Chapter 34: Otome Isekai Protocol
Su Yao stared at the back of Mizukume’s head. The vivid, invasive dream still clung to her. “Is that how you know things?” she demanded, her voice tight. “Horror movies? Modern slang? You’re dreaming Xiao Ling’s memories?”
Mizukume paused the anime. The sudden silence rang loudly. She turned her head. A look of distaste crossed her features.
“It is an unfortunate side effect of this parasitic configuration,” she admitted. Her nose wrinkled as if smelling something foul. “Echoes of the vessel’s experiences bleed through. Yes, I have seen the moving pictures she watched. I have heard the music she listened to. It’s a torrent of trivial noise.”
Her gaze grew distant. A flicker of genuine, cosmic annoyance shone in her eyes. “And I have experienced the memory of her final moments. Being struck by that large, grimy vehicle, ‘Truck-kun,’ as the online vernacular so frivolously names it was a most unpleasant sensation.”
She let out a weary sigh. “I spent the entire metaphysical event wondering why she didn’t wake up in a castle with a harem of devoted knights or in a fantasy world with a game-like interface. There was a disappointing lack of isekai protocol. How dreadfully mundane.”
Su Yao could only blink, processing the fact that this ancient, demonic echo personally knew the concept of isekai and had judged Xiao Ling’s fated meeting with ‘Truck-kun’ as lacking in narrative flair.
“So you’re a critic, too,” Su Yao said flatly.
“I am a connoisseur of compelling narratives.” Mizukume turned back to the screen. “And your predecessor’s was abruptly and artlessly terminated. Now, if you don’t mind, I am attempting to ascertain if this ‘Gomu Gomu no Mi’ qualifies as a valid System-level cheat ability. It’s far more engaging than reliving the sensation of asphalt and internal hemorrhaging.”
Su Yao sank back. A new layer of understanding and unease settled over her. The connection was deeper than she thought. It allowed Mizukume to sift through the mundane and traumatic debris of Xiao Ling’s life.
Mizukume’s gaze remained fixed on the paused screen, but her focus was clearly millennia away. “The sensation, of course, was entirely different from my own conclusion,” she mused. Her voice was clinical, as if comparing two vintages of wine. “The truck was blunt. A singular, crushing impact. A cessation of function. Efficient, in its own crude way.”
She finally turned. Her eyes met Su Yao’s, and for a moment, the ancient being within was utterly exposed.
“My end was artisanal. I was a pincushion filled with arrows. Each one a punctuation mark of betrayal. A period of pain meticulously placed by the hands of those I had charmed. It took much, much longer. One has time to appreciate the craftsmanship of one’s own demise in such a scenario to feel the blood grow cold and the light dim by degrees.”
A phantom ache, sharp and feathered, seemed to lance through Su Yao’s own body. It was a sympathetic echo from the clone’s memory. She instinctively flinched, her hand twitching towards her own unscathed torso.
“It was,” Mizukume concluded, the ghost of a thousand arrowheads fading from her expression, “infinitely more, personal. And far more aesthetically coherent than an encounter with ‘Truck-kun.’”
Su Yao stared. Her own near-death via poison and betrayal felt somehow cleaner, more direct, in comparison to the visceral, drawn-out imagery of becoming a living pincushion. The clone’s casual dissection of their shared mortal experiences was more unsettling than any outright threat.
“You have a horrifying way of putting things,” Su Yao managed. The taste of iron and old pain was still faint on her tongue.
Mizukume’s question sliced through the air with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. “Landlord. Are you so certain that you and the girl, Xiao Ling, are one and the same?”
Su Yao froze. The phantom taste of blood was forgotten. “What kind of foolish question is that? I awoke in her body. Her memories are my memories.”
“Are they?” Mizukume’s voice was lethally soft. “Or are they simply a library you have access to? You, the ancient Su Yao, awoke. But what if the consciousness known as ‘Xiao Ling’ simply departed? What if your ‘awakening’ was indeed her ticket to another world?
“Perhaps the world of an otome game more fitting for a bland, kind-hearted soul. She would be surrounded by handsome, two-dimensional suitors vying for her affection. It was a far more logical destination for her than sharing cranial space with you.”
She finally glanced over. Her eyes gleamed with malicious curiosity. “You assume you are a continuous entity, reborn. But what if you are merely a squatter who moved in the moment the previous tenant was evicted to a better neighborhood?
