–+–
Sandrone pushed open the unlocked door.
To her surprise, the place didn’t smell dusty at all.
Instead, it carried a dry scent, like the house had only just been renovated.
It was daytime, but with no windows open and no lights on, the room still looked dim.
The first floor had the typical layout of a shop converted into a home.
There were no extra furnishings, which made the space feel almost too empty.
Sandrone planted her hands on her hips and looked around.
The walls were a clean off-white.
The floor was paved with pale gray tiles that looked a little cold.
Against one wall sat a long dark gray fabric sofa, covered by a thin dust sheet, sitting all alone in the wide-open room.
Aside from that, there was nothing.
“Clean enough, I guess,” she said.
Her tone made it hard to tell if she was pleased or nitpicking.
Columbina had already drifted up the stairs in silence, light as a butterfly.
Not long after, the girl’s airy voice floated down from upstairs, clear and faintly echoing.
“Sandrone, come look.”
Sandrone let out a sigh so soft it was almost inaudible.
She closed the front door and went up the stairs.
The wooden steps gave off small, solid thumps under her feet.
When she reached the last step, she followed the light with her eyes and saw Columbina standing at the doorway of the room at the end of the hall.
It was a bedroom.
Noon sunlight poured through the bare glass window.
In the center of the room sat a large bed, and its style clashed hard with the simple, modern design of the rest of the house.
Columbina stood at the bedroom door, her pink eyes wide with curiosity as she stared at the bed inside.
“This bed…” Columbina tilted her head, a trace of doubt in her airy voice.
“It’s a little like our bed we had in Snezhnaya?”
Sandrone had only just reached the door.
Without thinking too much, she glanced over the bed and followed the thought.
“It is a little like it.”
The moment the words left her mouth, she froze.
Wait.
Our bed?
“What do you mean, ‘our bed’? That was my bed! You just used to… used to come over without asking and curl up on it all the time!”
Columbina blinked.
Her pink eyes looked innocent.
“But, Sandrone, that bed was very comfortable. And you never chased me away.”
“That was…”
Hadn’t they had a talk like this not long ago?!
“…Forget it. I’m not wasting my breath on you!”
Sandrone crossed her arms and lifted her chin, trying to cover a strange guilty feeling with sheer force of presence.
“Go, go. In any case, go find your own bedroom. This room is mine. I’m not used to sharing a bed, so you can sleep next door or in some other room!”
Columbina didn’t move.
She only stood there in silence, her gaze passing over Sandrone’s shoulder and down the short hallway behind her, a hallway so short you could see the end at a glance.
“But, Sandrone.”
The girl’s voice was soft and light, like a feather brushing the heart.
“This house only has one bedroom.”
“Huh?”
Sandrone froze for a second, then turned and strode out of the bedroom.
She made a full round of the second floor.
The second floor was divided into a living area, with a separate bathroom, a storage room, an open kitchen corner, and one bedroom.
Only one.
She walked back to the bedroom door, stiff from head to toe.
“Only one bedroom?” Sandrone’s voice sounded dry.
“Mm.” Columbina nodded, as if it were only natural.
“And only one bed.”
The two of them stared at each other at the doorway for two seconds.
Columbina suddenly leaned half a step closer.
She tilted her head up, seeming a little confused.
“Sandrone, aren’t we living together?”
A cool, clear fragrance rushed over at once, forcing Sandrone to lift her head a little.
“Who’d want to live with you—! Uh, we… we are, of course, of course we’re living together!”
Looking into those pink eyes so close to her, eyes that reflected her own flustered face, she felt the heat in her cheeks rise at a rate that made no sense.
“Then this will be our home from now on,” Columbina said, tilting her head and giving the place a fatal definition.
“What do you mean, ‘our home’?!”
Sandrone’s voice shot up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
“We’re just coworkers! Uh, former coworkers… This is just a temporary base! A temporary place to stay! Don’t use that kind of… that kind of weird word to describe it!”
“Then isn’t that our home?” Columbina’s logic formed a perfect loop.
Her tone was firm.
“You—!”
