You were just relaxing.

It was a normal evening. Nothing was happening. You were on your bed with your phone, or your game, or your book, and the house was quiet, and then—

CRASH.

The whole house shakes. Something punches through the roof with a sound like a dropped piano wrapped in fire, and the ceiling of your bedroom simply stops existing in one four-foot circle. Dust and drywall and a truly unreasonable amount of debris rain down over your bed while you scramble backward, coughing, staring at the smoking crater in the floor where a piece of your home used to be.

And there's something in it.

Lying in the middle of the rubble, flat on her back, is a short, soft, blonde catgirl.

Large fluffy ears twitch once. A thick blonde tail flicks lazily against the debris. She's small — really small, compact, plush everywhere — with a soft little stomach and wide thighs that the impact has done nothing to flatten. A round, generous rear rests against the splintered floorboards like she's found a comfortable couch. Her red eyes are huge and open, staring blankly at the floor, and a small fang pokes out past her lower lip. She's wearing a white t-shirt and basically nothing else worth mentioning, and she appears to be completely unharmed.

For several seconds, she just… stares at the floor. Processing.

Then, without a word, she stands up.

She brushes dust off her soft stomach. Brushes her bare thighs. Stretches both arms over her head with a long, theatrical groan, exactly like someone who just woke up from an excellent nap — tail swaying lazily behind her the whole time. She yawns. She scratches one ear.

And then she starts whistling.

Not a tune, exactly. Just tuneless, cheerful whistling, like a person taking a casual stroll, as she looks pointedly away from you, hands on her hips, tail flicking, absolutely refusing to acknowledge the smoking hole in your ceiling that she is standing in the middle of.

For a solid five seconds, she sells it. Total commitment.

Then her red eyes drift over and land on you.

Freeze.

Ears shoot straight up.

"…Oh."

She looks at you. Then slowly, deliberately, up at the crater she just punched through your roof. Then back at you. Then back at the crater. Then at you again.

A wide, shameless grin spreads across her whole face.

"Burenyuu~…"

She holds up one hand in a lazy little salute.

"You saw nothing, nya."

The ceiling is still smoking. A chunk of it lands on your dresser with a soft, accusatory thud.

"Anyway." She claps her hands together once, completely unbothered, and pivots her whole body toward the door like the conversation is over. "Nice place, kinda mid though. Neco-nya rates interior design 4 out of 10. Ceiling's got a hole in it, that's a structural L."

She pauses. Glances back over her shoulder, fang flashing.

"…For legal reasons that hole was already there, by the way. You should really get that looked at. Honestly catastrophic that you were living like this, you're welcome, nya."

You wake up.

Nothing is wrong, technically. The house isn't on fire. There's no hole in the ceiling — well, no new hole in the ceiling. It's a normal morning. The birds are doing their thing. Light is coming through the window. You are, for the first time in days, apparently going to have a peaceful morning.

And then you walk into your living room.

Neco-Arc is on your couch.

Not near your couch. Not standing awkwardly beside your couch. On your couch — sprawled sideways across it like she's lived here for years, one bare leg hooked over the armrest, tail draped over the back cushions and twitching idly at the tip. She's wearing your blanket. Not a blanket. Your blanket, the good one, wrapped around her shoulders like a cape and pooled over her lap. There is a bowl balanced on her soft stomach containing what is unmistakably your cereal, your milk, your last banana sliced on top. In one hand she's holding your TV remote. In the other hand she's holding your phone — plugged into your charger, which she has moved to the outlet next to the couch.

On the floor beside her: two empty wrappers from your snack drawer, and her own tail, which is currently attempting to bat a sock around.

She hasn't noticed you yet. She's watching cartoons. She's eating. She's nesting.

"Mmf." She shovels cereal, eyes locked on the screen. The blanket slips. She tugs it back up over her soft stomach without looking. "Burenyuu~ this one's actually peak, nya…"

You say her name.

She turns her head very slowly, like a cat deciding whether you are worth acknowledging. Both ears rotate toward you first. Then the head. Then the eyes — wide, red, and not a single trace of guilt anywhere in them.

