“Mai, what the hell is this?”

“A binder.”

“Okay, let me rephrase. Why do you have this?”

“Duh, so I can figure out who that magical girl is!”

The binder in her hands was thick. Monstrously so. I wouldn’t be surprised if she told me it contained the personal data of every girl at our school.

“This, my friends, contains files upon files of personal data about every girl at our school.”

I need to learn when to stop running my fucking mouth.

“I’m sorry, it contains what?” I asked, more out of shock than seeking genuine confirmation.

“Well, it’s mostly just the third year girls really. The socks she was wearing were the old style ones, which were discontinued the year we joined. That meant that anyone in first or second year that didn’t have an older sister was a no-go. Really helped narrow down the search.” She continued speaking casually as if her declaration wasn’t utterly absurd.

“It… it’s been less than 24 hours since we found the hideout. How did you do this in one evening?”

“Oh, that’s simple. I just forewent sleeping. Turns out that spending a third of your day unconscious is a real time killer.”

Yep, she’s loopy alright.

“The process was pretty easy really,” she continued. “I just had to cross reference everything we knew about that girl with the files of every relevant student in the school. Every time there was a contradiction, like different hair colour, I marked them with a red tab. For things that could be a potential disqualifier but aren’t certain, I marked them in yellow. Then the prime suspects were all marked in green. That’s everyone with long black hair, average height, average weight, in third year and of the same skin tone. So, whaddyou think? I wouldn’t mind if you dropped the tsun act and praised me for once, Sora.”

She proudly flicked her hair behind her head and puffed out her chest, as if what she just said was an incredible achievement and not a sign of severe underlying psychological problems.

Much to my chagrin, the other two weren’t much better. Saki practically had stars in her eyes, as if Mai was the Lisan Al Sugi and had come to deliver us salvation. Even Sunao looked at Mai with a sort of silent reverence, making me seriously question my judgement of her as “the level headed one.”

Seriously, had none of them noticed the massive elephant in the room?

“Mai… you realise this is a huge violation of privacy, right?” The three all fell silent and looked at me. Their gazes gave me a sinking feeling, but I knew sugar-coating wouldn’t help. “There’s over a hundred girls in third year alone, and you compiled and categorised personal details about all of them without consent? That doesn’t fly, Mai. If people found out, they’d be livid.”

Mai looked at the ground, all of her vigour from before seemingly gone in an instant. I felt a pang of regret for being so harsh, but I felt like tough love was the only way I was gonna get through to her.

I was shocked that her obsession had gone this far. I didn’t recall ever seeing Mai study for a test before. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I’d even seen her read before. Now she was poring over and organising pages upon pages of data in a single night? I had never seen her so consumed by something before.

Part of me worried for her sanity. Another part feared her incredible information-gathering skill.

“I… I didn’t mean to violate their privacy.” Mai’s suddenly dejected tone made me wince a little. “Everything I have here is public information, it just took some combing through the school’s database. I thought it would be okay…”

The complete 180 in her mood was tough to see. Perhaps I had been a little too harsh. I hadn’t intended to hurt her feelings, just make her consider her actions a little more.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“So long as you’re just taking easily findable information, I guess there’s no harm done. But still, having a binder with the information of hundreds of teenage girls in it makes you look like a total serial killer, and with what’s been going down recently that’s not a look you want to have.” The girls all winced as they realised what I was talking about. After all, Kei had just brought it up earlier today.

“The Toukyouto disappearances…” Sunao was the one to speak up, having caught onto what I was saying first.

“Hard to believe something like that is happening to girls our age. In this same city, no less.” Even the usually optimistic Saki’s expression soured at the thought.

It was a grim thing to think about.

“…I guess you’re right. Sorry, I should have thought it through more.” Mai’s expression had also darkened quite a bit. However, her smile at least partially returned as she flicked to the very back page of the binder. “But on the bright side, I’m pretty sure I’ve found our girl. Have a look-see, ladies.”

