She wore an oversizedborderline sloppypink bunny onesie, one foot in a fuzzy slipper, the other bare on the cold floor.
She seemed freshly yanked from sleep, her gaze still hazy.
Her doll-like face carried a faint, grouchy just-woke-up look.
She didn't even glance at Kei, who stood there frozen with the underwear in hand.
Rubbing her messy hair and stifling a yawn, she looked straight at Rei Ao on the sofa and asked, in a nasal, utterly familiar (borderline bossy) tone:
"Hey, Rei Ao, you big meaniehave you seen my thing?"
"The white one I think I accidentally flung it off when I teleported just now"
Her voice had a strange, cleansing purity to it, oddly mixed with a bone-deep laziness.
""
Rei Ao's hand, still holding his teacup, stalled mid-air. The corner of his mouth twitched of its own accord.
His expression was complicatedequal parts "I knew this would happen" and helpless amusement.
He slowly raised his hand and pointed at Shirogane Kei, who stood like a carved statue and at the very conspicuous little white scrap of fabric in her hand.
Gabriel (the blonde girl) followed his finger in confusion and turned her head.
Her gaze landed on Kei's hand.
The airwent dead silent.
Gabriel's sleepy eyes flew wide open!
Her fair cheeks flushed a shade even deeper than Kei's in an instant!
The tiny metal halo above her head flickered a few times, suddenly blazing brighter!
"Eeeek!!!" she yelped, a short, explosive scream laced with bottomless shame and fury.
~~~
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Chapter 888: Another Gabriel Accident
After that mortified scream, Gabriel pounced like a cat with its tail stepped on, and in a blur snatched "that" back from Shirogane Kei's frozen hand.
"Y-youyou! Don't look!!"
Flustered, she balled the little undergarment up and shoved it into her pajama pocket, then pointed at Rei Ao with a face burning from shame, golden eyes blazing.
"Rei Ao, you big jerk! This is all your fault!!"
Shame and anger shorted out her brain; she even forgot how she'd gotten here.
"How is that my fault," Rei Ao said with a helpless smile.
Gabriel only wanted to flee this scene of social death right now, this second.
"Teleport! Home!"
With a near-scream she triggered her ability. Another blinding white flare burst around her.
Whoosh
Light flashed on, then off.
When the living room came back into view, the atmosphere turned even stranger.
Gabriel was still standing there.
Or rather, Gabriel the person was still therebut her oversized pink bunny onesie, along with the one fuzzy slipper she'd had on, had vanished without a trace.
Beneath that sun-bright blonde hair was skin so fair it almost dazzled. A slim, graceful neck, rounded shoulders, a fine, lovely collarboneeverything lay bare in the warm, bright glow of the living-room lights.
The air froze solid. Time hit pause.
Kei stayed in a pose like she was still holding something (now just air), mouth a perfect O, eyes about to pop from their sockets, mind wiped blankexcept for the flawless, ivory-lit figure before her.
Tohru dropped a plate into the sink with a clatter, water splashing up.
Emilia clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
Mai Sakurajima's magazine slid from her fingers; disbelief flashed across her wine-red eyes for the first time.
Futaba covered her own eyesand peeked through her fingers.
Gabriel herself turned to stone. Moving like a rusty robot, she slowly lowered her head.
In her view: the polished floor and her own body.
Silence.
One second.
Two seconds.
"Eeeeeeeek!"
A scream loud enough to peel the roof, pierce the soul, and packed with shame, panic, collapse, and volcanic furyhowled through the entire apartment like a banshee's wail. Even the walls seemed to shake.
Gabriel's cheeks burned like a crimson sunset. Tears of humiliated rage sprang into her golden eyes. Like a lit shell, she hugged her bare self tight, thenthrowing dignity to the wind in favor of speedshot off barefoot in a blur, slammed into Rei Ao's half-open bedroom door, and burst inside.
Bang!!
From within, the door was yanked shut with all her might, the boom thunderous enough to rattle dust from the frame. A dull thud hit the panel next, followed by a tear-thick, hysterical, shame-fueled roar:
"Rei Ao! You cosmic, super-ultra MEGA JERK! You perv! You bastard! Go to my place and get my clothes! Right now! Uuughthis is embarrassing!!!"
The living room sat in wrecked silence. Water still ran from the faucet. Tohru stayed frozen mid-reach for the plate. Emilia's hand remained over her mouth. Mai's bend to grab her magazine was stuck halfway. Futaba's hands were still over her eyes.