The question, absurd as it was, struck a hidden nerve. Su Yao had always operated on the assumption of a merged existence. But what if it was a replacement instead of a merger?
“You feel her memories, yes. But do you feel her regrets for the unfinished homework? Her anticipation for the next episode of a silly drama? Or do you just observe them, like entries in a logbook?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Su Yao protested, but her voice lacked its usual iron conviction.
“Is it?” Mizukume pressed. A cruel smile played on her lips. “You, of all beings, should know that souls aren’t simple things. Death is a transaction. Why would it be so straightforward for her? You are a Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox. Your soul is a fortress. Did a mortal girl’s spirit merge with it? Or was it simply overwritten?”
With casual indifference, she turned back to the screen and delivered the final, haunting blow. “Perhaps you are just the demon queen who ate the previous occupant and kept her clothes. Something to ponder, isn’t it? Now, if you’ll excuse me, this ‘Enies Lobby’ arc is truly riveting. The architectural destruction is first-rate.”
Su Yao was left standing in the middle of the living room. The foundation of her entire new existence suddenly felt like sand shifting beneath her feet. Was she Su Yao? Was she Xiao Ling? Or was she just a ghost wearing a dead girl’s life as a skin, chasing the echoes of a past that might not even fully belong to her?
The clone, having successfully planted a seed of existential dread, focused entirely on the animated chaos on screen, looking more content and settled in her stolen body than Su Yao had felt in weeks.
Su Yao’s fists clenched. The existential dread hardened into defensive anger. “You’re just messing with me by planting doubts. It’s what you do.”
Mizukume paused the anime again. The sudden silence was heavy. She turned, and this time her gaze was coldly, devastatingly logical rather than mocking.
“Am I? Think, Landlord. Use that ancient, calculating mind of yours.” She leaned forward slightly. “If all it took for a fox spirit to become human was to simply die once and be reborn in a modern body, then why would the Gumiho be out there, right now, devouring countless livers over a thousand years in a desperate, bloody, and unreliable attempt to become human?”
The question hung in the air, simple and unanswerable.
“Yumi,” Mizukume continued, her voice dropping to a whisper, “is grinding through a millennia-long, repulsive ritual for a sliver of a chance at humanity. And you, Su Yao? You think you achieved it by accident? By drinking a poisoned wine?”
She let the implication that the unspoken, horrifying possibility that Xiao Ling’s soul hadn’t moved on at all, but had been utterly extinguished to make room, hang.
“Now that,” Mizukume said, her tone shifting back to its detached amusement as she unpaused the show, “is a far more terrifying and likely horror story than anything in your movie databases. But by all means, continue to believe the comfortable fairytale. It’s less messy.”
Su Yao stood rooted to the spot. Mizukume’s flawless logic was a cage closing around her. The gumiho’s endless, hungry quest was proof. Becoming human was a prize fought for with teeth and claws and centuries of perseverance.
So what, in the name of all the heavens and hells, had actually happened to Xiao Ling? And what, truly, was she?
The thought struck Su Yao with the force of a physical blow, cutting through the swirling dread about her own identity. Li Xuan.
It always came back to him. His betrayal, the poison, and the ‘Enlightenment’ he had forced upon her.
Mizukume’s words echoed in her mind as a key clicking in a lock. “You think you achieved it by accident?”
Her hand went to her chest where her core, her fox pearl, should reside. It was there, thrumming with ancient power, yet housed in a body that had belonged to a mortal girl who was never meant to hold it.
“That poison, it wasn’t just to kill me, was it?” she whispered into the quiet of the room. The anime’s sounds faded into background noise. “What did you do?”
What the movie celebrated as heroism was, in reality, an act of cowardice. And the poisoning itself may only have been the least shameful part of the truth.
The alternate ending she found online featuring the insipid fantasy of a quiet life with Li Xuan as a family now seemed less like a bad fanfiction and more like a blueprint from a failed experiment. What if he had wanted to remake her? To sever her from her power, her history, and bind her to a new, mortal life with him?
Was Xiao Ling’s death and her awakening the result of a ritual botched, delayed, or altered by unknown factors? A cosmic-scale spell that had finally found its target centuries later, using a random mortal girl’s sacrifice as its final catalyst?
The pieces, monstrous and grand, began to align. Li Xuan had been an alchemist of the soul. She was the unintended, chaotic result of his millennia-old ambition.
Su Yao’s trembling hand closed around the neck of her gourd, ready to drown the horrifying implications in a familiar, burning haze. She tilted it back.
