“Welcome to my tower!” I said, turning round and spreading my arms wide. The wondering look on Tear’s face made me pleased, the grubby footprints being left on the glass floor did not. I frowned at them for a brief moment. Dirt doesn't stick on my clothes, it just falls off, so I hadn't even considered having to clean the tower.

“First things first, let's get you cleaned up. Come along!” I gestured for the catkin to follow me and walked through the teleporter to the bath area.

Once through, I walked a few steps along the marble shelf, then stopped and stripped off my ninja costume, leaving me in just a pair of thin boxers that I had bought while in the city. I looked round and saw that Tear was covering both eyes with one hand, though I noticed the former street urchin was still keeping an eye on me through a gap between two fingers.

“What's wrong?” I asked, “you need to get undressed to wash, right?”

Hesitantly Tear pulled off the grimy tattered rags, standing awkwardly in front of me, one arm across almost non-existent breasts, the other covering lower down with the bundle of rags.

“Ah,” I realised, mentally kicking myself, then spoke hurriedly “I'm so sorry, I wasn’t sure what gender you were. I'm sure you can wash yourself, I'll go get some food ready.”

I grabbed my clothes and walked the long way round to the teleporter, then headed up the tower. I had no idea why I had been so insensitive; it was almost like some hack author had used me as an excuse to get Tear naked. But now that I thought about it, it made sense; of course it’s a catgirl slave companion with degraded physical capacity. Gotta hit all them tropes! Though she’s not actually a slave. I should have realised it immediately. “Note to self: keep eyes out for more isekai tropes in the future.”

“Hmm…” From my brief glimpse of her body, she looked painfully malnourished. I could see her ribs easily, and her arms looked like sticks, though with some small degree of muscle on them; I guessed that you needed to be tough to survive on the streets.

Eating a large amount of food immediately after starvation could be very bad for the body, in some cases even causing death, so I didn't want to feed her anything heavy as I didn't know how long it had been since her last meal, though I didn’t think it was that severe. I thought for a minute then pulled out a cauldron of soup from my world storage and set it to heating over a furnace on the crafting floor.

Then I realised another problem: clothes. “Aah! I should have bought some in the city!” I hummed pensively to myself for a minute, then pulled a spare wizard robe out of my world storage. I dropped down to the first floor, glanced through the glass floor at the blurrily indistinct form of Tear, some 10 metres below, then walked backwards though the teleporter. I rapped gently on the wall and heard a startled splash from behind me.

“Uh, Tear, here are some basic clothes for you. Tomorrow I'll go to the nearest town and ask the tailor there to make something proper for you.” I said, still slightly flustered from my earlier ungentlemanly blunder. ”Oh, and here's a bar of soap.” I pulled one out of my inventory and placed it next to the folded robe.

“Umm, thanks,” she replied quietly, sounding a little less guarded than before.

I smiled slightly and stepped back through the teleporter, noting that the grubby footprints were fading; I surmised the high mana density in the air was cleansing the dirt somehow, which made me happy as cleaning something as large as my tower sounded like a pain. I then walked back up the stairs to check on the soup. I frowned; using the crafting room as a kitchen and eating area wouldn't do, so I headed up to the still empty fourth floor. Halfway up the wall, I put in a subfloor of grey bricks, on which I placed cauldrons, pots, frying pans, a stove, and various ice chests filled with various foods. I also set up some tables, on which I placed various cooking implements.

Having layered the subfloor below with pale pearlwood plank walls, the floor with redbrick tiles, and painted the ceiling a pale blue, I set up a long bar table that curved about a third of the way round the room, against the wall behind which I set up some kegs and built stairs up to the second sub floor. Randomly across the room I also placed chairs and tables of various sizes.

I then descended down to the second floor, the crafting floor, and picked up the steaming cauldron of soup. I could feel that it was hot, but through my armour, it caused no pain. A rather curious sensation. I carried it over my head up to the newly (and poorly) dubbed 'food floor' and set the cauldron down on the dining hall subfloor next to a table.

Then I sat in the chair next to it and waited.

About ten minutes later, Tear stepped onto the landing and looked into the room. Seeing me sitting there, she entered and began advancing across the floor towards me. She was wearing the wizard robe which seemed to have fitted itself to her, which was good as it would have been far too large otherwise.

Her thin legs were just visible through the opening in the front as she walked, the hem of the robe flapping round her ankles, her bare, clawed feet tapping on the smooth tiles, and I could occasionally see an orange cat's tail waving around her calves. It looked in serious need of some grooming.