Kei kept that petrified pose, as if she'd forgotten to breatheforgotten to blink. Her amethyst eyes were nothing but vacant and dazed.
Who am I? Where am I? What did I just see?
An undergarment out of nowhere. A woman out of nowhere. Clothes that vanished in an instant.
She pinched her armhard.
"Ow!"
It hurt. Not a dream. All of this was real
Rei Ao set down his teacup and rubbed his brow hard, utterly helpless.
"...Sigh."
The long exhale was thick with complicated feelings. He stood, walked to the still-souls-out-of-body Kei, and, seeing the way her worldview had completely collapsed, spoke with deep apology and a powerless, "what can you do" tone:
"Sorry, Kei."
He pointed at his tightly shut bedroom door.
"My friend Gabriel clearly needs help. Please wait here for me. I'll be right back."
With that, he headed to the entryway, opened the door, and went next door to fetch clothes from Gabriel's place.
Kei's neck creaked as she slowly turned, vacant gaze following Rei Ao's disappearing back. Then her eyes drifted to the closed bedroom door, as if she could see the furious, mortified blonde inside pounding the bed.
She eased herself down onto the sofa, hugging her schoolbag like a final lifeline. Her posture was straight as a rod; her eyes stared into the middle distance like a delicate doll that had been played to pieces.
"Uneasy" didn't begin to cover it. She felt like she was floating in the vacuum of space, all sense of direction and gravity gone. Her mind kept replaying that world-shattering tableau: white light, the undergarment, the blonde woman, the disappearing outfit, the bare form, the eardrum-splitting scream
Every replay made her frayed nerves twitch hard.
She needed an explanation.
Noshe needed to forget.
But how could she possibly forget?
Time crawled past in dead silence while Kei's inner barrage of thoughts scrolled by at a frantic pace.
Chapter 889: Kei's Mind Plummeted...
A short while later, the key turned in the lock at the entryway.
Rei Ao was back.
He was carrying a paper bag printed with cute cartoon charactersobviously full of clothes.
He glanced once at Shirogane Kei, still hard-crashed on the sofa, and said nothing.
He headed straight for his bedroom and knocked.
Thump, thump
There was an immediate rustle of frantic movement inside.
Then the door cracked open.
A slim, fair armstill visibly flushedshot out, snatched the bag in a flash, and the door slammed shut with a bang.
A few minutes passed.
The bedroom door opened again.
Gabriel stepped out, fully dressed in a plain T-shirt and jeans.
Her golden hair was still a little messy.
Her delicate face was rosy like a ripe apple, and her golden eyes burned with mortified fury as she glared daggers at Rei Ao.
Just thinking about how she'd appeared stark naked in front of so many peopleespecially a complete strangermade her want to explode on the spot from shame and rage.
All of this
was his fault!
If he didn't live closest to her place (a teleport anchor, really?).
If he didn't didn't give off that infuriating aura that somehow attracted her magic malfunctions!
Anyway, it was his fault!
The more she thought about it, the madder she got.
She jerked up her little canvas sneaker and gave Rei Ao's shin a vicious kick!
Rei Ao wore a look equal parts innocent and helpless.
"Hey, Gab, be reasonable. Your magic misfired, and you unilaterally used me as an anchor. I'm the innocent one here, okay?"
"I don't care! It's your fault! Jerk! I'm never speaking to you again!"
She huffed that out,
glared at him one last time like a bristling little golden lion,
then shot a quick look at the silver-haired young woman on the sofa who still seemed scared senseless.
Shirogane Kei (internally): I'm not "senseless," I'm just rebuilding my worldview!
And with that, Gabriel bolted for the entry like the wind.
She yanked the door open and slammed it shut with a bang, vanishing without a trace.
Silence settled over the living room again.
Only Rei Aonow sporting a delicate footprint on his shinand Kei, still riding out the aftershocks in her soul, remained.
Rei Ao looked at dazed Kei, sighed, and took a seat in front of her.
Seeing the lost, glassy-eyed look on the young woman's faceas if she'd been hit by some indescribable psychic contaminationhe knew the shock tonight had been too much.
She was going to need careful debriefing.
Or a full re-education?
Either way, he'd have to help her build a new worldview.
That, at least, he was pretty practiced at.
"Ahem."
He cleared his throat and softened his voice.
"Kei you saw it, right?"
He chose his words.
"As you can tell, the peoplewell, the folksaround my place aren't exactly ordinary."
