"Hmm..."
Eirin Yagokoro pressed her personal stethoscope against Yimi's belly and listened.
But because her patient wasn't particularly cooperative, Eirin had given Yimi a broken stethoscope to play with—which meant that while Eirin was examining Yimi, Yimi was simultaneously pressing her own stethoscope against Eirin.
The mere sight of a stethoscope plugged into a pair of human ears was enough to leave Kaguya shaken for an entire year, her worldview in shambles.
Eirin raised an eyebrow and removed her stethoscope.
Yimi mimicked the eyebrow wiggle and removed hers too.
"Well?" Kaguya asked.
Eirin shook her head.
Kaguya's jaw dropped. "This is all Reisen's fault!"
"Princess, shouldn't the blame fall on Tewi?" Reisen scrambled to deflect the responsibility. "And besides—"
"Besides?" Eirin glanced at her.
The look appeared to carry no particular meaning, yet Reisen immediately swallowed the rest of her sentence. She wasn't brave enough to actually say "and besides, the reason she ate the Spell Card in the first place was because of Master's drug."
Next thing you knew, it would be declared an incident, and then the incident resolvers would come beat them up.
"What I meant is there's nothing abnormal. She checks out about the same as a healthy, ordinary child." Eirin lightly poked Yimi's belly. "Does that hurt?"
The little cat scrunched up her neck, ticklish, and burst into giggles.
"Looks like she's fine for now, but we shouldn't be too optimistic. Many of the Princess's Spell Cards carry the power of 'eternity.' There's no telling when it might activate—she could end up fixed in place like a statue."
Eirin pinched Yimi's cheeks, her thumb gently grazing the child's lip. "Hmm. Although the prototype loses its effect once swallowed, there'd still be some residual activity on the lips shortly after drinking it."
"Mm." Yimi gave her fingertip a light nibble.
"..."
Did that technically count as a successful saliva sample?
Tasting medicine on the finger, Yimi hastily spat it out and asked in confusion: "Frozen in place, like a statue?"
"Roughly like being frozen in time, unable to move at all. Spell Cards aren't exactly digestible, so if it can pass through naturally, that would probably be fine." Eirin produced a vial. "Open wide."
"Aah~"
A little sweet.
After administering the medicine, Eirin watched her for a few seconds and frowned. "Odd. In theory, this drug should make even Yukari Yakumo vomit up everything in her stomach. Did her body simply neutralize it as a harmless substance, or is it something else? Try this one—it'll break down whatever you've eaten, though you'll be hungry afterward."
Just a minor, irrelevant side effect: anyone who drank it would smell like a canine for an entire week.
The little cat grabbed the vial. Not wanting to go hungry, she naturally wasn't going to drink it.
Eirin mused: "Then again, if she's a special species like a Taotie—something that harmlessly absorbs anything it consumes—there shouldn't be any issues."
"If it hasn't manifested any effects, I can't undo it either." Kaguya slid her hands under Yimi's arms and lifted her. "Well then, until this crisis is resolved, I shall take responsibility and raise—I mean, keep watch over you."
"Dream on."
"Eirin, you simply don't understand the joy of raising them."
"And you still don't understand how awful it feels when someone you raised turns out wrong."
"Turns out wrong... Are you saying I grew up to be a hopeless child, Eirin?"
While the two of them drifted into an argument over who-knows-what, Yimi hopped down from the chair on her own and headed for the exit.
The little cat was very busy. She needed to greet everyone she knew, and once she was done, she'd leave this world and continue her quests. She was only two missions away from going home.
After Yimi left, a nine-tailed fox poked her head through a gap in space and addressed Eirin: "Pardon the intrusion. Lady Yukari seems to have fallen ill—she suddenly began vomiting nonstop..."
...
"Meow meow, meow meow, meow meow meow."
Drowsiness was creeping in again. Yimi rubbed her eyes.
This sort of thing could happen whenever she crossed between worlds. She'd been in the morning in the last world and it was evening in the new one, throwing off her sleep—or it'd be afternoon in one world and suddenly dawn in the next, leaving her exhausted before nightfall.
The fix was simple enough: she just tossed the drowsiness away.
"Meow?"
Wandering aimlessly, she suddenly spotted Chen curled up on an uncomfortable-looking rock, fast asleep. Puzzled, Yimi jogged over and nudged her.
"Why are you sleeping here?"
"Zzz..."
No sign of waking up.
Yimi pushed her off the rock, shook her hard twice—still limp, still out cold, completely abandoning the feline instinct to stay alert while sleeping.
Chen: (～﹃～)~zZ
The little cat suddenly recalled what Eirin had said—that the Spell Card might freeze someone in place.
And while Yimi couldn't be certain, the reason she was fine was most likely because Love Train had automatically treated it as a misfortune and transferred it away.
"Chen!" Yimi shouted right by Chen's ear.
Still sleeping. She looked unbearably drowsy—it had to be because Yimi transferred the Spell Card's misfortune onto her!
Yimi reached out to stroke Chen's head.
But if she transferred it away from Chen, wouldn't the misfortune land on Marisa or Reimu instead?
The little cat pulled out the medicine Eirin had told her to drink—the one she'd refused. She fed it to Chen, hoping it would cure her.
"Meow?" Chen jolted awake, then sniffed at herself in shock.
...
...
"Hmph."
"Back already? Don't bring that disgusting meat again—it's as revolting as the first time I ever tried cooking." Reimu poked her head out of the kotatsu.
"Hmph!"
Yimi hmphed louder.
"What's the matter—Marisa spank you?" Reimu tore open a bag of chips, shoved a handful in her mouth, and assumed spectator mode.
Yimi's expression went stiff for a moment. One hand on her hip, the other pointing at Reimu: "You're not allowed to play with the Yakumo family anymore."
?
"You little brat—since when do you get to tell me who I can hang out with?"
Yimi didn't respond. She dropped down and burrowed entirely into the kotatsu, leaving only her tail visible.
She'd gotten into a fight with Chen. At first, Chen had tried to pin her down and smack her butt, but Yimi wasn't about to let someone her own size spank her. They'd traded kitty punches until they went their separate ways.
And after she'd been so worried about Chen, too.
"Isn't it stuffy in there?" Reimu tugged at the tail poking out.
"Hm?"
For an instant it felt rigid—not soft, but like sculpted stone—yet in the next moment Yimi flicked her tail free of Reimu's grip.