When I leave the train, I'm surprised to see how different this city is from the slum. It's a lot more...modern? It feels like what I'd see back on earth--then again, slums were a thing on earth too, so maybe modern isn't the right word. But it still feels like a brand-new world, skyscrapers fill the streets so much that there's barely any place for the cars and people walking by, ads are everywhere, on the ground, the buildings, and even the sky as the clouds above have been shaped to look like logos from popular brands.

Thankfully, there's only one place that is in charge of hiring and instructing magical girls in this city. I ask around for the Magical Girl Prospect Agency, and it doesn't take me very long to find my way to the massive building that I was searching for. Although 'massive' is relative here, it's actually quite small compared to all the other skyscrapers surrounding it, but it's at least a ten-story building. I can see ads for different magical girls I've never heard of, I expect to see Inadequacy somewhere, but she's nowhere to be seen--Perseverance is here though.

Eventually I give up on trying to find a familiar face among the posters and open the glass door to the building, the inside is all a clean, pristine white, a big departure from the sights and sounds of the city, which isn't a bad thing considering most of said sights and sounds are trying to sell me something.

I walk up to the receptionist, she doesn't look particularly busy as she's spinning a pen with a bored look in her eyes I've seen a thousand times in the mirror.

It takes her a few minutes to notice my presence. "HA!" she shouts in surprise, the pen falls from her hands and rolls out of her reach. She looks at the fallen pen like it's a recently deceased family member, but quickly regains her composure. "I'm sorry, we don't get many visitors, not ones that need my help anyway. How can I be of service?"

I pick up the fallen pen and put it back on the table, she nods and spins it again. "I'm Cowardice, I'm here for a job interview," I say, trying to ignore her sick pen spinning moves.

"It's...floor three for magical girl auditions- wait, are you a new magical girl? Can I get your autograph?" She quickly pulls out a paper from behind her desk and shoves it in my face. "If I get your autograph early, and you become popular later, then I'll be able to sell it for a lot more! Please!"

"Aren't you the receptionist of a magical girl agency, can't you ask any of the magical girls that work here?"

"I tried! But they keep saying they don't have time and that I should be doing my job! I'm doing my job! I'm doing it right now!" She looks back at her hand that is somehow still spinning the pen, it's like she has a hand dedicated for the pen spinning and another for actually being useful to society.

I just sigh and nod, she squeals excitedly and slams the paper in front of me, taking out another pen and rolls it towards me. I grab the pen and sign my name, so I can finally be done with it.

She picks up the paper and her smile quickly turns into a confused frown, "James isn't a girl's name, is it?" She turns the paper back towards me. "Is that really your name?"

I take a closer look at the paper, that's definitely spelling out James, but I don't remember anyone by that name. I don't have any strong reaction to it, so it can't be that important, right?

I make another autograph and sign 'Cowardice' on it. I could've signed 'Leave' on it, but magical girls are known more by their title than their real name anyway.

After answering a few more questions, I try to enter the elevator, only for it to ask me for an ID card. The receptionist awkwardly laughs as she gets up from her desk and unlocks the elevator with her ID. It takes only a few seconds for me to reach the third floor, it has another employee behind a desk who perks up at my arrival, he types a few things on a computer before looking back between me and the machine.

"Cowardice?" he asks.

"Yup, that's me," I answer, walking closer to his desk.

"Did you get your ID from the receptionist?" I shake my head, and he massages his temple in frustration. "What do we even pay her for...whatever, we'll get this sorted later." He gets up and opens a door at his right, motioning me to follow him. It leads to a hallway with many doors, all white, everything is white here, it's actually starting to hurt my eyes. He knocks on one of the doors, and a girl opens it, she takes a good look at me, looks at the man and shrugs, he shrugs back.

Stolen novel; please report.

She follows us further into the hallway, until the man opens another door that leads to a big empty room, once we're all inside, the man fiddles with the door and I can hear multiple clicking sounds, as if he's locking me inside.

