What kind of worries did a girl just entering adolescence—one blessed with a happy, complete family—actually have? Besides romance, friendship was another big one.
It was painfully obvious that the atmosphere between Hitomi and Sayaka had soured, and the most awkward person caught in the middle was Madoka.
"School's over." Hitomi packed up her satchel and glanced toward Sayaka's seat. Something flickered through her eyes—disappointment, maybe, or something else entirely.
She understood. Today—no, starting from yesterday—her relationship with Sayaka could never go back to the way it was.
Perhaps because of her, Sayaka had used some flimsy excuse to leave early that morning and hadn't come back since.
Hitomi stole one more look at the lost-looking Madoka, then turned and walked out. Toward Kyosuke—writing the first line of a romance that was destined to leave someone out in the cold.
...
Around this time, Hitomi must have already confessed to Kyosuke, right?
Sayaka Miki hugged her knees and curled into a ball, staring blankly at the floor beneath her toes.
It would work out for them, wouldn't it? After all, Hitomi was the school's most sought-after beauty—she received love letters from different people practically every day.
And her? The moment she'd spotted Mami-senpai rushing out through the window, she'd followed and left school early too. Her sensing ability was genuinely far weaker than an ordinary Magical Girl's, but she covered ground way faster than any of them—she'd beaten Mami-senpai to the scene by several steps.
As a Magical Girl, she might have to leave class at any time to hunt Witches. She probably couldn't spare the time for romance. And Hitomi was so wonderful on top of that.
Sayaka clutched the pendant around her neck with a bitter grip.
But her healing ability hadn't become unusable like Kyoko's clones had. From start to finish, she'd never once regretted her wish.
The girl's body trembled slightly.
The trembling wasn't from the heartache of her secret crush possibly getting together with her close friend. In truth, she'd only been squeezing in a brief moment of heartache between everything else—because right now, hiding inside a crate in some factory storage room, she didn't dare make a single sound.
"You think you can hide from me?" That was Kyoko's somewhat irritable voice from outside.
Long story short, for various and sundry reasons, Sayaka was currently being hunted by Kyoko in what might turn out to be a neverending pursuit—even though she was supposed to be the stronger one.
Only now did Sayaka vaguely begin to suspect that she might have gotten the wrong idea about something.
"In here?"
A spear shaft punched through right beside her ear, and Sayaka fought with everything she had to suppress the urge to swallow.
"Tch." Kyoko walked away. The sound of her chewing snacks grew fainter and fainter. "Don't think you can run! I know exactly which school you go to! As long as you haven't transferred, I'll be waiting at your school gate every single day!"
"..."
This is so humiliating—don't you dare come to my school and blab about it!
Why had things turned out like this? If she really had gotten the wrong idea, what was she supposed to do? Would offering all the pocket money she'd saved up as an apology be enough to earn forgiveness?
Mid-thought, Sayaka spotted Kyoko's face appearing in the gap the spear had just torn open.
"Here's Johnny!"
"Kyaaah!!"
"Ooh."
Yimi held up the Grief Seed that Sayaka had knocked loose during the fight, lifting it toward the sun to examine.
So this was the thing Kyubey collected to address entropy increase. Looking at it closely, its internal structure was actually somewhat similar to a Soul Gem's.
"Alright, stop running off on me. I know you don't like hospitals." Tomohisa caught up to her with a sigh and took her hand. "I just saw some balloons over there—do you want one?"
"Balloons?"
Yimi nodded.
She picked out a balloon, and then Tomohisa bought two more identical ones for the other two kids at home. Madoka was already quite old, but keeping things fair was always best when possible.
Balloons purchased, Tomohisa tied the string to Yimi's collar. That way, even if she bolted into a crowd, he could spot her immediately.
"Oh, Yimi-chan, we meet again." Mami Tomoe hurried past but paused to bend down and greet her.
"Yellow Person!" Yimi greeted her back.
"I keep telling you—call me Mami-nee." Mami sighed helplessly and patted her head, then turned to Tomohisa with a slight bow. "I'm a friend of this child's."
Tomohisa looked puzzled. "A friend… Do you know her previous family?"
"No, actually we only just met a few days ago." Mami shook her head gently.
Tomohisa nodded.
He'd been to the police station to confirm that no one had filed a missing child report before he'd completed the adoption paperwork. If the birth family happened to be in this city, he might still have to go have a word with them.
"Have you seen which way they ran? I've been searching all day without finding them."
Mami hadn't only just arrived—the Witch had appeared that morning, after all. But by the time she'd gotten there, she'd witnessed Kyoko chasing Sayaka instead.
"It doesn't feel like we've been apart that long, but that child has changed this much?" Mami's expression was complicated.
To think she'd actually hunt down a newly contracted Magical Girl. It seemed the devastation of losing her family had hit this kouhai—the one who used to trail behind her calling "Senpai, Senpai" so sweetly—harder than Mami had imagined.
Yimi tugged at her sleeve. "Let me see your Soul Gem."
"This? I can only show you like this, okay?" Mami glanced at Tomohisa—an ordinary civilian—and held out her hand. On it sat her Soul Gem, transformed into its ring form.
Yimi touched the gem again, attempting for the second time to analyze its internal structure.
Modifying an existing one was probably harder than building from scratch, but the little cat was confident she could work it out in a day. Because Kitty had discovered something about herself—she might actually be a genius.
She patted the back of Mami's hand. "You can go now."
"That's not very polite." Tomohisa flicked her forehead.
"Then I'll take my leave—I still need to keep searching for those two…" Mami gave Tomohisa another small bow and departed.
Tomohisa ruffled Yimi's hair. "You sure know a lot of older girls, huh? They all seem like good kids, though. What do you want for dinner?"
Tomohisa's cooking was quite good. Too bad he couldn't see Kyubey—otherwise he could have joined forces with Kitty to research Kyubey recipes.
Yimi tilted her head up to look at him and asked tentatively, "Do you want to become… a Magical Girl?"
"?"
...
The commotion had been too loud, and some magic had leaked out, so Mami eventually tracked down the storage room.
She adjusted her expression back to an elegantly composed smile and opened the door. "Ara, let me see what's turned my cute little kouhai into—"
"Stop it!"
What she saw was Kyoko pinning Sayaka down, tearing at her clothes. Sayaka was resisting for dear life and hadn't let a single button come undone, but her panicked state combined with Kyoko's tickle attack meant she couldn't break free.
"Stop? You're telling me that now? This is what you call a taste of your own medi-something…" Kyoko, who had absolutely no idea how the idiom went, butchered it completely.
"I'm sorry! I—" Sayaka seized on the pocket-money apology plan she'd desperately thought up, but the tickle assault forced her to gasp out her words in fragments. "I'll give you money!"
"Ngh!"
For some reason, that made Kyoko yank at her clothes even harder, tears welling at the corners of her eyes.
"What are you two doing?" Mami took a step back.