Hwan was panicking from the moment she saw Amber closing up the zipper above her, the last sliver of light disappearing and leaving the five girls inside the bag in total darkness. With it, she could feel her hopes of ever getting back to normal disappearing, too. Not that her chances were looking very optimistic beforehand - there were a ton of Fruit users along the boardwalk of Panama City Beach, but none of them seemed terribly concerned about turning anyone back to an unaltered human state. Any further changes might only make her situation worse.
And she knew that the friends she was riding along with, as Amber carried the bag back to the airport and stowed it in an overhead bin on the plane, wouldn't be much help, either. Not only could they not understand her speech, hearing only a bunch of yipping noises when she tried to talk, but they wouldn't even understand how she felt. They all seemed perfectly content with being reduced to inanimate objects of one kind or another, with no way of knowing if they'd ever be human again.
So all the little stuffed fox could do for the next several hours was pace around restlessly, making a tight circle in the cramped space available. The other girls had all gone into some sort of unconscious state in the darkness of the bag, but Hwan couldn't have fallen asleep if she wanted to. She just couldn't accept this as her permanent fate. Even if she would never be totally normal again, she needed to at least find some way to get back to what she'd been changed into before. Five feet tall, instead of five inches at the shoulder. And, most importantly, the ability to say anything other than the word "Yip".
But all that frantic thinking and pacing around, kneading the floor of fabric below her with her soft fluffy paws, failed to bring any great ideas to Hwan's mind that would get her out of this situation. By the time she felt the plane land and the bag begin to roll through the halls of another airport terminal, she felt just as lost and anxious as she was when she first became a plushie. She had only one distant hope left in her mind - that maybe, while she was gone, her mom might have gotten a better handle on the foxy powers that had gotten Hwan into this mess, and now she would know how to use them to get Hwan out of it.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of waiting, Amber opened the bag again and, with one hand, easily plucked Hwan out of it. She wriggled a little in the sudden, but gentle, grasp of her... girlfriend? Hwan hadn't been entirely sure what the status of their relationship was, exactly, and that was before reality itself changed to make it so she'd supposedly always been a stuffed animal. But the kiss Amber planted on her fuzzy little snout as she carried Hwan out of the driveway... that was clearly more than just a friendly goodbye.
Hwan leaned forward and did what little she could to kiss back. And in that moment, she could almost forget about the helpless form she was indefinitely stuck in. Almost. She did have to wonder how their long-running friends-to-enemies-to-lovers history had been retroactively changed to make Hwan a plush during all of it. They couldn't have shared all the same moments together - some of them just wouldn't make physical sense anymore. But she couldn't exactly ask Amber to explain, and besides, her girlfriend was now only moments away from dropping her off and leaving.
Squeezing Hwan gently in one hand, Amber reached over and rang the doorbell with her other hand. Quickly, the door opened to reveal Hwan's fox-woman of a mother. "Hi, Mrs. Li," Amber said politely but casually, holding Hwan out casually for the anthropomorphic fox to take. "Don't worry, I brought her back in one piece. No rips or tears. Just like I promised."
Hwan really didn't like that Amber was suddenly talking about her like she was selling a used toy at a garage sale, but she couldn't help getting her hopes up now. This was her mom, after all. Even if everybody else thought she'd always been this way, and none of them could understand a word she was yipping, surely her own mother would remember... right?! Help!, she cried to the giant fox in front of her, although it came out as "Yip!" Mom! "Yip!" Please! "Yip!"
But her mom just looked down at Hwan with a slight smile and scooped her up in a single paw. If she thought there was anything strange about this situation, she certainly wasn't showing it. "So you couldn't find anyone who could make her more human-like?", Kim Li said. "That's too bad. I know she really wishes she could go to school with the rest of you girls."
"We really tried to find someone who could do it," Amber replied. "But it seems like all those Fruits mostly go the other direction. And hey, Hwan wouldn't be the only living object around at school these days. All the other girls got some sort of similar change - I think they might feel a sense of solidarity with her. Hwan might fit in just perfectly before too much longer."
A warm smile formed on Kim's long muzzle. "Maybe in a few years, when my daughter gets a little bit older. Sumin's still at that age where she wants to have something to cuddle with all the time."
Hwan couldn't believe her fuzzy little triangular ears. What had that Pinocchio guy done to her? The physical changes to her body had been bad enough, but now it was dawning on her that she was no longer fully considered a person, even by her own family members. And to top it all off, the way her mom had said "my daughter"... Hwan was also her daughter! Or was that not the case anymore in this warped reality? Hwan shuddered at the thought.
But before she could think about it any further, as if on cue, Sumin stomped into the room. The little girl had a little more fox in her than the last time Hwan had seen her - she wondered if that was more of the universe being rewritten or just more of her mom's Fruit powers taking effect. The reddish-orange fur in her ears had spread down through Sumin's hair and tapered off softly along the sides of her head. And she was walking on skinny black paws that stuck out from the bottom of her dress.
Hwan could practically see stars glimmering in her little sister's eyes when she caught sight of the plush. She braced herself for what she knew was coming next, but it didn't help much. Her mom practically tossed her into the girl's arms, and Sumin immediately hugged her - tightly. The squeeze was crushing - it would easily have broken all her bones if she still had any, and she could feel her glass marble eyes threatening to pop out of their stitching if any more pressure was applied. This was her life now? Scratch that - this is what her life had always been?