I, Sora Goto, am a liar. From my head to my toes, I am a person who is wrapped in deception.

Everything from my personality to my disposition to even my very name is a facade. One that I maintain with utmost diligence for every waking moment of my life.

I created these falsehoods not willingly, but out of necessity. ‘Sora’ is the fourth false identity I have assumed, having abandoned all prior ones after the thing I was trying to escape caught up with me.

This is the story of how those lies I built brought me face to face with a power beyond anything I had ever imagined. And it began with one sentence.

“Everyone look, a real life magical girl!”

***

The room was abuzz, as it had been ever since that spectacle outside the classroom window appeared.

Classes had been cancelled while staff checked that no damage had been sustained by the school or its students, so everyone was free to chatter away about what they had just seen.

“Wow, she kicked that cultist’s ass!”

“She was so skilled and cool, I wonder if she’s a martial artist.”

“The way she seemed to speed up so much half way through the fight, that must have been the signature move, 「Time Dilation」, right?”

Unsurprisingly, watching a fight between two superpowered individuals through your classroom window was a sure-fire way to get a group of kids excited.

Not that it was much of a fight. It was a total wash. The magical girl completely shut her opponent out. Even so, she put on one hell of a show.

Still, the racket in the classroom was starting to get on my nerves. The magical girl mania among my peers at Tokyo Academy For Gifted Girls was at an all time high, and with that came more noise than I cared to put up with.

Not that I didn’t understand the excitement, of course. Superheroes suddenly becoming real was something I dreamed about as a kid, so the recent emergence of these inexplicable “magical girls” had me pretty interested.

What annoyed me to no end, however, was the way people obsessed over them like celebrities.

Instead of “how do their powers work” or “what is magical energy,” everyone seems to be focused on “who’s the coolest magical girl team” or “who has the best magical girl outfit.”

The hero-worship for them at this school exceeded normality. In fact, it bordered on obsession.

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“We just watched a real superpowered fight in real time right outside our window, and you still manage to look grumpy about it.”

The voice that pulled me out of my bitter internal monologue belonged to a grinning blonde girl called Saki Tachibana, one of my best friends at this school, and a self-proclaimed magical girl aficionado.

“Ah- sorry, just not dealing well with the noise.”

“Tut tut. Would it kill you to join in on the fun for once instead of brooding like a gloomy tomboy?”

“Alright, alright, I get it, I’ll lighten up a little. The fight was definitely cool to watch, so I get why everyone’s so excited.”

“Good, you need to get that frown off your face every now and then.” she huffed semi-sarcastically as she spoke, scolding me for seemingly bringing down the atmosphere of the classroom.

Saki pretty much dragged me into her friend group by the scruff of my neck when I transferred here, so I’ve been subject to her whims pretty much from day one. I don’t scorn her company, and I appreciate that she tries to cheer me up, but she likes to live life at her own pace, without paying much attention to whether everyone else is keeping up or not.

“I-I get it… about the noise…” Saki’s remark was followed by the much meeker voice of the friend sat to her right, Sunao Kobun. “I-it makes it hard to hear my own thoughts.”

“Ah, come on Nao, live a little. You spend the whole damn day thinking, maybe letting the noise drown it out’ll be good for you.”

“J-just because you walk around with nothing in your head all day doesn’t mean I can too…”

I rolled my eyes as our group’s resident old married couple began their daily bickering session, though I couldn’t help but smile a little too.

All the while, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of our fourth member. The one I had noticed quietly sneaking out of the classroom as soon as the fight ended.

That idiot. I knew her well enough to know exactly what she was doing.

“Anyway, you girls need to get more into the magical girl spirit. As the elitest magical girl fan around, I can’t have my friends falling behind on this. You’ll drag me down too.”

“Well I’m glad that we’re in agreement that you’re an elitist magical girl fan.”

“Too right you are Sor- wait, ‘an elitist?’” She cocked her head as if trying and failing to parse my rebuttal in her mind, before seemingly disregarding it altogether with a shake of her head. “Not important. You guys need to get involved with these conversations, dammit. Like… Sora, which magical girl team is your favourite?”

“Me? Uhh…” I tried to think back on the many roving groups of magical girls that seemed to pop up around Tokyo. The girl fighting alone today was an exception: they usually fight in teams of four. “All Seeing Eye are pretty cool. Fighting with threads is certainly unique.”

“Shoulda known you’d choose someone lame like Eye. We need to get you better taste, girl. Someone cooler, like Illusory Spear.”

“B-but Spear always causes loads of collateral damage. T-they’re too reckless a-and dangerous.” The usually meek Sunao piped up at Saki’s comment. Despite being the more level-headed of the two, she was oddly very strongly opinionated about certain things.

“Oh, let me guess. You probably like Shining Cutlass the most, right, Nao?”

“Y-yeah, why?”

“Pfft, you and your lame taste. Cutlass are a bunch of hippies, always going on about ‘peace’ and ‘love’ or whatever. They’ve got no appreciation at all for dramatic flair.”

“W-well maybe if Spear weren’t so worried about ‘dramatic flair,’ they’d stop causing so much damage all the time.”

“Coward.”

“Airhead.”

I found myself chuckling under my breath as their argument devolved to petty name calling. They really did get along well.

Still, it felt weird for the three of us to all be sat around chatting while our usually-enthusiastic fourth member was notably absent. I got up from my seat, planning to check out in the hallway.

“When the hell is Mai gonna get b-“

“Sora-chaaaaaaaaan!”

My question answered itself as the nutcase in question barrelled through the doorway and wrapped my entire body in a hug.