I woke up early the next morning to the buzzing of my phone, feeling like I had been taken out of a weird dream once again.
After confirming that Mai was still asleep next to me, I slowly crept out of the room and answered the call.
“Saki, you’re up early for a weekend morning. This about Nao?”
“Yeah, I had her stay at mine last night. You took Mai home too, right?”
“Yeah, she tell you that or something?”
“Nope, I just know you well enough.”
I suppose I should have expected that from Saki. She’s always been the most socially aware of the four of us.
“So, by the fact that you’re calling me I’m guessing you’ve got an idea?”
“Something like that. I’m gonna take Nao into Akiba with me, I’ll send you the place we’re going. Try to get Mai to come along too so we can have them talk this out. I don’t want this rift between them to permanently strain their friendship.”
“You and me both, Saki. I’ll see if I can get her to come with me.”
“You’re a star, Sora. I’ll see you there.”
“Yeah, see you in a b-“
“Oh, wait, wait, there was something else.” Saki’s tone changed as she seemingly remembered something. She almost sounded… suspicious of something?
“What is it? Sounds pretty serious.”
“I just wanted to ask you… after you got your powers, did you have… weird dreams?”
I didn’t answer at first. The question had caught me off guard. I often had trouble remembering dreams due to my efforts to repress my recurring nightmares, but these past couple of nights I had woken up feeling like my dreams were particularly strange.
“I… can’t see I exactly remember my dreams, but I’ve had a feeling that they’ve been out of the ordinary.”
“Well, tell me if this rings any bells: did you hear a disembodied voice speaking in riddles in your dreams?”
As soon as she said that, it was like a lightbulb went off in my mind. That strange voice, the cryptic speech… it all came back to me.
“Yeah… yeah, I think I remember that. I couldn’t really make out a meaning, but I remember that voice talking me to… whatever it was saying was hard to understand.”
“I didn’t really get what it was saying either, but I think I recognised the voice. It was the same one that spoke to me when I unlocked my power. The one that gave me 「Fearless Leader」.”
“That…” now that she brought it up, the connection was obvious. Whoever that voice belonged to, they had spoken to me once before: when I gained 「The Illusionist」. “That’s right… I don’t know how I never noticed that…”
“Something tells me there’s a hidden depth to this power that we don’t understand yet. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Well we’ve only had them a short time. I think there’s nothing we can do but figure out as we go along.”
“I think you’re right, but I don’t like it. Not much we can do about it now though. That’s all I wanted to ask about, so I’ll see you later in Akiba. I’ll text you the details in a mo.”
“Yeah, talk to you later. And say hi to Nao for me.”
I hung up the phone and returned to my room, where my slob of a best friend was still spread eagled across her futon. Under different circumstances I’d have let her sleep, but I didn’t have time to waste.
“Hey, Mai, lazy butt. Get up already, would ya?”
“Ugggh, five more hours…”
“It’s already 10am, how late do you normally sleep in?!”
“3pm, obviously.”
“God dammit, Mai…” I grabbed the cover she was sleeping under and yanked it away, before opening the curtains to let the sun shine right on her face.
“Arggggh, natural light, my weakness.” She groggily sat up on her futon and looked me dead in the eye. “You’re a cruel husband. I want a divorce.”
“We’re not married. And getting you up to ask if you wanna hang around Akiba for the day.”
Mai’s early morning frown disappeared in an instant. Something told me she was faking it as an excuse to keep sleeping anyway.
“I’d we run we can make the 10:11 train!”
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“At least eat breakfast first, you maniac.”
***
It was just after 11am that Mai and I got into Akiba, and we headed straight for the arcades to blow a bunch of coins on video games.
Saki’s plan was to get the girls in a good mood, talk to them about why they’re upset with each other, then meet up at 1pm to get them to make up. That gave me just over an hour to do as much as I could on my end.
We immediately gravitated towards the new Iron Fist 8 machine, a fighting game that Mai was particularly fond of. I figured I’d indulge her in her favourite games until lunch then sit and talk as we ate.
While I can’t say I’m any good at Iron Fist myself, it was a lot of fun for me to watch Mai enjoy herself as she completely humbled me. After she kicked my ass a few times, some new challengers came along to try out beating her, to which she promptly swept the floor with all of them.
I didn’t get to see Mai’s competitive side particularly often, so watching her smirk as 3-0’d half the people in the arcade was a rare sight, one that I was happy to see.
I silently praised myself for knowing how to improve her mood as I continued to watch her effortlessly dismantle everyone who came to fight her.
As the crowd around her thinned, I noticed my time slipping away, so I tried to re-grab her attention.
“Hey, Mai, it’s pretty hot in here and I’m getting a little dehydrated, wanna grab a drink and some lunch from outside quick?”
“Hmm? Now that you mention it, I could probably do with a drink too.” Her forehead was glistening with sweat, but I silently remarked to myself that her tryharding was probably a bigger cause for that than the heat. “Let’s grab some street food, I don’t really feel like a whole meal right now.”
