Rewrite Our Love? Too Late-Chapter 116: The Crimson Cat and the Threshold of Power

Early morning sunlight filtered through the curtains as Yukima Azuma tied his running shoes. Just as he was about to head out for his morning jog, a sharp scream sliced through the silence of the house.

He froze. The voice came from upstairs.

Without bothering to swap into indoor slippers, he kicked off his sneakers at the door and sprinted up the stairs. Reaching the second floor, he didn't hesitate—he shoved open the door to Kasumigaoka Utaha's room.

"Senpai, what happened?" he called out, eyes already scanning the room for danger.

Finding Kasumigaoka Utaha unharmed, he let out a sigh of relief. But his gaze quickly landed on an oddity atop her cluttered desk.

His expression froze.

A fiery red "fluffy ball" lay sprawled out on the desk next to a slightly askew laptop. It looked like she'd been in the middle of writing when... whatever this was had appeared.

"Senpai! You stayed up all night again!" Yukima scolded, exasperated.

Kasumigaoka Utaha pouted, clearly unimpressed that his first reaction to her scream was to lecture her.

Yukima stepped closer for a better look. The red fluff was no toy—it was a cat. A long-haired breed with a plumed tail that resembled a feather duster. Its gleaming black eyes were sharp and full of curiosity as it surveyed its surroundings.

He waved at it.

The red cat immediately sprang into his arms with a purr, rubbing affectionately against his chest. Yukima blinked in surprise.

Utaha stared in astonishment.

"Senpai, is this... Hogyokumaru?"

She hesitated, then slowly stepped forward and stroked the creature's fur. Her fingers sank into the impossibly soft fluff.

"It seems... it is," she murmured.

Hogyokumaru. The crimson cat from The Metronome in Love—a fictional pet adopted by the protagonists in her novel.

Readers had always mocked the cat's unrealistic coloration.

Yet here it was, alive and purring in Yukima Azuma's arms.

How could something from fiction take physical form?

Yukima met Utaha's eyes, mind racing. "Senpai... what have you been doing recently?"

Utaha exhaled and began explaining.

After being deeply impacted by Saekano, she had thrown herself into rewriting The Metronome in Love Volume 5—its final volume. Initially near completion, she couldn't stop revising it. A fire had been lit in her heart, kindled by a mix of pride and competitive frustration.

Every time she passed the nameplate on the first-floor room—his room—it reminded her she couldn't fall behind.

Utaha Kasumigaoka, the genius author known as Kasumi Utako, refused to lose.

She read, rewrote, and even re-read that love letter Yukima had written to another girl, trying to distill its raw sincerity into her work.

Last night, everything clicked.

Fueled by emotion and obsession, she broke through.

As she finished the manuscript, utterly spent but creatively fulfilled, that's when Hogyokumaru appeared—popping into existence right atop her desk.

Listening intently, Yukima processed it all.

So that's what it was.

Her writing skill—her Literary Mastery—had reached Level 7: Transcendent, the threshold where fiction touches reality. At that level, supernatural phenomena awaken.

Yukima understood this intimately. With his system, his supernatural abilities didn't just awaken—they were automatically perfected.

But for others... it was different.

Curious, he picked up a pen and sheet of paper from her desk.

The moment the pen touched the page, a strange sensation surged through him—an overwhelming feeling that he could drag the world of Saekano into existence. Not just in words. Physically. Literally.

He stopped before he could try.

That power had rules.

"Senpai, try writing Sayaka's name. Can you bring her here, too?"

Utaha hesitated, but nodded.

She wrote a brief character introduction on the page.

They waited.

Nothing happened.

She shook her head. "It's not possible."

Yukima nodded to himself. That confirmed it.

With the system, his supernatural abilities were granted and mastered the moment he reached Level 7. But for others, even if they broke through, their abilities were unreliable, dormant, or weak—perhaps only surfacing under extreme emotional conditions.

And practice? That was still unknown territory.

"Senpai, let me explain..." Yukima began, offering a careful, partial explanation—leaving out the system, of course. He described the awakening of supernatural abilities tied to skill mastery.

Utaha listened closely, not doubting him in the slightest.

Instead of dismissing his words as delusional, she gently scratched Hogyokumaru's chin and stared at the impossibly real being she had written into existence.

"No wonder... I always sensed something different about you," she murmured. "That aura you sometimes give off—oppressive and unnatural. I thought I was imagining it."

Then, her mind shifted.

"But Yukima," she said, brows furrowed. "Shouldn't there be more people like us?"

"In this world, even if only one in ten thousand is a genius, that's still hundreds of thousands of people. And if one in ten of those awaken abilities, that's tens of thousands. With the internet, urban legends should be everywhere."

Yukima nodded grimly. "That's exactly what I've been thinking."

They sat in silence, then arrived at the only logical conclusion.

"Unless... awakenings only began recently."

Their gazes met.

It made sense—especially with the comet Charlotte drawing closer.

Then Utaha asked, "Has anyone else awakened?"

Yukima shook his head. "Not that I know of. Maybe Bocchi. Her guitar skills might be at Level 7 after the school festival. But she hasn't said anything. And Eromanga-sensei... maybe her drawing, but I can't tell."

He paused, then added, "For now, you're the only one I know who's awakened something."

Kasumigaoka Utaha smiled, genuinely pleased.

So it was just the two of them. The elite.

With a smirk, she snatched Hogyokumaru from Yukima's arms, cradling the crimson cat against her chest. The creature seemed to pulse faintly with her thoughts—as if it were an extension of her very soul.

She couldn't stop smiling.

Meanwhile, Yukima's mind turned to two girls.

Yotsuya Miko—born with the inexplicable ability to see ghosts and spirits. No training. It just happened.

Kato Megumi—so faint in presence that she could be standing right next to someone and still go unnoticed.

How could that be normal?

Even Yukima, with his past-life memories, had taken time to realize how easily she slipped from notice.

But ever since gaining his first supernatural ability, he'd become attuned to her presence.

What was the story behind these girls?

As he gazed out Kasumigaoka's window, something caught his eye.

Across the street, movers bustled about, carrying boxes into a new apartment.

Yotsuya Miko had moved in.

Somehow, she'd convinced her mother.

It was one street away—but well within the range of Yukima's Shogi-derived spiritual field.

"Senpai," he said suddenly, "this July... let's go to Hokkaido together."

"To see the comet?"

She didn't ask why.

She just smiled softly and nodded.

Charlotte was coming.

And Yukima needed to see it with his own eyes.