She'd only just gotten up and was falling asleep again—all because of the catnip she'd been gnawing on last night and couldn't resist, keeping her awake when she shouldn't have been. That stuff he'd brought was something else, seriously addictive.
Beatrice crept in quietly and looked at the little ball Yimi had curled herself into under the covers, then reached over and plucked the half-gnawed catnip she'd left on the bedside table from last night.
Yimi's ear twitched. She sat up in a daze and wrapped both hands around Beatrice's arm. "Don't throw it."
"Didn't say I was throwing it." Beatrice brought her other hand up to the back of Yimi's head, steadying her.
"Mm."
Following Beatrice's movement, Yimi simply let her full weight sink against her.
Sleep was just as important as eating. When you had the chance to sleep in peace, you couldn't just go redirecting your drowsiness elsewhere.
"Don't go chewing this in the middle of the night from now on. Honestly." Beatrice gently eased her back into bed, tucked her in, and stepped out to find herself a book.
More Sloth than Gluttony, really, wasn't she?
"Sorry, sorry about that—so you're a guest from the Royal Capital. Lord Ro—Roswaal-sama is away on business at the moment. If there's anything you need, you're welcome to bring it to me as acting butler."
"Oh my, being mistaken for a mother all of a sudden—what a surprise. I'm still so young, too. But as long as Emilia-sama is here, that's all that matters."
"…"
The room's soundproofing wasn't great—or maybe the whole hallway's structural integrity had taken a hit when she'd blasted through it—because the noise from outside was just loud enough to make sleeping impossible.
Yimi pulled the blanket over her head, clapping both hands over her human ears first, then over the cat ears on top of her head.
Fine, she wasn't sleeping anymore.
She rolled over in bed, flung her drowsiness away in a pique of irritation.
Felix walked down the corridor, rubbing at his eyes. "Ah, feeling so sleepy all of a sudden~"
Beatrice passed him in the hall with a flat look.
So daytime sleepiness was a universal cat thing, was it?
Yimi slipped her shoes on and stepped out of her room, looking down at the pocket on her pajamas—the one that looked like Doraemon's pouch—or more precisely, at the belly behind the pocket.
Hungry again. It had been a full hour and a half since breakfast.
She started toward the kitchen on her little legs, because Rem was by far the best cook in all of Roswaal Manor—Ram, for all that she was perfectly kind to Yimi, was confined almost entirely to potato-peeling in the kitchen.
Halfway there, she spotted the Dragon Carriage through the gap blown in the corridor wall and slowed her pace. Something shifted in her attention. She changed direction and began pressing herself against the wall, easing cautiously toward the exit.
A dragon!
The ground dragon plushie she'd been playing with Meili was practically identical to this one. She'd recognized it at a glance.
Diego was back!
She crept toward it step by step, then stopped in the doorway, peering out with half her face.
Standing beside the Dragon Carriage was an elderly man with a stocky build and an air of composed authority, dressed in a butler's uniform. His gaze slid over toward her without a word.
He hadn't spotted her.
Yimi sniffed at the air. She didn't pick up Diego's scent from this world—but she still edged her way over quietly, pressed her back against the carriage, and lifted the door a crack.
Nobody inside.
"Ahem." The old man made a show of coughing at this point.
Yimi quickly ducked her head, using the dinosaur pajamas as cover to sidle up next to the ground dragon and pretend to be its offspring.
The ground dragon lowered its head and nuzzled her with its snout, then looked back up at the old man—seemingly refusing to be so defamed.
"Are you a child of the Margrave?" The humorless old man finally spoke to her directly.
"Margrave?"
Yimi gave it up, stood, and brushed herself off.
"Ngh!"
But the ground dragon—apparently holding a grudge for being impersonated—immediately seized her by the back of her collar and hoisted her up, little legs kicking uselessly in the air.
"You're not?" The old man patted the ground dragon to settle it, his gaze moving to Roswaal's courtyard. "The blood smell hasn't dispersed. Witchbeast, by the scent of it."
"Ah, sorry sorry—this child is Lord Roswaal's guest. Would you have the Ground Dragon put her down first?" Subaru sidled over, holding a cup of tea.
Unfortunately for his self-appointed butler duties, he hadn't managed to join the conversation between Emilia and the cat-eared girl. He'd quietly pilfered the finest tea in the whole manor to loosen this old man's tongue—if Ram ever found out he'd helped himself to something that expensive, he was probably going to face a storm…
"Don't let the age fool you—she took out over a hundred witchbeasts by herself, and while she was at it, casually took a piece out of the house."
The ground dragon hastily put Yimi down.
Subaru moved to ruffle Yimi's head before stopping himself—two days of Beatrice's enthusiastic brutality had given him enough cause for restraint.
The old man looked down at Yimi, watching the fearsome child Subaru had described tiptoe carefully away from the ground dragon while pointing one finger at it, apparently threatening: you're done for.
"Witchbeasts." The old man gave a small nod.
The Hoshin Company had three formidable little cats—nothing surprising about a Royal Selection candidate having powerful allies.
Thinking he wasn't believed, Subaru poured him a cup and added: "All the remains were cleared away over the past couple days. Little Yimi insisted on cutting a piece from each one—took forever—but at least you didn't have to see the manor in that state."
"None of it was good."
"Of course not—Ram told you plenty of times that most witchbeasts can't be eaten. I spent two days helping you cut the meat and my hand ached the whole time, and it was all for nothing!" Subaru showed Yimi the web between his thumb and forefinger.
For him right now, every flare-up of the eternity fixation meant the pain lasted double. Power always comes with a price.
"The big smoky fish was delicious though. I offered you some before. You wouldn't eat it. And then you blamed me." The more Yimi talked about it, the more aggrieved she looked.
Though technically a regular person wouldn't have been able to eat it unprocessed either.
"Why are we back on this again? I apologized, didn't I? Actually—wait—that was witchbeast meat you handed me back then?! The vendor at the stall isn't already dead of poisoning, is he?"
The old man closed his eyes against the two of them and withdrew into his own thoughts. He took a sip of the tea Subaru had prepared.
One sip was enough to recognize it as extraordinarily expensive. The young man had come to find him with something other than pure goodwill.
Catching up to something belatedly, he frowned slightly and looked down at the small cat now baring her teeth at Subaru.
A rumor had been circulating among Royal Capital merchants lately—something about a young girl who looked barely past childhood, a hole punched through the sky. He'd passed through that still-unhealed gap on the way here and confirmed the story was true.
That wasn't the point.
"The 'big smoky fish'—are you referring to the White Whale?" The only thing that mattered to him was this one question, and it dragged his measured tempo up a notch.
"White Whale?" Yimi put a finger to her lips.
The old man's hand tightened into a fist. "Little girl—how big was this fish?"
"This big." Yimi stretched her arms out as wide as they would go. "I was running on top of it. It shot smoke at me. I cut it. It bled a lot. Then I used a mushroom on it, and it died."
That had been the strongest opponent Yimi had faced since arriving in this world—so large she'd had to resort to a mushroom.
Yimi produced the pot from her storage space and held it out for him to see. "Its meat. Very good."
"…"