Sandrone opened her mouth, but a thousand words clogged her chest.
In the end, they turned into a current of shame and anger that shot straight to the top of her head.
Did this dove truly not understand, or was she pretending not to?!
“That’s enough, Columbina!”
She stomped hard.
Her heel struck the wooden floor with a sharp thud, as if that could vent the restless heat she had nowhere to put.
“Hmph! I don’t care anymore! Even if you sleep on the sofa, don’t think you can… Forget it! I don’t have time to argue about sleeping arrangements right now! I’m going to summon Pulonia!”
With that, she spun around, moving so fast that she stirred up a breeze.
Columbina watched Sandrone’s rather flustered back vanish down the stairs.
She stood where she was, and the corner of her mouth curved up by the smallest amount.
“Oh… she’s shy.”
She murmured the words, then stepped after her with light feet, like a clingy cat.
Even after Sandrone went downstairs, she could still feel her cheeks burning.
So what if there’s only one bed?
It’s not like we haven’t slept together before…
She took several deep breaths before she managed to force down the heat in her face.
Calm down, Sandrone.
Calm down.
Sandrone breathed in a few more times and forced the tangled thoughts out of her head.
The most urgent matter was getting back her own military support.
She stood in the empty hall on the first floor and looked up, judging the ceiling height by eye.
It should be enough to hold Pulonia’s huge frame.
“Good thing the ceiling is high enough. Otherwise that guy Pulonia would tear through the second floor.”
She took out the ticket Aha had given her, tore off the stub according to the instructions, and held it in her palm.
“…That’s it?”
The scrap of paper in her hand turned into countless points of light and scattered.
But everything around her stayed quiet.
Nothing happened.
The tall mechanical automaton she had expected didn’t appear.
Sandrone looked left and right.
Her brows drew tighter and tighter.
“Where’s Pulonia? That bastard wouldn’t lie to me, would he?”
Bang!
A deafening blast went off in the open space without warning, along with a burst of flashy colored smoke and glitter.
Sandrone’s shoulders jumped, and she took half a step back on instinct.
When the smoke cleared, a huge, gaudy gift box with an overblown bow had appeared out of thin air in the center of the living room.
The gift box was absurdly large.
It was even taller than Sandrone.
“…”
Sandrone frowned hard and stared at the roughly two-meter-tall box with caution.
“Pulonia? Pulonia? Can you hear my orders?”
She called out to test it.
No sound of machinery answered her.
The box only stood there in silence.
“…That bastard really loves making trouble!”
Sandrone complained as she reached for the lid at the top of the gift box.
And yet—
She couldn’t reach it.
The box’s height was hostile to her.
She looked around, but there was no suitable tool in sight.
In the end, she had to rise onto her toes and stretch her arm as far as she could, trying to hook the edge of the lid.
Because the movement was too large, the hem of her elegant dress swayed with her.
She looked like a ragdoll cat trying with all its might to reach a cat treat.
“Pfft~”
A soft laugh came from behind her.
Sandrone froze at once.
She whipped her head around and saw Columbina leaning against the stair rail.
The girl had covered her mouth, but her crescent-shaped eyes had already betrayed her.
“That’s enough, Columbina! What are you laughing at?!” Sandrone felt her blood pressure climb again and shouted in embarrassment.
“Are you done watching the show? Come help me already! Whoever designed this thing must hate humans!”
Columbina hopped down from the stairs as if she weighed nothing, landing beside Sandrone like a feather.
“I’m here~”
With Columbina helping, the two of them each grabbed one side of the huge lid.
“One, two, three—open!”
At Sandrone’s command, they pulled at the same time.
With their combined strength, the giant lid finally lifted at one corner.
Strangely enough, the moment the lid broke away from the box, it went pop in midair and turned into a puff of smoke before vanishing.
The box still stood there, lidless and open at the top.
“What a pain. Why hasn’t the box disappeared?”
Sandrone complained as she jumped up, grabbed the edge of the gift box, and peered inside.
“Pulonia? Are you in—”
The instant her face moved close to the inside of the box—
Boing!
