Chapter 10 - Shopping and Confessions

Chapter 10 - Shopping and Confessions

The carriage rocked gently as it rolled through the cobbled streets, sunlight flickering through velvet curtains. Inside sat two women—one elegant and nervous, the other Sneakers and curled up like a lazy cat in her seat.

Stella stared at the sky with half-lidded, star-speckled eyes, her cheek pressed to the window.

The Duchess glanced at her daughter for what must have been the fiftieth time. Something was different. Too different. Her posture, her tone, her eyes… even the way she existed now felt like it hummed with quiet power.

This… this isn’t my daughter, the Duchess thought, her lips tightening—only to immediately scold herself. But she is. I can feel it. I know she is… I just...

She'd already discussed it with her husband. Multiple times. They’d whispered about it at midnight, behind soundproofed walls. And always, they came to the same frustrating conclusion:

Something happened… and we don’t know what.

But now, with the streets of the shopping district drawing nearer, the Duchess made her decision.

She cleared her throat softly. “Stella.”

“Mmm?”

“Tell me the truth. What really happened to you… after the accident?”

Stella didn’t move for a long moment. Then her head tilted, and she gave her mother a lopsided, unreadable smile.

“Would you believe me if I told you?” she asked, voice lilting, mischievous.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The Duchess hesitated… then nodded. “I don’t know what changed you. But you’re still my daughter. I’m sure of that.”

Stella blinked slowly. Then sighed, brushing a strand of star-glow hair from her face.

“Then I won’t lie to you,” she murmured. “I’m still me. One hundred and one percent. Just... extra assembled.”

Before she could explain further, the carriage rolled to a gentle stop.

“We’ve arrived, milady,” the coachman called out.

The Duchess smiled, lips touched with amusement. “Let’s discuss family matters at home. Right now, we have more important things to do.”

Stella’s eyes narrowed.

“…What could possibly be more important than the metaphysical rebirth of your only daughter?” she muttered, already suspicious.

“Shopping,” the Duchess declared, taking her hand with royal finality.

A cold sweat ran down Stella’s back.

No. No no no… not this again...

A long-buried memory surged up from the depths of her mind—back when she ruled an entire galaxy as the Empress of Obsidian Flame. She’d had armies, fleets, entire pantheons of lesser gods trembling before her...

And maids. So. Many. Maids.

Maids who loved to dress up their Empress like a ceremonial doll.

“An Empress must always wear proper attire befitting her station~,” they’d coo, layering her in silken tortures: corsets, twelve-pound hairpins, gold-threaded gowns that defied physics.

Stella trembled. The Duchess’s eyes had the same glint.

“I am not going back into the corset hell,” Stella hissed, trying to edge away.

The Duchess tightened her grip like a knight with a mission.

“You’ll look lovely.”

---

Two hours later, Stella stumbled back into the mansion like a corpse returning from war. Her skin was pale. Her limbs twitching.

A necklace that cost more than a city’s defense budget clung around her neck like a smug noose. A pair of cursed stilettos had massacred her feet.

She collapsed onto the nearest couch with a wheeze, muttering in sixteen dead languages.

She’d conjured casual hoodies with a snap of her fingers. She could obliterate stars with a thought. But against motherly shopping duty?

She was powerless.

“I miss my hoodie...” she whispered.

---

That night, she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, arms spread like a starfish. The ache of heels still haunted her, but her mind wandered elsewhere.

To her mother’s voice.

Her father's laughter.

To her home.

When she’d first awakened—memories flooding back from across realities—she had cried. Cried because she remembered her mission, but couldn’t remember where her home was.

Fragment after fragment, life after life, she had begun to forget. Their faces blurred. Their names slipped away.

But the feeling remained.

That strange, warm, foolish love.

And that was why—when she found her original body lying comatose—she didn’t just consume it like she had the others.

She merged herself into that final piece.

So she could still be Stella Rivera.

Not a cosmic force.

Not a goddess.

Not an empress.

Just... Stella.

And maybe—just maybe—she could find that forgotten love again that she wasn't able to enjoy before.

Bit by bit.

Even if it came with corset that can split her in half.