Project Necro is an official initiative by Re:Library.

According to feline linguist and scholar Lonalia Linalia Baba-nyan, Tai-yi claims to be the boss cat who commands the majority of the domesticated cat forces in the Qitaohe City.
As a “boss cat,” she naturally has many subordinates. Since cats use fewer numerals than humans, the exact number is unclear, but judging from her phrase “as many as the lights in the night sky,” it’s estimated that her followers number at least over a hundred.

Cats are social creatures. They hold territories, and at irregular intervals gather in what’s called a “cat assembly,” where they communicate and maintain balance among one another.
However, in densely populated urban areas, if we assume one in ten households owns a cat, that means there are about 900,000 cats in Qitaohe City City. With so many cats crammed into a limited space, territories overlap and conflicts increase. A boss cat capable of managing those disputes must have both charisma and formidable strength.
Tai-yi is precisely such a remarkable specimen.

At present, Tai-yi seeks power. Several of her territories have recently been destroyed by unknown monsters, and she says she needs the power to fight back.
Cat assemblies are held a few times a week at habitual locations. Lately, black monsters have been appearing at those spots, scattering the gathered cats.
A grave situation indeed. The usual meeting places—convenient for cats to gather yet far enough from human activity—have been ravaged one after another. They can no longer safely hold their assemblies.

Then Baba appeared and blew away one of those black monsters. Naturally, Tai-yi wanted to learn from her how to defeat such evildoers.
To destroy the World Shadow, enemy of Catkind

……
Okay, uh, sorry… Sorry.
But wait—please let me explain.
I didn’t do it on purpose, okay?

Half a year ago, when it was decided that we’d establish a branch in Qitaohe City, I began creating alibis by causing the World Shadow to appear around the region about twenty times. The idea was that when Haoran-kun later joined us and asked, “Does the World Shadow really exist?” he could find past records proving its presence. If the monsters started showing up only *after* his recruitment, it might look suspiciously self-staged.
It was probably an unnecessary precaution, but better safe than sorry.

The World Shadow is supposed to appear in deserted places. But if I spawned them in some completely uninhabited mountain, no one would ever encounter them—and that’d be lonely and depressing—so I had them appear in out-of-the-way yet occasionally visited spots where people might witness them.
Unfortunately, those criteria overlapped perfectly with the typical conditions for cat assembly sites.

Since Tai-yi’s meetings mainly gathered pet cats, remote areas were inconvenient. Yet if the location was too busy, human interference would end the meeting prematurely.
As a result, cat assemblies tended to take place in central but relatively secluded urban zones.

Among the twenty or so places I had my monsters appear, several happened to double as cat assembly sites—and got caught up in the chaos. Come to think of it, I do recall cats meowing and bolting out of the shadows whenever a monster appeared, and once I even frightened a human onlooker and scared off the whole feline group.
I had been careful about not troubling humans, but I hadn’t spared a thought for the cats. Now cats, too, have entered an age where they seek power. What a cat-astrophe.
Well, it’s an era where even monkeys become psychics. On reflection, nothing strange about that.

“Giving Tai-yi psychic powers and letting her rule cat society sounds fun, but isn’t it risky to make her the Tsukuyomi branch leader? You’re going to do smuggling, right?”

The Tsukuyomi branch’s planned contraband is mainly adult magazines.

These are banned under the “Public Morals and Obscene Publications Regulation,” but demand persists. Especially in China, strict state internet censorship makes online access difficult, creating a market for physical copies.
Japan’s adult-magazine industry alone is worth about 25 billion yen. Even tapping a few percent of that profit flow through smuggling would yield stable income. Organizing what used to be individual operations into a collective network could greatly improve efficiency and profit margins.
Smuggling adult magazines sounds idiotic, but Tsukuyomi is deadly serious about it. Criminally serious, in fact.
Of course, they’ll handle other contraband and high-tariff goods too.

When I checked, Baba nodded knowingly.

“Truth of the matter is, cats are skilled stowaways. In fact, they might be better suited than humans.”
“Really…?”
“Mm.”

She explained that cats have a venerable history as ship’s company, once serving aboard vessels to slay rats in the holds.
They can enter gaps humans can’t.
They can infiltrate and escape through routes humans can’t use.
And they exploit the psychological blind spot—no one suspects cats of smuggling.
A trained team of cats could become excellent smugglers.

“Grant them power to fight the World Shadow, and in return, commission them for smuggling. A win-win arrangement, is it not?”
“Hmm… true. But even so, giving psychic powers to cats sounds like it’ll cause trouble. The plan I prepared was for Haoran-kun. And if we recruit Tai-yi, her whole feline gang comes along, right? Keeping watch over that many cats to prevent accidents would be impossible.”
“Mm…”
“But it sounds fun, so let’s do it anyway. We’ll give powers to both Tai-yi and Haoran-kun, and make whichever proves more suitable the branch leader.”
“Mm!”

We decided to do just that.

.

There’s a saying that parents can always see through their child’s lies—but watching Haoran-kun of the Wang family, I’ve learned that that’s absolute nonsense. His parents had no idea he’d been sneaking out late every night.

Originally, the plan was for Baba to give him a new motorcycle and have him tell his parents, “I was working a night job to buy Dad a new bike. I managed to buy it, but I lost the old one on my way to pick it up.” His parents, who thought he’d just been wandering around like a delinquent, would be moved to tears upon learning the truth, strengthening their family bond. That was the intended emotional arc.

