The moment Rabbit Girl appeared on the flower-lined path, Rose Garden erupted in cheers. Even the air seemed to drift with golden-dust exhilaration.
Rabbit Girl had fulfilled the promise she had made earlier!
She had perfectly cleared Golden Country using only one life!
How could that not be worth celebrating?
Faced with everyone's excitement and joy, Rabbit Girl appeared quite calm. For one thing, she herself felt she had not performed all that well; for another... she had not returned alone. A figure followed behind her.
When Rabbit Girl stepped aside and revealed the figure behind her, the boisterous cheering abruptly stopped. Everyone's gaze was firmly drawn to this new uninvited guest.
She was a white-haired girl, perhaps only around one and a half meters tall.
She wore a red-and-white puffed dress. All manner of dolls had been sewn onto its plain white fabric: little white ponies beneath sunny rainbows, pink clouds, and chubby, round little blue birds that looked good enough to eat...
She looked like a lively homebody girl who had just entered that awkward stage of adolescence, wanting both to restrain herself and express who she was.
Under everyone's scrutiny, the girl showed no timidity. Instead, her amber-gold eyes curved into crescents as she smiled with boundless energy and greeted them right away.
Only, the contents of her greeting did not quite match her friendly expression.
"Wow! Your whole body is made of crystal, and you can still move even though you're so hard! Are you sure you aren't some mutant breed of stone people?"
"Another crystal person! But you look so ladylike—you're a big sister! Oh, right, I'm really curious. Do crystal people defecate? Is what you produce soft or hard? Transparent or opaque?"
"My name is Maggie. Can we be friends? Once we're friends, can