A single, pathetic drop landed on her tongue.
She stared at the empty vessel, then slowly lowered it. Her eyes moved to the kitchen counter, where her other two reserve gourds lay on their sides, utterly drained.
Burning with a fury that could scorch the heavens, her gaze locked onto Mizukume.
The clone had the decency to look mildly remorseful. “You were thinking too hard,” she said, gesturing with the remote toward the still-playing anime. “The past is a trap. The present is, adequately entertaining. I was assisting your relaxation.”
“You drank,” Su Yao’s voice was dangerously quiet, “all of my fire-wine.”
“The vintage was acceptably potent. A trifle simple, but it served its purpose.”
The last thread of Su Yao’s composure snapped. Li Xuan’s grand conspiracy, the existential terror of her own identity, and the global hunt for a mass-produced mask crystallized into one simple, undeniable problem.
Her alcohol was gone.
“That,” she seethed, “was a five-hundred-year reserve.”
Mizukume shrugged, a picture of serene indifference. “Then it appears your logistics are lacking.”
Su Yao shot to her feet, snatching her indestructible phone. “We’re leaving.”
“To hunt the mask? I told you, the passive approach is—”
“To the government’ secret headquarters,” Su Yao interrupted, her voice like grinding stones. “Towards Zhang Wei’s ‘super-secret, ultra-secure’ pantry stocks a vintage from the previous dynasty they confiscated from a drunken mountain god. It’s time for a consultation.”
She was already storming toward the door. The cosmic dread of Li Xuan’s soul-alchemy was momentarily overshadowed by the primal need to replenish her stash. Some battles, after all, were more immediate than others.
“Hold,” Mizukume’s voice stopped Su Yao at the door. “A moment for propriety. One can’t make a state visit to a clandestine military installation looking like this.”
Before Su Yao could retort that ‘this’ was her own face, a shimmer of dark energy enveloped the clone. The simple clothes she wore dissolved and reformed in a flash of light.
Standing in her place was now a Japanese schoolgirl. She was complete with a navy blue sailor-style uniform, a pleated skirt, and knee-high socks. The colors were slightly desaturated, as if viewed through a foggy lens. Her hair seemed to float just a fraction too slowly when she moved. Her eyes held a flat, doll-like emptiness that promised nothing good lived behind them.
She looked exactly like the protagonist from Fatal Frame, the Gothic horror game Zhang Wei was inexplicably fond of.
Su Yao stared. The empty gourd dangled from her finger. “What is that?”
“Appropriate attire for infiltrating a sterile, bureaucratic fortress filled with fearful men,” Mizukume replied, her voice now a haunting, melodic monotone that fit the new visage perfectly. “It projects an image of non-threatening youth, while the aesthetic subtext preemptively unsettles them. It’s an approved psychological warfare. Also, I am researching the cultural tropes.”
“You look like you’re about to exorcise someone with a camera,” Su Yao deadpanned. “That’s the game I bought for Zhang Wei. How do you even know about that?”
“I perused his digital library while he was sleeping here that one time. The tale of trapped spirits and familial trauma is quite compelling.” She smoothed her skirt with a gesture that was both delicate and deeply menacing. “Now, shall we go? I am curious to see if their reaction mirrors the in-game NPCs. Lead the way, Landlord.”
Su Yao let out a long, weary sigh that seemed to drain the will to live from her very soul. She was now going to storm a top-secret government facility with a possessed clone of herself dressed as a horror game icon, all to steal back-alley liquor.
This was her life now.
“Just don’t start humming a creepy music box tune,” Su Yao muttered, shoving the door open.
Mizukume followed. Her school shoes made no sound on the floor. “No promises,” she whispered. Her voice echoed faintly as if from the bottom of a well.
Su Yao and Mizukume teleported to the coordinates of the government headquarters, only to find the entrance blown out, walls scorched, and the air thick with the smell of mapo tofu. Alarms blared. Spiritual suppression barriers flickered erratically. Agents scrambled over rubble, some carrying files, others carrying colleagues.
“Finally,” Su Yao snarled. Crimson foxfire ignited around her fists. “A decent fight.” She assumed the Yamato had launched a direct assault.
They found Director Hao standing in what was left of the main operations room, clutching a tablet and a migraine. His suit was covered in a fine gray dust.
“Consultant Xiao! And, who is, that?” He stared at Mizukume’s haunting schoolgirl form. His professional composure cracked for a second.
