The couple was still busy in the electronics store of Sophia's old world, and after having gotten a lot of inspiration from all the appliances there, the duo also decided to get a camera or two to capture all the little and big moments they were going to experiment. That, and lots of lewd pictures of each other for reasons. Maya was being quite horny, after all, and she was a big fan of the idea.

“I wonder if I should get a laptop and or a tablet to play with, and to look at the pictures after taking them…" Once they left the camera aisle, Sophia started thinking about what else to get.

“Sure.” Maya nodded in agreement. “I mean, why not, right?”

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Even less than usual.”

“Ahaha…” She scratched her cheek in response. “Well, no point in explaining… I’ll show you once we get to them.”

“Okay!”

“Looks like the tablets are first.” Directly after the aisle with the cameras, the store presented a wide variety of said tablets.

“Oh, they’re like the TVs, but smaller…?” The white-haired girl got closer to one of them and touched it. "I-It moved!"

“S-Stop being so adorable…” The blonde was having a hard time staying calm over her curious and playful side.

“It’s not my fault that everything here is so interesting!”

“Sure.”

“So, why and how does it move when I touch it?!”

“How… because technology is awesome!" She had no idea how exactly it worked, either. “Roughly speaking, that’s the main difference to TVs, I guess…? It's not just for watching stuff. You can also play with it and do all sorts of things. Even reading books on it. However, if you have no internet, we would mostly use it to look at the pictures we took with the camera earlier.”

“You can do that?”

“It can even take pictures on its own, but the quality is kinda bad. Here…” Saying so, Sophia started the camera app on the tablet and took another picture of her girlfriend. Afterward, she opened the gallery to show it to her.

“I-It’s me again!” The incognito cat was still amazed. “Wait, that’s a bad quality?! It looks amazing! Way better than any drawing I’ve ever seen!”

“Ahh, well… In that context, you might be right, yeah…" She could see her point. "Still, the camera we got earlier makes WAY better pictures.”

“S-Seriously?! I can’t wait! High-quality lewds of you sound amazing!"

“Okay… Now you’re just doing your best to play it up as much as possible, aren’t you…?”

“Playing up what?" She actually sounded and looked relatively clueless while tilting her head to the side.

“…” Sophia had no idea what to say. “So, you’re saying we should get one?”

"Yes!" Maya gave her a big nod. "Better, can we get two? I want my own! I don't want to look for it first before I can get to look at lewds!"

“Sure…” The blonde decided to give up because she noticed that she was too far gone already. “As we can't use most of its features, we don't need one with fancy extras or high power. Because of that, the ones perfect for us are quite cheap because everything is fine as long as the display is nice."

“As usual, I don’t get it, but I like the sound of it!”

"By the way, all the devices we're getting here will break if they get wet in the wrong place. Any sort of liquid, I want to add. It’s unfixable, too.”

“…” She paused for a moment. “I-I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good.”

Afterward, Sophia grabbed two tablets that would suit their needs the best, a nice-looking big display being more or less the only requirement, and put them on the big card they had decided to get a little while ago. Once they were done with that, the two made their way towards the laptops to see if one of them would make any sense to them.

----------------

“Hmm…” Finding the laptops, Maya eyed them with a skeptical expression. “Isn’t this basically like the, uhh… tablets we got? Just foldable and with a ton of extra buttons…?”

“Well…” Once again, the blonde had no idea what to say because explaining the difference would explain absolutely nothing to someone who has no idea what either really is. "Tablets are more for playing around, I guess…? Mostly made for entertainment. Great to have on your lap while lying on the sofa.”

“Mh-hmm.”

“You can do that with laptops, too, but it’s easier to work on them… Here,” Saying so, Sophia opened a pre-installed writing software and started typing a short text using the keyboard. “You use all the buttons to type text and stuff like that. They usually have more power, too, but that’s not really important.”

“Ohh!”