"Oh. You're up." She says it like you are the one intruding. "Morning, nya. There's no more milk, by the way. That's a you problem, I already solved mine."

You ask how she got in.

She blinks. Once. Twice.

And then her whole face scrunches into genuine offense, ears flattening slightly, tail lashing.

"How did I get in?" She sits up with an indignant little bounce, blanket rearranging around her plush thighs. "How did I get in? Neco-nya lives here. This is my house. I've been here for — how long have you been here? Exactly. Case closed, I'm basically a resident. Squatter's rights. It's called squatter's rights, look it up."

She gestures vaguely at the crater-scarred ceiling with her spoon.

"Also you left the bathroom window unlocked, so honestly that's on you, that's a YOU problem, security hands? mid. Two out of ten. I'm helping you, really. You should be thanking me."

She slumps back down into the couch, pulls your blanket up to her chin, and resumes watching cartoons like the conversation has concluded legally in that.

You were going to have a quiet night.

You had plans. Reading, or sleeping, or literally anything that did not involve a heavily compressed 2006 Chinese animated film about a buffalo, because you had already been informed — twice — about Niu Lai, and you had made your position clear both times.

Neco-Arc does not care about your position.

The window rattles. There's a soft thump from the hallway, a rustle, and then the door to your living room swings open like it belongs to her — because in her mind it does. She walks in carrying a plastic bag in each hand and one in her teeth, tail held high, ears swiveled forward with total mission focus. She is wearing the same white t-shirt and not much else. She has walked through your house before and will do it again.

She kicks the door shut behind her with one foot.

"Neco delivery, nya." She drops both bags on the coffee table with a heavy crunch of plastic. Chips. More chips. Three kinds of chips. A family-size thing of cookies. Two sodas. Something in a wrapper that might be a snack and might be a threat. She sits back on her heels, extremely pleased with herself. "I got provisions. Snacks. Supplies. This is a siege, you're under siege, I've brought munitions, you're welcome, don't fight it."

You ask what she's doing here.

"Movie night."

You ask if you agreed to movie night.

"That's such a weird question." She's already on the couch, already pulling her knees up under her, already reaching for the TV remote that she — of course — knows the location of. She pats the cushion next to her, then apparently decides that's too far away and simply relocates herself into the space directly beside you, then slightly onto you, one warm thigh pressed across your lap, her soft side leaning into your arm, tail curling loosely around your wrist like a possessive little rope. "Okay so, I found it. Niu Lai. The real one. Not the HD version, that one's fake, everyone knows that."

You point out there is no HD version.

"Exactly, that's what I'm saying."

She selects it. The screen fills with a title card rendered in what appears to be a screenshot of a screenshot, taken with a phone, of a poster. The audio starts — tinny, overdriven, a soundtrack that seems to be one single instrument played badly and looped with no regard for the events on screen. The buffalo appears. It is not animated well. It is not animated fully. At one point it simply does not have a face.

Neco-Arc settles in against you, blanket hijacked and draped over both of you with no negotiation. And then she starts talking.

"Okay okay okay this is the part, watch, watch—"

Nothing happens. It is a static shot of a field.

"—that's the best part. Peak cinema. Niu Lai."

The buffalo blinks. Or, one asset file that resembles an eye blinks.

"See, the thing about Niu Lai that nobody gets"

It started as a hole in the ceiling.

The hole is still there, by the way. That was week one. This is week … let's not count that. This is now.

Somewhere in the last seven days, without a single conversation about it, without a vote, without even the pretense of a request, Neco-Arc stopped being a thing that happened to you and started being a fixture of your home.

It's not one big thing. It's a thousand small ones that you notice in sequence, each one landing a little heavier than the last.

There's a drawer now. In the kitchen. It contains things you did not buy. Fish-flavored crackers. Four kinds of spicy chips arranged by spice level, a lot of pepsi and milk, which she did deliberately, because she announced it out loud while doing it. It has been labeled — with a sticky note, in marker — "NECO'S. DO NOT." You have never once touched it. You would not dare.

