Chapter 23

I decided to walk and enjoy the beauty of this garden. But after a while walking made my feet hurt. So I tried looking at my feet. They were not beautiful.

I was desperate here. When was the last time I had just looked at anything for the sole purpose of appreciating the beauty of it? Maybe Truck-kun was right and it was a lost skill in our era.

What kind of beauty had I appreciated in my life before hitching a ride on the bottom of Truck-kun’s vehicle?

I tried falling in a lake like I had when I was a child. It was cold, but not beautiful.

There was a woman from a soda commercial. I could remember that.

But that didn’t work. Thinking of that commercial just made we want to drink soda.

There was the loading screen from a game I played for a few weeks before bumbling on to something else. It had been rather pretty.

There was a fake flower that Sachiko gave me for my cubicle when we celebrated our third year of dating. Well, she had been the one to remember that it had been three years. I had forgotten. I had just received my big promotion at work and I had been rather distracted.

And with that memory, my mood was ruined. I shouldn’t be spending this time thinking about my ex-fiancée. I was supposed to be learning to appreciate beauty, getting good at making worship juice for the goddess.

I was not supposed to be thinking about past mistakes that led me to a place in life where I longed for the loving embrace of Truck-kun’s tires.

I was ready to admit it, I was not good at gardens. I stood up, resolving to trip off the nearest cute little garden bridge I could find and land in the water, flailing and begging for my mother’s help. It had worked for me when I was a child, after all. Stick with the classics.

I found a bridge and fell off of it. It didn’t work,

Many hours later Nyarin arrived.

I saw her first and waved. “How have I been doing? Any worship juice getting gathered?”

Nyarin’s eyes widened, ears out in concern. “Worship juice? Oh, you mean appreciation of beauty to gather energy for the goddess. Have you even started?”

I shook my head. “That would be a no then, huh? Not anything?”

She shook her head, holding up a perfectly circular white stone as she approached. “This thing will burn with a weird purple flame if you start producing worship of the goddess.”

“Ah,” I said, examining the stone as she offered it to me, “no flame.” It was a bizarre thing. It was so perfectly white that it didn’t seem to have a real shape. The surface looked fake. It was so white that there was no shading, no sense of curvature.

It felt cool and hard as steel. It was a thin circle, about as thick as my thumb, and overall about the size and shape of a small cookie, more or less. But the only way I could tell it’s shape was by moving it around. Whether I put it in the shade or the bright sun, it appeared to my eyes to only be pristine, perfect white.

Nyarin laughed at my exploration of the disc. “It doesn’t exist in this world. It isn’t actually white, but color doesn’t communicate between dimensions so well.”

“Oh,” I said, “so, any advice on how one might appreciate the beauty of a garden?”

Nyarin looked around the garden. “I’m not sure that I’m the best person to ask. I haven’t had much time for gardens.”

“Me neither. Too many important things to do and be disappointed by in life. Truck-kun said it would be easiest to learn to worship the goddess through beauty instead of fertility and happiness. He thought I would be rather bad at being happy.”

“He told me that the stone would burn purple for worship by beauty, yellow for happiness, and green for fertility. I wonder why he didn’t consider worship through fertility. Maybe that’s why he sent me?” Nyarin said with a small laugh, ears twitching.

I blushed. “Doesn’t that take like nine months or something?”

Nyarin laughed, ears forward and calm. “Not for Bakeneko. It’s only weeks. For the physical animal cats that Bakeneko are named after, it’s a couple months.”

I laughed nervously. She was joking. Definitely joking.

We walked. I would walk up to a tree, conclude that it was indeed a very excellent tree, and then check the white stone. It obstinately did not burn purple. I would then conclude that it was a mediocre tree and go to the next, hoping it would be beautiful.

“You sure you don’t want to give the fertility idea a try?” I asked Nyarin, clearly joking.

“Okay,” she said.

I dropped the precious other-dimensional important white rock thing and she laughed.

“You’re a really easy mark, you know that? Gullible, but I kind of like that.”

“You like gullible guys?”

Her smile disappeared and her ears went back. “They’re the best. Gullible guys have been my surest ticket to survival.”

“What’s it like, being a Bakeneko?”

She tilted her head in thought. “I don’t really know. Or, it’s all I’ve ever known so I don’t have much to compare against. We’re born practically full grown. Our parents abandon us the same day. I’m not very good at being a Bakeneko, I’ve realized.”

“We’re a perfect match,” I said, “I’m especially bad at being a human.”

She laughed. “No, I mean I'm a calico. My orange and white and black marks me as defective. No matter what I transform into, I can't hide those colors. Black Bakeneko can transform perfectly, hiding from even True Sight. The oranges can fight, and the whites are master deceivers.”

“But you're all of those colors,” I protested.

She pointed at her ears, which were mottled with patches of various cat furs. “Male Bakeneko are extraordinarily rare. They get all of that power. They can even live a long time. Female calico are far more common. We get the worst of it all.

“That's part of why I've been so bad at deceiving customers.”

“Is that why Truck-kun calls you kitty cat, but in English instead of Japanese, like キティキャット,” I said, emphasizing the Japanese way to sound out the English words ‘ki-ti kyatto’.

Nyarin went still as if she had spotted danger. Her tail was still and straight, ears forward. “I’m not sure why he calls me that.”

I thought about this. “But you survived when a hungry old god attacked your litter. Were you the only calico?”

“No, I had a brother. He and the others were stronger. They fought or disguised themselves or tried to deceive the god. I didn't trust my measly skills. I ran up a tree and hid, and that proved the wiser course of action. I've learned that things like Truck-kun and Kisshin-sama can't be fought. Not by something like me.”

“Something like Truck-kun? You called him Baku. Isn't there an old legend about a spirit called a Baku?”

“I don't think he wants me talking about that.”

“Can he hear us in this place?”

“Time isn't flowing for him where he is. Only for us. Still, he's so much stronger than I thought he would be. I'd heard he was strong but…”

“Wait, time has completely stopped for him?”

“Yes. This is your deepest inner mind, or at least a representation to access it that Teuck-kun built. He warned you to be careful here. Delve too deep and you could be here for days, or much longer.”

I laughed. “Well you left me to explore this place for nearly a day before coming to check on me, so I figured it couldn't be that dangerous.”

Her eyes widened and the hair on her ears pricked up. “I came in seconds after you came here. Is that what you meant when you asked if you’d already managed to accomplish any worship. Seo, how did you stretch time that much?”

“Uh, I don’t know. I was trying to appreciate beauty but there was this stupid little blue flower that was not making it very easy.”

Nyarin shook her head. “We could never keep your memory suppressed, and then you start bending time accidentally?”

“And I fell in a lake back there. Maybe that did it.”

She examined my clothing, which had already dried hours ago. “Seo you’ve been here long enough that your clothes dried on their own.” She looked at me as if I was a bomb she had just found in her purse. “Maybe I should go back. Truck-kun will want to know this.”

I thought about this. “And if we abandon the plan, and Truck-kun doesn’t react well to me accidentally bending time, then he might kill us both.”

Her ears went back, so flat against her head that they nearly disappeared. “Maybe,” she whispered.