I don’t have a lot to say.

  There’s not much else to it than that. If something was wrong, like something was broken inside of me, then maybe I could find a way to change who I am. The problem is that what I say or don’t say isn’t who I am.

  I’m just Emi, and I’ve never understood why I’d need to explain myself beyond that.

  Isn’t what I do enough? Isn’t that who I am?

  I had thought it could be simple like that. Why would I need to explain things that don’t need explaining? To ask questions I don’t need the answer to? To speak words that I don’t need to say?

  I think at some point I realized that speaking was an action all its own. By not speaking, I was not doing. Some people might view it that way. That didn’t change what was going on inside my head, though. I still didn’t have a lot to say.

  Some days during school, I’d try to say more. At softball practice after school, I’d try to say more. On the bus rides to a tournament, at the parties after we won, in the summer by a teammate’s pool—I’d try to say more.

  The questions still came. Did you not have a good time? Do you not get along with that girl? You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.

  I still wasn’t talking enough. That overwrote everything I did.

  I stayed until the end—of course I had a good time. I spent half the party with her—of course I get along with her. If I didn’t want to come, I wouldn’t be here.

  But the questions were better than the alternative. Sometimes I was spoken for.

  Emi doesn’t like that, so let’s not. You guys are going to bother Emi if you keep that up. Emi is kind of shy, so maybe we just keep it simple?

  I never said any of that. Maybe it was because I didn’t say anything that they felt that they could say something for me. That didn’t make it feel any better. What was I doing that gave them that impression of me? I wasn’t.

  It was all because I still wasn’t talking enough.

  The real me was overwritten by the things I didn’t say. Pretty soon, the Emi that everyone else created was unrecognizable to me. The less it felt like the people around me understood me, the less I wanted to say. I went from trying to talk more to not talking at all.

  The result was predictable, but I was fine with it. Maybe a certain degree of quietness is cute. People feel they can treat you like a child or a pet. They believe that they have your best interests in mind, that they really understand you, so they make decisions for you. They really are trying to look out for you, even when they’re wrong. Become too quiet, though, and you turn into a burden. Someone weird. No fun to be around and impossible to understand.

  That was okay. I started to not have fun either, and I’m not sure if I ever understood the people around me. I guess you could say I didn’t fit in, but that’s not what it felt like. It was more like… I was happy where I was, so why bother?

  Besides, the real Emi existed somewhere else. I was with Ami.

  I never had to think about these things with Ami. No worries about talking too little—she always had fun either way. No debates over whether I should correct her assumptions—she’d never assume anything of me.

  Maybe it was because we had grown up together, or because our cells were coded in the same way. Usually, I could look at her and know what she was thinking, and she knew the same about me. We didn’t have a need to talk, but that wasn’t what made me so comfortable. I was happy with Ami because she did talk.

  She didn’t need to say what was on her mind. She didn’t need to tell me how I should think about her. So she used her words for something else.

  It was like another way of playing. The same way we’d wrestle or race or fight, she’d just toss words out into the open for fun, to let off steam. She was like a barking dog. I mean that in a loving way.

  Her words were all cheers, tongue-twisters, battle cries, taunts, gibberish rhymes, swears, lyrics to songs that didn’t exist—anything like that. Nothing that had any meaning on its own. Nothing that ever expected a reply. Just noises that made whatever we were doing that much more fun.

  I think seeing how fun it was made me want to try too. I could never sling nonsense around the way she did, but I had my own way of playing. I started looking for chances to say something that might be fun. Maybe it was a funny phrase that made her laugh. Or a comment that flipped the situation on its head. Even just something to surprise her.

  None of what we said mattered. At best, we’d be reminded of a joke the next day and laugh about it again. Nobody around us had any clue what was so funny. That was the whole point, though. We had no idea where the words came from or any intention of remembering them.

  They were like raindrops. White noise that fell from another world hidden behind the clouds. They gave a certain feeling to the moment and drowned out everything else, but that was it.

  We played like kids in the rain, our words falling into puddles all around us that would vanish the next time the sun shone. It was just Ami and me, but that was good enough.

  That’s what I thought, for a while.

  The world is too big. Sometimes I shiver when I think that there are people a million miles beneath my feet, walking around upside down on the other side of the planet. I’m sure they’re fine. It’s just a little weird. The same goes for the malls and office buildings and cities. They’re all ant hills of different sizes with too many people scrambling in and out.

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  I’m not scared, though. I wasn’t ever scared.

  But I did worry. What was I supposed to do after I graduated? I could go to university, but then I’d just ask myself the same question again after I graduated that. The other option was to get a job. Would I end up alone there, too, because I didn’t talk enough? Would I cause problems if I couldn’t get along with somebody? Those were the kinds of things I worried about.

  Eventually, I had to pick something. I couldn’t waste time with my sister forever. I knew that much. But maybe there was a job that came close.

  Being a magical girl doesn’t fit me. I’m no performer, unless you count a mime. I’ve never tried to sing or dance. The only note I can hit is probably a rest. I don’t know how to work a crowd, obviously. I’m not very smiley and I don’t know if people think I’m cute.

  But I’ve always kind of liked magical girls. I think other people like them because of how they look or their music or their charms, but I just like watching them. When they fight, it just looks fun. It’s like a team sport with special effects. And when they win, they’re heroes—just by winning. All the show business is fine, but the reason people really love them is because they save the day when a Cruelty shows up.

  Nothing else matters. Not really. Not to me.

  It probably mattered to the agencies. I didn’t have much luck finding one to join. That wasn’t a surprise—I knew my shortcomings.

