Kirakishou, Don't Cry

The moon shone bright and the stars were sparse. Ding Dang flitted about wildly, while I lay in bed tossing and turning. I'd spent the entire day running around outside, so why couldn't I sleep now?

The little thing was bouncing around happily because she'd received a whole pile of candy, circling the ceiling over and over. The boxes in the corner swayed slightly because the dolls inside had received storybooks as gifts, and until a few minutes ago, they'd been chattering away about what was in them. Heaven could bear witness: those books were far more suitable for children than Lilina's bizarre fairy tales.

Meanwhile, I was still marveling at the wonders of fate.

Yakumo Yukari and Hakurei Reimu—how the hell had those two barged into this? Choking on water, getting food stuck in their teeth, their faces cramping when they blinked, opening a gap and somehow becoming illegal interdimensional immigrants, accidentally destroying Imperial Army property and then losing their personal freedom... By all rights, neither of them was a lancer...

Bubble would probably learn about those two soon enough. I wondered whether that shut-in Child's Mother would go berserk because of it.

Maybe the doll girls could finally breathe a little easier.

These past few days, Shinku and the others had suffered terribly at Bubble's hands. The Shilin Mainframe, driven by an intense obsession, had sworn to make several one-to-one models part of her collection. The methods she'd used were already approaching the edge of humanitarian decency, and they had clearly left the dolls with severe psychological trauma. When Little Pao Pao had come by to say goodnight earlier, Suiseiseki had mistaken her for someone else and nearly launched herself and her box out the window—but just like when Suigintou had first arrived, the little doll had bounced