"Ah… Papa, you shouldn't touch that!"
The small voice, filled with both urgency and playfulness, reached me as I froze mid-motion.
"But you said to inspect it, right?" I replied, tilting my head in mock confusion.
"Hehe~ Inspecting and interacting are two different things, you know~?" she chirped, her hands clasped behind her back as she offered a sheepish grin.
"Is that so…" I muttered, lowering the object in question.
"Ah, I'm not mad or anything, okay?" she quickly reassured, waving her hands in front of her. "It's just that people tend to get a tiny bit in trouble whenever they touch my inventions~ Hehehe~" She scratched the back of her head with an embarrassed laugh.
The odd yet endearing exchange left me wondering about this peculiar situation I'd found myself in.
Days had passed since I first woke up in this new, profound world—a world that, deep down, I knew was just a fragment of a forgotten and likely destroyed reality.