＊＊＊
Stella entered the sizable Western mansion I’d seen earlier. After passing through the grand entrance hall, we entered a long hallway with a rigid row of doors. Stella entered the door farthest inside.
There were two bunk beds inside and four study desks. A pretty traditional four-person room.
“Listen up. I’m going to get changed now, but you’d better not look! You’d better, better, BETTER not look, okay?!” Stella said, looking down at me with her hands on her hips.
“You’re putting on a show of pretending you don’t want me to look, but that always leads to the other person looking anyway.”
“I’m not pretending! If you look, I’ll never stop calling you perverted.”
“That’s not the trump card you thought it’d be.”
What man wouldn’t rejoice over having a beauty call them a pervert? It seemed Stella was still far from understanding how men thought.
Stella balked. “I forgot! You’re an actual, literal pervert!”
“If you don’t want me to see, stuff me in your bed or something. I don’t have the hands to throw off the covers.”
“Wow. True,” Stella said, then promptly stuffed me into one of the beds. I was engulfed by soft fabric.
This must be Stella’s bed...sniff, sniff! Am I in heaven? It smells incredible. I’m so glad I still have my sense of smell.
After a bit, Stella flipped off the covers.
“I’m done,” she said. She was now wearing casual clothes. There wasn’t much to say about them, but that in turn emphasized her natural beauty. The sophisticated mounds on her chest, the gleaming legs extending from her skirt... She had even fixed her hair, since it had ended up disheveled during the fight with the trout.
She took a new pair of robes from a closet and put them on.
“Aaah, all that activity’s made me hungry. I think I’ll go to the square. But, hmm, whatever shall I eat...?”
“Hold it, Stella.”
“What?”
“I’d kind of like to go back to reality now...”
I knew talking to her about this likely wouldn’t be productive, but I couldn’t help myself. I was actually starting to panic a bit.
This dream was just a little too real. And I didn’t seem close to waking up. Normally, a dream like this would end around the trout part.
“Reality... What, do you still think this is just a dream?”
“Allow me to prove this is a dream with simple but definitive reasoning,” I began. Stella gave an exaggerated sigh.
“First, my body’s turned into a staff.”
“It’s totally normal for spirits to possess staves.”
“Next, you understand Japanese for some reason!” I declared, puffing out my chest with pride (metaphorically).
As far as I could tell, this wasn’t Japan. Why, then, did she understand my Japanese, and why was she speaking Japanese? If this wasn’t a case of dreamworld convenience, then what was?
“Japa-what?” Stella asked, tilting her head. “I’m speaking Oravinoese.”
“Excuse me?”
“The scriptures say the all-knowing, all-powerful Goddess devised a system by which spirits and people could communicate. The air itself automatically translates our languages so we can understand each other.”
What the hell? You’re telling me the air here has machine translation functionality? That’s just way too convenient!
“Finished your little bout of escapism, Otaku?” Stella asked, looking down at me with exasperation.
Escapism... Right, this was an escapist dream. All those horrible revelations about my childhood friend must have really done some damage to my psyche. Here I was, unable to recover without forming my ideal tsundere wife.
It’s about time to go back to reality. I’ll hate to say goodbye to this girl, but if she’s a delusion of mine, we can just meet in another dream—hopefully one in which I have a human body.
The question was, what do I do to wake up?
“Stella, could you give me a good smack?”
Stella’s expression tightened, and she looked at me like I was garbage.
“Pervert...”
Well, that gave off the wrong impression. I just wanted to try pain as a wake-up method again. I’d bash my head against a wall if I could, but alas.
Incidentally, she was clearly disturbed by my request. She took a step back as if to protect herself.
Well, looks like she’s leaving me no choice. I have to flame her embarrassment until she loses control of her hand.
“By the way, your bed smells incredible. Forget what I was saying—just let me stay here forever.”
“What...?!” Stella hurriedly nabbed me off her bed, then glared at me with bright red cheeks. “Who said you could sniff my bed, you freak?!”
“What, did you expect me to hold my nose the whole time?”
“You don’t even have a nose! How can you sniff?! Where are your nostrils?! Tell me so I can plug them!”
“Now that’s an even more prickly line than I expected! That’s Stella for you; she’ll never let an otaku down!”
“Grr! I didn’t say that to make you happy!” Stella shouted with loud stamps of her feet.
“Well, you’re in kind of a rough spot, then.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m confident any insult of yours will bring only joy to my heart. After all, I love your type from the bottom of my heart!”
Stella’s face basically caught fire.
It took just a glance to confirm I had gone far beyond what her shy heart could handle. She trembled, and pulled back the arm holding me.
“YOU BIG STUPID DUMB IDIOOOOT!”
All according to plan.
Stella threw me as hard as she could. At first I cheered and prepared to slam into the wall hard enough to shatter my theoretical skull, only to instead soar through the open window.
Huh? Well, whatever.
The last thing I saw was a sort of oh, crap look on Stella’s face before I flipped over and crashed onto the stone below headfirst.