With that, we left the arcade with part one of the plan successful. Mai was in higher spirits than I’d seen her in a while, so I hoped she’d be more open to talking about her personal frustrations.
We grabbed some cheap food and a bottle of water each and found a bench outside to sit down on, silently enjoying the sunny day. It took me a while to find the courage to broach the potentially uncomfortable topic, but eventually I bit the bullet and asked straight out.
“Hey, Mai, can I ask you something a little personal?”
“Hmm? Go ahead, what is it?”
“Why… why are you so desperate to become a magical girl?”
Mai broke away from eye and looked off into the distance. She wore a complicated expression, and I could scarcely tell if the question had upset her or if she was just trying to think of the right words to say.
“Sora, Have I ever told you how I ended up at the academy?” she said, breaking the silence with a sigh.
“The academy? No, I don’t think you have.” In fact, I had asked before and she had been strangely evasive.
“Well, back in middle school I was a bit of an anomaly. The teachers couldn’t figure out what to do with me, so they ran a bunch of psychological evaluations and stuff on me. One of those was a MENSA IQ test, which caught the attention of the academy.”
“An IQ test? It’s rare for them to offer someone a place over something that broad. What’d you score?”
“One hundred eighty seven.”
“A hundred an-!?” The answer exceeded my wildest expectations. If memory served me right, there was only a double digit number of people on Earth with an IQ above 185. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Mai was the most intelligent person in all of Japan with a figure like that.
“‘Amai the genius girl. The smartest kid in the world.’ That’s what my family always used to call me. After all, everything came easy to me. School work was trivial. Games like chess were mostly no challenge. Even learning languages became boring after the third one. No matter what it was, I always rose effortlessly to the top. An existence like that… it’s mundane. With nothing to challenge you, you lose motivation to do anything at all.” She looked off listlessly, as if that chronic boredom that had plagued her all these years had just taken over her body.
“That’s why you never really try in class…”
“Exactly. Not to sound conceited, but it’s like asking someone our age to sit in at preschool and give it their full attention. It’s just too dull and simple for me. So I’m always searching for something I can get invested in. Something I can really care about. I while away my time with video games and stuff, but that’s just a distraction. I need something I can really get invested in. That’s why I was so obsessive over magical girls. Elusive heroes of justice who appear, help those in need and disappear again without a trace. It was like a fantasy story come to life. I thought, ‘surely, if I can just understand them, I can find what I’m looking for.’ Feel a little stupid for that now, hehe.” There was a sad smile on her face, one that pained me to look at.
“I think I get the picture. That’s why you’re so desperate to become a magical girl yourself and right those wrongs, right?”
“Pretty much. At first I felt naive for every believing that fairy tale heroes than selflessly fight for others could ever exist in the real world, but then I saw you and Saki fight back. I felt like I had a chance to avenge that dream, to make that fairy tale a reality. I wanted to become the hero I had once believed in. Which is why I was so upset that Sunao denied me that chance.”
“She was just trying to protect you, y’know.”
“I know, I know, and I appreciate the sentiment. I just wish she’d respect my choice a little more.”
I wanted to argue, but what she was saying made sense. Sure, Nao’s actions might have protected her from danger, but it was danger that she sought of her own free will.
Mai was someone desperate to find a purpose in life, and just when she thought she had it was snatched away by someone dear to her. Being frustrated was completely reasonable.
“That being said, I definitely treated her too harshly. After I went home with you yesterday I regretted being so abrasive with her. I’ll apologise to her once Saki’s done with her part of the plan.”
“That’s good to he- wait, what?”
“Oh come on, you randomly called me out to a place both me and Nao vocally love, you’ve been checking messages from Saki every chance you get, and you’ve been trying to get me in the mood to open up all day. It’s pretty obvious you two are trying to help Nao and I make up.”
“I…” I felt a little dumb, realising that Mai had seen through my every action before I made it. Guess that’s what happen when the two dumbest people in our group try to trick the two smartest. “Well, either way, I’m glad you’re willing to talk things out with her. It would suck if you guys fell out over this.”
“Me and Nao’s friendship isn’t so brittle as to break over one thing. We just needed our time to cool off. Now come on, let’s find the other two already.”
“According to Saki’s message, they should be abou-“
I was cut off by a sudden clamour, a crowd of people hurriedly running our way.
“Everyone scatter, cult attack!” A pudgy man, running faster than his legs should reasonably allow, was hollering as he approached us. I got in his way and grabbed him by the coat, likely scaring him in the process, but I was too worried to care.
“Cult attack? Where? Where did they come from?”
“I-I-I-I dunno, they just appeared near the big ice cream parlour!” He could barely speak from fear, the attack clearly having rattled him.
“Ice cream parlour? The one there about half a klick that way?” Asked Mai, pointing in through the crowd.
“Y-Yeah, that one!”
I let go of the man’s colour and looked Mai dead in the eyes.
“That’s exactly where Saki and Sunao are.”