[Mu Continent · Fire Moth Base]
[Staff Dormitory]
When Elysia woke up, daylight was already flooding the room. She slowly sat up in bed and instinctively turned her head, looking for Kiyono Inori. The moment she did, she froze.
The vanity mirror, the wardrobe, the soft fluffy pillows. This was her room!
She looked down at her hands. The small, dainty, unbearably cute little cat paws were gone. In their place were the familiar hands of a beautiful, adorable pink-haired girl.
A girl's voice echoed in her mind.
"When you lose consciousness in another world, you will cross over into this one. When you lose consciousness in this world, you will return to the world you came from."
Elysia hurriedly checked the time. It was already past eleven, nearly noon.
"One, two, three…"
She counted on her fingers. She had spent about sixteen or seventeen hours over there, but here only twelve or thirteen hours had passed.
A ratio of one to one point two five.
For every one point two five hours she spent as a cat, the Elysia here slept for one hour. After arriving at the correct conclusion, the pink fairy nodded proudly.
"Huh? Of course. As expected of me."
But then…
"Even if turning into a cat lets me shamelessly cuddle up to girls, what on earth was all that?" Elysia clutched her head, a headache coming on.
Rubbing a fluffy cat head against a girl's legs. Using a tail to secretly make heart shapes. Meowing without a shred of shame and getting away with everything by being cute.
On the very first day, snooping through a girl's phone. Seriously researching some nonsense like "turning Mobius into a cat" instead of, I do not know, figuring out what kind of world that even was.
And on top of that, crawling into a girl's bed.
What was all that supposed to be! Thinking back on it now, Miss Pink Fairy was cringing so hard she might explode.
It was a dream.
One hundred percent a dream.
Even if the girl named Kiyono Inori in the dream was incredibly cute, that still did not make it okay to casually look through someone's phone or climb into a girl's bed.
Elysia's self-awareness was very clear.
Sure, she liked meeting pretty girls, and if someone blushed shyly she could not help teasing them a little. But she was a girl with very strong boundaries.
The real her.
Forget boldly climbing into a girl's bed. She had never even slept in the same bed as another girl before. Cat-form Elysia was way too bold.
Thank goodness it was just a dream.
She had nearly ruined her image as the Pink Fairy and turned into some terrible fairy who casually crawls into other people's beds. If she had to do it over again, she would rather freeze to death than crawl into someone else's bed.
Well… even though that strangely precious experience of "the first time crawling into a girl's bed" was now gone.
Still, she did not feel like she had lost out too badly. After all, the girl in the dream was really cute. Meow. That thought alone became the root of Miss Pink Fairy's shame.
Elysia, oh Elysia, how could you fall this far? Starting today, quit it.
…
"Ah, Elysia, good afternoon. Didn't see you this morning. Did our ace go off on another mission?"
"Good day, Lady Elysia."
"Sister Elysia!"
Walking through the corridors of Fire Moth, Miss Pink Fairy felt an odd sense of unreality.
As a girl overflowing with whimsical ideas, Elysia often dreamed. Her dreams were bizarre and colorful. According to Mobius, it was because her brain activity during sleep was far more active than that of ordinary people.
Even so, Elysia slept very well. No matter how vivid her dreams were, she usually woke up with only vague impressions.
But this time was different. This dream was far too vivid.
Slurping noodles in the Fire Moth cafeteria, Elysia suddenly thought of the noodles the girl in her dream had made. She had not planned to eat noodles, but when she saw them, she picked them without thinking.
"They really aren't as good as hers…"
As the embarrassment slowly faded, Elysia realized something. That might not have been a dream. Or at the very least, it was not a simple one.
"You want to see Dr. MEI? And right now? She's in a seminar."
"It's urgent. Really urgent."
Elysia pressed her palms together. "Just tell Dr. MEI that Elysia has something extremely, extremely important to discuss with her. She'll definitely agree."
"Uh… but…"
Dr. MEI's assistant hesitated. In the end, under Elysia's repeated assurances as Fire Moth's number two combatant, she decided to make an exception.
Dr. MEI was one of Fire Moth's most famous scientists. Her father was a world-renowned electromagnetic physicist. From a young age, MEI had set her sights on becoming a scientist, and she published her first paper on quantum mechanics while still in high school.
Within Fire Moth, she now stood among the top tier of researchers, leading numerous experimental projects. Her status had already surpassed even the veteran Mobius.
At first, Elysia had wanted to ask Mobius, since she was more familiar with her. She had even brought Mobius lunch.
"E-ly-si-a! Do not touch my workbench! Ahhh, please, I'm begging you. Go find Dr. MEI instead. Her lab is well-funded. My budget is already scraping bottom, and those damn old fossils…"
Mobius was at a critical stage in her experiment, and Elysia was promptly kicked over to Dr. MEI.
After listening to Elysia's question, Dr. MEI rubbed her forehead as if a headache were coming on. "So what you're asking is whether another world truly exists, and whether it's possible to cross into another world while dreaming?"
"Yes, yes!"
Elysia nodded vigorously.
"You, me…" Dr. MEI felt her headache intensifying.
Quantum mechanics and parallel world theory were actually her specialties. After all, her first paper had been on exactly that topic.
But how to explain those concepts in a way Elysia could understand was an almost impossible challenge.
Even Dr. MEI could not think of a solution.
After all, Elysia's level of knowledge could generously be described as elementary school dropout.
This was like when a seven or eight-year-old relative interrupts your important work, brimming with excitement as they demand to discuss the truth of the universe and quantum mechanics with you.
That was precisely what Dr. MEI was facing.
Despite the headache, the other party was Elysia, a senior figure in Fire Moth.
Elysia had been active during the Second Honkai Eruption, and during the Third Honkai Eruption, she had even saved MEI's life.
There was no helping it.
MEI patiently explained quantum mechanics, the macroscopic world, and the many-worlds interpretation, simplifying them as much as possible and wrapping them up like a fairy tale.
The kind even a three-year-old could understand.
MEI did not know if other people's three-year-olds could understand it, but when she was three, her father explained it to her and she understood just fine.
"Hmm…!"
Across from her, the pink-haired girl sank into deep thought, eyes narrowed, looking like she was using every ounce of brainpower she had.
Pink Piggy: wide-eyed stare.
Damn it! Just a little more! Just a little more and I almost get it! What did Dr. MEI just say again? Ugh, my head is itching. Feels like I'm about to grow a brain. Meow!
In life, everyone must face many choices.
Everyone must carefully judge which choices will affect them for a lifetime.
The clever Pink Piggy sensed that if she could truly understand Dr. MEI's theory here and even draw inferences from it, her reputation would flip instantly.
She would upgrade straight from "beautiful, cute, and strong girl" to "smart, beautiful, cute, and strong girl."
If she could make even Dr. MEI look at her in a new light, who knew? She might even become Doctor Elysia.
An opportunity.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Elysia's brain was thinking faster than it ever had before.
Three minutes later.
Miss Pink Fairy collapsed limply into her chair, her face wearing the unmistakable expression of a pig-brain overload.
"Elysia! Elysia, are you okay?"
"I don't understand any of it! At all!"
…
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Let me know if I got a name wrong. I know basically nothing about MyGO.