"Ngh—!"
The gaunt Stand threw a punch that caved clean through the wall beside it, sending the guards scrambling in alarm. At Yimi's feet lay the body of the President—vital signs gone.
More precisely: the President of this timeline—the one without D4C.
The Holy Corpse had stopped moving here. But no matter how hard Yimi looked, she couldn't see it.
She had never accumulated human knowledge or experience. Yimi had no concept of the world, let alone of planets—the idea of parallel universes was hopelessly beyond her. A full day had passed, and perhaps because none of the Holy Corpse fragments remained on her person, the Corpse's master had not appeared once to offer any guidance.
Yimi fled the parallel world's presidential manor and opened her System Achievement panel, scrolling to the unclaimed physical rewards from completed achievements.
[Skill Book: Introduction to Cooking]: A beginner's guide that brings even a complete novice to the basics.
Difficulty: Low.
How can anything in this world taste this terrible?
She sank her teeth into the corner of the book and chewed it clean, slowly and methodically. Knowledge welled up inside her like a spring.
"Congratulations, Host, on mastering the fundamentals of cooking—the rightful reward of diligent study and hard work."
Barely enough to dull the edge of her hunger.
With that done, Yimi decisively invoked the contract she had signed upon first arriving in this world.
"Do you need assistance, my lady?"
The Corpse's master had warned her, repeatedly. But faced with this situation, she had no other choice.
The Corpse's master had, according to legend, refused the demon three times. Yimi did not possess that kind of resolve.
The fat demon narrowed its eyes—each one nearly as large as Yimi's entire head—and met the gaze of the gaunt Stand astride its horse. Then, as though delighted, it split open a grin full of jagged teeth.
"Your desire has not dimmed. Had you applied that brain of yours—elegant as a drainage ditch—to the matter when we first met, you could have claimed the relic you sought at a far cheaper price."
The smile receded slightly. The demon continued: "My terms remain unchanged, my lady. Three days of fine dining in exchange for the Holy Corpse."
What Yimi desired was not the Holy Corpse itself—she wanted to go home. Perhaps the demon was implying, in a roundabout way, that it currently lacked the power to send her home. Unfortunately, Yimi did not grasp the meaning hidden in those words.
Compared to obtaining the complete Holy Corpse in one transaction, the price of three days' worth of food seemed almost laughably cheap.
Yimi lifted her head. She gave the matter genuine consideration—real thought, perhaps for the first time in her life—then responded three seconds later: "Send me there."
She meant: send me to the Holy Corpse—not deliver the Corpse directly to her face.
The demon studied the Stand looming behind Yimi with a contemplative look. "Even if you reduce the scope of your wish, my price will not change."
"Send me there." Yimi repeated the same four words.
"Heh."
The demon opened its massive jaws and swallowed the cat whole, then plunged headfirst into the tiled floor.
—
The presidential manor.
Even between a husband and wife sleeping in separate rooms, years of shared life leave behind a certain understanding. If even Lucy could guess that Scarlett preferred women, how could Valentine be entirely unaware?
But knowing was one thing. Witnessing it was another entirely.
No matter how he turned it over, he had never imagined that while he had been mourning his lost youth, his wife would be in that bed, with another woman, doing— He had only caught this much. What might they have done during all the times he hadn't been there to see? If it had been a man, he might have ended up raising someone else's son.
Anger. Grief.
"No—don't hurt her. We were only napping—this child said she missed her mother terribly…" Scarlett, true to her upbringing, had already smoothed her expression and assembled an excuse.
Lucy pressed herself into the corner, one hand drifting instinctively toward the dagger concealed at her waist, drenched in cold sweat. She had steeled herself—but Valentine might possess one of those bizarre abilities called Stands, and even if she did somehow kill him, how would she escape? She had arrived openly with Scarlett, in full view of the guards. The dagger was nothing more than a talisman for her own nerves.
