Tanimaki Works a Shift at a Haunted House (Part 5)

About ten minutes later, Tanimaki was finally released and waited for the next visitors.

This time, it seemed to be a young man and woman on a date.

But their voices sounded familiar.

“Meow! That’s Matsushita and Imagawa!”

Matsushita and Imagawa had once worked under Tanimaki back when he was still human.

Tanimaki instinctively ducked behind the sound equipment.

“Huh? I thought a nekomata was supposed to appear here...” Imagawa said, puzzled, with her arm linked through Matsushita’s.

“Yeah. Maybe it’s busy,” Matsushita replied, placing an arm around her shoulders.

They were unmistakably a couple. Judging by how comfortable they seemed together, they had probably been dating for quite some time.

“So those two have been dating, meow...”

Tanimaki waited to see whether they would mention him, but of course, they did not. They simply walked arm in arm toward the exit.

“Have they already forgotten all about me, meow...?”

Perhaps Tanimaki was already considered dead in the human world. Either way, it seemed that he no longer meant anything to either of them.

A deep sense of emptiness washed over him.

“There’s no point going back to the human world in this body, meow.”

If he was ever going to return to his old world, there would be no point unless he could do so in human form.

But even if he became human again, would there still be a place for him?

In the Republic of Meows, Debiru, Mayutan, and the Nekota family would accept him.

And yet... perhaps there had never been a place for him in the human world to begin with.