No Fluffing Allowed

The girl was buried in the dirt.

She was a silver fox beastkin who had been a servant at a noble's mansion. A maid, specifically, whose job was doing the laundry.

Perhaps that's why it happened. "You smell nice," the master had said, and she was favored. She was favored, and that was her downfall.

Naturally, he had his way with her. When he brought up her family, she couldn't refuse.

A common story.

And then, after toying with her dignity, he grew bored and killed her.

A common story. Yes, just a common story.

… No, she was still barely breathing.

Her stomach had been gouged out, and the organs from her lower abdomen had been crammed into her mouth while he called her a filthy woman.

Of course no one stopped the bleeding. She would die soon. Even with the stamina she'd built up as a laundry maid, she had only minutes left. Fortunately, she could no longer feel any pain. She just felt cold.

She didn't want to die.

She had so many regrets.

She'd wanted to experience a happy romance.

All of it had been trampled.

And then.

"Will you offer everything to the spirit?"

She heard that voice.

The girl couldn't speak. She couldn't even nod. But in her heart, she answered "yes."

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"And so, here's my second character!"

At Penpen's Home, a beastkin maid appeared — introduced as a girl Penpen wanted us to meet.

A cute girl with short silver hair. She had fox ears and a fluffy tail too.

And floating above her head was a yellow Halo.

"Huh… wait a second? How did Penpen get a second character before us?"

"What a cute maid-san!"

"Well, actually, my second character got unlocked when I paid off my debt. Nihihi."

Penpen laughed like a prank had succeeded, but wait — Penpen-chan is standing right there, so what should I call this one…? Maid-chan?

As for the Halos, Penpen-chan's was slightly dimmer, while Maid-chan's was currently brighter.

"I wanted a combat maid!! Her name is Ginko. Call her Gin-chan!"

"Oho! Pen-chan and Gin-chan makes Penguin!"

"You got it! Oh, and by the way, I ripped off that scumbag noble's balls and buried him instead. Did it all sneaky so no one saw, stealth mission complete, so it's just being treated as a disappearance. This stays between us, okay?"

Also, Gin-chan's organs had been restored to brand new condition using SP.

Apparently, after hearing from me that defects from character creation are kept as-is, Penpen made sure to fix everything properly.

"So yeah, my second character playthrough was a VR stealth action game! Man, it's been three days, gimme a break! Seriously though, I couldn't get in touch with you two at all for those three days, so I was feeling pretty lonely!"

"… Yo, it's only been since yesterday."

"Right. It's been since yesterday."

"Gah! I had a feeling that might be the case, but this is some serious space-time distortion! What is even going on over there?!"

Gin-chan slapped her forehead and looked up at the heavens. Her appearance had changed, but the person inside was definitely Penpen.

Huh? But wait, Penpen's been working their regular job, so it's actually been three real-world days on their end? What does that even mean…

The only thing I understood was that there were way too many mysteries to make sense of. This game is seriously too weird.

"Hey, Alto-san. Isn't there now a possibility that Penpen is living in a different time period than us?"

"The possibilities are infinite. But there's something more important right now."

"Hm? What's that?"

"Now that you've unlocked your second character, we have the problem of what to call us spirits!!"

Penpen — I mean, Gin-chan — and I both went wide-eyed.

"True… Up until now we've been calling each other Tria-shi and Alto-shi, but what do we do when there's a second character?!"

"Penpen-shi, Gin-chan-shi… Hmm. Should we use handles instead?"

"I just naturally called them Penpen, but they're Gin-chan now… Actually, shouldn't we be using player names? Though there wasn't any input for that."

Right. There wasn't one. No player name input. There was character name input, though.

"… Can't we just keep using the first character's name? Switching to Gin-chan-shi now would be a hassle."

"Maybe we could add something like P, like in those idol games?"

"PenpenP… AltoP has a nice ring to it, actually."

"Since we're spirits, maybe S? S for Spirit."

"I thought you were going for romanization, but that's not it. Still hard to say, though. Maybe a single letter that ends with a long vowel sound?"

We discussed it with troubled expressions.

Suggestions were made, rejected, "what about—" "no, G sounds like that black thing, pass," "U?" "hmm," and after going back and forth, we finally settled on "let's just use the first character's name like we always have."

"So Penpen-shi is still Penpen-shi even when possessing Gin-chan!"

"Yeah, sticking with what we've been doing is clearly the best."

"Yup. Hahaha."

The meeting was completely pointless, but that's what we decided.

… Wait, this doesn't actually solve the problem of it being confusing when Penpen-chan and Gin-chan (with Penpen inside) are standing next to each other.

I'll pray that someone figures it out on the wiki.

Also.

"By the way, Penpen. Could I pet Gin-chan's tail and ears?"

"Just a little bit is fine."

When I tried to touch them, the Ethics Filter activated. Unfortunately, I couldn't fluff them.

The soft silver fur swayed right in front of me. Was this some kind of slow torture?

"Th-that's ridiculous. Fluffing isn't lewd! That's not how this works!"

"Huh? That's weird. Pen-chan, let me try fluffing you!"

"Y-yes! Thank you very much! Pardon me!"

Penpen-chan was able to touch Gin's tail without any problem.

Was it because they were both characters belonging to the same player? Mmmgh. So jealous…!

"Maybe I should make my second character a fluffy beastkin too… Ah, but I also want a Home. A beastkin with a production class… Would that be too restrictive…? Maybe something different…"

"Fufufu, hurry up and ascend to this stage…!"

"It really is like a 2nd stage, huh… Well then, should we start raising our second characters today too?"

"Yeah."

Alright then, let's begin! Time for our second characters!