Confession letter.
Seeing those three characters written at the top of the letter Yimi had given her, even Tatsumaki sucked in a breath and leaned back slightly, thinking the little brat had learned something she shouldn't.
For the first time, she seriously began thinking about education. Before this, she had never even thought of herself as having any responsibility for Yimi's education.
"To Tatsumaki and Aunt Fubuki:
"I learned from Zenko how to write a confession (farewell) letter. Even though the time I've spent with you was very short, I was especially very happy. I really like you, but I also need to find the road home and look for Mom and Grandma. Zenko said a confession (farewell) letter has to be 300 characters long without counting punctuation because the teacher requires it. I don't know how to write that much, so I'll copy some useless words. Miss Bao, contact number: ..."
There was a long stretch in the middle where she had copied some advertisement and phone number from who knew where just to fill the character count. Tatsumaki's expression darkened.
She would have to take a day this week to arrest every bastard plastering illegal ads everywhere and lock them in the same room as Puri-Puri Prisoner!
The letter was riddled with misspellings. Besides that, the commas were packed far too densely, every word had been crammed into a single paragraph that hurt to look at, and the grammar and vocabulary were complete nonsense.
For a moment, Tatsumaki thought this had been homework assigned by a schoolteacher for parents to review. Then she remembered Yimi, who was currently living in City A, had been out of school for a long time, and first grade had barely begun teaching writing.
Tatsumaki slapped the letter onto the table. "What you actually meant to write was a 'farewell letter,' right? People usually don't hand these over personally. What are you trying to say? Have I treated you badly? Are you trying to run away from home? Rebelling?"
Yes, Yimi had not only handed it to Tatsumaki herself, she had even stood there without moving and watched her finish reading it.
Writing 300 characters took a long time for someone who had only just gotten used to holding a pen, and she still needed another copy for Aunt Fubuki. At Zenko's suggestion, she had gone to a copy shop and printed one.
Then the lady at the copy shop had shamelessly read through the contents and kept laughing until her stomach hurt while calling Yimi adorable.
"I'm leaving here... and going to another world." Yimi simply explained what she wanted to say.
"Do you think you're an alien, or have you watched too many cartoons?" Tatsumaki flicked a finger and casually shattered the farewell letter Yimi had worked so hard to finish.
"Mm." Yimi lowered her head to look at the scraps on the floor and tucked her little hands together in grievance. "I'll come back... in a few days, to see you."
"I'm leaving this world to go to other worlds and look for Mom and Grandma. I'll be gone for a while, by myself. I can't take you with me." She gave the same answer she had to give every time she passed through a world.
Tatsumaki turned her head away. "Think about that when you're older. Once you grow up, your missing family will come back. For now, your top priorities are staying here, eating your meals, sleeping properly, going back to school in a couple of days, and waiting."
She had probably never been this gentle in her life.
"You're lying." Yimi wasn't falling for that. She was the one who had gotten lost, so Tatsumaki was just making things up.
She pulled open the window, preparing to deliver a farewell letter to Fubuki too.
Tatsumaki grabbed the ankle Yimi had raised but not yet put through the window. "If you really won't believe me, I'll take you back there and look again. If there's still nobody, then settle down and listen to me, got it?"
The village where they had found the brat could no longer be inhabited because of the terrain, and everyone had moved into City Q. The Hero Association had apparently even investigated them, and not a single person there knew this little thing.
Yimi shook her head. "But I can't... bring people with me."
"Do I have to tell you the truth? Your family died a long time ago." Tatsumaki yanked her straight back, sealed every window used for ventilation, and even put chains across them.
Words as unpleasant as "leaving this world" weren't something she was supposed to take seriously, right?
Naturally, a little kitty couldn't stand hearing something like that. She snapped back angrily, "You're the one who's dead, dumbass!"
Tatsumaki choked for a moment. Even though she had been insulted, she still couldn't help wondering whether there was some hidden meaning in the brat's words...
That naturally didn't make Tatsumaki any happier. Expressionless, she raised a hand and made the cartoon blanket on the children's bed fly over from the bedroom, wrapping Yimi up tightly.
"If you want to leave, fine. You'll have to get past me by force. Otherwise, stay home and behave."
Of all the worlds Yimi had visited, Tatsumaki was the first person to stop her from leaving like this.
"There's... a flying saucer behind you." Yimi tried to trick Tatsumaki into turning around the way they did in cartoons.
"That trick was already worn out ten years ago. Also, there's a wall behind me."
Of course, a child her age had no way of knowing that.
...
In the end, Tatsumaki still couldn't stop her. Yimi wasn't the same as Fubuki.
Her psychokinesis far surpassed Tatsumaki's, but no matter how dangerous a baby holding a gun was, if she only knew how to club people with the grip and never learned to pull the trigger, Tatsumaki still couldn't lose to her.