A loud spring noise rang out.
A huge clown mask painted in bright colors shot out of the box like a cannonball.
Its mouth stretched all the way to its ears, and it flew straight at Sandrone’s face.
“—?!”
Sandrone’s pupils shrank.
Caught off guard, she stumbled backward from the sudden scare.
The intimate meeting with the floor she had expected never came.
Her back sank into softness and fragrance.
A pair of slender but strong arms caught her with perfect steadiness.
At some point, Columbina had appeared behind her.
She wrapped her arms around Sandrone’s waist from behind and held her in her arms, stopping her from falling to the floor.
“Careful.”
The girl’s voice sounded by her ear, carrying a trace of comfort so faint it was almost hidden.
“…Hah.”
Sandrone leaned in Columbina’s arms.
Her heart, no, her core, had nearly leapt out of her chest.
After several seconds of dead silence, her anger erupted like a volcano.
“That bastard! Animal! Cheap prank with no sense of beauty! Ill-mannered, rotten…”
A string of Snezhnayan curses that would never make it past censorship poured from the mouth of this elegant-looking girl.
Columbina, on the other hand, looked calm.
She even seemed to find it a little fun.
She reached out and pulled a gaudy ticket from the mouth of the clown mask, which was still swaying in midair.
The moment the ticket came free—
Bang!
The huge scare box exploded, turning into countless scraps of colored paper, glitter, and ribbons that drifted all over the first-floor hall.
In the center of the mess, only a palm-sized little gift box tied with a delicate ribbon remained.
“How magical,” Columbina said as she watched the glitter fall.
She caught one piece with her hand, her voice carrying pure wonder.
“What’s magical about it?! It’s just that bastard!”
Sandrone’s face grew even darker as she looked at the mess.
“We still have to clean up all this trash later!”
“All right! Stop holding my waist!” Sandrone straightened up out of Columbina’s arms and fixed her slightly messy bangs in a huff.
“Hurry up and see what nonsense is written on that thing.”
Columbina unfolded the ticket in her hand.
It still had that teasing layout, still used that infuriating cursive font, and the writing leaned this way and that, as if it had been written with some kind of color-changing ink.
–+–
[Joyous Troupe Logistics Apology Letter]
[To our dear VIP customer:]
[Oopsie, so sorry, so sorry! (>ω<)]
[I checked the tracking number just now and found that there was a tiny little error with the spatial coordinates of the delivery address~]
[It was located at the place where the second transport ticket was used~]
[And then, due to a teeny-tiny spatial disturbance during delivery, it sadly “came apart”!]
[Current status: torn limb from limb (crossed out) stored in separate locations (0/5)]
[Your “loyal guardian,” Pulonia, has currently been split into five parts and randomly scattered across every corner of the Cretan Hollow.]
[(That’s right! The same place you two just came out of!)]
[Special Mission: Puzzle Game!]
[Instructions: Five pieces in total! Head, torso, limbs… probably split that way?]
[Special Compensation: To express Aha’s tiny bit of regret, I have cast “invisibility that no one can see through” on these five parts. Valid for three days.]
[During these three days, no one except you two can find them~]
[So there’s no need to rush. Take your time. Treat it as a treasure hunt full of love!]
[If you don’t go look for them… they’ll probably get used as chew toys by the Ethereals in the Hollow, right?]
[—Your loyal and occasionally butterfingered Aha, with love ~♥]
–+–
After reading the last line, Columbina lifted her head and looked at Sandrone.
Sandrone’s face had gone as black as the bottom of a pot.
She snatched the ticket over and stared hard at that line, her knuckles turning white from how tightly she gripped it.
“What?! Five pieces?! That bastard took Pulonia… apart?! And left him in that Hollow?!”
That precise Pulonia, the one she had poured so much time and effort into tuning, had been broken into five pieces?
And she had to go back to that damned place to find them?
“And I have to put him back together…” Sandrone ground her teeth.
“Where in this awful place am I supposed to find the tools and parts to restore Pulonia?!”
