Kuroha Akira didn't know the exact moment the transfer had occurred.
Was it during their handshake? The brief moment their palms met?
Regardless, the evidence was now glowing softly on his own right palm: [Academics: A].
He had successfully 'copied' a talent.
And in that instant, he finally understood what it felt like to be gifted.
First, his memory sharpened. Not only could he recall things he'd seen before, but fine details now sprang to mind with crystalline clarity. Textbooks passages that would have required agonizing, repetitive drills could now likely be imprinted after a single, focused read-through.
Second, his concentration intensified. The usual mental static—the wandering thoughts, the distractions—simply faded away. His mind felt like a laser beam.
Third, his comprehension skyrocketed. Concepts that would have left him puzzling could now be dissected, summarized, and understood with startling speed, even without external explanation.
Finally, there was the confidence. A profound, quiet certainty that tasks which once seemed daunting were now within reach. It wasn't arrogance, but a deep-seated urge to try.
Externally, nothing had changed. But internally, the impact was nothing short of a system reboot. He recalled the '10,000-Hour Rule'—the theory that genius was merely the product of obsessive practice. He mentally scoffed.
Pure nonsense! Geniuses existed, and they ascended to heights in a fraction of the time.
Now, equipped with this borrowed cheat, Kuroha Akira faced a new dilemma.
He had a top-tier talent. He could theoretically achieve success in any number of fields. Stand out. Avoid the soul-crushing, beast-of-burden fate of his previous life. So… should he abandon his grand freeloading scheme?
No.
He couldn't be sure how long this 'replicated' talent would last. Basing his entire future on such an unstable, pilfered power was far too risky.
Maybe if I just go home and wash my hands, the words will vanish.
He trusted his own innate caution far more than this mysterious, sticky-fingered ability.
Lost in these recursive thoughts, Kuroha Akira finally neared home, walking his usual route along the riverbank path that skirted the residential district.
Under the warm glow of a streetlamp, he spotted a familiar silhouette.
"Meow!"
Upon seeing him, the cat—Kuroo—greeted him with a clear chirp.
"Oh, Kuroo… were you waiting for me?"
"Meow~" The reply sounded affirmative.
Kuroo was the stray cat—pure white with a single, ink-black tail—who had found him on his first, desperate day in this world. 'Stray' was a misnomer; her fur was always immaculate, her paw pads a delicate pink, showing no signs of a hard life. She was a frequent, charming moocher at Granny Kobayashi's, and thus a familiar acquaintance.
However, Kuroo permitted no petting. Attempts were met with swift, razor-sharp retribution, a lesson Kuroha Akira had learned in blood. Initially, he'd even wondered if she possessed spiritual intelligence, especially given Mr. Kobayashi's will mentioning 'the person brought by Kuroo.' It suggested a special cat.
Of course, in both his past and present life, Kuroha Akira was a staunch materialist. Anything currently unexplainable by science was merely not yet explained. Since transmigration was a fact, a cat spirit wasn't that much weirder.
Yet, prolonged observation revealed Kuroo to be, at most, a very clever cat—not the talking, bipedal type from Team Rocket. Her guidance was likely coincidence. Perhaps this was her territory, and her instinct was to lead lost-looking strangers to a trustworthy human—Granny Kobayashi. So much for fantasies of a cat transforming into a cute, beast-eared girl…
Cat girls… don't exist in reality! (A moment of silence for shattered dreams.)
"Meow meow meow! Meow meow meow!" Kuroo hopped down from someone's low garden wall and wove around his ankles, her gaze fixed upward.
Following her line of sight, Kuroha Akira realized she was eyeing the bottle of milk tea in his hand.
"What… you want this?"
"Meow~" Obviously.
Such a greedy cat. You're not a kitten anymore.
Though he had no particular desire for the now-tepid drink, he felt compelled to bicker with her. "No. This was a gift from the Class Monitor."
"Meow?!" Kuroo's eyes widened in apparent shock, her tail puffing up.
"You think acting cute is a valid currency? Let me teach you, little cat: the world is cruel. Delicious things require an exchange of benefits."
"Meow meow meow meow meow!" Her series of meows took on a distinctly insulting tone, though the specifics were lost in translation.
Finally, with a defeated, low "Meow…", Kuroo seemed to concede. She patted his shoe with a soft paw, took a few purposeful steps forward, then glanced back over her shoulder.
He'd seen this routine before. Follow me.
"Oh? There's really a 'benefit'?" What could a cat possibly offer? A dead mouse? But then he remembered the last time he'd followed her, it had led to salvation in the form of Granny Kobayashi. Once bitten by sweetness, twice… curious.
In no rush to get home, Kuroha Akira decided on a small detour.
Following Kuroo, he left the main residential path and entered a small, neglected copse of trees. There, hidden behind the foliage, stood a torii gate, its vermillion paint faded and chipped—the entrance to a small shrine.
Kuroha Akira had lived in the area for half a year and never knew this place existed.
So there's a shrine here… But by the look of the dilapidated gate, it had been abandoned for years.
Undeterred, Kuroo trotted through the torii. Kuroha Akira, materialist and ghost-agnostic, followed without hesitation.
The stone steps of the sandō path were mossy. At the top, the small worship hall came into view, its wood weathered to a silvery gray.
And there, perched casually on the dusty saisen-bako (offertory box), was a figure.
The night was clear, the moon nearly full, casting a serene, silver-blue light.
The moonlight bathed her, wrapping her in a hazy, almost ethereal aura.
Was she a fairy? A forgotten deity of the abandoned shrine?
Or… just a runaway high school girl.
The sailor uniform was a dead giveaway.
But the reason Kuroha Akira's breath hitched, the reason he stared unblinkingly, was simpler:
She was devastatingly, unrealistically beautiful.
She reminded him of the hyperbolic titles tossed around in his past life—'True Beauty.' Usually, it was marketing hype. But here, under the moon in this forgotten shrine, the title seemed not just apt, but insufficient.
Her face was a flawless canvas of pale porcelain, devoid of expression. Her hair and eyes were a black so deep it seemed to swallow the night sky. Her nose was delicate, her lips the soft hue of cherry blossoms—a captivating, yet cold and motionless beauty. She sat in perfect, preternatural stillness, like a windless sea, blending into the decaying shrine around her. She seemed less a person and more a scene from a ukiyo-e print come to life—a spirit who had momentarily descended to the mortal realm.
So beautiful it stole the very air from his lungs…
"Meow meow, meow meow meow?"
Kuroo's proud meow jerked him back to reality. She looked up at him with a smug little face that seemed to say, 'Well? How's this for a benefit?'
Yes. Very good. But… not the kind he needed just yet.
Running a quick mental check of the 'pickup lines' he'd recalled earlier—a side effect of his new intellectual acuity—Kuroha Akira took a step forward onto the creaky wooden porch.
He opened his mouth, and what emerged was perhaps the least smooth, most blunt opener possible in the history of human (or spirit) interaction:
"Hey, beautiful. Wanna come home with me?"