The Witch's Child (Re:zero)

Do you hate me?

Mamoru, Zuri, Iris and Yukiko sat in the carriage in silence, though it was very clear that someone was frustrated inside the carriage.

Mamoru: Zuri, stop looking at me like that.

Zuri: I wanted to travel...

Mamoru couldn't help but roll his eyes, it had been a pain to convince Zuri to end their little trip early. It got so bad in fact that Mamoru considered using his authority to just command Zuri to follow along.

Glancing to the recently transported Japanese girl, Yukiko, he noticed that she was rather nervous.

He imagined that it was due to them being strangers, for the most part anyway. Yukiko didn't really have a choice in whether she wanted to follow the group or not since she was not only in an completely unknown place, but she could barely see anything, so her odds of surviving alone were even lower than winning the lottery.

In all honesty, Mamoru wanted to say something, but he lacked something to actually achieve that goal.

He couldn't come up with a way to comfort the girl. Comforting other people wasn't his speciality, sure, he can easily comfort his father thanks to his knowledge of Return by Death, but other than that he'd rather stick to fighting.

Iris: Hey hey hey! Can you see me? Or can you not? I am visible, and now I am invisible!

He supposed that he didn't need to worry about that as Iris's idiotic acts seemed to be slowly putting the girl at ease.

Pretending he fell asleep, Mamoru leaned back and closed his eyes as he muttered something extremely quietly.

Mamoru: Echidna...

Just like that, in an instant his conciousness was ripped away from the living world as it entered the dream world created by Echidna.

Opening his eyes again Mamoru looked down at his body, once again an adult's body as he glanced up at where Echidna usually sat.

Aaaaaand she was nowhere to be found, which was somewhat surprising.

The door of the house that was next to the table opened and revealed Echidna walking through it as she looked in the direction where Mamoru was.

Echidna: Pardon my late arrival, but I just didn't expect you to suddenly call out to me like this.

Mamoru: Don't worry, not like I'm here to see you right now, sorry.

Echidna: That's not exactly the nicest thing to say, you did also call out to me, you know?

The white haired Mabeast chuckled as he spoke.

Mamoru: Please, the only way I can enter here is by saying your name.

Echidna: I suppose that's true. Also, you do know that you can speak normally in the dream world, right?

Mamoru: Yeah...But I got kinda used to it. So I won't bother-

Suddenly, the door of the house was blown off and Echidna was pushed down as a pink blur flew past her and slammed into Mamoru.

Mamoru fell to the ground as he felt someone sitting on top of him. The figure then proceeded to punch him constantly as the entire dream world shook.

Well, the punches didn't really hurt though. They actually felt pleasant, the reason for that was quite obvious too...

The one punching him was Minerva.

Minerva: Stupid! Idiot! Dummy! Die, actually, don't die!

Mamoru:...Which is it?