Chapter 197: Chapter 3: The Taste of Kyubey
Even without cooking it, Yimi—who regularly ate raw food—could already tell that Kyubey meat was going to taste terrible no matter what you did with it.
It technically counted as flesh and blood, yet it had the consistency of chewing gum. Almost zero freshness. And on top of that, an indescribable flavor that was definitively not something meant to be eaten.
Her basic culinary knowledge didn’t cover how to fix a texture problem, but she understood the principle of burying a bad taste under heavy seasoning.
Once she stripped the outer skin, she discovered that apart from the pair of cat ears, Kyubey’s anatomy leaned closer to a rodent’s—though the internal structure looked nothing like a mammal’s.
Operating with cat paws was far less convenient than human hands. And with Homura watching the entire time, Yimi couldn’t transform—the last world had taught her what happened when you shifted into a human in front of someone; Suzi-obaachan’s panic was not something she cared to repeat. So she applied the same mana-adhesion technique she’d developed while training Haki, sticking the utensils to her pads. The result was uneven cuts and sloppy knife work.
The stovetop had a sleek, ultra-modern look, but the labels were still readable enough for Yimi to figure out the controls.
Apparently curious about what Yimi was up to, Homura stood right behind her and watched in silence—neither interrupting nor helping. She simply observed as every last spice in her kitchen was sacrificed to the Kyubey cause.
The method was a simple clear stew, but Yimi had gone heavy on the aromatics to mask the flavor. Even so, it couldn’t suppress the burnt-rubber stench that congealed halfway through the cook.
"Blech!"
Yimi gagged, then scooped up a spoonful of broth to taste once it was done, tossing out the misfortune of her scalded tongue as she went.
"Blech!"
After tasting, she shook her head, clawed at her tongue with a paw, and expelled the lingering foul taste as another burst of misfortune. Then she licked her lips and forced on her best "mmm, delicious" face.
She ladled a small bowl and nudged it toward Homura.
"Meow~ (^_^)"
Maybe it was just a cat-palate problem. Maybe normal humans would find it perfectly tasty—like how Yimi loved eating little goldfish but humans didn’t.
"..."
When Homura didn’t budge, Yimi nudged the bowl again and meowed once more.
Homura locked eyes with the kitten’s hope-filled gaze and managed one sentence: "Your level of evil is right on par with Kyubey’s."
Without an ounce of mercy, she dumped the cat’s painstakingly prepared masterpiece into the trash, kitchen utensils and all.
"Meow meow meow! Meow meow meow meow!" Yimi scurried at her heels, trying to protest.
The trash bin by the door wasn’t the ordinary kind Kyubey had been perched on earlier. It looked like a plain brick-shaped block; it rose automatically when Homura approached and retracted after she tossed the garbage in.
Yimi stomped on the spot where Homura had stood. The recessed bin didn’t react at all.
"What a waste of half an hour." Homura sighed and walked back inside to assemble her firearms.
The city looked as though run-down housing and visible poverty simply didn’t exist here. Everyone seemed to live in a villa with floor-to-ceiling windows and a garden. Everything appeared so perfectly idyllic.
And of course it did. Kyubey’s kind had been meddling in human society since antiquity, granting the wishes of countless hopeful girls along the way.
"Meow meow." Yimi pushed the door open and padded in, still voicing her objections.
Homura didn’t chase her out. A brand-new anomaly after who knew how many loops—she certainly wasn’t going to throw that away. If anything, she’d have dragged the cat back had it tried to leave.
The girl set down her assembled weapon, grabbed Yimi, and planted her in front of herself. "No Soul Gem. You’re not a Magical Girl. I’m going to classify you as an alien with special abilities for now."
"I don’t know whether you can actually understand me, but how much do you know about Magical Girls?"
If the cat could cook, its intelligence was at least above a gorilla’s.
"Meow?" Yimi tilted her head.
All she knew was that Magical Girls were the targets she needed to feed per her quest. As for what the species actually was, her understanding was the surface-level literal meaning: girls who could use magic.
By that logic, the little cat was a Magical Girl too... a Magical Little Girl.
"Can’t understand me?" Homura sounded disappointed.
"Meow!" Yimi shook her head vigorously.
"You can understand? What number is this?" Homura held up three fingers.
"Three," said Yimi.
Homura: "?"
Oops—slipped up!
Yimi’s eyes darted around, scrambling for a save: "Meow meow meow."
Homura’s eyes narrowed.
"Are you... a Magical Girl?" Yimi gave up the act entirely.
"If I say yes, what are you going to do—eliminate me?"
What Kyubey did, from a human-emotional standpoint, was fundamentally a tragedy. A Magical Girl’s duty was to destroy Witches. But as a Magical Girl expended magic and her emotions grew darker, the taint accumulated in her Soul Gem. The only way to purify it was with the Grief Seeds dropped by slain Witches.
And once the Soul Gem was fully corrupted, the Magical Girl would become the very Witch she’d been fighting. This was the information Kyubey withheld—the same truth Homura had tried, loop after loop, to tell others, only to be distrusted every single time.
In fact, from the moment a girl became a Magical Girl, the Soul Gem was the real "her." The original body was reduced to an empty shell—convenient for combat, repairable with magic even if a vital organ took damage, but inert the moment the Soul Gem moved beyond a certain range.
In a sense, they could no longer be called human. Perhaps they no longer even qualified as living beings. And that, too, was something Kyubey kept hidden.
If some Kyubey-adjacent species suddenly popped up with the goal of solving the Witch problem at its root, Homura wouldn’t have been surprised. During her loops she’d even witnessed someone who, upon learning their true nature, broke down and tried to murder their friends before killing themselves.
Faced with Homura’s question, Yimi blinked her big eyes. "If you’re a Magical Girl, I’ll feed you Kyubey."
"Would eating Kyubey produce some kind of special effect? Turn a Magical Girl back into a human?" Homura asked. She’d genuinely never tried something that bizarre. If it actually worked, she wished things could be that simple.
"Don’t know."
"Then what’s the point?"
Yimi’s eyes darted. Time to try bluffing. "Kyubey is... really yummy."
"..."
Homura’s hand tightened on the grip of her gun.
This creature’s evil was perfectly on par with Kyubey’s—and it wasn’t even as good a liar. Its purpose was unclear, but at least it wasn’t running around tricking girls into becoming Magical Girls.
There was one thing worth being wary of, though. Just now, when she’d asked whether eating Kyubey would change anything, the cat could easily have answered "yes" to deceive her—but had honestly said "I don’t know."
Kyubey, a being devoid of emotion, also rarely relied on outright lies. It typically achieved its ends by omitting key information, leading targets to the wrong conclusions. For instance, without those two critical revelations, a Magical Girl sounded like nothing more than a righteous champion of justice. Well... the "Kyubey tastes good" part was definitely a lie.
"Do you dislike Kyubey?" Homura asked what she considered the more important question.
"Yes." Anything her mother disliked, Yimi disliked too.
Homura nodded. "It seems we can coexist peacefully, for the time being."
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