Chapter 47 – Remorse

Sophia wasn't actually sure which of her boosted emotions or character traits went berserk. Still, some of them had basically taken her over and made the girl incredibly bold, and she took a very intimate bath with Maya. Even after she managed to somewhat retake control of herself, Sophia still spent the evening happily playing around with the cat-girl, having a rather intense petting session with her ears.

The girl's boosted stats had returned to a slightly more normal level on the following day, though, which was a cause for many worries.

"Ha!" Sophia's eyes shot open while her breathing was ragged. "W-What a scary? dream! Haa..." She looked around, disoriented after apparently having had a vivid dream. "Soo fluffy~." The girl noticed Fen behind her and rubbed the back of her head against his soft fur to calm down.

"Hmm? My legs, no, lap feels kinda heavy... D-Don't tell me-" Without looking down, she patted the area with her hand and quickly came in contact with something. After making sure she was indeed feeling some silky hair, and a pair of incredibly fluffy and familiar feeling things resembling animal ears, Sophia's face turned pale, and she slowly looked downward. "M-Maya."

Fully awake in an instant, which was a very unfamiliar and unlikened feeling for her, Sophia became aware of the peacefully sleeping cat-girl in her lap and stared at her with a panicked expression. "D-Did yesterday really happen? T-There's no way, right...? R-Right?!" She glanced at her hand and then at Maya's ears. Reluctantly, she poked it as gently as she could and lightly scraped against the fur.

"I-It feels exactly the same as in my dream... No way! It-, It was no dream, was it...? Uuh, this is bad... seriously bad. AH!" She suddenly looked even more shocked. "T-The-, The bath, it happened?! I did all that?! Or the one being in charge of me that time? No, this wasn't me... It was someone else... NO! Wait a moment... That's not true, either. Could it actually be?" Sophia stopped talking to herself and thought about the idea she just had, trying to understand her situation.

"It was the person I want to be... aspire to be. My boosts didn't go out of control but maxed out. It showed me... a glimpse of my full potential? Eh? Could that really be the case...? My normal mind just couldn't keep up, let alone accept the huge gap and let me panic afterward? Is that why it somehow felt different from when I lose myself to anger? Because that's not how I really want to be... I think? It's just handy at times, getting so angry that I stop caring… No, yeah... definitely not. Maybe, probably? Surely. Right?" Her newest theory still had a lot of holes.

"L-Leaving that detail aside, for the time being, it would be really nice if that's actually the case... B-But!" Sophia had to take another break. "But... the gap between those two me is still too big... Yesterday was-, it was way too embarrassing! Uuh..." Her entire face turned more and more red as she remembered the events.

"I want to die." The remorse had finally hit her. "Crawl in a hole and die. NO, that's not true! No matter how much I suffer in times like these, I don't want to waste this chance! And, most importantly..." The girl rubbed the back of her head against Fen's furry body before looking at Maya in her lap once more. "I-, I definitely don't want to part from those two, but, uuh, soo freaking embarrassing!" She still had to come to terms with her new emotions and feelings, which clashed so extremely with her old self.

"Sophia...?" The cat-girl slowly woke up and wiggled her head around in the other girl's lap a few times before lazily facing her. "Haa~... What's wrong?" Even while still half-asleep, she noticed that something was going on.

"M-Maya?!" She was surprised or the sudden waking up of her." N-No. it's nothing..."

"If you say so... haa~" After another yawn, she lightly stretched her limbs but made no movements indicating leaving Sophia's lap.

"M-Mind getting up any time... soon?"

"I wasn't planning to, no." Instead, Maya repositioned her head some more before finding the perfect spot and getting more comfortable there.

"I-I would be really... glad about it, though." Sophia's face managed to get even redder while it was becoming hard for her to speak.

"Well, I wouldn't!" She had taken a liking to the girl's lap.

"P-Please..."

"Don't want to~."

"C-Come on..." Sophia looked troubled because her embarrassment was rising at an alarming rate. "Ah, I can just stand up, can't I?" Having arrived at a simple yet brilliant idea, she did just that.

"Eh?! O-Ouch?!" Losing her balance after rolling off her lap, Maya hit her face rather hard on the ground. "You're so mean, Sophia!" Rubbing her slightly bruised nose, she looked up at the now standing girl and complained to her. "Huh? How could you get up so easily? My legs are always completely dead after you sleep in my lap..."

"Are-, Are you calling me fat right now?" Her voice changed, her shyness was gone.

"That's the last thing I would call you!" She scanned Sophia from head to toe and then her chest a second time. "Eat something, girl! Ah... you eat quite well, though." As the cook of the group, she was well aware of that.

"Where were you looking just now when you said this? Come on, tell me. Where? Don't worry, I won't get extremely angry."

"D-Don't people normally say they don't get angry…? Like, at all?"

"No, this saying certainly wouldn't be fitting in this very scenario." Her eyes looked serious.

"F-Fen, backup please!"

"Cat, leave me out of this." He had no plans to assist her, possibly ending as collateral in the end.

"Traitor! Err, I, uhh, I like you the way you are, okay?! T-There was nothing negative I wanted to convey in my answer, Sophia! Just making clear that you're not fat, not even a bit. Absolutely nowhere... Aaaand I'll stop talking now!" Maya noticed her panic reaction and interrupted herself before making it worse.

"R-Really?" Something in that reply had caught her off-guard, and it wasn't the confirmation of her not being fat. "T-Thank you..." The rising anger was replaced by embarrassment once more.