Her short tomboyish hair and cat ears were also vividly orange, I had thought she had dark brown hair, but I guess that was just all the dirt in it. Similarly, I could now see she had slightly tanned skin and a gaunt but still pretty face.

A couple of steps into the room, her pale blue eyes locked onto the cauldron of soup, and she instantly halted, lowering her posture and creeping forward, as though stalking prey.

I burst out laughing and she straightened, a slight flush colouring her cheeks.

“Come on, sit!” I called, gesturing to the chair opposite me. “It’s not going to try and escape if you startle it.”

She shot me a glare but walked up to the chair and sat in it a little stiffly.

“I must say, I wasn't expecting you to have orange hair,” I told her.

“And I wasn’t expecting you to have grey. From the way you behave I'm surprised that you're old enough,” she shot back, seemingly on reflex.

“It’s silver not grey! Just how old do you think I am?!” I demanded indignantly.

“Hmm, sixty or seventy,” she replied.

“I'm twenty you cheeky brat!” I exclaimed, flicking one of her cat ears gently.

She coloured, but rallied saying, “Eh? I'm sure you're older than that. No wait, you're certainly not that old, if you were, you'd be cleverer.”

“I'm four years older than you, so where does that leave you?”

“Wiser than my years,” she replied smugly, and I realised I had fallen into her trap.

“Says the girl who tried to stab me because I was wearing slightly similar clothes to someone who tried to kidnap her!” I exclaimed.

“Oho~, at least I'm not the one who stripped off all his clothes in front of an innocent young girl,” she said mockingly.

“You still peeked~” I teased.

“Anyone would want to make sure that the madman stripping in front of them wasn’t going to do anything weird!”

“That’s… actually kind of a fair point,” I conceded, noticing Tear take another glance at the cauldron beside me. “Would you like some?” I asked, and she nodded eagerly.

I half-filled one bowl and filled another, passing her the half-filled one and placing the full one in front on me.

She took it and began inhaling her soup. “Slow down,” I said, then with a note of desperation, “at least pause for breath.”

When she gave no sign of following my advice I sighed, then, faster than she could react, snatched the bowl away from her.

“I said slow down,” I told her more firmly as she jumped in surprise.

The catgirl hissed at me and I waved a finger at her. “None of that, unless you want me to go back to calling you Hissy. Now, are you going to eat more slowly?”

She nodded grudgingly and I pushed the bowl back across the table and started eating from my own bowl. Despite my admonition, she had finished her half-bowlful before I had eaten more than a few spoonfuls, then sat, looking fixedly at the cauldron next to me.

I chuckled, took her bowl, and ladled another half-bowlful into it. “Don't eat too much, you're probably not used to it,” I said, passing the bowl back to her along with a glass of orange juice, pulled from my inventory alongside some bread bought from Durell, and she paused. “You have an item box,” she half stated, half asked.

I paused in my cutting up of the bread, to consider my response. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Hmmm, that's not very usual,” she commented and went back to spooning soup to her mouth.

This was very useful information for me, though I wasn't going to tell her that. It meant that I could use my inventory more openly from now on, and not receive too much attention.

I finished my small meal, using a piece of bread to mop up the remaining soup in the bowl, refilled Tear's bowl again, and sat back to watch her polish off her third half-bowl. The ravenous catgirl was still eating extremely quickly, which was the reason why I was only giving her half-bowlfuls.

She finished, and looked between me and the still mostly full cauldron expectantly.

I smiled. “No,” I said. “If you haven't eaten for a while, you should only eat a small portion at first. Give it an hour or two, then I'll let you have some more.”

The catgirl opened her mouth, but closed it again when I flicked my hand and both the bread and the cauldron vanished into my inventory.

We sat in silence for a while, until she suddenly asked “why is there a hole in all the floors?”

“Because these,” I said raising a wing. “You can't expect me to walk can you?”

“But what if people fall down it?” she asked.

“That's why there's a wall round it,” I replied, “but if you're worried about it, I can probably do something about it.” I leant back into my chair, thinking. “hmm, that might work,” I mused internally.

“Has it been an hour yet?” asked Tear, and I absentmindedly pulled a full bowl of soup from my inventory and pushed it over. It was still just as warm as when I had put it in, and I realised that time probably froze inside my inventory.

She quickly finished it off and I stood, taking back the bowl and sticking it in my inventory to clean later.

“Tear, you start walking up the tower, I'll go get a room ready for you. You'll be on the 19th floor, so be prepared for quite a walk.”

I chuckled at her expression and headed over to the central shaft, leaping into it and shooting up to my floor.

“Got into the habit of doing that,” I muttered, descending back down a floor.