After Sophia's breakdown after having read all the messages her sister had sent her ever since she disappeared, she, with a lot of help from Maya, decided to reply to Steph's messages. The blonde underlined how happy she now is and that she wants nothing more than her finally being happy again, as well. She should stop worrying about her older sister and finally live her life again. Afterward, using the camera of the laptop she was typing on, she took a picture together with Maya and sent it to Steph, hoping to get the point across that there was no need to worry about Sophia anymore.

"…" The two were still in the restroom together but were facing yet another problem.

“We’re about to run out of tissues, huh…?”

“I’m also getting thirsty…” Sophia was having multiple problems, actually.

“No wonder…” Maya rolled her eyes while using one of the last tissues to wipe away some of the blonde’s tears. “Well, that means you’re about to run dry, huh?”

“I hope… I’m getting tired of crying…”

“I can imagine.” She reacted with a wry smile. “How about you stop, then?”

“E-Easier said than done!” The blonde got loud. “Do you think it was a good thing? Sending the messages to Steph? The picture, too…?”

“I don’t know… I hope so, though.” Maya could not give her a definitive answer.

“Me, too…”

“Well, she now has actual proof that you’re still alive and doing well, so…”

“Y-Yeah…”

“So, what now…?” The white-haired girl looked right at her.

“Hmm…?”

“What do you want to do now?

“Get a drink and cry some more…”

"Besides that, idiot."

"No idea, then…" It wasn't the first time they had had this exchange.

“Do you want to head home? Our home, that is?” Maya decided to clarify this part. “Or, should we buy some more things I don't understand but am fascinated by?"

“…” She paused for a moment. “T-The mood is kinda gone, and I feel horrible, but… We should use the chance we have right now… We need to keep you busy for the next five months with some of the things we're getting after this."

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“Well, the toys are banned up until then for you, after all."

“W-What?!” Maya’s eyes grew wide. “W-Why so long?! That’s beyond unreasonable!”

“I had to adjust the time after the recent events. I think it’s a fair thing to do after everything you made me go through.”

“I beg to differ!”

"Well, tough luck." Sophia just showed her a little smirk.

“…” Maya wanted to complain, because she really wanted to try the toys out as soon as possible, but seeing the blonde being able to tease her despite the situation made her give up for the time being. "Okay, what else is a must-have we need to get?"

"Nothing we get so far is a must-have."

“I WHOLEHEARTEDLY and STRONGLY disagree." She raised her voice.

“Besides the horny.”

“Ahh.” The incognito cat looked relieved again.

“A TV might be fun… Mostly to watch the pictures we took together.”

"Ohh! I would also like to see a movie and or series you and Chloe talked about before… I want to know what that is like!"

“Hmm… That might be hard without internet… Wait, are Blu-ray players still a thing? DVDs, too?”

“I’m sure they are!”

“You have no idea what I just said, don’t you?”

"Not even in the slightest!"

"Well, I like your enthusiasm. Let's take a look…”

“Yay!”

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

As Sophia’s mood seemed to have improved a lot, mostly thanks to Maya keeping her busy, the two retrieved their cart with the cameras and the tablets, and walked far away from the laptop area.

“W-Welcome back to sensory overload…”

"Mh-hmm…" The two had returned to the TV area, and both quickly got overwhelmed by all the moving pictures and sounds.

“Alright, which one do you want?” While pointing at the TVs, Sophia then looked at her girlfriend.

“E-Eh…? You let me decide?”

“Why not?”

“I have no idea about anything here, though?”

“Just get the one with the nicest picture and the size you want. We should, in theory, look out for power consumption, but I doubt the difference between them is that big. Also, the solar thingy we got is waaay too oversized, anyway. Oh, but…” Sophia then pointed at the price tag of one of them. “The higher the price, the fewer movies and series we can get later."

“I see… We’re putting it in the living room…?”

“Sure, if you want to.”

“Alright… Our living room is way too huge, so maybe we should get a bigger one…?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Hmmn…” Afterward, Maya started walking around to look at all the TVs individually, but she soon stopped again. “T-They all look amazing…” Naturally, she had no idea what good and bad quality is. “They feel like you’re watching out of a window… Sure, some look betterer, but even the cheaper ones are unbelievable!”

