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The commotion that happened in a park on the outskirts of Qitiaohe City at midnight was reported on the news the next morning and became the talk of the town for a while.
Even if it was a deserted park in the middle of the night, if you go around smashing playground equipment, making craters, and causing huge booming noises, people should gather immediately… or so I assumed, but my prediction was wrong. No one gathered, and strangely enough, not even a report was made.
According to Baba, this was due to the “fallen-leaf and mushroom principle.” According to Shiori, it was the “bystander effect.”

Since it was such a big incident, surely someone else would report it.
No one else had gone to the scene, and it looked dangerous, so I’ll avoid going too.
If I get involved and the situation worsens because of me, that would be bad, so I’ll stay out of it.

Those kinds of thoughts worked together like they were coordinated, creating a sort of blank zone.
I thought that was ridiculous, but apparently there are real examples in New York, Japan, and China.
Tracing back through my own memories, I recall something similar from elementary school. Yousuke had cut his foot wide open and was crying, and our entire class surrounded him going “Are you okay?”, “Does it hurt?”, “Are you okay?”, “You good?”, “Are you okay?”, all of us fussing and worrying, but no one called a teacher, no one took him to the nurse’s office, and we kept standing around forever in that infinitely awkward, fidgety group pause. Not a good memory.

Because we had pre-emptively disabled the surveillance cameras in the area around the park, too, there were few clues to reveal the details of the incident, and it ended up becoming three times more mysterious than planned.
Rumors about a herd of cats marching toward the park or crows flying in formation toward it multiplied the mystery on top of the mystery, looping around so far that the whole thing started to sound fake.
There were also rumors about giant creatures appearing in the city at night or tuna flying low over the sea (that last one seemed to be someone witnessing me catching tuna for Huang-hu). Seeing the situation as serious, UMA hunters had apparently infiltrated Qitiaohe City or not.

Meanwhile, thanks to the little farce, the two cats and one boy safely deepened their bond.
Huang-hu had thought Tai-yi and her posse were just pretentious cats who knew nothing about fighting, but revised that opinion. He also respected Haoran-kun, who came to help riding that roaring creature, as pretty capable “for a human.”
Tai-yi and Haoran-kun, too, seemed to have instinctively carved in an awe toward Huang-hu after seeing him up close, gigantic and causing tremors as he fought fiercely.

Huang-hu wanted Baba’s knowledge to understand what had happened to his partner. Tai-yi and Haoran-kun wanted Huang-hu’s power. With Baba included, the two cats and two humans formed a group to face the World Shadow and psychic-related problems together.

Baba recommended joining Tsukuyomi, the organization she belonged to, but since the Chinese pair knew her though not much about Tsukuyomi, they were cautious. So, for now, they decided to cooperate under the name Miao Miao San He Hui.
The naming was Haoran-kun’s idea. In Japanese it probably meant something like “Nyan-Nyan Yakuza.” You really love cats, huh.

Skillfully steering the conversation and uniting the psychics, Baba immediately heard the details from Huang-hu and shared her granny-brain wisdom.

The World Shadow very rarely parasitizes humans. Normally, one can resist it with mental strength and defeat it. Even if resistance fails, it self-destructs in a few days. But from what she heard, the homeless man had amnesia. That meant his ego was unstable and easily influenced, so he likely adapted to the world’s darkness.
Psychics are food to the world’s darkness. With Huang-hu and then even Tai-yi and Haoran-kun gathered together, it was like a feast laid out. The excited world’s darkness seized control of the homeless man’s consciousness and went berserk… that was the likely explanation.

To drive the world’s darkness out of the homeless man’s body and erase it, the best method was to awaken the man’s ego. If the main personality regained strong will, the world’s darkness—only clinging to a crack in the heart—would no longer be able to maintain substance and would flee or vanish.
There are many ways to awaken someone’s ego, but stimulating survival instincts through pain or fear is the quickest.

Haoran-kun went “I see!”, satisfied, but to the cats it was difficult to understand. Yeah. Saying things like parasitization or going berserk won’t make sense to cats who don’t even understand amnesia.
Seeing the cats totally lost, Baba summarized in a way they could grasp.

So basically, if we beat up the black giant monster again, the world’s darkness will disappear, and the man will regain his sanity, and peace will be restored!
In game terms, beat the boss and you get the happy ending.

This time even the cats understood the policy, and everyone moved forward together.
First step: tracking down the homeless man. To beat him up, they had to find him first. Tai-yi mobilized crows and cats to search from air and ground, and Haoran-kun filed a missing-person request to get people searching too.

Alas! I couldn’t be found.
Far from Qitiaohe City, across the northeastern border into Russian territory, I was living like a wild man in an abandoned village in the Kamyshovy mountain range.
Even the cat information network takes a long time to relay information from deep in the mountains to a city 50 km away. A cat’s daily roaming distance is said to be at most 300 meters in a straight line. Even with maximally efficient relaying, 50000 ÷ 300 ≒ 166, meaning it would take nearly half a year for the information to reach them.
And since I crossed a national border, the Russian police wouldn’t act on a missing-person report filed by just a boy.

With days passing and no clues at all, Baba suggested borrowing Tsukuyomi’s help.
Tsukuyomi manufactures a terrifying drug that, with a single injection, lets you read an object’s two-month memory. If they ordered it and used it once, tracking the man’s whereabouts would be easy.
They also handled acoustic weapons and unapproved stimulants that massively boost physical ability, an appealing lineup.

Baba said:

“I am not just a nosy granny.”
“I saved Tai-yi and Haoran at the gas station.”
“I taught you about the World Shadow and trained you in psychic abilities.”
“I made a modified bike and saved you from danger.”
“I have to collect on the huge ‘debts’ you owe.”
“Tsukuyomi chases people to the ends of the earth to collect on debts.”
“But Tsukuyomi helps its comrades for free.”
“If the Miao Miao San He Hui becomes comrades of Tsukuyomi, all past debts will be cleared. Drugs and tools will be provided for free.”
“In exchange, I want you to help Tsukuyomi for free as well. That is what it means to become comrades.”
“So, what will you do?”

Accepting what was effectively a threat and hostile takeover, the Miao Miao San He Hui was swiftly absorbed into Tsukuyomi, leaving only the formality of the group name intact.
The method is completely mafia. But Baba doesn’t mean harm, so…

Haoran-kun, who had been learning reluctantly about matters related to smuggling, immediately became motivated when he heard the projected profits from their first trade.
According to Baba, who was teaching him the trade secrets, Haoran-kun had outstanding instincts for setting up safety nets and securing escape routes. Instead of trying to maximize profits from smuggling, he focused on making sure that failures wouldn’t cause losses, and on avoiding getting caught even if the smuggling was discovered.

He’s basically a flight-risk kind of guy. He has proven he can fight when needed, though.
When he was borrowing his dad’s bike without permission, he concealed it perfectly, so there’s no doubt he’s good at hiding and running. You could say he’s well suited for Tsukuyomi, a shady secret organization.

While preparations continued, the drugs shipped from Tsukuyomi arrived.
Borrowing the ability of a certain blonde ninja girl from Tokyo, they headed to the stage of the decisive battle!