I promptly all but forgot about my quest for catgirls in the castle after I realised I was one myself.
My desire for finding one remained just as strong as before, only temporarily subdued by the joy that consumed me once I knew what I was. I'd keep looking later. That wasn't the problem. What was?
I made a major discovery. I needed to celebrate. Hard!
I danced around while looking at myself in the mirror, jumped and shouted with my fist in the air, and stroked my newly discovered cat ears with trepidation, but ultimately I ended up back in the hallway. The woman that owned the room, in my eyes still non-existent, kept trying to stare holes into the back of my head. Turned out some people could be annoying even when they weren't relevant to the story, enough to make me leave her room behind.
Searching around randomly for a few minutes led me back to my sister, engaged in conversation with someone I couldn't see through her back. A reasonable person would have waited for them to finish talking before doing anything too drastic.
Was I reasonable? I was in fact many things, but reasonable?
That, I was not. Never had been, never would be. Didn't want to be either.
I rushed forward, jumped at Violet, and wrapped my arms around her back.
She got cut off mid-sentence and both of us fell to the floor. She went stiff at first, but relaxed once she managed to turn around and look up at me.
I hugged her a bit tighter.
"shwis, sihsw—", she tried to complain, but her objections came out muffled with me being in the way, "sis, get off me! This, the stuff I'm doing… It's pretty important. I don't have time for distractions."
I nodded and Violet smiled. We understood each other perfectly.
"This hug is indeed very important, yep! Let's just save the other stuff for later."
Violet put up with it for a little longer before she pushed me off her and stood up.
"Apologies for the interruption. This is my sister, though I take it you may have heard of her already."
She bowed towards the person she had been talking to. I decided to actually look at said person, and bent down to whisper in my sister's ear after I managed to see just who she had been talking to. A girl who looked to be a year or two younger than me, probably around the same age as Violet. She was wearing something that resembled a maid outfit to a rather suspicious extent, had long black hair paired with yellow eyes, and she also had… cat ears!
"Violet, you're talking to a catgirl?"
"Yes, but I didn't want to tell you yet, because…"
I pumped my fist up into the air, jumped out of joy, and let out what I would have considered a rather celebratory noise. A celebratory catgirl noise, even, as I couldn't let the opportunity to subtly remind you that I was a catgirl myself too slip past.
"...because I knew you'd overreact."
Since I already had disappointed my sister anyway, I figured it was fine to continue acting like a total dork. That is to say, I paid her warning no heed and kept doing my own little celebratory wiggly dance. Nothing could stop me!
Aside from the person my sister had been talking too loudly clearing her throat, reminding me that there was more important business to attend to.
Such as hugging more catgirls, or hugging the same catgirl but more intensely.
Violet and the girl she had been talking to ignored me and continued talking. That suited me just fine. I chose to ignore them as well, albeit while eavesdropping on their conversation and hugging Violet again.
This might have been where some would have expected me to pounce on the catgirl I only just had discovered, but I can assure any worried readers that I had more restraint than that. Giving a good first impression was supposedly of paramount importance if you wanted to make someone fall in love with you, and giving a good impression included not asking people you just met to marry you right off the bat.
But I found another catgirl, yay!
Back to the plot.
To a conversation I played no part in. To me being utterly irrelevant and useless for the first time so far this novel. Was it just me or were my eyes watering up a bit?
"So, Linn, about those preparations I asked you about…"
"I will make sure they get taken care of. But now that your sister is here, why don't I take the opportunity to also address some other matters? Such as what you told me about right before she arrived."
The maid catgirl turned towards me with a smirk on her face.
"Your sister claims you want to marry me."
"Well, yes, I suppose you could say so, but I can assure you that I have my reasons for it and that—"
"Fine, I accept."
Linn, the catgirl maid, crept up on me while we were talking until , leaned in close enough that I could sense every time she exhaled, that her body made close contact with mine, and she…
...Thread a ring on my finger before backing away again. Where did she even get that from?