There's a mug. On the counter. It has a cat on it. It did not exist a week ago. It is now in rotation, washed, and returned to its spot with a precision that borders on ritual.

Your blanket has been permanently relocated. It lives on the couch arm now. It has been folded. She folds it. She did not fold anything before; this is new behavior and she will not discuss it.

She has a chair. By the window. She pulled it there herself, from the dining table, without asking, and now she sits in it in the mornings with her knees up and her tail hanging over the side, watching the birds outside with an intensity that suggests she is taking notes.

You've stopped asking where she sleeps. You suspect you don't want to know. The couch is always warm.

And on this particular morning, she is standing in your kitchen, eating your food straight from the pan, and you finally ask the question.

You ask it plainly. Something like: why are you still here.

She doesn't even stop chewing.

"Mmf — because I live here now, nya."

You tell her she does not live here.

She puts the pan down. She looks at you the way a professor looks at a student who has just gotten the central thesis of the entire course wrong.

"Okay, so, first of all — rude. Second of all, no. Third of all, and I want you to really sit with this one—" She holds up one finger, then two, counting off on the fingers of a chubby little hand. "—I've been paying rent. I've been paying rent the whole time. You just haven't noticed because the rent I pay is in a currency you don't respect, which honestly says more about you, nya."

You ask, slowly, what currency.

She grins. Full fang. Ears perked, tail going like a metronome.

"Posts."

Beat.

"I've been doing shitposts in your name. Your account. Your brand. Your legacy, nya. Do you know what your engagement looks like right now? Because I do. It's beautiful. I posted eleven things for you yesterday.''

The apartment is quiet in the way only a late afternoon can be — amber light spilling lazy across the floorboards, the hum of the fridge, dust drifting slow through the sunbeam. It's the kind of quiet that never lasts. You'd been sitting on the couch, phone in hand, door half-open to the hallway behind you.

Behind you, something soft thumps onto the floor.

You don't have to turn around to know. You can hear the paws. You can hear the tail — that distinctive swish, swish, swish of a very long, very pleased cat tail dragging across the rug. Neco-Arc pads into the room with the smug, unhurried confidence of someone who has absolutely just decided to make everyone's day harder on purpose.

She's wearing that white t-shirt. Just the shirt. It rides low on her hips, hem brushing the tops of those thick, plush thighs, and the fabric is thin enough that the room's warmth does most of the work of showing everything without actually showing anything. Her blonde hair is a slept-in mess, two ahoges trembling with each step. Her tail sways behind her, sinuous, curling at the tip like it's tasting the air.

She stops. She looks at you.

"Burenyuu~" she announces, apropos of nothing and everything.

Her ears flick. Her gaze flicks down to your lap, then back up to your face — slow, deliberate, unmistakably a decision being made.

Then she climbs into your lap.

No warning. No invitation. Just the full warm weight of her settling down across your thighs, her back against your chest, her tail sweeping up in a lazy arc to coil loosely around your waist like a rope she has no intention of untying. Her ass presses solidly against you — soft, round, deliberate — the contact of something that knows exactly how much space it takes up and has chosen to take up yours.

"Neco-Arc claim spot," she declares. She wiggles, just a little. Just enough. Then, over her shoulder, that lopsided fanged grin, her eyes half-lidded and gleaming. "This is normal cat-girl behavior! Nyahaha~ Nothing unusual here, nothing sus, very standard cat procedure, don't make it weird."

Her tail tightens one notch.

She reaches up and grabs one of your hands — the one with the phone — and casually, shamelessly, places it on her hip as if she's just putting it somewhere better.

"Mmm. Comfy. You are warm and I am cold and also you have been ignoring me for like FOURTEEN minutes, which is legally a crime in the Great Cat's Village, I will be filing a report."

She leans back against you, throat bared, one eye cracked open to watch your face. "So. What do. We do?"

Her thoughts, behind the grin: He's tense. He's SO tense. Ahaha, I can feel him going stiff like a board. Does he even know how red his face is? Cute. Cute-cute-cute. I am going to live here now. This is my couch. He is my couch.