Columbina lifted a hand and stroked the top of Sandrone’s head, as if soothing a cat with its fur standing on end.
Normally, Sandrone would have slapped that hand away by now.
But at this moment, all of her attention was nailed to the ticket, and she noticed nothing else.
Columbina crouched, picked up the little gift box left on the floor, and opened it without hesitation.
Thankfully, nothing strange appeared this time.
On the inside of the lid were four large words: “Newbie Benefits.”
“Sandrone, look.” Columbina handed her the box.
Sandrone took a deep breath and accepted it while trying to force down the urge to kill someone.
Inside the box were two brand-new cards: citizen IDs, which seemed to serve as identification in this world.
There was also a bank card.
A sticky note on the back listed the password and one short line: “Spend it carefully. This is your food money for the week.”
“…”
Sandrone no longer had the strength to curse.
With a dark face, she took out the citizen IDs and bank card.
Under the cards lay two sleek rectangular devices with black screens.
“These are… the things called phones.”
Sandrone picked up one of the phones and pressed the power button.
The moment the screen lit up, her whole body froze.
On the wallpaper was a picture of her and Columbina in that pure white void, sleeping face-to-face with their heads leaned together.
In the image, Columbina’s lashes were long as feathers.
And she herself… had somehow slept with no guard up at all, even with the faintest relaxed curve at the corner of her mouth, a look she had never noticed on herself.
When was this picture taken?!
Was that bastard watching even then?!
Heat burst up to her head with a boom.
Sandrone’s cheeks reddened at a visible speed, and her fingers tightened around the phone until her knuckles turned pale.
She almost threw the phone on instinct, but what remained of her reason held her back by force.
This was one of the only three communication tools they currently had.
“…A! Ha!” She squeezed the name out from between her teeth, her voice filled with a young girl’s wavering urge to kill.
Sandrone stared hard at the sleeping faces on the screen, her fingertips going white.
The next second, she slapped the phone screen down into her palm, as if doing so could crush both that image and a certain god of fun.
“Hah…”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Anger wouldn’t solve the problem.
When she opened her eyes again, most of the frenzy had faded.
“Take it. One for each of us.”
Sandrone handed the phone to Columbina.
Her movement was brisk, and her tone had returned to its usual calm, though it still sounded a little stiff.
“Do you know how to use it?”
Columbina took the phone.
Her gaze lingered for a moment on Sandrone’s tense profile and slightly red ear tips before she lowered her head.
She tried swiping the screen and found it rather easy to use.
“Mm, no problem~”
“Hmph. At least you’re somewhat useful.”
Sandrone picked up the other phone and tossed the empty box into the corner.
It hit the wall with a soft thud.
“Back in Snezhnaya, you came to the lab and bothered me so many times. I guess it wasn’t a complete waste.”
She stopped looking at Columbina.
Her fingers moved quickly over the screen, as if testing its functions.
“Are we going to look for Pulonia now?”
Columbina’s voice sounded.
She lifted her head, her clear pink eyes turning toward Sandrone.
“…No.”
Sandrone’s fingers paused for half a second before she gave her answer.
“That bastard is awful, but since he said it’ll be fine for three days, we don’t need to rush.”
She walked to the sofa and lifted the dust sheet.
Dust danced in the sunlight.
She didn’t sit down right away.
Instead, she ran her fingertip across the sofa’s fabric and continued sorting through her thoughts.
“Fifty thousand Dennies.” She glanced at the thin bank card, frowned slightly, then relaxed her brow.
“That’ll only keep us alive here for a very short time.”
She thought back to the Bangboo that had guided them through the Hollow with exact precision.
“We need information. We need to understand this world’s currency, factions, common sense… and above all, the rules for entering and moving through Hollows.”
At last, she sat down and leaned back a little, setting the phone aside.
“But…”
Sandrone lifted her gaze and fixed it on Columbina, who stood in the shadows.
There was no shame or anger in her eyes now.
This was the cool, measured look of Sandrone, the “Marionette,” studying and questioning.
“Columbina, before we learn about this world, there are some things we need to talk about first.”