Please Stop

Heim

"Mama?"

"Yes baby?"

"Is that a dead person?"

"It is baby."

"Why is it on our kitchen table?"

"Because," Lilly said slowly, "I'm trying a new experiment."

Yūta reflexively glanced down at the Cursed Spirit in his hands. He had been feeding the black bird, Kurai, for a few weeks. It still tried to attack them every so often, but it was docile in the presence of Tora. The nekomata kept a close eye on the avian spirit. Yūta looked at the body. "Who was he?"

"I don't know," she said. She didn't know his name. She had watched him battle Satoru Gojō after she saved Satoru. The man was impressive, especially considering he did not use an ounce of useable spiritual energy.

That was not why she had him, though.

After Satoru killed him, she replaced his corpse with a good replica. She always kept a few corpse-copiers in her void storage whenever she had to fake a death. Unfortunately that was her last one which meant she'd need to make more soon. That was never a fun process. Hopefully she had all the ingredients in her void storage and wouldn't need to farm for anything. She liked hunting ingredients as much as anyone, but making the trips to one of the dimensions of hell for the guts of facers was rarely ever fun.

By rarely ever fun, she meant only ever fun when completely wasted and with equally wasted friends.

She hoped that the man she used her last corpse-copier on would be worth it.

Her reasons were twofold.

One: she wanted to test the extent of her abilities in that world.

Two: her instincts told her that the man had something to do with the Story.

Just as she knew Yūta was a protagonist—or antagonist—she knew the man in front of her had to be related. How important he was, she didn't know. He was marked for Death, which meant he was meant to die that year—likely by Satoru's hands.

His death meant... something. To someone. Somehow.

She didn't know, but after lifetimes of living in stories, she had a good instinct for what was vital and what wasn't.

That man's death was vital.

So what happens when he doesn't stay dead?

She wanted to know.

Resurrection was something that varied world to world. Some worlds considered it a staple of life—like breathing or baking—and other worlds were so tightly restricted it could not be done.

Lilly could Pause time in that world, but she was not allowed to go Forward or Backwards. She could only live in the Now, never the Later or Then for that world. She knew this when she tried to jump back to the past after meeting Satoru and was promptly rejected.