Kei's eyes rotated very slowly and focused on his face.
Her lips moved as if to speak, but no sound came out.
Only after a long moment
did she force out, in a parched whisper heavy with hesitation and uncertainty:
"So, that blonde woman just now, and that"
She really couldn't bring herself to say "underwear" or "naked."
She could only gesture awkwardly, cheeks flaring red again.
"It was all real?"
She needed a final confirmation
that she hadn't hallucinated from a split mind.
"Mm."
Rei Ao nodded with devastating certainty, his calm tone enough to crush hope.
"All real."
"That was Gabriel. She used teleportation magic, and there was a minor technical hiccup."
He kept it as light as he could.
"Tele teleportation?"
Kei struggled to repeat the word she'd only ever seen in fantasy stories,
her eyes full of utter shock and bewilderment.
"Is is that magic?"
She felt the materialist, science-built skyscraper she'd spent more than a decade erecting collapse in a roar.
"Yes."
He nodded again, a touch of helpless headache creasing his face.
"It's magic."
"And ever since Gabrielan angel'fell,' her magic keeps throwing up all kinds of weird glitches."
He paused, tone taking on an oddly certain tilt.
"The strange part is, every glitch beelines to me. She never teleports to anywhere else."
He even pulled a subtle "you know what I mean" face.
"An angel? 'Fallen'?"
Kei felt like she was listening to a fairy tale.
She recognized every word, but together they made zero sense.
She parroted the two terms dumbly; her head buzzed like a thousand bees throwing a rock concert.
"That's right."
Rei Ao sounded as calm as if he were remarking on the nice weather.
"Gabriel's the real dealan angel. She's just currently in a rather lazy, 'fallen' state."
He even shrugged, as if to say it wasn't a big deal.
"???"
Kei's eyes lost focus completely.
The last string labeled "reason" in her brain snapped with an audible twang.
Angel, magic, teleportation, underwear, naked, harem, girlfriends
A barrage of keywords went berserk in her chaotic mind, scrolling, colliding, exploding.
She sat there slack-jawed on the sofa,
hugging her schoolbag tight like a broken, soul-less porcelain doll.
Her long silver-white hair hung listlessly,
framing a face that screamed, "Who am I? Where am I? What happened to the world?"
Mai Sakurajima finally picked her magazine up off the floor.
Looking at Kei's "played-to-pieces" state, she sighed softly and murmured,
"Poor kouhai tonight's info dump might take her until the next century to digest."
Rei Ao rubbed his temples, staring at Kei's fully crashed, out-of-body condition.
Seemed he'd have to "reboot" this worldview-shattered little rabbit and install a brand-new operating system compatible with magic, angels, harems, and other complex programsa pretty daunting job.
"We'll take it slow."
~~~
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Chapter 890: Kei's Mind Crashed like the Stock Market
The living room was steeped in a near-motionless quiet.
Only the "tick-tock" of the wall clock's second hand beat a steady rhythm against Shirogane Kei's already scrambled nerves.
Like a robot fed too many bad commands, she sat rigidly on the sofa, clutching her schoolbag tight in her armsas if it were the only piece of driftwood that wouldn't sink in the howling storm of information.
Rei Ao took in her out-of-body stare and vacant eyes.
He knew the truth about Gabriel had hit too hard.
She'd probably need a more systematic expansion of her worldview just to barely grasp it
or, more accurately, to be forced to accept reality.
He sighed.
Might as well strike while the iron was hot and say everything that needed saying.
"Ahem."
He cleared his throat again, trying to call Kei's scattered attention back.
"Kei, that just now was only the tip of the iceberg."
Kei's eyes rotated painfully slowly,
finally managing to focus on Rei Ao.
Her gaze was full of panicked confusion: "There's more?!"
"Gabriel is my neighbor, my friend and one of my girlfriends," Rei Ao said evenly, dropping the next bomb.
"And among my neighbors, besides an angel like her, there are also mm, demons."
"Dee demons?!"
Kei's voice spiked with a cracked note of horror.
Angels had already wrecked her worldview.
Now demons too?!
The very beings that legends and religion cast as evil, depravity, and brimstone?
"Mm." Rei Ao nodded with complete certainty,
as if it were no big deal.
He even added, trying to soothe her: "But you don't have to be scared. Most of the demons around here are actually pretty cutekind of like Gabriel. They're all pretty girls."
He sounded like he was describing a neighbor's docile house pets that occasionally tore up the furniture.