  Even this crappy agency—well, it used to be crappy—probably only took me because Ami applied with me. My top selling point was that I looked identical to someone else. That was fine, though. Being at the same agency as Ami made me happier than the fact I was a magical girl itself. We got to fight together. Spear and shield. It felt like a continuation of how we'd spent our school days, only this time we were actually helping other people.

  These past couple of years were strange. For a while, nothing happened. Then a lot happened all at once.

  While I was in the hospital, everyone seemed to change. It was like how the world changes during the first warm days of spring. I opened my eyes after a couple of days and the world was filled with new leaves and flowers and green. Like someone dropped an open paint can on the planet. Everything was different after that.

  Except I didn’t feel any different. I was away when the paint splattered, and none of that color splashed on me.

  I became stronger in terms of magic. Some new people started calling themselves my fans. But nothing changed in me that seemed to have changed in Ami and Adah and eventually even Rika.

  I feel like I was supposed to change, though. Like I needed to, so I could keep up with everyone. So that we could all get stronger, win competitions, and become heroes. I feel like, now that everything is changing, the same old Emi won’t be enough.

  Just fighting won't be enough.

  Singing songs, taking photos, recording videos, getting up on stage, acting in a television show, posting on social media, chatting with a fan, answering questions in an interview—can I do any of that?

  I don’t want to be left behind.

  I don’t have a lot to say, but I still want people to cheer for me. That’s what I worry about now.

  That’s why I want to understand her—Sweetdream Soulslip. Clair.

  Neither of us have said much of anything today. When her team arrived, she didn’t say a word to us or even her manager. When she got her makeup done, I saw she didn’t talk at all then either. Now, with this camera pointed at us, she’s still pretty quiet.

  But no one seems to mind.

  Ami would be used to it. Even if she doesn’t know Clair like she knows me, she won’t mind talking the way she usually does. That’s just who she is. She talks for her own sake, so whether the people around her are quiet or not doesn’t affect her at all.

  This photographer, Neil, though—he doesn’t seem to mind either. There’s a difference between how he treats her and how he treats me. I’ve gained a sense for this. Those little pauses when people expect you to say more. The constant shifts in their manner of speaking as they wonder if they’ve said something to put you off. I’m attuned to all of it, and he definitely feels some kind of caution toward me. He’s not like that with Clair. He talks to her naturally and easily.

  The same goes for everyone in this room. Clair’s not weird to them at all. Actually, she pulls their attention in, and they’re happy to watch her. Right now, Grace is looking at her from outside the set. Adah and Rika are watching while they wait for their turn to take headshots. Obviously, I’m watching her too.

  Her transformation explains some of the attention. The core of it is a white sleeveless dress. It’s thin and light, almost like a nightgown. It shows off all her tattoos, from her hands to her shoulders. The tattoos glow white and seem to project off her skin like holograms. Their whole team adds magic elements to their outfits like that. She’s also covered in jewelry that she didn’t seem to be wearing before. Piercings all up her left ear. Rings on half her fingers. A thick anklet that could pass for a prisoner’s shackle. It’s all flashy, but it doesn’t explain why people are so interested in her.

  She calls that attention to herself, and she wears it like another accessory. If she held up her hand like she had something to say, the whole world would wait silently, pausing even until they starved just to give her the chance to speak.

  She’s an eclipse. Everything stops in front of her.

  No one would ever talk for her. They’d never assume anything. They’d just wait. Because she simply is. She is herself, and everything about her comes from within her. Somehow she makes such a heavy impression without saying a word.

  It’s like staying quiet is her way of exerting power over other people. For me, it feels like I’m vanishing whenever I don’t talk. People seem to think I’m slipping away, and they feel like they have to reach out to pull me back in. For Clair, her silence makes her presence even stronger.

  I want to understand why. What’s so different between us?

  It’s more than the fashion or the magic—I know that much. I can tell from the way Neil points his camera that he’s focused on her for a different reason. There were moments earlier when he focused on Ami and me. We got distracted by one of the hanging crystals and Ami started poking it. We were sort of swinging it between us like a pendulum. I think Ami actually wanted to whack it back and forth like we were playing tetherball, but she held back. Anyway, Neil liked taking photos of us while we were messing around with that.

  What exactly does that mean, though? That’s not the same kind of attention Clair attracts. That’s not the silence of the eclipse, and it only lasted so long before the camera moved away from us.

  Whatever the difference is, Clair definitely knows how to use it. There was a moment when she directed us instead of Neil. She only said—“Come here”—and pointed to one of the stalagmites in the set. She had Ami and I kneel on either side of the rock while she stood behind it. She wrapped her arms around it like she was hugging it, and the glowing tattoos on her arms illuminated Ami and me in an eerie way. It hadn’t been his idea at all, but Neil loved it and snapped lots of photos of us.

  Whatever made her think of that—that’s what I want to understand. That’s the secret. That’s how I can keep up with Ami and everyone else.

  That’s the part about being a magical girl that matters even more than fighting Cruelties, I think. Even when she’s not fighting, even when she’s not transformed, I think Clair’s fans would cheer for her. Everyone at DreamRise seems to be like that. They know how to steal the hearts of people. In just a single photo or a few words, they make fans fall in love with them.

  I don’t like Iris. I don’t know what to think about Ekki. But I want to talk to Clair. I have so many questions I want to ask her. I have so much I want to say to her.

  I want to be friends.

  More than anything, I don’t want to be left behind.

  I don’t want to evaporate like the rain.