If Tatsumaki increased her strength any further, she would hurt Yimi, so she held back. Yimi took advantage of the opening, escaped, and vanished into the distance in the blink of an eye. Heartless little thing.
She had even hugged Tatsumaki before leaving.
Tatsumaki lay spread-eagled on the bed, staring fixedly at the ceiling.
She herself had been around this age once too. She had possessed immensely powerful psychokinesis, only to be coaxed with a few words into becoming a test subject, then locked in a cage and forbidden from going home. But this little monster was far beyond what Tatsumaki had been back then.
Rolling over and floating up again, Tatsumaki used psychokinesis to bring in the clothes she had bought for Yimi from the balcony. They were already dry.
The phone rang. Fubuki again.
"Hello?"
"What's going on?! She suddenly flew to my place and said goodbye, saying she has to find her mom. Aren't you her mom?"
Tatsumaki covered one ear. Even without seeing her, she could imagine her little sister's eyes going round.
She shouted back, "I told you she's not my biological child! Why do all of you take it for granted that I gave birth to her? We don't look anything alike, okay?!"
"You didn't even try to stop her? Your name is on the letter too!"
Tatsumaki snapped, "You're one to talk. You're the one who gave her the idea in the first place!"
"You... forget it. I'm not arguing with you. You must've done something awful and made her mad again." Fubuki hung up.
"Why does her deciding to run off somehow mean I'm the awful one?!" Tatsumaki stomped her foot and kept yelling at the dial tone.
She was the one who washed both the brat's clothes and the brat herself.
Thinking about it that way, maybe she really hadn't fulfilled her responsibilities as a guardian...
Tatsumaki lowered her head and saw the scraps of paper scattered around her feet. She gathered them with psychokinesis, stitched them back together, and continued reading.
After the padded-out filler, the letter continued: "I made pretty clothes for Aunt Fubuki and bought Tatsumaki lots of panties, remember to wear them. I'll bring tasty food back for you. Don't fight when I'm gone, and don't fight when I'm here either. I like you. If you like me too, don't leave after school. If you want to skip the stuff filling the character count, jump to line eight and keep reading."
Tatsumaki gave the letter a half-lidded look. "Then put the character-count filler at the end. Or put the note about skipping ahead before it."
That "I like you" and "don't leave after school" line really had been written like a confession letter, hadn't it? A school that could teach elementary students to write something like this and even impose a character count was no ordinary school.
Maybe she should frame it like a picture. Then when Yimi grew up, she could show it at her wedding.
Tatsumaki flew outside and chased after her.
Interlude: Gift
"Stinky orange cat! I'll beat you to death!"
"You're not even a cat, stinky ferret!"
"Hurry up and pull them apart!"
Even in worlds where Yimi still had people she got along with, there were inevitably annoying brats who treated her like a thorn in their side.
She had kept her promise and come to visit Betty, only to run into Mimi while they were out shopping in the royal capital together.
Because the old mansion had been destroyed, and even the terrain around it had been dragged out of shape by Love Train, they had been forced to abandon that area and choose another place closer to the royal capital.
Anastasia held Mimi in her arms. "All right, all right. You're already fourteen. Why are you still squabbling with other children?"
Yimi seized the opening and launched a verbal attack. "Fourteen and already an old fossil."
"..."
The over-four-hundred-year-old Beatrice's face darkened. She let go of Yimi, turned around, and walked away.
"I remember where your house is now. Tonight, I'll sneak in while you're asleep and draw all over your face." After threatening Mimi, Yimi hurried after Betty.
This was the kitty's clever scheme. She had no time to run all the way to Mimi's house in the middle of the night, but she could scare Mimi into not daring to sleep in her room.
Yimi took Beatrice's hand and began reporting on everything she had learned.
"I learned... how to make clothes, and how to write confession letters, and how to play games, and how to swallow a thousand needles..."
Beatrice pulled her hand free and pinched Yimi's cheeks. "What are confession letters and swallowing a thousand needles supposed to be?"
With her little face squashed out of shape, Yimi answered indistinctly, "That's a pinky promise... and the letter you leave when you're going away."
"That's a farewell letter! And Betty has no idea what this pinky-promise thing is, but it sounds way too dangerous." Beatrice patted her hair.
It seemed a little shorter.
When Yimi first came to this world, her hair had already been around medium length. But in the previous world, while living with Aunt Fubuki, she had been taken along to get her hair done, so it was shoulder-length again.
"I brought you... this too." Yimi rummaged through her storage space and pulled out a little pink dress.
Beatrice lowered her head and lifted the dress a little. "Doesn't this look a lot like the one I'm wearing?"
"Mm. Sorry."