“Ahaha, that’s fair, I guess.” She couldn’t blame her for that. “Well then, decide on a size, and I'll choose the TV itself."

“Okay!” She walked around some more while inspecting the bigger TVs in the assortment. “Hmm… Maybe one of those two…?” Maya pointed at a 65” and 75” model standing right next to each other. “It’s hard to say because I can’t imagine how it would look in the living room…”

“Going for the huge ones, huh?"

“T-There are still bigger ones!” She then pointed to her right, where a few 80"+ TVs were displayed. The greedy girl tried to look a little less greedy.

“Hehe.” Sophia liked her reaction. “How about we get both?”

“Eh?”

"Their prices are reasonable, they're even on sale right now, and the image looks nice, too. I remember the brand being reliable, as well. Wait…” She then looked closer at the price tag. "That's perfect! It seems like they're running a promo right now, and we get a free Blu-ray player with them!"

“That’s good…?” Maya couldn’t follow her.

“That’s the thing we need to watch movies on the TVs!”

“Ohh!”

“Alright, let’s get both!”

"Wait, would getting two mean that we can buy fewer movies…?"

“True.” Sophia nodded. “Even with both, we can still get hundreds of them, though. Also, if we only get one TV and that one breaks, there will be no movies at all.”

“Oh, that’s true!”

“I mean, they will all break eventually, but we should have some fun with them for a good while!”

“Okay!”

“Also, if we do run out of money, we could always go back to the gold guy. But I doubt we'll be able to spend all the money on movies and series. A lot of them are plainly no good."

“I see!”

Afterward, Sophia got another cart, a flat one, to place the massive TV boxes and the two free Blu-ray players on it. Once that part was taken care of, the duo started looking for the movie area.

“Oho! Looks like the demand for movies and series on disks is still high!” They found them relatively quickly, and the blonde was surprised at just how big the area was.

"Disks…?" Maya just looked confused again.

“You’ll find out once we watch the first one later.”

“Alright.”

“Okay, let’s look around and get everything that looks good! Should we split up for a bit and look at stuff on our own? Everything that tickles our fancy goes into the cart.”

“E-Eh?” The incognito cat wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “I-I don’t know anything about these movie things, though…”

“Here,” Sophia picked up a random one from the shelf. “The most obvious thing to catch your interest is the picture at the front. Then, there's also a little text at the back that tells you more about what the movie will be about. If it sounds interesting, in the cart it goes!”

“I see… Okay, let’s try it!” She wasn’t against the plan anymore. Afterward, the duo went in different directions to look at movies and series on their own for a bit.

“Alright, where are the horror movies?” The blonde had a specific reason for wanting to look on her own. “Her reaction with the ghosts in the dungeon and what Eve told me about her getting scared by spooky things, this will be fun~."

Roughly 15 minutes later, the two reunited again. Still, something seemed odd, and it wasn't the 30+ horror movies in Sophia's cart, all lying cover down to not spoil the surprise.

“…” For some reason, Maya’s face was completely red while she continued to steal glances at her own cart, filled with about as many movies.

“What’s wrong…?”

“Y-Your world is amazing!”

“Eh…?” The blonde could only tilt her head in response. “Where even were you? I haven’t seen you once while browsing through the movies.”

“Uhh…” She got even more awkward. “At the end of the row, there was a door with a sign over it… Adult section or something like that…”

“Wait… Huh? Since when do electronic stores even have that...? In a separate room and all..” Sophia looked confused for a moment and then grabbed a few of the movies in Maya’s cart to get a better look at them. “They’re all porn!”

"There was also a so-called preview thing running on one of the TVs… V-Very interesting. Informative, too…”

“Informative?!”

“There’s something we have to try later…" Saying so, Maya also pulled a movie out of her cart. "That's the one that was running on the TV…”

“The lesbian Kamasutra…? Part 1 of 5…?” She needed a moment. “Seriously…?”

“Yes!” She nodded a few times. “I got the other four in here, as well!”

“It was a mistake to show you this world… You’re too compatible with it… The pervert came home or whatever…”

“You don’t want to watch it?” Maya looked at her with upturned eyes.

“I never said that!”

“Good!”

“I didn’t know there were that many lesbian movies in the wild. Outside the internet, I mean. Wait, they're all girls only, right?"

