Chapter 20

Running a cottage café in a small mountain village was a lot of work. After sunrise I gathered wood to fire the ovens. I started a fire and went for water at the well. Nyarin had the dough ready when I returned.

I had been the youngest ever Vice President of Strategic Partnerships leading a data team or making important decisions. Now I had splinters. But I was happy.

The work wasn’t more important or lucrative. Nyarin smiled when I came in. She wore a human costume instead of her usual catgirl illusion. She had adjusted the oven’s fire and had soot on her face.

“You’ve learned how to get the fire’s heat just right,” Nyarin said, smiling through the soot.

“And you’ve kept the soot off your face better than a week ago.” I said.

Nyarin laughed and put a tray of pastries into the oven. She refilled jars of long black licorice shaped like an ancient dragon crafted by gods of hatred. The eyes were raspberry flavored.

I stood, looking at her until she raised an eyebrow. “What?”

I hugged her. Her eyes widened and she went stiff, then relaxed.

“I’m still real,” she said, looking up at me.

Nyarin had confessed how her Isekai job worked on her first day here. She would inhabit key Isekai characters until the customer was enraptured. Then she would leave and the characters would continue automatically. The door for her to leave couldn't open until the customer's mind was locked into the Isekai.

Was I not locked into this world? Apparently not, since she was still here.

Yesterday I considered lighting the red flame over my eyes to confirm if Nyarin left me to my Isekai. I couldn't bear to think this world wasn't real, so I couldn't light the red flame of True Vision.

“I'm still real,” she said again, seeming to say it more to herself than to me.

We broke the hug, both feeling awkward. Nyarin blushed

We prepared the shop. Even though we’d been here a week, this world came with years of memories. I remembered building this cottage with Nyarin years ago.

I heard feet from the back of the cottage. I remembered how we took in three orphans after a town two valleys over was destroyed in a landslide. The children were up.

There was an energetic, curious boy with black hair and endless questions. Also a girl with strawberry blonde hair and a pet cat. I hadn’t asked Nyarin if she modeled the children after us.

The third child followed the other two who ran and shouted merrily. He had white hair like frozen strands of ice, shimmering in subtle colors. His eyes were always pondering something. He helped us manage the oven while the older two played.

He frowned at the pastries. They were platypuses filled with cantaloupe cream that spilled out of the mouth if you pressed the stomach. Nyarin and I were careful around him, as if he might explode at any moment.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said, making conversation before the first customer arrived. “How does me living in an Isekai hallucination empower your boss?”

Nyarin sighed and looked at the floor, as she often did when I spoke about the outside world. We didn't talk about it often, but I had questions to ask before she left me here.

She continued working, not looking at me as she explained. “Spirits emerge spontaneously from the spirit energy in everything, especially from living things, humans most of all. Your emotions, thoughts, and dreams. The most powerful spirits, the gods, become powerful by harvesting energy directly from humans.

I asked Nyarin, “If I worshiped you enough, would you become a goddess instead of a minor spirit?”

She laughed. “It takes more than that. The gods are special. I don’t know how they became what they are. I’m just a Bakeneko.”

Again she said Bakeneko like it was a confession. “Are Bakeneko not elite?”

She frowned. “No, Bakeneko are lowly. Most spirits think of us as...” she paused for the right word, “trash.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“We’re bottom feeders. Wisps of short-lived smoke ignored by immortal spirits. My kind can have children, but most are born when a street cat dies alone and unloved. We’re born as full adults, with all the memories of our parents.

“Many gods think it’s more efficient to eat little alley cat spirits rather than use our abilities to transform and deceive. There were six in my litter. I was the only girl. After a ravening god came through town, I became the only survivor.”

Nyarin unlocked the café door which said “Café Isekai.” Soon mountain travelers, traders, and occasional adventurers heading for the old haunted fortress ruins higher in the mountains.

It wasn’t a lucrative business, but it was a fulfilling life. It took me a couple of days to realize that and stop trying to optimize supply routes and marketing.

She kept talking, as if the silence bothered her. “We called it worship, but it’s different for every god. For our boss worship takes the form of a true appreciation of beauty, fertility, and happiness. She’s Kishoutennyo, but recently she’s using the nickname Kisshin.”

I barely remembered that name, but I wasn’t the type to visit temples and purchase superstitious keepsakes. She was an obscure goddess, often replaced by men in the Seven Gods of Luck. The one Nyarin worked for was the Japanese version.

“Like all the once powerful gods, Kisshin-sama went into hibernation when magic left the world long ago. Magic is just returning, and the gods are awakening from their slumber weakened, starving, and desperate.”

We welcomed the first customers. One picked a cookie that looked like a flat copper disc asking why they were called “Ghost King Cookies.”

Our dog, Poochi, welcomed guests and the children played as a group of adventurers had breakfast before leaving for the old haunted ruins. I didn’t envy their adventure. I just wanted to be here.

Business died down and I asked Nyarin another question. “Why all the Isekai stuff to get someone to appreciate beauty, fertility, or happiness?”

“True appreciation of beauty is almost gone from this world,” Nyarin answered.

“That hardly seems fair. People still like beautiful things,” I said defensively.

“People now gawk at pretty actresses on screen, listen to digital music, or marvel at beautiful game graphics.”

“What’s wrong with movies with pretty actresses, digital music, or games?”

“Nothing for you,” Nyarin answered, “they’re convenient. But it’s just a screen of small squares of light changing color quickly. Your music is digital. But there’s no actual beauty or music. Your enjoyment is real, but Kisshin-sama can’t use that to nourish herself.”

“Why not?”

Nyarin shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“But she’s also a goddess of fertility and happiness, right? Why doesn’t she feed off of that stuff in our world without making Isekai?” I asked.

Nyarin nodded, but waited for me to figure it out.

“Birth rates are down, worldwide but especially in Japan,” I volunteered, realizing the problem, “she doesn’t grant fertility but is sustained by it?”

Nyarin nodded, “Both.”

I cleared my throat. “What about happiness? Is our modern world so unhappy?”

“Seo,” Nyarin said softly, “we’ve talked about how so many women would rather sleep their lives in a dream and how convenient devices replaced in person beauty for people lighting their faces with artificial screens. You jumped in front of a truck to leave that place.”

“Well, yeah, but we have, like, streaming video and delivery food and…”

Nyarin looked at me meaningfully and picked up a red bun with a yellow dot in the middle. She had laughed when I recognized it as inspired by her Christmas Special costume in an earlier world. “We’ve got food here too.”

I thought about this. “Do you know what makes a good Isekai story?”

Nyarin shrugged. “Inexplicably grateful maidens?”

We laughed.

I was about to answer, but was interrupted by the sound of plastic snapping open. I recognized it since I had spent weeks traipsing around with a gacha ball.

The white-haired boy, Truck-kun, stood in the café holding a gacha ball. Nyarin and I avoided saying his name to prevent breaking the memory changes and brainwashing that Nyarin and put on him when she had created this world.

She wasn’t sure how long the brainwashing would last. She guessed it would be about six months in Isekai time.

Apparently Truck-kun was far stronger than she had estimated. Truck-kun’s eyes burned red. Before our eyes he grew from a child to his adult form.

“The Baku,” Nyarin said, looking at Truck-kun. She had said the same thing before this reality was created. What was a ‘Baku’?

We had run out of time.