometime."
Yimi had made her decision. She didn't want Reimu to die, so she wasn't going to become the Hakurei Shrine Maiden.
All the kitty needed to do was spend one hundred percent of her energy to open another portal—but once Reimu died, she'd really be gone. Forever.
"Mm..."
Reimu gave no sign of waking at her farewell. The nudging just made her uncomfortable, and she let out a soft nasal hum before rolling over and going back to sleep.
She'd gone to bed later than Yimi the night before—she'd had two pairs of shoes to mend.
Neither Reimu's nor Yimi's shoes were ordinary cloth ones. They weren't the kind you could fix with a few stitches the way you would other clothes, and on top of that, it was the soles that had worn through.
Why not just buy new ones? Because Reimu would rather waste time than waste money if it meant saving a few coins.
"Mm."
Yimi shifted away from her side.
Sleep was the number-one most important thing. Yimi understood this truth deeply.
She sat at the low table and tore a page from the notebook Keine-sensei had given her, then wrote a farewell message on it the way she'd seen done in manga.
The kitty didn't really know why you were supposed to leave a note instead of just saying goodbye in person. She'd only learned it from manga.
Then she turned around and quietly stuffed several unread manga volumes into her storage space, picked up the shoes Reimu had mended for her the night before, and packed up the clothes Marisa had given her.
She stared at Reimu for a while.
Then she opened the portal.
...
Some time later, the shrine door was yanked open, and the cold wind outside rushed in unobstructed.
"So cold!"
"How are you still asleep at this hour, Reimu? At your age, how can you even stay in bed this long?" Marisa threw back the blanket and shook her out.
She looked left and right around the shrine. "Where's Yimi-chan?"
"Dunno. Probably went to the temple school." Reimu stretched, noticing that both outfits hanging on the clothing rack were gone.
"Even a kid knows the early bird catches the worm, and you've got the nerve to sleep in? Keep this up, and you'll find you skipped straight from youth to middle age without even getting to waste it!" Marisa set a bag down on the floor.
"Are you my mother?" Reimu reached for the bag. "What is this, hot pot ingredients?"
"Autumn clothes for Yimi-chan. Because you obviously aren't the type to buy a kid new clothes."
Reimu retreated back into the blanket, refusing to get dressed and come out. "Don't be ridiculous. When the time comes, I'd go ask for clothes too."
"You just said 'ask for,' not 'buy.' You realize that, right?"
"You've got some nerve saying that to me. I'd at least offer Spell Cards as payment." Reimu reached for the manga she always kept within arm's reach—and noticed several volumes were missing.
She settled for inspecting the clothes Marisa had brought instead. They looked more like Human Village style.
As if reading her thoughts, Marisa explained. "These aren't ones Alice made for me this time. I snuck back home while the old man wasn't looking and found these. I thought for a second he'd remarried and had a kid, but I saw the hole cut for a tail and figured I'd just grab them."
Come to think of it, she hadn't known the old man kept a cat. Totally didn't seem the type. Marisa had checked thoroughly—it was just an ordinary orange tabby. Surely he wasn't preparing in advance for the cat to turn human?
"I see."
"When does Yimi-chan usually come back?"
"No idea. She'll come back when she's hungry, I guess." Reimu closed her eyes, ready to go back to sleep.
"What kind of answer is that? You're completely irresponsible as a guardian, you know." Marisa was visibly annoyed.
"Since when am I a guardian?"
In Gensokyo, as long as you weren't a normal human, there was hardly any real danger. A couple of difficult youkai at most, and for that brat, they wouldn't even count as a threat.
"What's this?" Marisa spotted the note.
"Im gona find my way home. Ill come see you in a few days." The strokes were riddled with wrong characters, and there were black inkblots everywhere, but that didn't stop Marisa from getting the gist.
For the kitty it might feel like a long time, but since the multiverse was separated by both time and space, for Reimu and the others it might only be a few days.
"Home? Go where? Isn't this her home?" Marisa didn't quite understand.
"Now that you mention it, she did tell me she wanted to become the Hakurei Shrine Maiden because she wanted to find her way home." Reimu replied calmly, grabbing a manga she'd already read countless times to flip through again.
"Why are you so calm about this?! She could've run off to who knows where!" Marisa yanked her out of the blanket again.
Reimu was unmoved. "You're the one being weirdly worked up. She said she'd be back in a few days, didn't she? If she has her own home, you can't exactly stop her from going back... Besides, you only played with her a couple of times, right? Where's this sudden deep bond coming from?"
Marisa went speechless for a moment, managing only a sullen retort. "That attitude of yours makes me think that if I died, you wouldn't shed a single tear."
She snatched a half-eaten bag of cat food from beside Reimu.
"What are you doing?" Reimu was baffled.
"What do you think? I'm going to find her. At the very least, we could've helped her find her way home together." Marisa flew out into the rain.
"You want to go to Heaven too... Suit yourself. Not even closing the door—are you trying to freeze me to death?"
Reimu shut the door and flopped back down.
A manga she'd already read too many times. Reading it again would only feel boring.
She'd just go back to sleep, then. Being forcibly woken up in such perfect sleeping weather was truly tragic.
...
She couldn't sleep at all. It was all Marisa's fault. And that brat's.
She picked the note up off the floor. "So many wrong characters. And the handwriting's all wobbly. Was she holding the pen with her whole fist? Does the temple school not even teach how to hold a pen?"
Reimu got dressed and stepped out the door.
(End of Volume)
Volume: JoJo Old World