"Good afternoon Leave. May I see your ID?" The woman asks. The man whispers something into her ear and she rolls her eyes. "No matter, can you show us your magical girl transformation? We'll go from there. We can go in another room if you aren't...comfortable with us watching, but a camera will be recording everything anyway, so it will not change much."

I take out my envelope and start reciting my Cowardice speech. There's no point in arguing, I just hope my transformation isn't going to drive them insane or something, especially since he asked me to read it when no one else can see me.

The transformation goes mostly the same, these aren't the same eyes, mouths and hands as before, but once I ignore them they go back under my dress. I can still feel them if I pay attention to them, but otherwise it's as if they aren't even here.

Unfortunately, my audience can still see them the folds moving under my clothes, and despite their best attempt at keeping a neutral expression, what I see on their face is undeniably disgust and...something else.

"There's going to be so much porn made out of this," the man states.

"We're all thinking it, that doesn't mean you should say it out loud," the woman snaps back, "but yes, your transformation is...how do I put it nicely..."

"It looks like you're being groped," the man says bluntly.

"Crude, but accurate. Is there a way to make those things under your skin...move less? Most magical girls have some form of control over their appearance. If you're still a beginner, that might be hard, but do what you can."

Every time I pay attention to the moving things under my clothes, they start getting out, so I don't actually know what they look like from their point of view. But maybe I could...mhh...

I take a few steps forward and try to push the thoughts behind me, both physically and mentally. It takes a lot of shaking and scratching, but eventually I can feel some big disgusting thing grow behind me, an amalgamation of everything I don't want to see, hear or feel. I know it's behind me, but what matters is it's not in front of me.

"Good enough," the woman says, "at least we can show this on TV. My name is Nána Svobodová, but you can call me Enouement, you probably haven't heard of me since I'm not as active in the magical girl leaderboards."

I tilt my head. "What's Enouement?"

"It's a specific form of regret, it's how you feel after seeing the result of the past, and how you wish you could go back to tell your past self. It's hard to describe." She yawns. "Not all of us were gifted with common emotions, as a matter of fact, some emotions have even been named after the magical girl rather than the other way around, because they embodied such a niche feeling that no one even thought of creating a word for it."

"So, I'm lucky to have cowardice? Since it's a common emotion, or trait," I ask.

"It makes you stronger, but it's also more likely to mess you up mentally, so 'lucky' is relative." She claps her hands twice and the man pulls out a remote, after pressing a few buttons, the roof opens and reveals a cage that is slowly lowered in the middle of the room.

What the cage contains is...a black thing? It's like a black lizard that stands on two legs, except it has three heads, all of them having burning red eyes. It stands perfectly still, but it's clearly alive and aware of us, I have no idea what's going inside its head though, even its soul tells me nothing about how it feels.

"What I'm about to tell you is pretty confidential, of course it's not a secret we can keep forever, and there are already a few rumors here and there, but you'll still be punished if you tell anyone." I nod, and she continues. "The truth is, the forces of chaos have never truly been terminated, because they can't truly be killed, they just come back. So we found a loophole, a profitable one too." She circles around the cage as she talks, not taking her eyes off the beast. "Turns out, there's a limited amount of those beasts, and if we capture them instead of killing them, then their immortality is not relevant as long as they are contained. They are also a very good source of mana and energy, not this one though."

The man presses a button on his remote, and the cage opens, "This is the most straightforward test, this room is heavily reinforced with Inadequacy's runes, so you can go all out. Good luck!" The man press another button and a small dome rises out of the ground and surrounds him. Enouement stays in the room with me though.

The beast slowly walks out of the cage, its many eyes studying me, and suddenly, it speaks.

"A hell of your own design," the first head says.

"A promise you wish to remember, but refuse to uphold," the second head says.

"What about her? What about it? What about them? They are here for you. But are you there for them?" the third head says.

The woman giggles, "very little known fact about the forces of chaos, while strong, that's not what made them such a massive pain to fight." She smirks. "They are also very good at understanding humans and tricking magical girls into losing touch with their attributed emotion. In other words..." her smirk turns into a wide grin, "Run faster, Coward."