Another boring day at the temple, Shou Toramaru thought to herself. She had just finished reading that book from the Outside World that Mamizou had gifted her and was largely out of things to do. So what was a youkai to do other than to loiter around the Myouren Temple grounds and perhaps look to see if anyone was being a worse Buddhist than she was. Because if there was one thing she was good at, it was reprimanding people.

"Hmm. Don't see anything…"

The grounds were remarkably quiet this early in the morning. Kyouko Kasodani was off cleaning her section of the yard as usual; Shou couldn't help but admire her work ethic, as much as Byakuren seemed dedicated to eliminating whatever leisure time she had. Besides her, she only saw a handful of monks and monks-to-be training outside, nothing too surprising given that the sun had barely risen. Yup, seemed today was going to be a perfectly quiet, ordinary day.

And then she heard a squeak.

"Huh?"

Shou turned and looked around for the source of the squeak, but to no avail. It wasn't to her left, it wasn't to her right, and if it were at her feet she were sure she could feel it. Which probably meant she was going to have to go on a little journey to figure this out.

Shou began to wander the grounds, specifically looking for where the squeaking would be loudest. Wandering out to the gate, she caught absolutely nothing, and so she wandered back around to the building: There we go, there's the squeaking again. That confirms that whatever she heard was coming from inside. Taking this knowledge and running with it, Shou walked into a side door, where she would begin walking through the halls in an attempt to locate the source.

Eventually she would come across a door to her right. Oh, the squeaking was real loud coming from there, the chances of her turning, entering, and seeing some giant mass of rats were very suddenly not zero. Only one way to find out though, so Shou soon turned and poked her head into the room next to her.

"Hello?"

Ah, so there was the reason the squeaking was so loud. It wasn't a mere mouse or rat, but a group of several. They were all scurrying around the room, a few either carrying dust clothes or sliding around on them. And who else would be among them but the giant rat… err, mouse… that makes all of the rules? Nazrin, a youkai like Shou, was currently using her dowsing rods for a variety of purposes: The one in her right hand had a dust cloth attached and was cleaning a high shelf that even the massive Shou had a bit of trouble reaching, while the one in her left hand had some cheese on the end and was leading some mice along a lower shelf.

"Nazrin?"

The sound of Shou's voice visibly caught the mouse youkai's attention. Nazrin swiveled around to face her tiger partner and looked up for eye contact; truth be told, the height gap between them was pretty much entirely a result of Shou herself being incredibly tall, maybe around two meters tall.

"Yeah, love?"

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm just cleaning. I know you get annoyed when I don't pitch in to help take care of the shrine whenever I stay over, so I thought I'd have a little fun with it."

"Oh, you're being charitable?" Shou cracked the smallest of smiles at that. "Thanks Nazrin, I appreciate it. Mind explaining how you're doing it then? This all seems pretty complicated, and lady Hijiri's already gotten on my case about drinking too much."

"It's quite simple, dear Shou!" Nazrin walked forward and held her hands out to her sides, briefly twirling. "As you can see, these kind mice are manipulating their dust cloths, quite handily in fact. Because there's so many clothes and so many mice, even if they retread ground they're not about to drag any dirt around because they can just pick it back up! And for those who lack motivation… behold!"

Nazrin held up the cheese-ended dowsing rod, waving it in front of Shou's face. The tiger could very clearly tell she was just doing it for dramatics, but hey, who didn't like a little dramatics once in a while?

"Food rewards! You and I both know that mice aren't particularly motivated by the possibility of being reborn in a better standing in the next life, they just wanna live a long life now, so I'm motivating them with food. Not even just this cheese either, I have a whole stash lined up."

"A stash, huh? That's quite interesting." Shou fidgeted with her sleeves as she though of what to say next. "So, uh… would you mind telling me where you got that food?"

"Oh, wouldn't you like to know? I, uh… I have my methods. Which I'm not sharing, so there."

"...I see." Shou could take a wild guess as to what Nazrin meant by that; as much as she liked her, she knew Nazrin wasn't exactly a morally upstanding character. "And, uh, besides that high shelf, have you done any of the cleaning yourself?"

"Mm? Myself? Why would I need to worry about that? They've got a hang of it, don't you think? And it's not like I'm not doing anything Shou, I'm still leading them. There's nothing you need to worry about love, I've got this all under control-"

Nazrin's sentence was very suddenly interrupted by a crash. The noise causes the mouse to leap back and toward Shou, practically leaning against her to seek some sort of comfort. Sighing, Shou patted her partner on the head and looked to see what broke; as it turned out, it was a single ceramic bowl that had broken into a few pieces. Nothing too unmanageable. All of the rats had already scattered to the other end of the room.

"...so, great Napoleon," Shou remarked, "how did relying on the mice to do everything work out for you?"

"Eurgh, it was fine until that happened. And who's Napoleon?"

"Someone in the book Mamizou gave me." Shou casually avoided mentioning that Napoleon was a military leader whose hubris was his ultimate downfall; truthfully, the height had nothing to do with it, as even the book mentioned that Napoleon wasn't particularly short.

"Sure, sure. Uh… I'll… I'll clean that up-"

"No, no, I'll get it."

Shou walked over to the mess and knelt down to pick up the large shards of the bowl. With a groan she stood back up and disposed of the remains of the bowl into a waste bin, then turned back to Nazrin, who was already in the middle of trying to feed the visibly shaken rodents. Sheesh, Shou thought, maybe her little jab was a bit insensitive. With that thought in mind, she walked over to Nazrin and stood next to her.

"Hey, points for creativity," Shou told the mouse. "It wasn't practical, but I can only imagine how much effort it took to orchestrate all of that."

"A fair bit, actually," Nazrin admitted with a groan as she finished distributing the food, then snatched Shou's arm. "It's a lot harder to motivate mice when the food reward isn't immediate. But, uh, what do you think of the finished results?"

"Hmm? What do I think?" Shou took one quick look around the room. Actually, there was hardly any dust at all, if there even was any. Maybe she shouldn't have been so quick to judge the mice for the one mix up. "Looks good. Give the mice my regards, but first, let me give you mine."

Shou leaned down and gave Nazrin a kiss on the cheek; the intimacy was enough to turn Nazrin's face as red as could be, almost as red as her eyes if you wanted to exaggerate. Shou couldn't help but admit to herself that seeing her flustered was fun, both because it helped to deflate her ego and also because she just found it cute.

"So how about some breakfast? I hear Ichirin's cooking."

"F-fine, fine. Probably beats what I had before getting here."

With that, Shou helped Nazrin out of the room and off to the temple kitchen, while the other mice dashed out of the room to parts unknown. It was kind of a miracle that Nazrin was able to figure out how to wrangle them all, Shou thought to herself.

She supposed they didn't call her the Tiny Clever Commander for nothing. Even if she really wasn't that tiny.