“Typing words really is much easier on a laptop. Unless I was outside, I used that most of the time to chat with mom and… Steph, too.”

“Ahh…” After hearing this, the white-haired girl made a short pause, but her curiosity quickly got the better of her. "Wait, you can chat over those things…?”

“Yes… Those devices can connect to each other, and you're able to talk with the owner of the other one. See that little dot on top of the display? That’s a camera. If you want to, you can even look at each other while chatting. Most of the time, it's just simple written messages, something like a short letter, though.”

“That sounds amazing! Can you show me?”

“You need internet for that, though…”

“Internet…?”

“Uhh… That’s the thing that connects the devices together, I guess…”

“Aww…”

“Oh, wait… The laptop is connected to the Wi-Fi here.”

“What’s that again?!”

“Ahaha…" She scratched her cheek in return as she kept forgetting that Maya had no idea what any of those words meant. “That’s what you use to connect your device to the internet in the first place.”

“Oh, I understand.”

“Do you…?” Sophia tilted her head because she was having a hard time believing that.

“Not at all!”

“Understandable.” She nodded. “I could show you the messenger thingy I used. Luckily, I always, uhh... forgot to set up this 2-factor thingy. I'm also a responsible adult who uses the same password absolutely everywhere and has never ever changed it before. I should be able to remember that. I use a super easy password, after all~.”

"Err…?"

“I’m so happy you didn’t understand that… Many people would get angry over what I just said.”

“I see…” Maya didn’t look like she did, though.

“Anyway,” She just continued and opened the online version of the messenger she used in the past. Afterward, she entered her login credentials. Exactly two seconds later, big tears began to stream down her face while staring at the screen in silence. “…”

“S-Sophia?!” Naturally, the white-haired girl immediately started panicking after seeing this.

“…” She continued to stay silent for another moment. “W-Why did I do that…? Why have I not thought about that…?” Afterward, new tears just kept appearing.

“S-Seriously, what happened?!”

“T-This… This chat thing… it saves messages others sent you… You can read them the next time you use a laptop…”

“Oh, that’s neat!” Maya liked that feature. “Wait… have you gotten any letters since you left…?”

“Y-Yes…”

“Oh.” She started to see the reason for her emotional outbreak. “From your family…?”

“…” It took her a while to answer. “Y-Yes… A couple dozen from mom and… and many h-hundreds from… Steph…”

"…" Maya also had to think about what to say first. "What, uhh… what did they write to you?”

“I don’t know… You have to click on their names to see their messages…" While saying so, Sophia used the trackpad to circle the mouse over their names several times. “I-I can’t, though… If I read what Steph wrote now… I-I don’t know what that will do to me… Nothing good, that I’m sure of…”

“Not reading them won’t do you any good either, though.”

“I'm scared… I'm scared I'll do something stupid if I read them…"

“Don’t worry, I’m used to that already.”

“…” Hearing that, Sophia finally turned her head away from the screen to look at her girlfriend, who promptly used the chance to wipe some of her tears away. “Idiot…”

“Are you really qualified to accuse others of that?”

“It… It takes one to know one…” It sounded rather half-hearted, but the blonde managed to make a comeback.

“That point goes to you.” She was glad that there was some life left in her. “Okay, should I take a look for you? At the messages, I mean.”

“N-No…”

"Well, one of us is going to do it, or else we aren't going to leave. You have to know what they wrote, and I’ll make sure of that.”

“…” Sophia stared at her with her teary eyes wide open. “I-I hate you…”

“In this situation, I’m fine with being the villain.”

“S-Stop being so smooth…”

“I know. It’s a curse.”

“Come on…”

“Ehehe~.”

“D-Do I really have to read them…?” Sophia got back to the topic. “I feel like that will end up in a catastrophe...”

“What will one more of them change?” She let out a chuckle before continuing. “Yes, you have to. It might not do you any good right now, but you’ll regret it even more in the long run if you don’t.”

