I breathed in heavily as I stood at the door of the dainty little cafe. Even if we were here to make amends, I knew it would be difficult to sit down and talk to Saki after last time.

I tried (and failed) to steady my nerves, but after realising I was just gonna have to push through it I simply sighed and walked through the glass double doors.

As I had expected, Saki was already sat down waiting for me in a booth in the corner. When I entered, she gave me a wry smile and waved me over to sit down with her. I gave an awkward wave back and slowly trudged my way over to her.

“Hey.” She spoke softly, but didn’t meet my eye.

“H-hey…” I replied as I sat down opposite her.

There was a lot I wanted to say, but I was struggling to think of how to say it. And I could tell Saki felt the same. For a while, the two of us sat in an awkward silence, avoiding one another’s eye, hoping the other would be the first to speak.

Neither of us did.

Though I had argued with friends before, none had ever shouted at me the way Saki did before. As such, I had never had to really ‘make up’ with anyone like this. It was new ground, and I didn’t want to take the first step into it.

“Any drinks for you guys?”

I was momentarily startled as the silence was broken, not by us, but by a young waitress waiting patiently at the side of our table. I was so nervous I hadn’t even noticed her standing there.

“Ah- coffee, please. Black.” Saki seemed just as caught off guard as me. Clearly neither of us were in the right headspace.

“Umm… caramel macchiato, please.”

“Sure thing, I’ll be right back.”

The waitress girl turned to return to the counter, though by her slightly hurried pace I presumed that she caught on to the uncomfortable air between us.

Swallowing my pride and biting the bullet, I decided to speak first.

“About yesterd-“

“I’m sorry.”

Saki cut me off with her own apology, bowing her head as if deeply ashamed. I was, needless to say, incredibly confused.

“You… what?”

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“I overreacted yesterday. Emotions were running high and I unfairly took that out on you. So, for shouting at you and putting you down… I’m sorry.”

I was utterly stumped. Saki was under the impression that she was the one in the wrong?

“I… huh. I kinda assumed you were still pissed at me for what I did and had invited me here so I could apologise.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still frustrated that you hid this from us. It was dangerous and stupid and we had a right to know. But I didn’t even give you a chance to explain why you did it. I let my emotions get the best of me, and I was a terrible friend. For that much, I really am sorry.”

I almost felt stupid. All that worrying that I had betrayed her trust and irreparably damaged our friendship, and she was waiting to apologise to me.

Still, though. Something about that didn’t sit right. After all, I was the one who was actually in the wrong.

“I have to apologise too. When I started putting the pieces together in my head and realised that Kei might be guilty, I was scared. Scared that someone I considered a friend could have been doing something so heinous. And scared of what that would do to you guys, too. If it turned out that the person we were searching for was the same person who had tried to kill us before… I thought it’d crush you all the same way the thought was crushing me.”

“Well you… weren’t entirely wrong there.” Saki held a bitter expression, Kei’s betrayal still clearly souring her mood. As it was the rest of us, to some extent. “Still, it hurts a little that you didn’t trust us to take it well. We’re a team, we can’t be keeping secrets like this from each other.”

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you, it’s just…” I breathed in heavily, trying to choose my words carefully. There was no good way to say it. “I knew you guys had enough on your plates already, I didn’t want to add to that with a theory I didn’t even wanna believe myself. I was… concerned, I guess.”

“Be it trust or concern or whatever else, always come to us when there’s something on your mind. We’re in this together. No more lies, no more secrets, got it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”

Though the conclusion was a positive one, the atmosphere was still a little heavy. As the waitress came and dropped off our drinks, I tried to think of a way to change the topic now that we had talked through our issues.

“So…” I took a sip from my macchiato and decided on what I was to say. “You and Nao, huh?”

“Gah-“ Saki almost choked on her coffee. “Did she already tell you?”

“Nope. I didn’t know until just now.”

“Oh, you little…” realising she had been duped, Saki rolled her eyes at me. “We were gonna tell you guys soon, there’s just been so much going on recently that we weren’t sure when.”

“Don’t I know it. Feels like every day there’s some new problem we have to deal with. Still, what took you guys so long to get together? It’s been pretty obvious you both wanted it for a long while.”

“To be honest, I only really understood my own feelings recently. By the time I did, we were knee-deep in all this magical girl business. Between Flame coming after us every other day, trying to end the Director’s schemes and all this heaven and hell stuff, it never felt like the right time.”

“Isn’t that exactly why now is the right time?”

“That’s exactly what Shin said to me. He’s the reason I was able to confront my feelings in the first place, actually. You got a pretty good catch there, Mai.”

“Hey, back off girlie, he’s mine.”

“Keep him, I’ve got a cute girl in glasses waiting for me.” Saki and I both chuckled at the absurdity of the conversation, before she spoke once again. “He said the advice came from you, y’know. That your words are the reason he can look to the future with hope. He really loves you a lot, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling my brightest smile, “I think he really does.”