The Soft Sensation
As for what became of that remaining one—I'd gone to rest and promptly fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Only when I finally dragged myself awake did I realize my gacha results had been a success.
The result of the second pull…?
—Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
The shock of burning through that first ten-pull for nothing hit harder than I'd expected. If this had still been ordinary reality, a single ten-pull wouldn't have been enough to stress me out like this. It was just a game, after all—if you really needed something, you could whale for it, or sit tight and wait for the freebies the companies handed out.
But the situation I was in now?
—Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
The shrill alarm blaring in my ears, the plush give of the jelly mattress under me, the cozy warmth of the blanket and pillow I was buried under—I could feel all of it for real. And then there was that Logout Impossible message I'd seen barely two weeks ago. The fact that I was genuinely living inside this goddamn game turned even these little things into a source of pure irritation.
Ah, damn it.
It wasn't as if I'd worked myself to the bone the day before, either. I'd only come back to rest—I never expected I'd just pass out cold. I kept fidgeting in bed, turning over in my mind why I'd done that, and after about a minute I arrived at an answer.
Until now, Jessica and Ignis had somehow kept my mental state held together. But the moment I registered that my precious free ten-pull had gone down in spectacular flames, every scrap of stress and fatigue I'd been stacking up detonated in a single explosive chain reaction.
Tch. At this rate I'm finished.
Once that thought landed, I decided this really wasn't okay. Of course, maybe I was the only one who felt that way—maybe everyone else would just shrug it off. But looking at the replies piled up under the post I'd written in chat, I had to admit I might have been overreacting.
So I sorted through the mess in my head, decided to shore up my crumbling mental state, and resolved to grind the quests still stacked up, farm more gacha currency, and throw another pull properly this time.
—Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
"Ah, for fuck's sake."
Still seething at the alarm that refused to shut up, I kicked off the blanket and reached back without looking—expecting the clock to be in its usual spot so I could silence the noise behind me.
And right then—
—Squish♡
"…Huh?"
The hand I'd stretched behind me sank into something extremely soft and plush, and stopped dead.
What is this?
The texture was similar to my private bedroom's mattress, but heavier somehow—and warmer, even accounting for body heat built up overnight.
—Knead, knead.
There was no way a mattress would be sitting in that position. And the more I pressed, the clearer it became that this felt subtly different from my bed's gel mattress. Still wondering what on earth I was touching, I kept kneading it with my fingers while slowly turning my head to look—
And the moment I turned around.
"At last, you're looking this way, Master…♡"
—Knead, knead.
"Aahn♡"
There she was: a golden-haired nun with a chest so enormous that even my hands—which I'd always considered fairly large—couldn't fully cup it. No. The highest-tier large-scale combat character who had once handled firepower alongside the battleships in my fleet. The SSS-grade Super known by the epithet Saint of Explosion.
Pashtura was lying right beside me.
Naturally, the second I registered that fact, I pulled my hand off her chest as casually as I could manage. There were a dozen questions I wanted to fire at the woman who'd somehow ended up in someone else's bed—but first, as a functioning adult, I decided to start with the proper greetings.
"…It's been a while, Pashtura."
"It truly has, Commander♡"
Pashtura, who tagged a heart onto the end of every sentence, shifted her body into the spot where I'd been lying and kept talking.
"Do you have any idea how desolate I felt while you were gone, Commander?"
"Mm."
—Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
She wrapped her whole body around the residual warmth still left in the bed, the blanket, the mattress—as if determined to soak up every last trace of my body heat and scent. Watching her, I gave a small nod of acknowledgment.
"Back then I wasn't free to move as I pleased, so I never got to witness the moment you vanished…"
"Mm."
—Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
"Never again. I will never again watch you disappear with both eyes open…♡"
"Ah—right."
But the look in her eyes went far beyond mere affection. There was no word that could properly capture the mad, obsessive light burning in them. Faced with that gaze, I felt an overwhelming sense of pressure—and the damn alarm still blaring kept shattering my concentration.
—Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
"Could we maybe turn that alarm off first and then talk?"
"Oh my. My mistake."
I got Pashtura—who had been sprawled across the bed like a human floor mat, blocking the way—to silence the alarm. The second it stopped, though, something else happened. Because I'd stayed shut in my room instead of coming out like usual—
—Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud… BANG!
"Commaaandeer! Is something wrong? Are you unwell somehow?!"
Our Jessica came flying from the command center in a single breathless sprint, worried about my body, and flung the door wide open.
The result of Jessica's desperate entrance was immediate. She'd shoved me—who had been trying to put distance between myself and Pashtura, and so was lying closer to the doorway—straight forward. With my frail ordinary-human body, I got clipped by the door she'd thrown open and toppled face-first.
"Ah—I-I'm so sorry!"
And given where I'd been lying, getting hit by the door meant I pitched forward straight onto my bed. The critical problem was who was currently on that bed: Pashtura, sitting there half-naked as if deliberately trying to seduce me. Every piece of the situation locked into place with exquisite timing.
—THUNK!
"A-aah?! Pashtura?!"
"Auhn…♡"
In an instant I found my head buried between the cleavage of the woman sitting on the bed, while Pashtura—caught completely off guard—took a full-force headbutt from an adult man square in the abdomen.
Anyway, after all that.
Pashtura had just taken a gut-punch from my skull, but she was SSS-grade for a reason. She was back on her feet in a flash, and now she was delivering a proper, formal greeting to me once more in the command center.
"It's a pleasure to meet you again, Commander. I am Pashtura, the Saint of Explosion. From this moment forward, I place myself under your command."
"Mm. Right."
I returned the greeting naturally, taking in the sight of her for the first time in three years: the shimmering golden hair, the reddish horns set against it, a figure so violently curvaceous that Jessica and Ignis couldn't even begin to compare—and the utterly deranged, barely-there "nun's habit" that only just managed to cover any of it. Then I pulled up her status window.