Betty was a very good person. Apart from her fondness for policing how much catnip Yimi got to gnaw on each day, which made Yimi unhappy, everything else about her was lovely.
For instance, she'd read Yimi a bedtime story before sleep, even if Betty's tone wasn't especially lively.
And it was Betty who braided her hair after she woke; by now Yimi's hair had grown so long she could barely braid it herself.
In all sorts of ways she took the little cat's side. She was the person closest to Yimi in this world—but her mental state seemed a little off.
"You just stand right there—don't run!" Beatrice, one foot still shod and the other bare, chased hard after Yimi, her other shoe gripped in her hand as a weapon.
Yimi clasped her two hands together, pumping her little legs for all they were worth up ahead, glancing back now and then to see whether Beatrice was catching up.
Betty had been the one to bring her over here, and now, after Yimi had made her move, Betty was angry on top of it. The kitty had given up so much wild game to deal with these menaces for you people, and you'd still scold a poor, innocent kitty.
Congratulations, Host—achievement unlocked: [Run, Yimi—I've Got a Split Personality]. Reward: +5% Portal Energy.
"Didn't I just say to wait a second?"
"486 said do it."
"Since when do his words carry more weight than Betty's? Hmph—hah!"
At last, using her advantage of longer legs, Beatrice caught the little cat and smacked the little leather shoe hard against her backside.
"Nnh!"
At the same moment, Beatrice's own backside gave a throb of pain. She glanced behind her in flustered anger and saw no one there at all.
She looked back down at Yimi and felt another surge of irritation.
You're hitting back? And here I was going to go easy on you.
Yimi wriggled, trying to twist away from her hand, and put on a deliberately pitiful act. "Ow."
Beatrice set down the shoe and checked her over, worried. "Betty didn't use much force. Are you feeling unwell somewhere?"
The sudden crisis had nearly made her forget the baffling thing this child had said before—something about 'going to another world to find her mama.'
"Hehe."
A soft laugh cut off Beatrice's violence and brought her back to herself. The two of them, who'd been on the open ground at the entrance to the Trial Grounds, now stood—she didn't know when it had happened—on a sunlit stretch of green.
The Castle of Dreams.
This was not any location in reality. The consciousnesses of some who took part in the Trial might arrive here, but by rights neither Yimi nor Beatrice should have appeared in this place.
The mana source of a foreign world had acted upon the spellwork that made up the Trial, producing some strange directional effect. The odds of such a thing were about like an ordinary person collecting a few marvelous trinkets, laying them out at random, and happening by pure chance to complete the very spell that drags an angel down from the heavens.
"Mother?"
Beatrice let her hands fall still and stared, stunned, at the figure that had appeared—she didn't know when—in the middle of the lawn.
She wore an all-black dress, the kind reserved for funerals; set against it were her pale, long hair and pale skin, the corners of her mouth curved up in a smile that came off as rather wicked.
"Beatrice."
"Mother!"
Beatrice hurriedly put her shoe back on, pulled Yimi over to stand before the woman, and flung her arms around her. "Betty missed you so much."
Even bound for four hundred years by a single spoken promise, nothing could change a daughter's love for her mother.
Echidna reached out and stroked her hair. "Not changed in the slightest, I see. Have you picked up any bad habits?"
Beatrice clutched tightly at her collar. "While Mother was gone, Betty didn't touch a single drop of wine." That was something Echidna had forbidden.
Echidna pressed a fingertip to her cheek, as though thinking. "Which is to say—Beatrice did secretly drink while I was still alive?"
"That's not it!"
The words 'still alive' successfully reminded Beatrice of the fact that her mother was already dead—and that, in a sense, the woman before her, this thing akin to a departed spirit, could no longer be counted as the original Echidna.
Echidna in her state of death had emotions, but no 'human heart.'
"Up we go~"
Echidna hooked her hands under Yimi's arms and lifted her high, studying her baby-fat cheeks from every angle, her gaze holding nothing but a fierce thirst for knowledge.
As the Witch of Greed, the 'greed' she displayed—at least in her present, deceased state—was a curiosity about anything and everything. So of the whole group that had come to the Sanctuary, the one who most interested her was, in fact, Natsuki Subaru.
The Echidna within the Castle of Dreams wouldn't be affected by Return by Death, and Subaru had countless chances for trial and error, so it was only natural that she, brimming with curiosity, would want to see every possibility Natsuki Subaru could achieve.
Apart from that boy, this small child was the other person she couldn't quite see through. Indeed, before Yimi reached the Sanctuary, Echidna had scarcely known what she even looked like.
"Mn."
After Yimi let out a small nasal sound, Echidna set the little cat down before she could grow impatient at being held by a stranger.
"The Book of Wisdom that Mother-sama gave me stopped showing any words a long time ago."
Even knowing that the person before her was not the mother of her memory, Beatrice still wanted to pour her heart out to her—to tell her, half like a child seeking comfort, of her centuries of loneliness, of the despair of watching the pages grow blanker by the day, even of coming to treat 'That Person' as the one who would end her life, and finally of the joy of at last no longer being alone.
"This is the child I chose." But once she opened and closed her mouth, that single sentence was all she could bring out.
She'd chosen Yimi to become 'That Person,' the one who would free her from her binding—all because the naive little cat had scrawled, on a blank page, a line of misspelled words saying Betty could leave.
"Is that so? You made a choice, Beatrice."
Echidna's faintly wicked smile hadn't changed. She reached out a finger and flicked Yimi on the forehead. "You went and wrecked the Trial I set up with such care. Running wild in someone else's graveyard—how terribly rude of you, wouldn't you say?"
"Then, in a bit, I'll, bury it back for you." The little cat showed her sense of responsibility.
"..."
Then, slow on the uptake, Yimi pointed at her. "You're the one who gave Betty that book!"
"Rather slow to react, aren't you?" Echidna smiled on.
The smile lasted right up until she saw the little bean before her lift a foot and kick her in the shin with a hard-soled shoe.
This wicked woman!
"Roswaal-sama, Ram's horn has only just been repaired, so I may not be able to control my strength very well. If you insist on resisting, I might accidentally injure you."
As Ram spoke, Rem stepped up to stand at her side.
"There's no meaning in saying such things now. You already possess the power to take revenge on me..." Roswaal's face was bruised and swollen. This was what happened when a mage let an oni like Ram get in close.
"Ram has already said it: Ram does not hate Roswaal-sama." Ram drew out the wand Yimi had snapped in two.
This wand was one Roswaal had given her himself, and her broken horn had been hidden inside it all along.
"Ram loves Roswaal-sama dearly!"