Shu…
Mama Shu?
Even with her normally mild temperament, Shu couldn’t quite maintain her composure after seeing that nickname.
Judging purely by age, perhaps she was old enough to deserve such a title.
But she was only the sixth among her siblings!
Surely that didn’t mean she deserved to be called “Mama.”
[Kashiwagi Eri: Tch. Just look at that disgusting expression of his.]
[Yakumo: Shu is a woman who could become my mother.jpg]
[Yakumo: You guys probably don’t even have that meme over there. How pitiful. A world without Gundam.]
[Kashiwagi Eri: Who cares?!]
[Yakumo: If you’re really Shu, then whatever I say next, please don’t be scared.]
[Kashiwagi Eri: After that terrifying bombshell you just dropped on me, I don’t think anything can scare me anymore.]
Eriri held her forehead, having completely forgotten about her lost line art.
Who could possibly think about something like that after learning they were a character in a novel?
That kind of revelation shattered a person’s entire worldview!
[Yakumo: Actually, you don’t need to worry that much. The version of you in the novel didn’t have this chat group, did she? Just think of the novel as one possible future. Besides, your world doesn’t seem to have any power that lets you experience alternate timelines or branches, right?]
[Yakumo: Anyway, we’re getting off topic. You should be able to change your usernames yourselves. Try it later. Back to Shu.]
Shu had been preparing to ask another question after watching the conversation derail.
But seeing Yakumo’s message, she quietly stopped typing and changed her username to Shu.
Although…
A moment ago he’d been calling her Mama Shu.
Now it was Sister Shu.
That was quite a dramatic change in seniority.
[Yakumo: I know a fair amount about all three of you. Furina too. Unlike Eriri, though, I learned about Shu and Furina through games. Mobile games, specifically.]
[Eriri: Tsk, tsk. I can practically smell the money you’ve dumped into gacha from here. Don’t tell me you’ve hit hard pity before. Hahaha.]
[Yakumo: How did you know I pulled Shu to Potential 3 in Arknights without spending money, and got Furina to Constellation 2 in Genshin?]
[Eriri: Nobody asked, you damn class enemy!]
[Yakumo: Back to Sister Shu. What year is it in Terra right now? Has Rhodes Island appeared yet? What about Reunion? Is Jie still alive? Has Wang split himself apart yet?]
[Shu: It seems you really do know something about me, although I do not quite understand what “Potential 3” means. As for Third Sister, she has already passed away. Second Brother’s situation also seems to be…]
[Shu: As for this “Rhodes Island” and “Reunion” you mentioned, I have not heard of either.]
[Shu: The year is 1050.]
[Yakumo: So it’s already that year… That explains it. Still, there’s quite a while before the curtain truly rises, so there’s no need to rush.]
[Yakumo: Also, Sister Shu, could you send me a bowl of rice? I’ve been eating bread for weeks. I’m about to forget what rice tastes like…]
The staple food in the little village was bread.
Rice didn’t exist there.
For someone like Yakumo, who felt as though lunch didn’t count unless he ate rice, this was practically torture.
[Yakumo: I’ll send you guys some of the bread from my side too, so you won’t accuse me of being picky.]
Yakumo’s panel wasn’t actually the chat group itself, but he did have a mailbox function.
Sending items through the mailbox produced essentially the same result.
The group-file function seemed to correspond to the Guild Storage on his system panel.
[Eriri: What the heck is this?! It’s so hard, and it feels all rough when I bite it!]
[Eriri: Wait, you seriously sent it over?!]
Eriri stared blankly at the half-bitten loaf in her hand.
Everything that had happened before could perhaps still be explained somehow.
But an object being teleported into her hand out of thin air?
She couldn’t think of any explanation for that.
[Furina: This doesn’t even deserve to be called bread! Wait right there! The great Lady Furina shall show you what real bread and cake are supposed to taste like!]
[Yakumo: Fufu, wait a second! Let me first explain what I know about all of you, then I’ll tell you about myself. Right now, you know almost nothing about me while I know all sorts of things about you. That’s pretty unfair, isn’t it?]
[Furina: Very well. The great Lady Furina shall exercise a little patience.]
Inside the Palais Mermonia, Neuvillette sat at the head of the room and watched Furina beside him suddenly spring to her feet, wave her arms around dramatically, then immediately sit back down again.
He shook his head.
Had Furina been under too much pressure lately?
This didn’t look so much like one of her performances as…
A nervous breakdown?
But Furina was far too preoccupied to care what Neuvillette thought.
She desperately wanted to know what the future held.
She had occupied the position of Hydro Archon for more than three hundred years.
Without some kind of hope, she didn’t know whether she could keep going.
[Shu: I found it. Is this the “red packet” function?]
[Shu: I have heard that during the Great Yan New Year, human elders give red packets to their juniors. Hehe. Seeing the words “red packet” inevitably reminds me of those two younger sisters of mine. It is rather amusing.]
[Shu: As it happens, it is almost lunchtime here. I left some meat soup simmering in a pot this morning. Why don’t I let everyone have a taste?]
[Yakumo: Sob… As expected, Shu really is a woman who could become my mother.]
A mail notification appeared on Yakumo’s system interface.
He clicked to claim the attachment.
Just as Shu had said, he received a serving of rice and a bowl of meat soup.
The taste he hadn’t experienced in so long nearly brought tears of joy to his eyes.
[Shu: I suddenly feel the urge to plant you back into the ground and grow you again from scratch. Sigh.jpg]
Shu had learned how to use memes!
[Eriri: I feel like my entire worldview is being assaulted…]
[Yakumo: Relax. At times like this, all you have to do is smile.]
[Eriri: Quoting Evangelion at me isn’t going to help!]
[Yakumo: Huh? You actually have EVA over there? So some works overlap between our worlds. Maybe one day you’ll even be chatting with Shinji Ikari in this group.]
[Eriri: Somehow, that makes me feel even more complicated…]
[Yakumo: We’re off topic again… At this point in Sister Shu’s timeline, Great Yan is still relatively peaceful. Anything major involving the Sui siblings probably won’t happen for another fifty or sixty years. As for events that directly involve Shu, those are probably more than sixty years away.]
[Yakumo: I’ll search for it. Give me a moment and I’ll send you the page. If I’d known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have skipped the Here a People Sows storyline.]
While searching for plot explanations related to Here a People Sows, Yakumo continued chatting.
He also casually dropped a link to Shu’s EP into the group, just to give everyone a small taste of the full power of Mama Shu.
[Yakumo: As for Fufu, I don’t think I should directly send you a link. The plan to save Fontaine has to remain secret. I don’t know whether telling you everything in advance might create some kind of butterfly effect.]
[Yakumo: Let me ask this first. How many years has it been since you took the position of Hydro Archon? Neuvillette is there too, right?]
Furina’s expression had dimmed when she read Yakumo’s first message.
She’d almost accused him of being a liar.
But the second message reignited the hope in her heart so quickly that she didn’t even care about him calling her “Fufu.”
[Furina: More than three hundred years. To be precise, three hundred and sixty-five years!]