"Give it back." Reimu held out her hand.
"What?" The cat played dumb.
"You stole it, didn't you? My gohei." Word on the street was that this kitten had been running around waving it everywhere.
The cat relaxed. "Didn't steal any gohei."
She'd only taken a stick. She had no idea it was called something fancy like a gohei.
"That thing has been with me since I was little." Reimu pulled her hand back and did some mental arithmetic. "As of now, you owe me 150,000."
The five-million-yen tea was obviously beyond repayment, but this amount—maybe the brat could work it off.
That jerk Yukari—dumping another mouth to feed on her without a single coin. Reimu hadn't slept properly in two days because of this little pest.
Maybe she should borrow a folding screen from somebody. Set it up in the middle at night to stop the little critter from crawling over.
Reimu dragged out the low table she used for tea.
Yimi promptly sat on top of it.
"Off." Reimu picked her up by the collar and set her down to one side, then spread out a tatami mat, knelt on a cushion, and brewed a pot of tea with the leaves Keine had sent.
Yimi looked down at the cushion beneath Reimu and frowned. "Why don't you buy a taller table?"
She'd thought it was a particularly wide stool.
"Because it takes up space, and it's expensive."
The already-small shrine felt even more cramped now. Visitors had been coming all day, and their gifts had the place packed to bursting—the storeroom couldn't hold it all, so the overflow had ended up piled in her room.
Normally she scraped by in poverty, but the moment everyone heard she was dying, out came the good stuff.
"Mm." Yimi looked around and didn't see a cushion for herself.
She squeezed past Reimu and plopped right down in her lap.
"Get off, you're making me sweat." Reimu gave her a shove. "Spare cushions are in the cabinet. Go get one yourself."
Yimi fetched a cushion and tried sitting across from Reimu the same way. Extremely uncomfortable.
She stretched her legs out under the table. Short enough that her feet didn't reach Reimu, but somehow this was even worse.
"This fancy tea doesn't look any different from the stuff I normally drink." Reimu muttered, pouring two cups and pushing one toward Yimi to keep her from fidgeting.
Yimi lowered her face over the cup and let the warm steam wash over her.
"Hakurei Shrine Maiden—what do you do all day?" The cat needed to understand.
"Day to day? Drink tea, space out, wander around outside when there's nothing to eat at home, drop by Kourindou to see if there are any new manga." Reimu ripped open a bag of snacks and tossed a handful into her mouth.
"Oh—and the main duty is guarding Gensokyo and resolving incidents."
Something about these snacks tasted off.
She glanced at the packaging. Cat food, apparently—someone's gift.
Whatever. Still edible.
Under the cat's watchful gaze, Reimu grabbed another handful and ate.
The cat set aside the issue of not being offered any. Time for questions. "What's Gensokyo? What are incidents?"
"Seriously? You don't even know what Gensokyo is and you want to be the shrine maiden? Don't tell me you just heard the title and thought it sounded cool?"
Reimu fixed her with a dead-fish stare but explained anyway: "Gensokyo is the sealed-off region where we live, cut off from the Outside World. I've heard it takes up about a sesame seed's worth of space compared to what's out there. Incidents are when newcomers like you show up and try to pull some stunt that makes trouble for everyone. The Hakurei Shrine Maiden's job is to exterminate those troublemakers and resolve the incident."
Her primary source of income was incident resolution... though of course, protecting Gensokyo truly was her responsibility.
Reimu poked Yimi's forehead in warning. "Don't you even think about causing an incident. I don't care if you're a kid—I'll exterminate you on the spot."
The cat nodded. "So resolving incidents is what makes you the Hakurei Shrine Maiden."
"What kind of logic is that? If you want to be the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, the first requirement is being the strongest in Gensokyo..." Might as well set her an impossibly distant goal.
"Fair warning—I've got nothing to teach you." Unlike previous shrine maidens, Reimu spent her days lounging around the shrine and never trained. Her strength came almost entirely from raw talent.
Yimi didn't respond—she was busy sneaking her hand toward Reimu's teacup.
Cat Law: the big cat's water always tastes better than your own.
Reimu pushed the hand away with a blank expression. "If you're bored, go to Kourindou and grab some manga. Bring back anything good so I can read it too."
This big cat had zero energy whatsoever.
Yimi carefully extracted her legs from under the low table, stood, and headed for the door. Before leaving the shrine, she stopped by the pond to check on the big turtle, giving its shell a gentle poke with the gohei.
Then, the moment Genjii raised his head, she turned and ran.
Genjii: "..."
Where did this brat come from?
As Gensokyo's most prominent shrine, nobody actually dared come here to worship, but the Hakurei Shrine still saw no shortage of non-human visitors. Aside from the rare kind soul worried about Reimu starving, there were also a few obnoxious regulars.
Clunk!
Something that should have been near-impossible at the Hakurei Shrine: a sound from the donation box. But Reimu felt no excitement. She'd almost never heard the clink of copper coins dropping in; this kind of dull thud, however, she recognized all too well.
She reached for her gohei out of habit and grabbed air.
She snatched up the wooden stick Yimi had shoved at her the day before and charged out. "It's you again, you rotten fairy!"
"Hahaha! Fell for it again, idiot! Idiot Red-White!"
A brazen laugh. Blue dress, wings of ice crystals hovering behind her back. A girl who looked about Yimi's size slapped her own rear at Reimu in mockery, then turned and bolted.
Fairies—mischief-loving creatures. In Reimu's book, every fairy was a prank-playing fool, and this ice fairy in particular made it her weekly mission to lob frozen frogs into the donation box.
"Cirno, don't do this—you'll get killed..."
"What's to be scared of? The Red-White's been replaced, right?"
"They said she's about to be replaced. That one's still the same one."
"Is that so? But I'm the strongest!"
Cirno puffed out her chest.
Reimu scowled at the stick in her hand, then decided that stooping to argue with an idiot would only drag her own IQ down. She gave Yimi a light tap on the head with the stick.
"You. Go beat her up."
"No." Yimi crossed her arms.
This kitty wasn't stupid.
Reimu did the math on her fingers. "I'll give you a third of the cat food we've got."
"Oh?" Yimi pursed her lips, weighing the offer.
She had absolutely no idea how much a third was, but it sounded like a lot.
She set off after them on her little legs.
"Can't even fly." Reimu turned back inside to continue her tea.
Whether the brat could actually beat a fairy was anybody's guess—but fairies were that weak... Better eat more of the cat food now; that way "a third" would be less to give away.
"Cirno-chan, I think someone's chasing us..." The green fairy tugged at her friend's sleeve.
"Who? Who dares chase me?" Cirno looked down at Yimi with a scowl.
"Who are you?" Yimi pointed at her.
Cirno puffed out her chest. "You don't even know who I am? I'm the Strongest in Gensokyo!"
The Strongest!
Reimu had said that to become the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, you first had to be the strongest in Gensokyo.
The cat clenched her fists—and drew her spear!