"Ah... this...?"
Robin's beautiful eyes went wide, and her slender hand, wrapped in delicate silk gloves, instinctively covered her slightly parted lips. Her face was full of bewildered disbelief.
The shock lent her exquisite features an oddly endearing daze.
This was Penacony, the palace of sweet dreams.
But even dreams had to follow basic rules!
Dreamscapes weren't lawless fantasies where anything went — most physical rules mirrored the real world exactly, with only a small portion carefully crafted by Dreamweavers to better suit the dream.
There were indeed some game zones within dreams adapted from classic animations, where participants could use special equipment to temporarily transform into the game's protagonist for an immersive story experience.
But once you left that designated game area, the transformation effect would immediately wear off.
So, the scene before her...
There was no way this was the dream's own rules at work.
So then what was going on with this... Mr. Jerry?
Robin was completely dumbfounded.
As an interstellar superstar, she'd considered herself well-versed in the diversity of the cosmos's myriad races. But she was certain no race could freely switch between human form and rodent.
Just as Robin fell silent, beginning to wonder whether she should urgently call the Family to inspect the dream's condition —
the small, fluffy brown mouse moved.
It spun rapidly in place a few times, then hopped about cheerfully, before deliberately faking a fall — flopping flat onto the ground with a splat, as though testing out its current body.
Robin watched, stunned into a blank stare.
Then the energetic little mouse looked around, its gaze locking onto one direction, and it scurried off on its tiny legs, pitter-pattering toward the room's grand, firmly shut door.
"Mr. Jerry?"
Robin ventured, testing the waters:
"Do you... want to leave here?"
She had the odd feeling that Mr. Jerry, now a mouse, carried a somewhat different air than the gray-haired, gold-eyed young man from before.
Caelus-Jerry stopped at her words, turned around, flashed Robin a brilliant mouse-style grin, and nodded his tiny head vigorously.
"Do you need me to help you open... the door...?!"
The words had barely left Robin's mouth, the tail of her sentence still hanging in the air, when she saw the little brown figure striding briskly toward the crack right at the center of the closed door.
Then it simply strolled right through!
"?"
In that moment, Robin's mind automatically played that classic, soul-deep confusion sound effect from short videos.
She blinked in disbelief, then rubbed her eyes hard.
Was she seeing things?
Or had the dream system actually developed a bug?
How had it gotten through?
No, wait — had it really passed through?
"Mr. Jerry!"
Robin hurried forward two steps, reached out to push open the heavy door, and cast an urgent glance at the polished floor outside.
What she saw next was even stranger, the kind of sight that made her question her entire existence.
The adorable brown mouse hadn't vanished — it was right there, not far beyond the door.
But it was no longer a plump, three-dimensional creature. It had become a thin sheet of paper, as though crushed flat by a ten-ton truck and flattened straight into a two-dimensional world.
A flat mouse silhouette, stripped of all thickness, was walking casually across the ornate carpet as if nothing were amiss.
"Am... am I dreaming?"
Robin murmured to herself.
"Oh right, I actually am dreaming..."
But that wasn't right!
She shook her head hard, trying to dispel the sense of unreality.
This strange phenomenon was enough to make even her, a Penacony native, start doubting whether something was wrong at the foundational level of the dream.
No, she needed to verify this.
As for how to verify it—
Under Caelus-Jerry's startled gaze, Robin decisively slammed the door shut with a bang — the very door that had just flattened a mouse.
She was going to test the door's properties herself!
Facing the closed, ornate door, the elegant superstar took a deep breath. Robin ignored the door's existence entirely and took a firm step toward the panel.
Bang!
A dull thud echoed through the corridor.
Two seconds later, the door swung open again, and Caelus saw Robin crouched pitifully on the ground, one silk-gloved hand pressed to her reddened forehead, the other unconsciously rubbing it, her delicate brows knotted in pain.
"Ahahahaha—"
Caelus-Jerry, as though watching a hilarious stage comedy, slapped his own thigh hard, laughing without restraint.
"Mr. Jerry..."
Robin lowered her head, embarrassed and flustered.
She'd basically concluded that the problem wasn't the dream — it was this gentleman.
Once he'd laughed his fill, Caelus-Jerry stopped, craning his little head to peer at the splendid golden corridor ahead, then looked down at his own tiny legs — shorter, combined, than a human finger — and fell into brief contemplation.
A moment later, understanding dawned, and a glowing lightbulb appeared above his head.
What the heck?
"?"
Robin's beautiful eyes, still glistening with tears, went wide — she'd really seen a lightbulb!