"Covering a transgression with a clumsy lie only makes you look like an uneducated village girl, Scarlett." Valentine said it with cold detachment, then turned his gaze to Lucy.
Before he could continue, Scarlett had already steadied herself. She stepped forward and pressed a finger lightly to her husband's lips. "I wasn't lying, Fanny. Perhaps it's my age—I find myself wanting a child."
The answer gave Valentine genuine pause. It was true—Lucy's identity had made him overlook the fact that she was only fourteen.
"Scarlett…"
Lucy watched the situation tilt, reading the opening. The right move was to stay still and let Scarlett play out the scene.
But before she could compose her next line, Valentine abruptly seized his wife's face in his hand. "You carry a smell that disgusts me right now. It's the smell of lying, Scarlett."
"You—"
His gaze shifted to Lucy. "Come to think of it—you fit the profile of 'female, under fifty-one kilograms' rather well. Was it you two shameless women—colluding inside and out to betray me?"
Lucy's eyelid twitched. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
She didn't know Valentine had already obtained a rough description of the betrayer—but she could piece together enough.
Valentine walked toward her.
Every instinct screamed at Lucy to hold steady, not to let a single crack show. But at precisely that moment, a voice—impossible to dismiss as her imagination—began repeating in her ear, faint and persistent:
"Come this way…"
No—calling it "in her ear" wasn't right. She couldn't quite place the direction.
"Come this way…"
Not now. She needed to deflect his suspicion—and not only for herself. Her husband's fate was bound to hers.
From behind Valentine, the long-eared Stand materialized. It threw a punch toward Lucy—a test. Under normal circumstances, an ordinary person could not see a Stand.
Lucy was supposed to be an ordinary person. She should have been.
But the thing hovering before her, radiating menace from every surface, was starkly visible before her eyes.
"Wh— what is that?!" She threw herself backward.
At that point, she had no choices left to weigh. She bolted through the shattered doorway in the direction the voice was coming from.
"I knew it was you!"
Valentine moved to pursue. If he hadn't switched to this leaner body, he doubted he could have outrun a young girl.
"You think you can escape?" He directed the Stand to trip the alarm—but instead of continuing down the corridor toward the exit, the fleeing girl doubled back and threw herself directly into the room where he had hidden the Holy Corpse.
A coincidence? He refused to believe in any coincidence.
"Ah—!" A girl's shriek tore from within.
Knocking Scarlett aside with one strike, Valentine summoned his Stand and stepped through the door.
No immediate anomaly. Lucy—perhaps having stumbled into something—was lying on her side near the chimney where he had concealed the Corpse, clutching her stomach and whimpering softly.
But his attention was not on the girl.
Because behind her, the scales-bearing Stand loomed with its head bowed—mounted high on horseback, imposing from above—and fixed him with a pair of glowing golden eyes without a trace of hesitation.
"That cat—!"
The sight of that Stand snapped everything into place. The Holy Corpse's final trial had crossed the distance of parallel worlds to land directly in his path.
"You dare deceive a demon—!"
A deep, thunderous voice rolled over Valentine's. He registered, for the first time, that something else occupied this room—something radiating a chill that went beyond cold, all the way into dread.
Nearly scraping the ceiling with its bulk, the greed demon glared with deep displeasure at the Stand holding the scales.
The moment it had honored its contract—delivering Yimi to the complete Holy Corpse—the "future food" Yimi had promised as payment had immediately come due. But not three days, as originally agreed.
One hour of fine dining. Just that—nothing more.
Because in Yimi's mind, being transported from one spot to another was worth exactly that much. When her grandmother used to stuff her into a cat carrier and haul her to the vet for injections, it hadn't required any particular effort either.
And so Famine had executed the transaction accordingly.
"This was a trade that left a demon rather displeased, little one. Still—I look forward to our next business together." With that, the demon plunged headfirst into the floor and vanished.
That cat has two Stands?!