“Hm, hm, hmm...♪”
In a room within the divine realm, with a starry sky above and clouds on the ground, a young girl—the Goddess—opened a wooden closet that looked completely out of place in the otherwise barren expanse and chose her outfit for the day.
She was in a great mood. Or rather, she seemed like she was in a great mood. In reality, she was pissed. That was because some schmuck in the world she managed as a hobby had shown up, claiming the name of her lover, the God of Destruction. What’s more, the old fart looked absolutely nothing like her beloved—he was just some fool claiming he’d perfected alchemy, all so he could indulge in his selfish desires. How could she not be upset?
However, she was the type to smile through her anger. “Since it’s a special occasion and all, I think I ought to dress up a little bit,” she said cheerfully. “Some stylish-looking battle garb, perhaps?”
Of course, she couldn’t go down to the world herself. She’d have to use the hero system installed within the world to send a soul from another world there instead. But if she exploited a tiny loophole—more specifically, if she created a vessel in her likeness for the hero to use—she could interfere just a little. And for that purpose, it was in her best interest for her own clothes to be similar to the vessel’s.
“And yet, none of these look like they’ll fit the bill. I’d like to have some kind of accessory that visually represents my ability, you know? Oh, come to think of it, in that movie the God of Destruction showed me the other day, there was that guy who used zippers to zip open pockets of space!”
In the film, the man could stick a zipper onto a wall and unzip it to enter a completely different space, or stick it on one of his enemies and zip them apart. In fact, rather than just opening a hole in empty space without warning, perhaps having a zipper as a visual aid would make the concept easier to grasp for beginners. Her main technique of spatial magic worked a little differently from normal magic, after all.
Although, once she exploited her loophole, her vessel would probably pick it up pretty quickly without even needing a visual aid. Still, considering the time her magic would take to master, any aid that reduced that time even by one second would be worth using—because it would lessen the time she’d have to wait to hand down her punishment.
“All right, it’s decided! I’ll wear this outfit here that has a ridiculous amount of pointless zippers on it!” While she was at it, she’d wear this huge zipper necklace around her neck so her vessel would realize how powerful her might as a goddess was! With that thought, she grinned.
“Hmm, but you know, that’s still not enough. I need even more zippers.” She thought for a moment. This outfit had been a gift from her lover, the God of Destruction, and it had many zippers in all sorts of places that you could unzip and stick your hand in—well, that aside, the point was there were no more places she could add zippers to. Plus, she didn’t want to try to alter an outfit her lover had gifted her.
“Then I guess there’s no other choice. I’ll put them directly on my body!”
That said, if she put too many on, it’d look unsightly. She needed to find a specific place. Her mouth? It would make it hard to speak, so that was out. Her eyelids? Nope, she needed to see. Under her clothes somewhere...? No, because then it couldn’t be seen. And if she put one on her stomach, her guts might accidentally spill out when she opened it.
Legs, feet... No, now that she thought about it, putting zippers on her bare skin would probably be pretty painful to begin with. Unless her lover did the job, of course—then it’d probably feel pretty good.
“So the only other option is my hair,” she said, and she poked her big ahoge. Yeah, my hair won’t hurt! Perfect! With that decided, she picked up the zipper she wanted to use.
“Oh, right! Maybe I should split this in two, and give the other half to the God of Destruction! That way we’ll be, like, a matching couple! Like ‘with our powers combined, we are one,’ or something!” She squealed and blushed. “Oh no, what am I saying?!” Hugging herself, she indulged in her own fantasies.
“All right, now that that’s decided, I’ll put this on with spatial magic all careful-like and...done!” She examined herself in the mirror and struck a pose. “Yep, I’m a cutie all right!”
The Goddess was fully satisfied. And as though to symbolize her mood, the zipper around her neck, overflowing with divine power, glowed gold.