“Did mother send you to get me?” Natsumi sighed as she grabbed her electric guitar. With a swoosh, the guitar she held disappeared in an instant. “If that's the case, you're wasting your time. I'll go home when I want to, but it wouldn’t be today.”

“Greetings, I’m Mashiro Shimizu Mikan. You can call me Mashiro. I was just doing the dishes and I heard your singing, so I’ve come here.” I walked towards her and sat on top of the tree stump next to her.

Perhaps it was distrust, but I felt confident it was more of anxiety and annoyance of me sitting and being close to her that made her fiddle her fingers awkwardly. I nudged her clothes and tapped the empty tree stump next to me. She sighed, but didn’t complain any further and sat next to me. I could feel her blue hair touching my shoulder.

“Yeah, right. As if someone would just casually be on the easternmost of the continent, close to the dragon nests, and know my name.” I noticed that she was glancing around at the butterfly flying around us. She occasionally poked some of them, and there was even a butterfly that would land on her finger. “I’m not… coming home.”

Looking at her… I was in a daze. It was disorienting and I felt lost. My brain shuffled its way through, finding the right words to respond. However, there was nothing I wanted to say. I found myself following her and watching the butterfly together in the middle of the night.

“Your mother is… worried.” I muttered, with a volume so low I was worried she couldn’t hear. But the flicker of her fox ears perhaps signified that she did hear it, especially with her next line.

“You don’t know that! You don’t know what I’ve been through!” Natsumi yelled, scaring away the butterflies. Her blue hair spread apart crazily.

It was loud, and scary. However, I didn’t feel anything but exasperation. The more words she spew, the more irritating it became. I peered straight to her eyes, it was like looking at a mirror. Nevertheless, I gulped down my annoyance, and hugged her.

“Please, talk to her. Everything is okay, you don’t have to act strong anymore. Just… Please, don’t leave,” I whispered to her ear while holding her tight. I couldn’t make out her face. The only thing I was able to tell was her silence.

It felt… nauseating. I was mimicking Mashiro’s speech pattern and tried to comfort the girl in front of me, the same way as she would in the game. The moment I saw her, I knew who she was, the same way as I knew how I was Mashiro upon seeing my reflection. She was Natsumi, the character I hated the most in Luminous Dream.

“Please, take care of yourself.” I kept hugging her tightly.

This was it. This was why I hated her, why I felt jealous of Natsumi. She was Mashiro’s rival since they were in different bands, but most importantly, she was Mashiro’s best friend. Watching the anime and playing the gacha game, I could relate to Natsumi so much that it was practically looking at myself in the mirror. The way she acted, the problems she faced. However, unlike Natsumi, I didn’t have Mashiro. I was alone.

“Are you… okay?” Natsumi asked. I was trapped inside my mind so much that I hadn’t realized she let go of my hug and stared at me. Her dark blue eyes were looking straight at me with concern.

“Ah…” I muttered out loud. Without realizing it, tears came dripping down on my cheek. I was overwhelmed with so much emotion that I didn’t know what to feel anymore. I always wanted to be hugged by Mashiro, and for her to tell me everything would be okay. “Sorry, I was just… sleepy.”

Natsumi sighed heavily as she stood up. She waved her hand around and a piece of gem materialized in her hand. It was rainbow colored, and shiny, just like the one I got from the slime earlier. However, the size of it was a lot bigger than the one I got. Roughly two times bigger, just slightly bigger than the standard coin.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Fine, I’ll go back to Vulprithal.” She reached out her hand to give the gems to me. “Here’s the reward for you. It’s something I got from a dungeon, but I don’t know what it is. It might sell for a lot of money.”

I graciously accepted her offerings. After taking the gem from her hand, I imagined the gems disappeared. Just like that, the gem I was holding was replaced by a text bubble.

[+25 Luminous Gem]

“Thanks… Though I’ve heard they’re useless.” I repeated the phrase I’ve heard from Catherine, which was met by a total disbelief and even anger expression from Natsumi.

“Of course they’re not! They look beautiful!” Natsumi yelled in denial, which drained all color from my face. Those strings of words made me realize one of her adorable, yet dumb personalities that I could never relate to. “Since it looks like a good gem, it would fetch a good price!”

“Natsumi, you never get… scammed or anything, right?” I asked.

With an offended pout, she responded, “Of course not! I always score the best deals from the marketplace. Like this ring—supposedly worn by a level 1000 hero during an epic battle with dragons—and this bracelet, which was apparently a meteorite from another world, forged in the heart of a dying star!”

“Are you sure you weren’t being deceived by those vendors?” Even though I’ve only been in this world for two days, I was sure that those item descriptions sounded ridiculous. But there was also the chance that it might be true, so I asked.

“You’re such a worrywart,” Natsumi said as she took off her bracelet. She walked towards a nearby rock and raised her hand holding the bracelet and started to beat the rock using the bracelet. “Of course it’s super durable and real, see?”

The moment she finished saying that, the bracelet that was allegedly a forged meteorite from another world shattered into pieces. Leaving nothing but a small lump of metal. Feeling shocked and speechless, she watched the broken bracelet in silence for a while.

“Um… Anything else?” I asked.

I could sense that her eyes were slowly turning moist. Even in another world, it seemed that her airhead personality didn’t change. She was still the same Natsumi I’ve read and watched on the series. There were so many episodes of her buying things on impulse and not realizing it was a scam.

“Well… There was also this. I spent so much gold on it because the person selling it told me that it would give me legendary power…” said Natsumi as she materialized a ticket with the name redshift written on it. She gave the ticket to me with a dejected voice, “whatever, you can have it.’

I simply accepted it with an awkward “thanks.”

“Well, I’ll be going now. Thanks for everything, Mashiro.” I saw her smiling for the first time. It was a peculiar feeling, seeing the character I related to so much coming to life in another world. Still, I didn’t mind this feeling.

I watched the butterflies circling me and Natsumi rather conspicuously. I didn’t know why they did it, or where the butterflies even came from, but their shiny blue light gave an ethereal feeling that enhanced Natsumi’s beautiful smile.

However, that smile ended rather quickly as the sound of rustle could be heard from the bushes. The lack of light made us even more wary, as we stood next to each other, facing the source of the noise. I consciously willed the ticket I was holding to disappear and summon the training sword.

[+1 Redshift Ticket]

That sense of wariness completely vanished as soon as I saw the figure that caused the rustling bushes. A familiar witch hat and magic staff was apparent as she walked closer.

“...?” The familiar noise from Catherine could be heard. She had the same shocked face from when she met me for the first time.

Even though my guard was relaxed, the fox girl next to me still remained cautious. She was visibly shaking, while Catherine's eyes dropped down, avoiding Natsumi’s gaze.

“Natsumi, relax! She's friendly–"Just before I could finish my sentence, Natsumi’s blue eyes shined into a really light blue color. In the next moment, her body was completely replaced by hundreds of blue roses, leaving nothing of her flesh. She completely disappeared.

“Well, that was to be expected.” Catherine sighed disappointedly as she gripped her witch hat tightly. It was an inexpressible sense that I couldn’t explain in her eyes. However, one thing I could tell was that she kept avoiding my gaze as I tried to make eye contact. Catherine’s mouth started to move and uttered something in such a low volume that I could barely hear, “I’m sorry.”