"I'm the evil dragon. You're the cat-person hero."
"I don't want to be the cat-person. I want to be the evil dragon." Yimi objected to Meili's casting choices.
Diego still hadn't returned, and Yimi still couldn't find any clue to his whereabouts.
These past two days, Yimi had taken to wandering down to find Meili whenever she had nothing to do—someone closer to her in mental age. Meili hadn't shown any unfriendliness and clearly liked small animals, so Yimi was fairly certain Beatrice had gotten it wrong about her.
"Huh? But you're already a cat-person yourself." Meili pointed at her ears.
"Aside from me, there are no good cat-people." Yimi deployed a sweeping generalization without any self-awareness. "I want to be the evil dragon. See, I'm even wearing—dragon hide."
"Dragon hide?"
Meili looked up at the dragon-head cap sitting on top of Yimi's head, and locked eyes with its strangely wise gaze.
"Ha ha ha! Fine, fine, whatever you want—you're younger than me anyway."
Meili picked up the cat plushie meant to represent the hero and had its little paw grip a toy sword—one of those wooden ones made for children—then lunged it toward the ground dragon plushie in Yimi's hands.
"Whoosh. You're dead."
"I'm not dead."
"Yes you are. The evil dragon is supposed to be slain by the hero—it says so right here in the book." Meili produced the storybook Ram had casually brought down for her.
"Impossible—dragons are incredibly strong!" Yimi handed the ground dragon plushie back to Meili. "Fine, I don't want to be the evil dragon anymore. I'll be the cat-person."
"Changing again? Alright then." Meili gripped the ground dragon plushie and shoved it up close to Yimi's cat plushie. "Graawr graawr—you've been bitten to death."
"Why?!"
Meili's eyes slid sideways. "Because you just said it yourself—dragons are incredibly strong. Meili thinks you made a very good point."
"Mgh! Meow meow meow meow!"
Realizing she'd been played, Yimi balled her small fists and rained punches down on Meili, only to have them blocked by a pillow.
"You started a real-person fight without warning! Prepare yourself—I'm going for the tickle attack." Meili used her size advantage to pin Yimi down and reached for her sides.
"Hm? Not working?"
"You terrible creature!"
After wearing themselves out, Yimi yawned and curled up in a corner with Meili's pillow, falling asleep on the spot. Even as a cat, she'd had the bad habit of dozing off anywhere at any time.
Even on a single bed, a child small enough could sleep horizontally just fine.
"Fell asleep all of a sudden?"
Meili stayed in her W-sitting position and watched Yimi for a while. The breathing was steady—definitely not faked. The ability to knock out in three seconds without any guard up was honestly enviable.
Meili's hand drifted slowly toward Yimi's neck.
It paused.
Then pulled back.
Everyone out there was someone keeping her locked up, after all.
——————
"This is nice. Let me feel more—" Subaru pressed Puck against his face in bliss, and Puck laughed a warm little laugh.
Emilia sat nearby watching them with a smile. "Subaru and Puck really do get along in the strangest way."
"Because no one can resist something fluffy!" Subaru clenched his fist, then deflated with a sigh. "Too bad I can't pet the other one."
It seemed his earlier comment had put Beatrice on high alert—even when Yimi was in cat form, the moment he tried to move his hand near her head, he'd be hit by a tremendous force and launched directly out the second-floor window.
Puck planted his tiny front paws on his hips and nodded in complete understanding. "That's only natural. If someone were to go around touching my daughter without permission, I would chop their hands off too!"
"That sounds like a direct threat aimed at me, father-in-law."
"'Father-in-law' is such a strange thing to call someone," Emilia said, tilting her head. "For that matter, Subaru is always doing such strange things."
"Strange?"
Subaru blinked, then quietly redirected his focus to the potato in his hands.
Right—from Emilia's perspective, he'd simply appeared out of nowhere one day and then, for some reason, decided to help her get her insignia back. That she hadn't grown suspicious of him was thanks entirely to her straightforwardness.
The stench of the carcasses had finally been cleared away. A shame that most witchbeasts couldn't be eaten—all that wasted material. Though after spending time personally cleaning up the mess, the idea of eating any of it had lost its appeal anyway.
The good news was that the witchbeasts had mostly been drawn toward the manor, leaving the village untouched—food procurement wouldn't be a problem. And because of how he'd protected Petra, combined with his energetic personality, Subaru had easily gotten on good terms with the villagers; they'd often round down the price when he came to buy things.
It had been a difficult process, but he'd at least managed to learn from Yimi what Diego actually was.
In summary: an unkillable dinosaur-man who swapped bodies endlessly to gain new abilities and then hunted people. Absolutely, beyond any doubt, connected to him personally. Absolutely, beyond any doubt, terrifying and dangerous.
Though Yimi's apparent lack of concern had the secondary effect of keeping Subaru from feeling too alarmed either. According to her, she'd watched him get reduced to nothing, not even ash—yet somehow he could never be completely eliminated.
A few days of this self-appointed-butler life had almost started to feel comfortable, maybe even pleasant. He couldn't afford to drop his guard, though. If he could get Emilia to trust him enough that she'd let him take her and run, that would be ideal.
Lost in thought, Subaru caught a flash of pink hair in his periphery.
"Oh, good morning, Ram-chi. Look—I can peel potatoes without cutting myself now." Subaru held up his cleanly peeled potato to show her the fruits of his training.
Ram had just carried a sleeping Yimi up from the basement. She glanced at the reasonably well-peeled potato in his hand.
Her tone was serene. The content was lethal: "I see. Confidence from Subaru's new ability, attributed not to any improvement in skill but purely to the power assisting him. How shameless of you, Barusu. Drop dead."
"Such blunt venom, completely out of nowhere?! Throw a clueless newcomer a word of encouragement once in a while!"
Still bewildered by this hostility, Subaru stared at the peeled potato in the bowl. Then something clicked and he snapped his fingers: "Onee-sama—could it be that someone easily mastered the one thing you actually pride yourself on in the kitchen, and now you're just a little—"
Killing intent.
Subaru immediately cut himself off and changed the subject with all the subtlety of a car crash: "Speaking of which, while we were clearing out the remains, I found this on a little old man's body—it looked a lot like the black book Yimi gave me before."
He produced a small black book.
"A Gospel? You can use that for firewood," Ram said flatly, jostling the sleeping Yimi in her arms—the little cat was unconsciously chewing on the fabric of Ram's shoulder.
"Huh?" Subaru stared at it. "We can't read it? There might be something in there about why they attacked here."
"Reading it would probably break your brain. And you might end up deepening your own sti—never mind." Ram turned away, moving to carry Yimi back to her room.
"Mm."
Subaru looked down at the potato in his other hand. "If I could invent a peeler for this world, would I be rich?"
He was still turning that over when the rumble of a Dragon Carriage came in from not far off. Subaru, assuming Roswaal was finally returning, tensed and looked in that direction.
"What happened here?"
Unexpectedly, the person who stepped down from the Dragon Carriage was a complete stranger to Subaru—a cat-eared girl with a blue-and-white skirt and flaxen medium-length hair, staring at the hole Yimi had blasted through the wall with wide eyes. The witchbeast remains had been cleared, but the hole itself hadn't been patched yet.
A very cute girl. Not quite to the level of Emilia in Subaru's eyes, but cute enough to absolutely qualify as his type.
But given the timing and the cat ears, Subaru couldn't help where his mind went. "Excuse me—are you here to pick up your daughter?"
Felix: "?"