"Mew mow meow miao!"
"You. Me. Them."
"A, B, C, D, E, F, G..."
"Yo~shi."
The storm had passed.
Evening now, by the edge of a wilderness lake.
The roly-poly furball toddled along on slightly uncoordinated legs, her three-cornered mouth producing crisp, childlike sounds as she practiced the languages she'd just barely acquired.
Even with the System forcibly uploading basic linguistic knowledge into her brain, a creature who'd never spoken a word in her life could only manage simple phrases like these. Mastery through repetition wasn't the kind of thing you nailed on day one.
The real gift was that she could finally understand human speech. She'd actually picked up bits and pieces before, but mostly pretended not to understand whenever grandma was scolding her for getting into trouble.
Yimi was in a good mood. She'd tried channeling some of her own "Energy" into the portal thing, and it worked. The trade-off was a wave of exhaustion and ravenous hunger afterward—but nothing that eating and resting couldn't fix.
Her seven-year-old-level knowledge wasn't enough to parse what "0.2%" on the Energy meter actually meant, but this clever kitty knew one thing: keep feeding the portal, and sooner or later, she'd open a path home!
Cats didn't really grasp the concept of "worlds." Cats only knew this meant going home.
But first things first—she hadn't eaten in a whole hour, and that Energy contribution had left her stomach growling.
Yimi lowered her head and sniffed the air. Reading scent trails after rainfall was at least twice as hard as usual.
Then something pricked her senses. Her ears swiveled, and she spun around to lock eyes with a human leading a dark, brooding-looking horse—and wearing teal lipstick.
A very big cat. Well, a human.
The two stared at each other for a long moment.
Then the man cracked a grin, flashing a mouthful of gold-capped teeth, and turned to his companion: "Johnny, look what I found! A cat that looks a lot like a panda. Guess we don't have to worry about lunch."
"MEOW!" Yimi, who now understood every word, puffed up instantly. She backpedaled on her wonky legs, growling a threat at him.
This kitty is NOT to be trifled with!
"What are you even saying? You want to eat a cat?" Johnny's brow was beading with sweat, one hand clamped on Gyro's sleeve to prevent him from doing something he couldn't fathom.
"Relax, buddy—I'm joking. Look, it's got a collar, clearly somebody's pet." Gyro stomped the ground a few times in Yimi's direction. "And you really are an animal lover, huh? You were plenty ruthless catching those rabbits. Where'd that 'by any means necessary' energy go?"
"MEOW!"
Yimi bolted. She sprinted a good distance before looking back and realizing they weren't chasing her.
"You can't compare rabbits to cats..."
"Though, you know, I've heard legends that cats are messengers of the devil. People in the Middle Ages blamed them for spreading the plague."
"Pretty sure it was the mass slaughter of cats that made the plague worse..."
Yimi lay flat on the ground, watching them from a safe distance.
She felt something strange. Not danger, not familiarity—something else. The oddness radiated from their bodies, specifically from one's right eye and the other's left hand. A faint resonance hummed between those body parts and something along Yimi's spine.
Even a cat-brain could figure it out. These were the things the System wanted her to collect.
"Mrrow?"
But Yimi had no idea how to get them. She could sense the Corpse Parts inside their bodies. Was she supposed to dig them out?
Small cats can't beat big-big cats. That's just common sense.
The opposite seemed to be true, though—neither of them appeared to sense the Corpse Part inside her.
Paying no further attention to what was probably just a lost pet from a nearby village, Gyro pulled out a fishing rod. "Hey Johnny, you know how to lure earthworms? I heard if you stick a pole in the ground and scrape something ridged against it, they come right up."
Running a long-distance race obviously meant packing enough provisions. And even when supplies ran low mid-race, you'd hunt game—nobody would waste time fishing.
But the previous storm had been absolutely brutal. On top of that, during their fight with Diego Brando, the waterproof tarp had been slashed by his claws, soaking and ruining a good portion of their dry rations. They hadn't even noticed until after leaving town.
This was the only water source for miles. The arid climate meant the rainwater puddles wouldn't even last until tomorrow. With luck, they might spot wild animals coming to drink, like this cat had. With their long-range Stands, catching prey wouldn't be a problem.
Besides, night was falling. No one rode in the dark. A couple of fishing casts wouldn't set them back too much.
Gyro tossed one of his water-logged bread rolls toward Yimi.
She sniffed it, then disdainfully batted it aside with one paw.
Garbage. Not even a dog would touch that.
