Konekoshinji -

Yuki was cured within the hour. She smiled for the first time in three years.

Ren felt his heart crack. But Mochi’s purr rumbled in his chest. Not prey. Not threat. Just... noise. Konekoshinji

The ritual was illegal, blasphemous, and absurd. Ren paid a bio-smuggler for a neural imprint of a stray cat—a tabby named Mochi who’d lived nine lives in the flooded ruins of Old Tokyo. Then, in a rusted shrine under a highway, Ren underwent the splicing. Yuki was cured within the hour

To the uninitiated, it sounded almost whimsical—a child’s lullaby or a cat’s name. But in the underworld, it meant “The Cat-Child Ritual.” And it was the only way to survive the Ninth Ward’s ghost-net. Konekoshinji

He pulled it out.