“I’m going to make you regret it if you’re wrong…” The blonde glared at her for a moment. “I’ll get rid of the toys if it’s a lie.”

“!?” Maya really didn’t like the sound of that. “No, I’m willing to r-risk the vibrating goodness for that! It will be good for you!”

“Wow…” She looked honestly surprised. “T-This is going to be sooo bad…” Afterward, Sophia clicked on the icon labeled ‘Mom’ inside the messenger.

----------------

The messages from her mother were basically divided into three groups. There were many right after she disappeared, asking about her whereabouts, concerned that something had happened, and hoping for her to return soon.

After around a month, the messages started to become less, and her mother mostly gave her some updates on what was going on, like her pregnancy and her new little sibling after a while. There were also some mentions about her growing a little more distant from Steph as she wanted her to take it a little easier because it was affecting her life too much.

Then, recently, after the letter arrived, her mother sent a few more messages again. They were mainly about thanking her and how she’s glad that her daughter seems to be doing fine. She also asked some questions, but none of them obviously got answered.

“…” Maya was standing right next to her and was also reading the messages. Once the blonde had reached the last one, she had no idea what to say and just put her hand on her shoulder.

“…” Sophia simply started crying again. In fact, it had begun the moment she read the first message from her mother. “I-I… I don’t want to read Steph’s messages… This… This is already hurting too much... a-and I was m-much closer to my sister… I won’t be able to deal with more…”

"I get that, I really do, but…" She had a hard time being convincing after that. “Do you really not want to know what your sister wrote…?”

“…” Once again, the blonde went silent. A few moments later, she finally clicked on the ‘Steph’ icon in the messenger.

----------------

-

--

---

----

-----

-----

----

---

--

-

Similar messages happened in the same pattern for an entire month after Sophia's disappearance. Steph explained how she contacted many more organizations and mobilized everyone she knew to find her sister. She basically went through every street of the gigantic city they were living in herself, as well. Her messages also were becoming increasingly desperate with each passing day.

After the initial month, Steph's messages began to change. Every day still started with begging for an update, but it turned more and more into a sort of diary over time. Every single evening, without fail, she wrote a little summary of her day and what happened. Places where she looked for Sophia, people she asked about her, posts on the internet she made. Also, mundane things to keep her sanity up. A new recipe for cookies, a new movie she's looking forward to watching with her, or a cute jacket she found.

A few months later, Steph was still sending at least one message daily, but the contents had become much more somber. It felt a little like the sister was slowly realizing that Sophia was actually gone. Much was written about their mother, as well. How they had fought a lot over Sophia and how she didn’t want to give up. Steph didn’t care how much it was affecting her. No matter how apparent it was becoming and how a part started to understand, she didn't want to believe that Sophia was gone. Soon enough, her messages became cheerful again. Every single one was written in a very merry way afterward.

This went on for many months afterward. One message after another. One day after the next one. Without fail. Not a single day was skipped. Asking how Sophia's doing. Hoping she was okay. How she missed her. How Steph wanted her back. What her sister did. Where she went. What she experienced. Everything was relayed to Sophia’s messaging account.

Then, the letter reached her, and everything changed again.

-----

---

-

Those were but a few of the messages Steph had left Sophia over the past almost year since she had disappeared.

Once she was done reading through all of them, many she had to read at least twice because the tears were affecting her vision, the blonde exited the messaging program and closed the lid of the laptop.

"…" Without saying a single word and with tears still running down her cheeks, she just turned around and left. She couldn’t be near the laptop any longer.

“S-Sophia!” Maya wiped away her own tears as she was also reading along and quickly followed after her girlfriend. She hadn't expected it to be that heavy, and while she stood by her decision to make the blonde read it, it also seemed like she was regretting it a little bit. In any case, she had a lot of work to do now. Getting Sophia back up after this might end up being slightly complicated.

 

 

---

---