"It just rained, so we probably don't need the worm trick..." Johnny, still mounted, wore an awkward expression. "I'm going to use the restroom. Could you set up my rod for me?"
Due to a gunshot wound he'd thoroughly deserved, his legs were paralyzed. Even using the bathroom required propping himself up with tools, so the topic still made him self-conscious even after all this time traveling together.
"Go ahead, buddy. Just don't wander too far, and yell if anything happens. If you spot a rabbit or a bird, bag one—we can at least eat that, right?"
The President could still dispatch assassins at any moment, after all.
Gyro's "fishing rod" was really just a stick with some string and bent wire—improvised and crude. They'd never planned on fishing as a survival strategy, so no one had packed proper gear.
Not that a lake this small could hold anything big enough to drag a man in...
The moment he finished setting up Johnny's rod, Gyro felt a tug on his own line. He yanked it up: "Lucky me!"
It was a fish barely big enough to qualify as a minnow.
"Meow?" Yimi raised her head.
After a moment's hesitation, she crept closer on careful paws, tilted her face up, and let out a cutesy little mew: "Mew~"
I'm very cute. Please give me fish.
"What are you looking at? I'm not sharing. You think you can just tilt your head and meow once and steal the fruits of my labor?" Gyro grabbed her face and gave it a wobble.
...This cat didn't even have whiskers?
"Meow." Yimi feigned ignorance.
The fluffy little ball stirred something playful in Gyro. He set aside his catch first: "There's a saying in the East—'Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.' Here, take this rod. See that grass stem tied to the line over there...?"
He launched into a mock-serious fishing lesson for the cat.
Then he turned his head away: "There. You now know how to fish. Go catch your own and stop bothering me."
"..."
Yimi stared down at Johnny's fishing rod for a moment.
Then the line jerked.
"MEOW!"
Yimi clamped her jaws around the rod and hauled back. A fish twice the size of Gyro's catch came thrashing out of the water and flopped ashore.
"?"
Gyro's wide eyes cycled between confusion and disbelief.
「Congratulations, Host! Achievement unlocked: [Never Skunked]. Reward: 'Basic Fishing Manual' ×1. Physical item reward requires manual retrieval.」
"Meow?" Yimi glanced up, then looked back down.
Food first.
Gyro watched, stunned, as the clever cat delicately unhooked the fish from the wire, casually swatted the rod aside with one paw, and began eating.
That swat sent the rod sailing right back into the lake. Then, impossibly, the baitless line immediately got another bite.
"Meow." Yimi dropped her fish and went to reel in the next one.
"??"
Another fish landed. Yimi went back to eating. The rod, tossed aside again, hit the water—and the line moved again. Yimi abandoned her meal, hauled in the catch, set it aside, resumed eating, the rod went back in, the line tugged—
Three minutes. The shore reeked of fish. They were small, but there were many.
"???"
Gyro slapped his own face.
Were these fish suicidal today? Could a cat actually learn to fish?
He looked down at his own rod, which hadn't twitched since his first catch.
Keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the water and absolutely not looking at Yimi, Gyro whistled casually while reaching over to drag her fish toward his own pile.
"Meow?" Yimi tilted her head.
Gyro flashed another gold-toothed grin and rubbed his fingers together: "This isn't theft. I just taught you how to fish, remember? Taking a small tuition fee as compensation is perfectly fair, wouldn't you say? In the human world, if you want something, you have to trade something else in return. Them's the rules."
Yimi blinked her big eyes. She didn't think Gyro's logic was wrong, exactly. She'd often brought dead mice home to repay mama for raising her.
Then she looked at the two small fish in front of her. And at the overflowing haul Gyro had swiped.
Fury rising. Hackles engaged.
The cat sprang up and kicked Gyro square in the back. Way harder than he'd expected—she actually sent this six-foot roughneck tumbling into the lake.
Gyro surfaced, sputtering, and swiped water from his face: "What the—?! You ungrateful furball!"
He reached for the fishing rod to use as a weapon. Seeing this, Yimi snatched the biggest fish in her jaws and bolted. Gone in seconds. Truly, completely vanished.
"...Did it actually understand me? (⊙﹏⊙)"
"Gyro, are we under attack?"
Johnny had returned from his bathroom break, scanning the perimeter with wary eyes.
"It's nothing—I just hooked a huge one and couldn't reel it in." Gyro set down the rod. "It was massive. At least twenty pounds."
Johnny looked down at the pile of small fish on the bank. "That's... a lot. You caught all of these?"
Gyro was silent for two seconds, then nodded solemnly. "Yep. All me. Impressive, right?"
"Very. Teach me how."