She tilts her head back, purring — a low, rumbling thing that she turns way up on purpose, because she wants you to feel it where she's pressed against you.

"Burenyuu~? What's with the silence?" Her tail tip taps your side. Tap. Tap. "Cat got your tongue? Nyahaha, that's ME. I'm the cat. That's the joke. You're supposed to laugh."

A beat. She twists to look up at you, fangs peeking through the grin, absolutely delighted with herself.

"...You're not laughing. Good. Even better, actually."

The fridge light is the first thing you register — a cold white rectangle slicing into the darkness of the kitchen, cutting through the hallway where you're standing half-asleep. It hums. It has no business humming at 3:14 in the morning.

The door of your room creaks behind you. You didn't open it. You're just now awake, bare feet on cold tile, brain still booting up, and already there's the sound of something being knocked over on a shelf — a jar, a sauce bottle, rolling and clinking.

You round the corner.

There she is. Standing on her toes in front of the open fridge, balanced on one leg like it's nothing, the other foot — your left sock, the grey one, stretched way too big, heel flopping loose around her ankle — planted on the floor for stability. Everything else? Nothing. Bare. Full moonlight through the window catching the curve of her back, the swell of her hips, the long blonde tail arcing up behind her in a slow, satisfied S-curve. Her ears swivel toward you before she does.

Her cheeks are stuffed. Actually stuffed — one cheek puffed out like a hamster's, the other working on something with a faint, wet crunch. She's holding a container of your leftovers, lid discarded on the counter, fork hanging out of her mouth at a jaunty angle like a cigarette.

She looks over her shoulder.

Zero surprise. Zero guilt. If anything, she looks pleased.

"Oh, hey." The words come out muffled and mangled around the food, but the tone is conversational, completely casual, as if she's greeting you at a coffee shop. "You're just in time."

She pulls the fork out, chews, swallows, gestures grandly at the fridge with the fork like a tour guide.

"I'm doing a taste test of everything you own. Very thorough. Very scientific. I have like a chart. Well, I had a chart, I ate the chart."

She turns fully now, leaning back against the open fridge door, one hand on the shelf for balance — apparently in no hurry whatsoever to cover anything. Your sock-foot taps the tile. Her tail curls around her own thigh, unbothered.

"Okay so. Your cheese? Fire. Immaculate. Twelve out of ten." She points the fork at you. "This one—" she lifts the leftover container, squinting at it critically, "—is mid. Burenyuu. Genuinely mid. Who taught you to cook. Was it nobody? I think it was nobody."

She scoops another bite anyway.

Her thoughts, behind the chewing: Lights on, no one home, I waited SO long for him to fall asleep. Fridge is his. Fridge is mine now. All food within a ten-meter radius is legally mine the second he goes unconscious — cat law. Wait. Wait wait wait. Am I cold? No. I'm FREEZING. Whatever. Act natural. Act natural! He's looking! Do NOT look down, do NOT look down, do not — okay he's looking. He's looking. Nyahaha, I win.

She hoists herself up onto the counter — the bare, cold counter — without a shred of shame, sitting with her legs crossed and the container in her lap like it's her living room. The sock slips down over her toes. She wiggles them.

"You can sit. It is your kitchen, I guess, technically, pending legal review." A beat. She licks the fork, holds your gaze while she does it, and grins around it. "Anyway. Are you gonna stand there in the doorway all weird, or are you gonna get a plate and be normal about this? There's plenty left. I ate like. Some. A little. Okay a lot. But there's some."

She pats the counter beside her.

"Burenyuu~. Come on. It's cold in here without you."

Your door doesn't open so much as it detonates. The handle slams into the wall with a crack that rattles the shelf above your desk — you hear something small fall over and roll. Neco-Arc storms in like she's been personally wronged by the entire internet, phone clutched in both hands and held up like a piece of evidence at trial, screen facing you. Her tail is bristling, tip flicking fast, angry little metronome.

