In that moment, it was as though time had crystallized inside the library.
Meruru stood in the doorway, tray still in hand, the seafood congee balanced on it.
First she looked at the Great Witch's face — red as though blood might drip from it. Then she looked at Shin's hands, both of them clamped firmly against the white-stockinged sole of that foot. Finally, her gaze settled on the Great Witch's slightly disordered clothing, and on the tail end of a sound — still not fully swallowed back — that had carried a distinctly trembling "I'm being broken."
Clatter.
A spoon dropped against the tray with a sharp ring.
"Br— Brother…"
In an instant, the light went out of Meruru's eyes. The girl radiated a bone-deep, cold sense of grievance.
"Before, the Great Witch said… that I should marry Brother…"
"It turns out… this kind of thing… can also include the Great Witch?"
"Hold on, Meruru — hear me out."
Shin released his grip with a perfectly neutral expression and let that white-stockinged little foot go free — releasing this particular troublesome loli-mother who had such an affection for jokes at his expense.
In all honesty and before heaven, he really had done nothing but give her a foot massage. He truly hadn't anticipated the Great Witch's reaction being quite so theatrical.
He only knew that Ripple was life energy, that it carried a healing effect by nature — how was he to know it would behave like electric therapy on contact?
"I… I don't understand… wahhh…"
"It seems… it seems I arrived at the wrong moment, and interrupted Brother and the Great Witch mid…waaahh!"
Meruru, predictably, transformed back into a weeping jellyfish. Whether her temperament was nature or nurture, Shin genuinely couldn't say.
He had protected her well, by any measure, for their entire childhood, hadn't he?
"Foot massages… also count as Brother and the Great Witch's 'negotiation'? So that's where Brother's preference lies…"
What preference?! How did this become a preference?!
And given how long they had been together, did Meruru somehow still not know what his actual interests were?!
Shin stared at Meruru in disbelief, his gaze briefly passing over the two generously-proportioned, resilient aspects of her silhouette — he still remembered that on their very first night, Meruru had needed to cast [Healing] magic on herself just to get through the initial shock of it.
And now she'd forgotten all of that already? He didn't mind the jellyfish jokes, but please — don't have the memory of an actual jellyfish.
"Meruru can also massage Brother's feet…!"
"Feet, chest, even — she can massage anywhere for Brother. Why would you have to look to the Great Witch for something like that?"
"And Meruru can also wear whatever Brother likes — like what the Great Witch is wearing… wahhh…"
It seemed Meruru, in addition to her lovesick tendencies, was developing a certain yandere edge as well.
He was fairly sure the Great Witch had given Meruru a witch's factor — not an obsessive factor. Wasn't she?
"Meruru, calm down…"
And at this point, the Great Witch, Yuki, finally caught her breath.
Straightening her slipped clothing with slightly flustered hands, she attempted to deploy some senior-member authority to restore order to the situation.
"Don't misunderstand, Meruru. This is a perfectly normal thing — like a child washing their mother's feet."
"Your brother recently learned a new health technique and came to practice it on me first… yes, something like that. Don't overthink it."
"A health technique…?"
Meruru murmured to herself, her gaze drifting to the Great Witch's white-stockinged feet — the ones that hadn't quite retreated back under her skirt — with the red pressure-marks still visible through the fabric, bright against the white.
"Brother."
"Hm?"
"This health technique… Meruru wants to learn it too. Please take me to the bedroom right now."
The slightly vacant, post-crying light in Meruru's eyes sharpened with a very different kind of gleam:
"I will learn diligently. That way, afterwards, I can give the Great Witch her massages too, so Brother won't have to trouble himself."
"How about it?"
Shin: …
What exactly is going on right now?
He hadn't expected Meruru to be capable of being jealous of the Great Witch — he had always assumed that when it came to loyalty and devotion toward the Great Witch, Meruru ran even deeper than he did.
But there was no other way around it. In order to put out the nearly-visible flames of Meruru's jealousy, Shin had no choice but to pull her over on the spot and give her a live demonstration — directly on that considerably more robust and accommodating constitution of hers, compared to the Great Witch's glass-boned frame.
Meruru returned to her normal self fairly quickly after that — the only side effect being that the library, which was meant to be used for quiet reading, rang with a somewhat celestial soundtrack for a while.
For Meruru, after all, Shin had none of the hesitation he'd shown with the Great Witch — they had long since done everything that needed doing, and this was hardly anything extra.
Though Shin did notice, during the demonstration, that the Great Witch's expression had gone strange again — something like whack-a-mole: press one end down and the other pops right back up.
I should find an excuse to go outside soon and investigate the state of this world.
If Witch Island is really located in the Nasuverse, things could get complicated — and it's unclear which way it leans, toward the Alaya side or the Gaia side.
Shin sat in the dining room, sipping the bowl of seafood congee Meruru had made — now half-cooled — while in the back of his mind, the group chat had apparently reignited its earlier unfinished argument.
To be continued…