Before Fen and Maya started their little love talk out of nowhere, Sophia had gotten really conflicted about her risen embarrassment after her boost went back to a more normal level. Also, coming to a possible explanation of why it happened, she ran away from the group to clear her head.

"Haa-" Sighing after she covered a considerable distance, Sophia sat down on a fallen tree in a tiny forest she came across while running. "So embarrassing! Have I really reverted back to normal...? If so, that's beyond frustrating! How about finding some middle ground, me?! Can I force myself to become so bold again? Wait, do I... want to?" She was unsure of how to continue.

"Is it really what I think it is? Was that the full potential version of me? It may have a bit too high-spec, but I would enjoy it... I think? It's hard to wrap my head around. I might have gotten a bit too confident and... Maya-" Sophia stopped mid-sentence when she thought about the cat-girl.

"I've done her wrong. I got way too close to her... I mean, I enjoyed it, but it was wrong! She clearly was uncomfortable when I played with her ears. Why else would she have squirmed so much after all?" She forgot about the part where Maya got so relaxed that she had fallen asleep in her lap afterward. "I probably should apologize, but... they felt so good! I want to pet them again!" Her conflicting emotions had taken a slightly impure turn.

"In the first place, Maya... if you let me play around so much, I might get the wrong idea, you know?! I know you like this, uhh, skinship thing and feel sorry for me, but what are you going to do if I get my hopes up?! If I didn't know better, I would almost think you were marking me! The cat we had at my mom's house acted almost exactly the same, rubbing her head all over me whenever I came over. Yeah, impossible... Urgh, what am I even thinking about?!" She got more than a little sidetracked.

"Seriously, what should I do?! Embrace the overboost or whatever and force myself to get used to it? Suppress it...? Slowly increasing it bit by bit and trying not to go out of control? That seems like the safer choice, but... W-What if I suppressing eventually stops my boosts? If I get stuck, not being able to become who I want to be and the same as in my old world happens... Anything but that!" Being locked in the same or similar loop as in her previous world was the last thing Sophia wanted. "I need to embrace it."

"Should I talk about it with Maya? I need her for the brute-force method, after all. Hey Maya, I want to get used to my boosts, can I molest and harass you a bit? Please?- Yeah, that's a brilliant plan... Hmm, I could always just get back at her when she overdoes it and get a little more extreme... It's not my fault, then. NO! What am I? A low-life pervert?! That's not what I'm going to do! Uuh... W-What should I do?" She was at a complete stalemate.

"GaaAaAHhh!" Crying out the frustration about her indecisiveness, Sophia shouted with all her might, loud enough for it to echo through the entire area. "Maya..." Her thoughts had become entirely focussed around the cat-girl. "Should I tell her about me, after all? Who I am... What I am. Everything? I don't think I can-, should try to get closer to her without being honest. That's way too unfair. But... Can I tell her? Will she understand? Will she accept it... no, me?" There were a lot of undefined variables.

"What if she can't... Will she leave me? I, that, no..." She definitely didn't want that to happen. "But hiding is also no good. Uuh... My head's starting to hurt! I want some stress relief! I want to play with Maya's ears! A-Ah-" Sophia stopped talking when she noticed that she had gone full circle with her thoughts.

"Gaah!" Yelling again, she punched a nearby tree to calm down, leaving only splinters behind on the place where it used to be. "I absolutely can't decide! I have a feeling I can't find an answer no matter how hard I try... Ahh! I give up! It's no use!" Thinking never was her strong suit.

----------------

Unable to come to a conclusion, she had little choice and stopped worrying about it for the time being. After punching another innocent tree into smithereens to get the frustration out of her system, Sophia finally decided to head back to Fen and Maya in their camp.

"Oh, look at that, the runaway girl's back." The wolf was the first to spot her.

"Ahaha, I needed some alone time... to think about stuff."

"Oh, we did a lot of that as well."

"F-Fen?!" The cat-girl looked flustered as she faced him.

"Maya?" Sophia had no idea what was going on.

"N-Nothing!" She obviously didn't want her to find out at this point and hastily tried to change the attention away from her. "W-We heard your shouting all the way over here... did something happen?"

"A-Ah-, you heard that, huh? Uuh..." Sophia got a little embarrassed that her voice traveled so far. "I was... just a bit frustrated because I can't decide on anything..."

"Hmm? What do you mean? Decide what?" The cat-girl was interested in her worries.

"Well, it's about y-yesterday." She hesitated for a moment before continuing. "I think I'm starting to understand what actually happened to me there... I think it wasn't so much that my boost went out of control, and I stopped being me, but I maybe was at my full potential. Though, I was unable to really control, handle it yet. Myself, that is." Sophia had accepted this possibility as her desired outcome. "Now I don't know which way to continue onwards I should choose..."

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"What are the options?"

"Ignoring it ever happened and suppressing my boosts with all my might. Somehow slowly trying to get used to it eventually...?"

"I don't like that idea." Maya gave a frank answer.

"Neither do l." The wolf's opinion was the same.

"The other way would be to embrace it and not care about the backlash. You two would need to keep my, uhh, tension up for that, though... I'm not sure how I feel about that."

"I'm in."

"Sounds fun." They didn't sound concerned at all. Rather, the two seemed to look forward to it.

"Ehh?" Sophia didn't know how to take that. "B-But Maya, you saw what happened yesterday, right? I've... bothered you a lot."