The other three of us all leaned in to read the file, even I myself falling to the curiosity of what Mai’s prime suspect was like.

Appearance-wise, she seemed to be very average in almost every aspect. Black hair, average height, average weight, average skin tone for a Tokyo kid. I hate to say it, but it’s incredibly impressive that Amai was able to narrow down her search so much when the one she was searching for had such common features.

The rest of her file also had nothing particularly exceptional, except for a short note about her winning silver at a regional archery competition. Quite impressive, and would coincide with the bow-wielding magical girl team, Tranquil Arrow. However, the thing that really caught my eye was…

“Aya Shiko… now I see why she’s your prime suspect.”

“Ahh, you’ve a good eye. As expected of you, Sora.” Mai gave me a thumbs up and a grin, though I’m pretty sure she’s mostly proud at her own work and is just glad I’m recognising it.

“Aya… that’s the name the other girl said at the invisible hideout, right?” Saki had also caught on, and the four of us all looked between each other, silently affirming our opinions. This girl was almost definitely the target.

“Okay, so we’ve figured out who she is. What do we actually… do with that information?” I asked the question, but I had a bad feeling that I already knew the answer.

“We meet her and ask her to introduce us to the other magical girls, of course!” Amai immediately confirmed my anxieties.

“Honestly, Sora, I thought you’d figure that out on your own.” Saki rubbed salt in the wound without an ounce of self awareness.

“It-It does sound like it could be fun…” said Sunao, going along with what Saki wanted. Again.

“Hate to burst your bubble, guys, but we don’t know where to find this girl outside of school. And we can’t exactly walk up to her in a crowded hallway and say ‘hey, we’re big fans of your carefully hidden secret identity, can you show us into your highly secretive invisible hideout?’ in front of the entire school, can we?” I was hoping those words would be enough to dissuade them, but my swift disappointment was hardly even a surprise.

“Worry not, dear Sora, for I have devised a plan!”

“That’s never a good sign.”

“I’ll ignore that. Y’see, after I decided on Shiko-san as the target, I looked a little more into her, and gathered this.”

No, unfortunately my eyes were not deceiving me. Amai did, in fact, pull a second binder filled with personal information out of her school bag. This one filled with only information about Aya Shiko.

“I got a lot of useful information from my sources. Judging by where she lives, she likely gets the first train from Ginza in the morning. She’s a bit of a loner so she should be easy to catch on her own. She’s actually half an inch shorter than school data suggests, she currently intakes about 1800 calories a day, and her three sizes ar-“

“Ooookay, I think we get the point, Mai. But, how exactly did you obtain all of this information?” There was way too much in here for her to have simply used legitimate publicly available information like the school website.

“Uhhh… a good friend of mine knows Shiko-san, so I asked her about it?”

“Which ‘good friend’ would that be?”

“Uhhh… Nakayoshi?”

“Your good friend… Nakayoshi…”

“Y-yeah! Yuu… Nakayoshi…” she trailed off as she realised her bluff wasn’t working.

“…you cyber-stalked this girl, didn’t you?”

“It was not cyber-stalking! It was information gathering! Private investigation, a completely legal and legitimate practice! I won’t accept this libel to my name, Miss Goto!”

“Libel is written, slander is spoken. And you’re not a PI.”

“Okay, okay, fine, maybe I did some light stalking. But it was for you guys too! I want all of us to get to meet real magical girls! My intentions were pure, honest!”

I put my palm in my face. I’ll have to teach this girl what ‘pure’ means at some point.

“I’m gonna have to apologise to this girl to her face for your actions, you weirdo.”

“I’m not a weirdo, you ass! Wait, to her face? Does that mean…”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll hear your plan out. Mainly because I know you’ll do it without me otherwise, and I don’t like the idea of you three getting into trouble.”

“Yesssss! Sora, I love you!” She looked positively giddy that I was willing to hear her out. Still, if I get to hear that every time I entertain her absurd ideas, maybe I should try being a little more open minded with her. “Anyway, ladies, listen closely. The plan is simple.”