But Haoran-kun was *too* good at covering his tracks.
He stuffed air-filled plastic bags under his blanket to make it look like he was sleeping, snuck out silently, took photos of his father’s bike before moving it so he could return it to the exact same angle, and always got back early enough that the engine wasn’t warm by morning.

His daddy and mommy were completely fooled—they thought he was sleeping at home every night.
So when he suddenly showed up with a new motorcycle and apologized for losing the old one, his father blew up. Only then did they realize he’d been sneaking out at night, and he got thoroughly scolded. Honestly, if confessing only gets you screamed at, no wonder kids stop confessing.
His mommy jumped to the conclusion that he’d earned the money by doing something shady, yet still told him, “No matter what, I’m on your side,” hyping herself up in her own drama.

Both of his parents genuinely care about him, they just wanted him to stay on the straight and narrow, or at least remember that his parents would still be on his side even if he went astray. Watching from the sidelines, I could see that clearly.
But from Haoran-kun’s point of view, it was: “I confessed honestly, got screamed at, got accused of crimes I didn’t commit, and no one believes me.” Basically, a recipe for losing faith in humanity.
Naturally, he snapped and stopped speaking to his parents altogether.

Classic case of household fallout. Miscommunication… plus overbearing parenting…. No wonder Haoran-kun is such a rebel. The only one he can trust now is Tai-yi.
Honestly, it makes me sad too. Like, I’m sorry, I wish I could just throw money at the problem like I did with Touka-chan, but in Haoran-kun’s case, his parents’ personalities are, well, let’s say “unfixable.”
All I can do is give him a supernatural coming-of-age story for comfort. Shiori once said, “There’s nothing sadder than a youth crushed by parental control with no friends to play with.” Coming from her, that hits hard. Don’t worry, Shiori—I’m here for you. Let’s enjoy life.

Anyway.
I transplanted psychic source into both Haoran-kun and Tai-yi. Both successfully awakened their powers.
Judging from the stabilized psychic signatures, Haoran-kun’s is gravity-based, while Tai-yi’s is telepathic.

Gravity manipulation is fairly common—not as basic as fire or ice, but far more so than time or healing.
For some reason, “gravity” just sounds cooler and more advanced, maybe because it feels like a higher-level concept.
Of course, freshly awakened Haoran-kun couldn’t make heads or tails of his ability yet. It’ll take time.

As for Tai-yi, depending on the specifics, telepathy could become tricky.
If it’s just mental communication, that’s fine—a heartwarming talking cat, adorable!
Even mind reading would be tolerable. Cats can’t speak, so even if she learned our secrets, she’d have no way to tell anyone. The only human (?) she can talk to—Baba—is on our side anyway. So even if she tries to warn Haoran-kun that he’s being toyed with, the truth won’t get through.

But if she develops *combined* telepathy—mind reading *plus* translation *plus* direct mental communication—we’d be in trouble. She could read our thoughts, expose us, and blow the whole operation sky-high. In that case, I’d have to apologize and forcibly extract her psychic source. Balance adjustments matter.
That said, for now Tai-yi is as clueless about her power as Haoran-kun. Growth takes time.

Haoran-kun kept training, sometimes going to school, sometimes skipping. It’s a boring but vital stage.
Normally, after five growth cycles—about ten days—you’d notice some change. But Haoran-kun showed no such thing. He said he could feel the power activate, but it produced no visible effect.
Still, he felt the telltale growing pains of the soul (?) that mark psychic development, so he wasn’t stagnant.

It was possible that the growth was just too slow for his ability to be visible…. Then again, since we already knew his power was gravity-related, Baba simply made him stand on a scale.
The result was immediately clear—the needle on the analog scale maxed out.
We bought a high-performance digital scale that measures up to 300 kg. His 60 kg body now weighed 139 kg. Tests showed that equipment and clothing didn’t gain weight, meaning his ability increases the gravitational pull on himself.
The fact that he could still move freely despite the weight confirmed the principle: psychics are immune to their own powers.

Well… let’s hope for better applications later. For now, even with its effects known, it’s still useless.
If he learns to project that gravity increase onto enemies, though, he’d instantly become top-tier. His original weight was 60 kg, his altered weight was 139, meaning the added weight was 79 kg. That would be like carrying a chubby adult man on your back. And because no armor or equipment could hinder it, that much force was enough to pin most foes helpless.
Of course, that’s assuming he ever develops that level of control. If his growth caps out early like Ruu-denka’s, then too bad.

Meanwhile, Tai-yi spent eighteen hours a day sleeping, and the rest walking or cuddling with Haoran-kun while following Baba’s training orders. Her ability’s effect was discovered by chance on the eleventh day.

I was disguised as a day-labor foreign worker, drilling a hole in a back alley near Haoran-kun’s house to set up an event, when I ran into Tai-yi on her walk. She had never seen me before, so she didn’t recognize me.
To avoid suspicion, I crouched down, cooed in a baby voice, and waved the end of my towel like a cat toy.

“There, there~ kitty kitty, aren’t you cute~”

As I reached out to pet her, Tai-yi looked up at me and meowed.

“Meow (Away with you, uselessly large human).”

Ugh…! A voice directly inside my head!?