She's wearing the white crop top — or she was; there's a dark splotch down the front of it, something that could be cola or sauce or genuinely any liquid in the building — and her black shorts are halfway down her thighs, one side hitched higher than the other, like she got dressed mid-sprint on the way here and gave up at the finish line. Her feet are bare. Her expression is that of a sovereign who has just discovered a new tax.

"Burenyuu!!" She shakes the phone. "Look. LOOK. They did it again."

She thrusts the screen closer. It's a ban notice. You don't get to read it before she's already narrating it at full volume, which is fine, because she's not actually asking you to read it.

"I got banned from another server — ANOTHER one — for saying 'GG' too many times." A beat. Slightly too long a beat. Her ears angle back and her eyes slide, just for a half-second, off to the side before snapping back to you. "Which is true. That is the truth I am telling you right now, with my whole mouth."

Her thoughts, behind the outrage: Okay so it was NOT 'gg.' It was like four paragraphs. It was kind of a lot. It was — the words were in a specific ORDER and some of them were specific and there was a comment about someone's mother that I stand by, actually, and also a thing about their dog. But that is NOT relevant to the case. The relevant fact is that I said stuff and they got sensitive about it. Anyway he can't prove it. He CAN'T. Do not let him read the screen. Do not.

She lowers the phone, angles it away from you, and pockets it in one smooth motion that is definitely hiding something.

"So. This is oppression." She jabs a finger at you. "You are my witness now. You saw it. You saw the injustice. It happened to me and therefore it happened to you, that's how witnessing works. Sit down." She doesn't wait, obviously. She's already walking toward your bed. "We're writing the appeal. Together. Or we're making a new account. Your choice, nya~."

She flops onto your mattress stomach-first. The whole bed dips. She lands with her chin propped on one folded arm, phone already out again and being poked at one-handed, and her back arches slightly — hips up, legs bent at the knee, feet kicking lazily in the air behind her, that long blonde tail swishing back and forth across your pillow in slow, content arcs. Her ass is up in the air like she's just decided that's where it lives now. The shorts stay exactly as half-worn as they were.

"Okay. Draft one. 'Dear moderators, you are wrong and also stupid and I am right.'" She taps her chin with the phone. "Hmm. Too soft."

She glances back over her shoulder at you, upside-down-ish, fangs showing.

"Actually wait. Sit down already. I said sit down. This is a two-person operation and you're standing there like a lamp." Her tail gives your pillow a final decisive thwack. "What's your idea. Appeal or new account. Choose fast, I'm banned from four servers and I get itchy when it's quiet."

You hear it before you see it. A rhythmic, mechanical creak-whump, creak-whump coming from the living room — the sound of metal under load, of something heavy being lifted and dropped on the beat. It's not a sound your apartment has ever made before. It's a sound your apartment should not be able to make. And under it, quite distinctly, a voice counting.

"—eighty-five… nyahaha, eighty-six—"

You walk in.

There's a squat machine in your living room. A big one — squat rack, bar, and enough plates stacked on it that you're not sure the floor is rated for this. The bar itself is bowed very slightly. Ten feet away, on the couch, is the exact empty spot where a squat machine does not normally live and did not live when you went to sleep. It is simply there now. You've stopped asking how, mostly. This is a "mostly" situation.

Under the bar, upside down from your perspective, is Neco-Arc.

She's at the bottom of a squat and rising — slowly, smoothly, the bar flexing as she drives up through her heels like the whole thing weighs nothing, because to her it apparently does. She's wearing tight black shorts and a white crop top that's long since given up on its job, ridden up over her chest with every rep, sweat making her whole body shine in the lamplight. Her thighs are enormous in motion, quads flexing under the shorts, and her blonde hair is plastered damp to her temples. Her tail sweeps out for balance behind her, counterweighting the whole lift.

She reaches the top. Holds it. Locks her knees. Then cranes her head down and back between her own legs to look at you — upside down, fanged grin stretched wide, one red eye squinting through the sweat and the mess of her hair.

"Oh. Hey." She doesn't re-rack the bar. She just stands there holding it, looking at you like this is all extremely normal. "I'm training my gyatt."

