episode_0023

Thud.

Huh?

As a healer, Mei Luina had heard the sound of people losing control of their bodies and collapsing countless times. The moment she heard that sound, along with feeling the weight of about 5kg pressing on her chest, she could guess what had happened in this hospital room.

“Did Stacy collapse?”

Just a moment ago, Stacy had been so confident, bragging about coming to make herself climax, mentioning something about developing Porchio and climaxing Mir Ryuin and Dain Adamas, and arrogantly making terrifying remarks. Now, without any warning, he had collapsed. As a veteran hero, Mei Luina couldn’t help but instinctively be on guard.

“What’s going on? Did someone attack Stacy? Uh, um, what should I do? I’m just a helpless plant person who can’t even lift a finger…”

But Mei Luina, currently not the renowned saint and world-ranked 3rd hero Mei Luina, was instead a cursed plant person.

“What on earth has happened?! At least I can feel Stacy’s warm breath against my chest. Thankfully, it seems he’s not dead. Uh, then did he just faint? Still, I can’t relax. If someone suddenly made Stacy faint, they could just as easily kill him. I have to stay alert.”

In this dangerous situation, Mei Luina felt powerless and terrified as she gripped Stacy’s collapsed body, his face buried in her ample bosom, unable to do anything.

“But even if I stay on guard, what can I do right now? I can’t do anything at the moment. The only person who can cure my curse is right in front of me, in danger, and I can’t even see what’s happening. This… This is the first time I’ve resented my own body so much. If something really happens to Stacy, I’ll have to live like this forever, unable to talk to anyone, living in this darkness…”

[End of EP.23]

For centuries, she possessed such exceptional talent that she earned the title of Saint upon her arrival on Earth, and as a result, she was always surrounded by those who admired her. Living in a world filled with people who worshipped and praised her was something Meiruina took for granted, and the attention and fervor of her followers became an essential element that enriched and gave value to her life.

So, when she was cursed and turned into a plant-human, her mind and soul trapped within her physical form, Meiruina experienced loneliness for the first time in her life. It was a sensation of complete isolation, unable to hear her own voice, unable to see anything in the darkness, in an unchanging world, completely cut off as if she were the only one isolated.

That dreadful feeling was loneliness, and for Meiruina, who had always lived amidst attention, affection, and adoration, loneliness was more terrifying than anything else. “No, absolutely not! Mr. Stay cannot die, never!”

Therefore, when she realized that Stay was in danger, the return of her loneliness, and the panic at the thought that he might disappear again, and forever, overwhelmed her. The person who had stopped her from crying for a whole month due to her madness of loneliness disappeared in less than a day, which was unacceptable, unbearable.

If it wasn’t for Mr. Stay, there would be no one to listen to her story, no one to break her curse. So please, please, someone save Mr. Stay! Please!

Before becoming a plant-human, Stay, whom she had simply used as an emotional dumping ground, was now more important to Meiruina than anything else. He was her sole means of communication, and in order to prove that she was no longer alone in this world, it was imperative that Stay, the only one in the world with the status window ability, remained alive.

However, the current Meiruna was a plant-human who could do nothing alone, and all she could do was desperately cry out her innermost thoughts that no one could hear.

Please, someone save Stay! Please! If that person is gone, I’ll be alone again! I absolutely hate that! That’s the one thing I can’t stand! It shouldn’t happen! So please, please, anyone save Stay…

After about 10 minutes of relentlessly crying out unheard emptiness, Meiruna suddenly felt that something was strange.

Huh…? But why isn’t anything happening? If you make someone faint, shouldn’t you do something after that? If you’re just going to make them faint and disappear, there’s no reason to make them faint in the first place.

While Meiruna desperately cried out for Stay for a full 10 minutes, Stay, the actual recipient of her cries, was sound asleep, burying his face in her soft, plushy chest, clutching a milk bottle with his right hand.

The warm breath flowing into her breastbone remained steady, and the grip on the milk bottle, despite its softness, reassured moment by moment that Stay was perfectly fine.

The moment she realized this fact, Meiruna felt her face grow warm and finally understood the truth she had failed to notice until now.

W-wait, could it be? He’s just asleep, right?!

※※※

What’s this? It’s so soft, plushy, and warm.

Feeling a sensation of something pressing against her face that was so soft, plushy, and warm that she wanted to keep it buried there forever, she came to her senses. Although she wanted to continue like this, the blockage of her nose and mouth made breathing difficult, so she had no choice but to remove her face from this strange object.

“Ugh… Ugh, huff! Huh?”

This… This is Meiruna’s milk bottle, isn’t it?

When she removed her face, she could identify the strange, soft, plushy, warm object she had been burying her face in all along.

The identity of that object was none other than Meiruna’s soft, plump milk bottle.

Just as my right hand was holding the royal milk bottle, I found myself waking up with my face buried in the royal milk bottle, having passed out while still clutching it, recalling the moments just before losing consciousness.

Ah, yes. Even after seeing the warning that depletion of energy could lead to incapacitation, I couldn’t stop myself and ended up fainting while tightly gripping Mei Luina’s royal milk bottle until the energy drained away.

The sensation from the warm, soft, and somewhat squishy royal milk bottle in my right hand, as if it contained all the happiness in the world, was certainly exquisite enough to make one faint from sheer delight.

However, what mattered now was not how splendid the royal milk bottle of Mei Luina was, even though that was important in its own right. No, the real significance at this moment was the fact that I had fainted after clutching this royal milk bottle until the energy drained away.

Yes, come to think of it, what I had done for Mei Luina, Dain Adamas, and Mir Ryu was not to induce fainting, but to infuse energy. I had been so intoxicated by their intense reactions to the fainting induced by my vigorous energy infusion that I had forgotten. I had been inducing fainting in these three people to smoothly and efficiently infuse them with energy.

Forgetting that purpose, I had haphazardly infused energy, so it wasn’t strange at all to faint…

“No, did you think I’d faint once the energy was used up? This is a bit unfair.”

But until the energy was depleted, everything seemed fine, so it was truly unfair to faint immediately upon depletion.

If, at the moment of fainting, there were surprise inspections from the Central Information Department of the Awakened Society, I would be found collapsed with my hand on Mei Luina’s chest, Dain Adamas’s lower abdomen, or Mir Ryu’s forehead. Just the thought gives me chills. It wouldn’t be surprising at all to end up being executed in public; that’s how serious it would be.

Even though it’s a non-existent scenario, just imagining the dreadful possibility made shivers run down my spine involuntarily.

So now, I buried my hands, trembling from the cold, in the warmest, coziest, most reassuring bundle of happiness around me.

Squelch! Grrraaah!

As I touched the enormous milk bottle, even gripping it tightly with both hands, a feeling of surprise calmed my anxious heart as it overflowed.

“Phew, now I can finally relax a bit.”

They say that when your mind is uneasy, touching a cute animal makes the uneasiness disappear. Perhaps, touching this giant milk bottle once does a lot more to relieve anxiety than touching a cute animal a hundred times.

Thinking about touching Mei Luina’s effective milk bottle whenever I feel anxious, I pondered how to solve the problem of depleting this resource.

“First, we need to address the issue head-on.”

To find a solution to this problem, it seemed like Mei Luina, Dain Adamas, Mir Ryuin, and I needed to gather together and discuss.