"Ah, uhh, sure." She wasn't sure how to react.

"Maybe it's just because I'm stronger? Even before my boosts, I was quite proud of my legs." Sophia gave her thighs a satisfied pat while saying so.

"You should be," Maya answered without thinking again while she looked at the girl's legs, her tail being all over the place and moving in a twitchy motion. "O-Oh... No, I mean, yes! I mean, no... Wait!" The cat-girl stopped talking and took a deep breath to get herself back on track. "Yes, that could be the case. I really neglected training my body lately. I should exercise more."

"Y-You should do that..." If Sophia could properly think right now, she would’ve loved to ask how the cat-girl managed to collect herself so fast again and learn from it. Still, she had only understood half of it at best, anyway. She was still brooding over how Maya had admitted liking her body earlier. "A-Anyway... If you would excuse me, I-I need to..." Before finishing her sentence, Sophia ran away from the camp so fast that Maya seriously thought the girl teleported away for a second.

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"Ah, she's gone..." It took her a moment to even realize.

"What a brilliant self-destruct." Now that the danger of ending up as collateral was no more, Fen spoke up again.

"Yeah." The cat-girl could only agree.

"I'm talking about you."

"I know." She nodded. "I lost my cool there for a bit and got a little-"

"Honest?" The wolf had seen through her.

"Ahhh..." Maya's expression became really awkward.

"Am I wrong?"

"You are-" She hesitated with her answer for a good while. "You are... not. It was that obvious?"

"You were basically marking her, weren't you? For a while already, even. Petting Sophia, clinging to her, and not to mention how you were wiggling around in her lap, rubbing your head all over her lap."

"You're really sharp, huh?"

"I don't have to be, not for that." It was more than obvious for the wolf.

"Ahahahaaa-" Her laugh trailed off and ended in a sigh. "Yeah, I was doing that, though the clinging mostly was just me being me, actually. Okay, a good bit more than usual... Wanting to mark her, well, that's a recent trend..." Maya looked conflicted. "I don't know what happened. I mean, we only know each other for a month or so, but there's something about Sophia... Yeah, I might've gotten more than interested in her. Especially after yesterday, things became different…"

"You want her as a mate, then?"

"A-Ah!" The cat-girl almost fell over. "C-Could you, could you not phrase it like that... please?" She wasn't a fan of Fen's wording. "Not... directly that? I'm not exactly sure what I want..."

"Don't you think yesterday was, let's say, rather obvious?" The wolf wasn't buying it. "Granted, I'm not perfectly familiar with the cat-tribe, but weren't you guys particularly fussy about your ears? Even amongst the beastfolk in general, that is. Wasn't it... that only the ones you want to mate with were supposed to touch them?"

"A-Again, could you call them partners? Other than that... maybe not to that extent, but, y-yeah, you're basically right." Maya's face turned redder. "Our ears are extremely, uhh, let's say, sensitive. Letting others touch them is, has a deep meaning. I might've gotten ahead of myself a little and a-acted in the spur of the moment... D-Does Sophia know about, well, any of that?"

"No, she never met any beastpeople before saving Chiyo and her group. There wasn't much known about them from... where she came from, either. The ear thing, at least. The marking, on the other hand, all cats, no matter the kind, do that. She might connect the dots eventually."

"Ahh... that's good. I think I can come up with an excuse for the marking."

"You're not going to tell her?"

"N-No..." The cat-girl sounded hesitant. "I'm not 100% sure what exactly I want yet. It's, it is also my first time feeling like this... I have no idea how I could- Sophia, herself, is also going through a lot… I don't want to burden her with even more things right now."

"I really don't think you'll be a burden to her."

"Well... Also, there's so much surrounding her that I don't know yet. Not to mention our different standings..." She remembered her ongoing misunderstanding of Sophia being of royal origin in the demon realm.

"Hmm.?" Fen naturally had no idea what she was talking about.

"Before I don't have the full picture, I think I want to continue exploring whatever... feelings I might have, or am developing right now, but I don't want to make a decision yet..." She thought it was too early to act.

"You are quite wise for your age, Maya."

"No, I'm just a coward."

"They're often two sides of the same coin."

"Ahaha." Her mood brightened up a little. "I really want to know more... everything about Sophia!"

"I don't think you need to explore your feelings any-. Whatever." The wolf stopped caring in the middle of his sentence. "You're in for a surprise, that's for sure. This girl's story... Speaking of which, I want to retract my statement from the other day."

"Hmm? What do you mean?" Maya couldn't follow him.

"About pushing Sophia too much. Whatever happened to her yesterday, I think it's a big step in the right direction."

"Ahh!" The cat-girl gave a big nod. "It felt a bit weird at first, but I think we got a glimpse at the real Sophia there... and I liked what I saw there." It was the moment where she actually fell for the girl, after all.

"You certainly are not one to hold back, huh? But yes, I had the same feeling about her outbreak. Yes, I also think she misunderstood her outbreak. It really wasn't someone else; it was the real her."

"By the way..." She glanced around. "Shouldn't we look for her? It's never a good thing to leave Sophia alone, after all." Maya suddenly had a bad feeling.

"Leave her be. She needs to blow off some steam to clear her mind. I can't imagine just how many things are going through her head right now."

"You're probably right. Still-"

"GaaAaAHhh!" While the two talked, a loud cry of a familiar-sounding female voice echoed through the area.

"See? Just blowing off some steam." Fen's theory had gotten some vocal support.

"S-Sure..." There was nothing else Maya could say in this situation.