“Of course!” She nodded a few times. “I got every movie in the lesbian section!”

“I see…”

“Not interested in the other stuff.” Maya then shook her head. “There even was a super nice female clerk in there to help me out! She warned me about trap movies I shouldn’t get.”

“Ohh, that’s great!”

“By the way, what are trap movies…?”

"Ahaha… In this context, it would be lesbian porn that isn't lesbian at all… After the first five minutes, a guy would suddenly show up, and it ends in a threesome…”

"Disgusting! Thank you very much, miss clerk!"

“Ahaha…”

“So, what did you get?” Maya tried to peek into Sophia’s cart.

"That's a secret. I got some of my favorite movies, and I want to surprise you with them!" As the blonde was into horror, she technically wasn’t lying.

“Ohh, I look forward to that!”

“So do I!” Sophia was trying very hard for her smile not to turn into a grin. “Should we look at the rest together? Let's find something that catches both of our interests!

“Yes!” Maya liked the plan.

Afterward, once the spooky and horny genre was taken care of, the two collected a wide variety of many more movies. Once they had gotten a decent amount, the couple went over to the series box sets. There, they got the complete edition of basically every series that looked and sounded even remotely interesting. The play time of each collection usually was gigantic and a much better value for money if you have to maximize the amount of entertainment you can buy before not being able to get more. Thanks to that, they got many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of entertainment in all the carts the two had by now.

Nearby, Sophia had also spotted the video game section. As she still had a good bit of money left, even after getting way too many series and movies, the blonde also decided to get a game console. She limited herself to party games that can be played with many, though. That sounded like more fun to her. She also got a couple of extra controllers and some other accessories.

Before finally leaving, the blonde also got two gigantic packs of batteries in bulk, a lot of the rechargeable kinds, all kinds of chargers, cables, and extension cords for power, data, and everything else she could think of. They would be out of luck if she missed anything, after all. Sophia also decided to buy two hair-straightening irons. One for herself and maybe Anna to use, as well. The other one was to experiment on after she might've remembered this almost forgotten plot point.

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

Once they had paid for everything, which took almost half an hour because it was multiple hundreds of objects, the couple swiftly disappeared into a dark corner inside the building, and when they came back, all their baggage was suddenly gone. Stuffed into Sophia’s storage, that is.

“Unhinged binge shopping is the best~. Spending a ton of money really improves the mood~.”

“Ahaha…” Maya chuckled at her.

“Oh, right! You wanted to get some cooking books, right? How about we-!” The two had just walked through the exit of the electronics store when Sophia tried to suggest their next activity. She wasn’t able to finish her sentence, though. Exactly half a second after having left the store, her expression completely changed as she froze up on the spot. At the same time, tears once again started to appear in the corners of her eyes. Something that was constantly happening today.

Immediately after, the sound of her cheek being slapped with immense force echoed through the area. The slap sounded so strong that the old Sophia, without her boosts, probably would’ve sustained quite a bit of damage. In fact, the hand of the dark-blonde girl in front of her, who was slightly smaller than the tiger version of Sophia, had turned bright red in an instant. Tears were also streaming down from the dark blue eyes of the girl in the white sweater and black jacket and shorts, just like her sheer black overknees and sneakers. Still, it somehow didn't seem like those were the result of the pain in her hand. In fact, it seemed like this girl had already been crying long before the slap.

“HEY!” Contrary to the frozen and rooted Sophia, Maya was anything but silent. No one’s slapping her girlfriend without repercussion, after all. She was about to pounce on the shorter blonde with a slap of her own, one seemingly infused by magic and ready to send her to another dimension, but she didn't make it far.

"S-Stop!" Sophia held her arm in front of her to stop the white-haired girl from attacking her. Afterward, she slightly turned her head to the side to present her other, by now tear-soaked, cheek to the girl. “S-Slap this one, too, please… I-I… I earn that… T-That, and much more…”

“S-Sophia!” The girl had no intention of slapping her again, though. Instead, she immediately jumped at her and tightly crushed the taller blonde into a gigantic hug while wrapping her arms around her neck.

“S-Steph…” While whispering the name of the girl in front of her, Sophia quickly returned the hug.

 

 

 

---

---