But before she could recover from the shock of "a bulb lighting above his head," the bulb vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
Caelus-Jerry nimbly darted to Robin's feet, hooked his tiny paws precisely onto the delicate lace of her hem, and scrambled up hand and foot, quickly reaching the knee she'd slightly bent while crouching.
Before Robin could react, the little mouse on her knee coiled and leaped with all its might.
Its fluffy little body traced a graceful arc through the air and landed squarely on Robin's smooth, jade-white shoulder.
Hiss—so slippery!
Judging purely from the feel underfoot, it was like standing on freshly mopped, still-wet polished tile — a perfect illustration of what "treacherously slick shoulder" truly meant.
Luckily Robin was no ordinary girl, or else having a mouse suddenly scramble up her and perch on her shoulder would probably have sent her shrieking at the top of her lungs.
Once he'd steadied himself, Caelus-Jerry extended a tiny hand and pointed decisively down the corridor.
"Do you want me to carry you along?"
Robin blinked.
Caelus-Jerry nodded.
"All right."
Robin had entirely given up on the idea of showing Caelus out by now. This young man — or was he a mouse? — defied her expectations, wrapped in mysteries that stirred her curiosity.
She rose slowly, carefully keeping her balance.
"Mr. Jerry,"
she asked cautiously as she walked, "Can you... talk right now?"
"I can."
Caelus's voice rang out clearly.
"But in this state, I don't like talking."
"You don't like talking?"
Robin's willow brows twitched slightly, intrigued.
Mm-hm!
Perched on her shoulder, Caelus-Jerry nodded his tiny head like a chick pecking rice:
"Talking makes my whole body feel awful. It's weird."
Caelus guessed it was probably because, in the original Tom and Jerry, these two characters basically never spoke.
A harmless little constraint, all things considered.
Just as Robin hesitated, a sheet of paper with writing on it was held up before her.
[You can just say whatever you need — I can write to communicate with you.]
The handwriting was clear and forceful, flowing like dragons and phoenixes in flight, its strokes full of vigor.
Such beautiful handwriting!
A mouse's calligraphy, somehow surpassing that of many calligraphy masters Robin knew.
"All right..."
Robin nodded on reflex, then belatedly realized what she'd just seen and turned to look at the paper and pen — far larger than the mouse himself — on her shoulder.
Wh-where had he even pulled that pen and paper from?!
He'd pulled them out earlier during his introduction, then they'd vanished, and now they were back again?
He didn't even have any spatial storage equipment on him!
"Mr. Jerry, where do you want to go?"
Robin asked softly. Guided by the little mouse on her shoulder, they had already passed through several rooms.
A sheet of paper was held up before her right on cue, the writing still as fluid as ever.
[No need for "Mister" — just call me Caelus or Jerry. I'm looking for my partner.]
Robin's eyes widened slightly.
Such fast handwriting!
But what caught her attention more was the content.
Caelus was his real name?
Partner?
Was that "Mr. Jerry's" girlfriend?
"Is this also her first time entering a dream, Jerry?"
Robin slowed her pace and explained gently:
"This is deep within the Golden Hour, my personal Dream Bubble. Your companion... normally wouldn't be able to enter here."
"Getting from here to the boundary between reality and Memory Zone — the place someone might accidentally stray into when first exposed to high-concentration Memoria — would be an extremely complicated process."
"By the time we found a path, she'd likely have already left that border region."
Yet the little mouse on her shoulder shook its head vigorously.
Perhaps it was because Tom and Jerry were a paired transformation card, or maybe it was the bond between Tom and Jerry themselves.
Whatever the reason, Caelus could clearly sense exactly where his other half was.
The little mouse suddenly leapt nimbly off the girl's rounded shoulder, landing squarely on the carpet.
He extended a hand and beckoned toward Robin's slender hand, which hung at her side.
"Do you... want my hand?"
Robin hesitated for a moment, then offered her pale, slender, silk-gloved hand.
Caelus-Jerry flashed a satisfied smile and clasped both tiny hands tightly around one of Robin's index fingers, as if gripping a ship's helm.
His small body turned to face straight ahead, his gaze utterly focused, every stray thought cleared from his mind until only one pure thought remained.
Find Stelle·Tom!
And then—
Run!
"W-wait?!"
Before Robin's startled cry had even finished, an unimaginable force suddenly surged from her fingertip.
It didn't feel like being pulled along by a palm-sized mouse at all — more like being dragged along by a runaway vehicle.