Beatrice's dress was already very pretty, so Yimi had subconsciously copied it.
"I'm not blaming you. I'm impressed you remembered it that clearly. Hmph~" Beatrice accepted it and held it against herself to compare the size.
Unfortunately, there weren't many people left for her to show it off to now.
...
Yimi automatically generated 5% portal energy every two days. Together with the achievements she kept unlocking, and since she never used the gacha, she was gradually becoming rich.
This time, she first returned to the seafaring world. She wanted to visit Dog-Eyes, whom she had not seen in a long time. She hadn't even seen Dog-Eyes one last time when she left before.
Even when teleporting to a world she had already visited, the System was still highly random.
A world was enormous, so getting anywhere near the right place depended almost entirely on Yimi's EX-ranked Luck. It worked well this time, and she appeared directly aboard a ship.
"Move it, boys! Put your backs into it!"
The rocking of the ship felt unfamiliar after so long and made Yimi a little unsteady; she nearly fell straight onto her butt. Fortunately, her balance in human form was also extremely good.
Looking around, she found herself in a room that resembled a print shop. Since Yimi had just gone to print something in the previous world, she could barely recognize it even though this world's style was rather different.
A storm was raging outside. For most fleets at sea, weather like this demanded serious attention, which meant nobody was in the printing room. A ship equipped with its own printing room was no ordinary vessel.
Yimi braced herself on a table and kicked her little legs until she climbed on top to look at the printed sheets.
They were bounty posters, except they targeted Marines. The numbering showed these had only just been printed as the first edition, though Yimi couldn't understand any of that.
All she could see was that among the huge pile of Marine bounty posters was one with her own face on it, except the amount printed there was nothing like the tens of billions of Berries she had seen before.
Cat Child Yimi: Bounty 5 Berries
Rayleigh had explained to her what bounties meant.
"Meow meow meow!"
Yimi angrily slapped the machine. Psychokinesis seeped inside and destroyed it from within.
She kicked the door open, wanting to see who was printing her picture and doing something like this, only to make eye contact with Mihawk, who was leaning against a sofa in an extremely arrogant pose while drinking.
"Dog-Eyes." Yimi ran over.
Mihawk drained the red wine he had intended to savor slowly.
Yimi sprawled over him, grabbed his hat, and shook it. "Why did you... get a bigger ship?"
Mihawk grabbed the back of her collar and lifted her off. "I happened to run into it and stopped for a rest."
The ship wasn't Mihawk's. It belonged to Buggy, and Mihawk didn't have much of a relationship with him.
But Buggy, a man wholly obsessed with money, seemed to have come up with another scheme. He borrowed a large startup fund from Mihawk to set up some kind of mercenary guild, then spent part of it buying equipment to print bounties for Marines.
That was the extent of their relationship. They had simply happened to be photographed by a passing news bird, which then reported that Buggy had become an officer under Emperor Mihawk.
That Emperor position had been pushed onto Mihawk by the little brat in front of him.
Yimi rummaged through her storage space. "I brought you... a present."
Mihawk straightened his hat. "No one in this world likes rats."
"It's not a rat." Yimi pulled out a long black dress from her storage space and handed it to him.
"..."
"I made it myself. Try it on."
"..." Mihawk didn't take it.
Yimi simply laid it over him. "I'll come back... in a few days, to play."
She still needed to go visit Rayleigh too.
Watching Yimi, who had apparently awakened some new Devil Fruit power, fly straight out the window, Mihawk lowered his head and stared at the dress she had tossed onto him for a while.
He decided to have Buggy raise Yimi's bounty to 10 Berries.
...
A new world. Another modern city.
Looking at the Japanese written on the signs, Yimi provisionally ruled out the possibility that she had returned home.
But it wasn't impossible. Back in the Stand world, different regions had used different writing and languages too. To be safe, she opened the System panel first.
Main Quest: Become a Qualified Detective
"Beishen?" She didn't know that word.
The last time a quest had told her to become something, it had been a shrine maiden, and she had deliberately chosen not to finish that one.
"Host is advised that aside from the possibility that one out of every three people in this world is a murderer, this world is extremely ordinary. Please be a good child who obeys the law."
"Meow?"
"Look at that kid. She's so cute! Is she cosplaying?"
"She really is. Should we ask if we can take a picture?"
Some passing high school students pointed at Yimi.
Cosplay again. Every time she heard people say that word, it meant there was something wrong with Yimi's clothes, and this group would definitely make a huge fuss over the kitty's ears.
Yimi grabbed her witch hat and ran into an alley. After taking it off, she pulled out the baseball cap she hadn't used in ages, put it on, and tucked away her tail.
It made her very uncomfortable, but she could simply use Love Train to twist the uncomfortable feeling away.