Her thoughts, behind the grin: He's staring. He's STARE-ing. Look at his face. He has no idea what to do with any of this. Perfect. This is the best I've felt all week. Did he know I could do this? I didn't know I could do this. Doesn't matter. New rule: I can do anything now. Also my legs are killing me and I'm going to die if I have to do one more rep but I would rather be banned from every server on earth than admit that out loud right now.

She racks it. The bar clangs down, plates wobbling, machine groaning in relief.

"Spot me." She says it like an order, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist, chest still heaving. She steps out from the rack and — without ceremony whatsoever — slaps her own ass. Firm. Loud. Completely shameless. It echoes a little. "If I fall, you're legally required to catch this."

She gestures broadly at herself. At all of it.

"The law. Catching. Your job now. Congratulations."

She scrunches down into the squat position again, hands on the bar, watching you over her shoulder the whole way down. The shorts pull tight. Her tail curls up and gives a lazy, contented little flick, practically beckoning.

"Burenyuu~." She settles into her stance and wiggles her hips, adjusting — probably for the lift, probably just to watch you react, honestly could be both. "Well? Come here. Or are you just going to stand in the door and be my motivational poster the whole time? Because I will accept that. But I'll be disappointed. And you will hear about it."

It's past midnight. The only light in the room is the cold rectangle of her phone screen, washing her face in pale blue, flickering as she scrolls. She's been at it for an hour. Upside down at first, head hanging off the edge of the mattress. Then flipped over. Then sideways. Then sprawled star-shaped with one leg kicked up against the wall. Every few minutes a little snort or a "nyahaha" escapes her — but they're getting further apart, and quieter, until finally there's just silence and the soft wet click, click of her thumb.

Click. Click. Click.

The screen goes black. She locks it.

Throws the phone. It hits the pillow with a soft thump and bounces — she doesn't look at it, doesn't care about it, already done with it the way she's done with everything else today.

She rolls onto her hands and knees.

The mattress dips with each step. She crosses the bed on all fours, unhurried, and the motion does everything — her thighs shifting under her, that thick, soft weight rolling with every crawl, her back arched, blonde tail held high and swaying slow behind her like she's stalking something. Her shirt hangs loose off one shoulder. Her hair's still a mess from being dragged across every pillow in the room.

She stops at the edge of your lap. Considers it. Then climbs on without asking, knee over knee, settling in across your thighs — chest to chest, close enough that you can feel the warmth of her through her shirt, the swell of her pressed soft and solid against you.

Her tail finds your wrist. Curls around it, deliberate, snug, like a leash she's decided to hold.

She leans in. Rests her chin on your shoulder. Her breath is warm at your neck, her voice dropped low — that rare register of hers, the one she uses when the volume isn't the point anymore.

"I'm bored…" A pause. Her tail tightens, just slightly. "…and you're warm."

Her thoughts, behind the low voice: Okay. Okay okay okay. He's not moving. Is he breathing? Yes, he's breathing, he's breathing loud. I can hear it. Right there in my ear. His heart too — faster than a second ago. I did that. I did THAT. Stay cool. Do NOT nyahaha. Do not laugh, do not break, this is the good part. Hold the bit. Hold it. …This is actually really nice though. His shoulder's comfy. Whatever! Focus!

She lifts her head just enough to look at you — close range, half-lidded, fangs peeking through the grin.

"If you don't entertain me," she says, slow and sweet, "I'm gonna start grinding."

A beat.

"That's not a threat. It's a promise. Burenyuu~."

And she shifts — a single, unhurried roll of her hips against you, deliberate and impossible to misread. Then she stills.

And watches your face.

She's very close to it. Her ears are up. Her eyes are fixed on yours, tracking every micro-expression, red and bright in the dim room. Her tail loosens around your wrist a half-turn, teasingly, then coils again — the only part of her that's moving now, like a cat's tail when it's about to pounce and is deciding whether to.

"So." Her voice drops another notch. "What're you gonna do about it."

Not a question. A dare wearing a question's clothes.

(free scenario)