She had no time to adjust her stance before she was forced into an extremely undignified pose, her body pitched forward at a 45-degree angle, hauled forward by that tiny brown figure.
But that was only the beginning.
Something even more world-shattering happened next — the dreamscape around her no longer receded at a steady pace but began to twist, stretch, and fold!
The gleaming golden corridor, the floating decorations, the flowing glow of Memoria...
Space itself compressed beneath the mouse's seemingly tiny strides. She could clearly feel some solid dimensional barrier of the dream being pierced through as easily as fragile glass.
How was this possible?!
Robin's mind went blank, with only that single thought screaming through it.
Even just breaking through from the surface of the Golden Hour into a deep dream crevice like the Dreamflux Reef required a specific route, method, or sufficient Dreamweaver authority.
Mr. Jerry... just what method was he using to move?!
Robin felt her own worldview crumbling toward the brink, one mouse-step at a time.
She had no idea how much time had passed.
Maybe only a single minute; maybe ten had gone by.
Just as Robin felt she was about to be shaken apart by that awkward dragging posture, the terrifying pull finally vanished.
Boom!
A door suddenly flew open.
The manner of its opening was more than a little violent — the door swept through a graceful arc before slamming flat onto the ground.
That door was done for.
The source of the violence: a mouse, still running across the surface of the door, though how such a tiny body had managed to tear open that heavy door was anyone's guess.
The mouse came to a stop, but the momentum of the human charging behind it at high speed had nowhere to go.
"Aah—!"
Robin only managed a short, sharp cry before she completely lost her balance, toppling forward like a jade tree felled by a gale, straight toward the ground.
And directly in the path of her fall was Caelus-Jerry, who had just released her finger and hadn't yet had time to scramble away.
Her chest, wrapped in an ornate purple lotus-leaf bodice and full as snow-capped peaks, came down under the Acceleration of her fall like two collapsing snow mountains, bearing straight down on the tiny brown mouse below.
Aw, looks like this little mouse is about to become a mouse-pancake again~
As Caelus-Jerry watched the snow-mountain meteor descend, that thought flashed through his mind.
Splat!
But the expected crushing didn't happen — in that split second, Caelus felt there was still a chance to save himself.
Relying on Jerry's incredible flexibility, he wedged himself, just barely, into the deep, warm valley above.
The mouse's small body was tightly enveloped and squeezed by that astonishing softness and smoothness, as though sinking into a snow-white abyss brimming with lethal temptation.
He flailed his tiny hands, steadying himself amid the soft avalanche.
"Mmph!"
Robin let out a muffled groan as she landed hard on the carpet.
But the physical pain was nowhere close to a fraction of the mental shock and physical sensation she felt now.
She could feel it clearly — that small, warm, fuzzy body wriggling and sliding within the valley.
She could even feel the strange, shiver-inducing sensation of those tiny paws pushing futilely against her.
"G-get out! Get out of there!"
Robin's voice carried an unprecedented flurry of panic and embarrassment, her face instantly flushing a burning sunset red.
Ignoring the sting in her bruised knees and elbows, she scrambled to push herself up, fumbling to pull the squirming little creature out.
Just as Robin rose to her feet and Caelus-Jerry poked his head out from the valley, they both got a clear look at the room before them — and froze.
There, a gray-haired girl was pressed torso-first against the wall, limbs thrown into the air, spiraling through the corridor — from floor to wall to ceiling, then from ceiling to wall back to floor again.
It looked exactly like some bizarre creature having a meltdown, and for a moment Robin thought she'd stumbled into a horror Dream Bubble.
Sure, this was a dream, and walking on walls as if they were flat ground was normal enough. But even so, couldn't she have at least walked like a flattened mouse-sheet, the way Jerry had done earlier?
That would still be more "normal" than sliding along the wall chest-first and running on one's rear!
Besides the flailing Gray-hair, there was another figure present.
Blue-violet hair spread out like burning purple flames, its tips curling in delicate arcs.
Her white short top, embroidered with purple twining vine patterns, dipped low enough to reveal her delicate collarbone, exposing one shoulder and the underarm, while a black sash cinched her waist into a slender silhouette.
A flame tattoo on the inside of her thigh, red and purple intertwined like burning violet fire, traced along the curve of her leg, lending her a touch of wildness.
What drew the eye most was the long sword with its black hilt, its sheath etched with silver-violet patterns.
She gazed at Robin with cool indifference.
Stelle suddenly leapt down from the ceiling, landing in front of Robin, her eyes wide as she stared at the brown mouse nestled in the snowy valley.
"Caelus-cub?"
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