"H-Huh? "

"There was the b-bath, and not to mention your e-ears, Maya... I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm afraid I could do more things to you that you wouldn't like..."

"Do you really think so, Sophia?" There was a hint of disappointment in the cat-girl's voice. "I would never do anything I'm not comfortable with just to entertain someone. I'm definitely not like that."

"I-I'm sorry... for offending you." She felt the need to apologize. "Wait, does that mean?"

"Y-Yes. Though I was a bit embarrassed while you were touching my e-ears, how you t-touched them... You still had my full... consent."

"S-Sorry, I got a little too excited there."

"Y-You sure did."

"S-So...?" Sophia had lost track.

"Prepare yourself! The next little while's going to be seriously embarrassing... for b-both of us."

"D-Did l-, did I really make the right choice?" She already started to second-guess her idea.

"Too late now~!" With a slight tint on her cheeks, Maya showed her a nice grin. She then walked up to her and trapped the girl in a big, hearty hug.

"H-Huh?!" This was too surprising, and her face turned full red again. Little did she know that the cat-girl looked the same. Unfortunately, because Maya was resting her head on Sophia's shoulder, she couldn't see her expression. "Y-You're way too sneaky!"

"Ehehe~. I-, I have to work hard for m-my goal, after all!" Stumbling over her words a little, Maya became conscious of her actions after the conversation with Fen earlier.

"Your goal?"

"E-Err, m-my goal is to help you reach, uhh, your goal!" She barely managed to cover it up.

"Okay? T-Thank you?" Sophia felt that something was odd about her phrasing, but she couldn't pin down what exactly was bothering her.

"And... feeling anything yet?"

"H-Huh?! Feeling, err-" She was feeling various things, both physically and emotionally, but there was no way she could admit to any of those. "T-This whole situation is... really embarrassing, but other than that... n-no, nothing like yesterday."

"It is-, I-I mean, I see!" The cat-girl was having a hard time keeping it together. "What now... want me to stop?" She was about to let go of Sophia, but she didn't get the chance to.

"N-No, let's try... let's try a little longer." Not only feeling embarrassed but also a little bold all of a sudden, her expression slightly changed. She wrapped her arms around the cat-girl's waist, hindering her from letting go and pulling her closer instead.

"S-Sophia?!'" This action was too unexpected for the already flustered Maya. "I-It's actually working, isn't it?! My... uh, t-the Sophia I know would never do anything like this!"

"Hmmn... You think so?" She hadn't noticed the sudden change herself. "It's... still super embarrassing, though, so... it's kinda weird... this feeling."

"Wouldn't you call that... normal? You know, hugging someone is nothing one shouldn't be able to do. It's nice and perfectly normal. A full-blown, tight embrace, on the other hand... Yeah, I- I gotta admit, t-that can be... embarrassing..." Maya is not afraid to hug, so she knows what she's talking about, but going further than that, especially today, was beyond her limits as well.

"N-Normal...? No one-, no one ever used that word to describe me. At least lately… or the last 10 plus years, to be exact... including myself." Not that many had the chance to describe her in the first place since then, though, being alone for most of that time.

"You..." The cat-girl had no answer ready for such a heavy confession.

"Isn't that fine... being normal? I would like that..." There were many emotions in Sophia's voice.

"Uhh... Okay, give me a second here. I need to process this first-" She went silent for almost a minute, rather than a second, trying to wrap her head around what she just heard. "Sure... uh, being normal is not something to scoff at, but using your full potential you showed yesterday, you would be able to live your life with exceptional confidence. This would far exceed being normal, just in a good way, don't you agree? I think that's worth considering."

"You might have a point..." She thought about it for a moment. "Yes, you're right! I don't want to be just normal, no, average! I've been given a new life, after all. I'm not trapped anymore! I want to go all out with this second chance!" Sophia's motivation was high.

"Given... a new life? Trapped?!" Maya had a very complicated expression after hearing this.

"Uhhhh-" She noticed her mistake. "I-I mean... by coming to this place-, c-continent!"

"Hmm..." The cat-girl sounded suspicious. "Okay, whatever... So, what do you want to do now?" She was becoming more and more curious about Sophia's past, but she also didn't want to push her too much about it. It wasn't the right place and situation for this.

"Let's try something more extreme!"

"Okay! Wait, what?!" Maya agreed without thinking, but she then looked shocked and peeled herself away from Sophia as the words registered.

"A-Ah... T-That, it was your idea in the first place, r-right?"

"D-Did I really say it like that...?" She didn't remember ever sounding so suggestive.

"You were the one who said it's going to be embarrassing. I'm not sure what you've got in store, but it's going to be extreme in my eyes, right?"

"O-Oh-" Maya noticed that she interpreted a little more into the suggestive part than the other girl. "Today really isn't my day..." Mumbling, she turned her head away in embarrassment. "S-Sure, let's do something really extreme~." The cat-girl broke a little and gave up.

Even so, after all that, the two spent the rest of the day apart from each other. The talk with Fen had made Maya incredibly conscious of the other girl, and she needed to cool her head. She had yet to get used to the feelings she was becoming aware of for the first time.

Once she felt calm enough to deal with her again, the cat-girl tried to think of an extreme plan to help Sophia get used to being confident, and even more importantly, to get back at her. Although Maya ignored the fact she got flustered all on her own and how the other girl was relatively innocent for once.