It was a quiet afternoon on Sixth Street, a modest neighborhood in New Eridu. I moved the "Open" sign to "Closed" on the door of Random Play, our video rental store. The store was really little more than a front for our proxies work, though it had become our main source of income since we lost the Phaethon account. Besides... the electricity bill was getting annoying... my sister Belle wouldn't understand the headaches I felt when she saw that receipt...

But it wasn't just us. We had a new companion: Yidhari Murphy. It was a long story, but we finally managed to help her get a new lease on life, even joining the "Shack of Terror." My sister sometimes invited her to stay with us.

I looked out the store window; the sky was darkening, and the first drops of rain were starting to fall. I decided to go upstairs to the bedrooms and approached Yidhari's door. I knocked gently, but there was no answer. I knocked again, a little harder, and still nothing. With a touch of unease, I slowly opened the door, peering into the dark interior of the room. In a corner, barely visible, I made out her weapon, a hammer with the inscription "KRAKEN" on the tip. The only light came from the faint flicker of the television in the center of the room, playing a horror film, its bluish light illuminating a peculiar scene.

There, seated on the floor in front of the television, was a kind of cocoon formed by its own tentacles, which enveloped its body. Only its head peeked out above that knot of pale, sinuous limbs, and over it was a blanket. It was a strangely adorable sight.

"Yidhari..." I called softly.

She noticed my voice and uttered a melancholic, melodious "Hmm...?"

I could see she was perfectly comfortable, nestled within her own tentacles. Her purple eyes, with those hypnotic spirals in her pupils, rested on me with an enigmatic calm.

"I... I had fallen asleep," she murmured, her cheeks flushed from the warmth that enveloped her. As she spoke, the tip of one of her tentacles gently detached from the cocoon and moved toward me in a slow, curious gesture, like a shy greeting.