"Thanks for your patronage. Five hundred yen." Yamada Ryo held out both hands, waiting for a tip.
Xi: "..."
This guy!
Was she Sister Ling? No, she was Nian!
Or rather, she was a fusion of Reiwa Nian—someone who looked like Ling but had Nian's actual personality.
First there was Ijichi Nijika, who resembled Sister Shu, and now there was Yamada Ryo, who resembled Reiwa Nian.
Why did she suddenly feel as though she would run into her sisters no matter where she went?
Could this be some inescapable Möbius loop?!
Inside her heart, the tiny Mirage Dragon let out an evil dragon's roar.
"Ryo! You can't charge people for something like this!" Nijika sprang up and chopped Ryo on the back of the head.
Then, to keep Ryo from doing anything else outrageous, she took Xi on a tour of STARRY herself, explaining what was interesting about bands and what she needed to watch out for.
"Hmm...?" Watching Nijika show Xi around, Elysia could not help asking, "How strange. Why does nobody seem surprised by Xi?"
"People with animal traits pop up sometimes, like Professor Dazzle Dog, who has a dog's head and a human body," Yamada Ryo suddenly explained. "But Xi's case is indeed pretty rare. The ones I usually see are full dragons. Half-dragon, half-human types are really uncommon."
"Uh... you can actually see complete dragons?!" Elysia was stunned.
"Go next door and watch card duels. There are too many to count," Yamada Ryo said dismissively.
Those weirdly coiffed, skintight-suited card players all seemed to have dragon fetishes. Their card spirits were all dragons; in at least nine out of ten duels, there would be dragons. It was nothing rare at all.
On the contrary, people who were fundamentally human but bore some dragonlike traits were extremely