“Don’t ask,” Su Yao cut him off. “What happened? Where’s the enemy?”
Director Hao let out a long, soul-weary sigh. He pointed a trembling finger towards the destroyed cafeteria. “There is no enemy. It was the new intern and her bodyguard.”
Su Yao’s fire sputtered out. “What?”
“The intern decided to warm up her takeout for lunch in the microwave.”
“The microwave,” Su Yao repeated, flatly.
“The microwave,” Director Hao confirmed, his voice hollow. “Her bodyguard insisted that the ‘machine-hearth’ was not generating sufficient yang energy for optimal flavor distribution. She attempted to augment the process.”
From the wreckage of the cafeteria, Li Xiu emerged, looking pristine and apologetic, dabbing at a smudge on her cheek with a handkerchief. Behind her, Yumi followed, licking her fingers. A few stray sparks of chaotic foxfire still danced around her claws.
“Director Hao! Xiao Ling!” Li Xiu gave a slight, formal bow. “My deepest apologies for the disruption. The user manual for the appliance was unfortunately vague on its spiritual energy compatibility. Yumi was only trying to help.”
Yumi grinned, showing a few too many teeth. “Food hot now. Very good. Machine, less good.”
Mizukume observed the scene with detached interest. “The juxtaposition of catastrophic structural failure and mundane culinary ambition is artistically coherent.”
Su Yao looked from the ruined headquarters, to the apologetic billionaire heiress, to the liver-eating gumiho who had just tried to supercharge a microwave, to the shell-shocked spymaster.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. The grand conspiracy would have to wait.
“Director Hao,” she said, her voice drained of all emotion. “The confiscated mountain god vintage. Where is it? I am having a day.”
Director Hao stared into the middle distance. His voice was a monotone of resignation. “Storage Locker Seven. The one that used to be over there.” He gestured to a pile of smoldering, twisted metal and shattered clay jars. A potent, spiritual aroma, now mixed with concrete dust and burnt wiring, hung heavy in the air.
“It’s gone. All of it. The Mountain God’s vintage, the 200-year-old baijiu from the captured demon, everything.”
Su Yao stared at the wreckage. The last hope for a decent drink, the one thing that could make this entire, cosmically stupid day bearable was gone. Vaporized by a gumiho’s attempt to microwave mapo tofu.
I am never letting a Korean fox spirit reheats a Japanese food for a Chinese girl again.
A low, guttural sound built in her throat. It was the sound of a primordial being whose last tether to patience had just been severed. The air around her began to warp. Her form flickered between her human vessel and the vast, shadowy outline of a nine-tailed fox.
“Right,” she breathed. Her voice was layered with an echoing snarl. “That’s it.”
Mizukume, still in her haunting schoolgirl form, observed the spiritual pressure building with academic interest. “The loss of a controlled substance appears to be the catalyst for a core system meltdown. Fascinating.”
Just as Su Yao’s eyes began to bleed into pure crimson light, a voice piped up.
“I can make more.”
Everyone turned. Yumi the gumiho was picking a piece of scorched pork from her teeth. “The wine. I can make more. Better. Stronger.” She grinned, a predatory flash. “Old recipe. Use lightning, tiger blood, and, lots of screaming.”
Li Xiu clasped her hands together. Her eyes shone with earnest enthusiasm. “See? A proactive solution! Yumi is so resourceful!”
Director Hao looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. “We aren’t authorizing the use of screaming as an ingredient in a brewing process within a government facility!”
Su Yao’s apocalyptic aura faltered. The raw, chaotic potential of Yumi’s offer cut through her rage. Tiger blood and screaming? It sounded promising.
Mizukume leaned towards Su Yao and whispered in her eerie, flat tone, “The ethical violations are significant, but the product specifications are intriguing. I recommend authorizing the experiment. For research purposes, of course.”
Su Yao looked from the smoldering ruins of her hope to the unhinged liver-eating brewmaster, then the horror-game schoolgirl encouraging industrial-scale violation of supernatural OSHA regulations.
She took a deep, steadying breath of the ruined-headquarters air.
“Fine,” Su Yao said. The word was one of absolute surrender. “Make the wine. But if it’s not at least twice as strong as the mountain god’s swill, I’m feeding you your own liver.”
Yumi’s grin widened. “Deal.”
Director Hao simply turned and walked away, muttering about early retirement and the existential dread of managing a pantheon of calamities.