Adah had expected the Apex Vox girls and their manager to want to talk business right away, now that they had brought up the idea of working together, but that hadn’t been the case. It turned out that Sheffa had been serious about wanting to have a casual chat.

  Canto had been the first to take the conversation in that direction by asking Rika about the song she was working on with Adah. They talked about Rika’s ideas and the challenges she was running into, and that soon led into talking about music generally. They shared their favorite bands and idols; apparently they were into a lot of the same musicians. Their conversation was as normal as could be—an eavesdropper wouldn’t even have known they were magical girls.

  The twins and Mari had broken off into their own little group at the same time. Judging by the sound of laughter that had repeatedly escaped their huddle, they had been trying to outdo each other with jokes. The trio glanced at the other girls from time to time, so Adah had assumed they were also regaling each other with stories about their teammates. Only good stories, Adah had hoped.

  Meanwhile, Sheffa and Adah spoke captain to captain. While their conversation wasn’t about business, it was about magical girls.

  “I heard you’re a big Pureheart fan,” Sheffa said. “That makes two of us.”

  Sheffa pulled out her phone—a faded pink acrylic charm dangled from its case. From the shape of the charm, Adah recognized it immediately. She would never mistake that rabbit-eared heart symbol.

  “I have the same one!” she said, louder than she meant to. “Those must be from a decade ago, maybe longer.”

  Sheffa nodded and held up her phone to inspect the charm closer.

  “It’s the last version they made before Pureheart retired,” she said. “It’s basically a collector’s item. I always keep it with me, as a symbol of my goal.”

  “And what’s that?” Adah asked.

  “I’m going to be as famous as Pureheart one day. I’m going to make the whole world feel the same hope that Pureheart gave me.”

  Adah was curious what Sheffa meant by that “hope,” but first she wanted to put the girl’s apparent good nature to the test.

  “If that’s your goal,” she said, “then I’ll have to surpass you as well. For the sake of my own goal, I can’t accept second place to anyone—not Pureheart and not you.”

  Sheffa looked Adah in the eyes and grinned.

  “I knew we’d get along,” she said. “I’m looking forward to working together already. There’s nothing better than a friend who’s always trying to stay one step ahead of you.”

  “A friend? Don’t you mean a rival?”

  “No, Heartbreak. I mean a friend.”

  Sheffa stuck out a hand toward Adah and waited for her to shake it.

  She was a weird girl.

  She was how Adah had imagined other magical girls would be like, back before Adah had got into the industry. That was what made her weird.

  The friendly faces and selfless attitudes that magical girls always showed their fans were parts of an act. Most fans probably knew that. In a twisted way, it felt better to know that a magical girl’s smiles and winks were manufactured. That made them a familiar and reliable product, like knowing that every can of soda you opened would taste the same as the one before it. From the perspective of a fan, it was pleasant to remain willfully ignorant or naive about what went into creating such a product.

  Once you were working in the industry, you couldn’t ignore the manufacturing process. The photos that were prepped and edited to the point of becoming a hallucination of the real person. The bubbly personalities and canned lines that no one could maintain through a genuine conversation. The charade of effortlessly defeating monsters, even though sweat was stinging your eyes and you were so tired you could puke. The industry self-selected for people who could handle living a life like that.

  Adah knew it was possible—likely, in fact—that even her hero Pureheart was another fabrication.

  Yet, the girl in front of her with her arm outstretched, at least at this moment, seemed sincere. Sheffa wanted to be her friend.

  So Adah shook her hand.

  ☆☆☆

  Adah was soon reminded that Sheffa was the exception to the rule.

  Most teams and the magic users they consisted of were ruthless. Some wouldn’t just jump at the opportunity to step on someone else’s head to climb higher, but would revel in it. Adah had experienced that firsthand.

  So when her phone rang later that night when she was reviewing Seb’s photos, she considered letting it go straight to voicemail.

  She had no interest in answering a call from Ekki.

  Their teams had exchanged contact info during their IndieMagie collaboration, just in case, but Adah hadn’t expected anyone but their managers to make use of that info. She especially didn’t expect to receive a call from anyone at DreamRise after how their duel had ended up.

  Perhaps because Ekki’s call was so unexpected, Adah’s curiosity got the better of her. She decided to answer. At least over the phone, she could hang up and end the conversation as soon as he pissed her off.

  "What do you want?” she said, hoping her voice sounded rude enough to make him regret reaching out.

  “Just to talk,” he answered.

  Somehow, Adah doubted he meant it in the same way Sheffa had.

  “Not interested,” she said. “If you want to cheat on Iris, you can do it with someone else.”

  “Fine, I’ll cut to the chase,” he said. “You’ve really gotten under Thibault’s skin. In a bad way.”

  “Me? What the hell did I do?”

  “Do you mean besides extorting him?”

  “He approached us,” Adah said. “If he didn’t like my deal, he could have turned it down. Besides, we’re giving him what he wanted and more. I call that a good investment.”

  “Well, he doesn’t see it that way,” Ekki said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s a prideful man. He feels like you got the better of him, and now you and your team keeping showing up every time this region gets mentioned, like a reminder of his ‘investment.’”

  Adah moved from her desk chair to her bed and flopped down. If this conversation was headed in this direction, she wanted to be laying down.

  “That’s what he wanted!” she said. “He asked us to grow, and we’re growing.”

  “And that’s why he’s not stopping you,” Ekki said. “He knows he needs you, but he wants to knock you down a peg. That’s why I called you: to warn you.”

  Adah felt a sense of déjà vu that made her shudder. The last time this guy warned her of something, she’d wound up with a bloodied face and suffered the most frustrating failure of her life. She let Ekki continue explaining, but if history was anything to judge by, then this was the part where she should run as far away from DreamRise as possible. The boy confirmed her suspicions a moment later.

  “No surprise—he wants to use us to get back at you. He wants us to take on a B-Rank first, no matter what. That’s his petty revenge.”

  “And that’s what you called to warn me about?” she asked. “Don’t worry, I figured out a long time ago that your team is the favorite child.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Ekki responded right away. “That’s what I want to warn you about. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s asking us to do, or what the consequences would be of doing it. Tell me, why hasn’t your team fought a B-Rank yet?”

  “Huh? We’re not strong enough, obviously.”

  “Right,” Ekki said. “The same goes for us, but Thibault doesn’t understand that. He thinks he can demand results and get them just because he wants them. You can see it with this whole strategy around the C-Ranks. This was never the right way to go about growing the region, but now we’re all in on his dumb idea and stretched thin because of it. Our teams are making things work for now, but rushing a B-Rank is going too far. We’re not ready.”

  “Then wait a couple weeks,” Adah said. “I’ve got plans for my team—it won’t be long before we’re taking on a B-Rank ourselves. We’ll beat you there, and then Roland Thibault will shut up.”

  “You’re probably right,” Ekki said, to Adah’s surprise. “You have an extra member compared to us, and your spells are more diverse on top of that. Even if we have a head start on you in terms of FP, it’s probably inevitable you’ll be ready before us. Thibault knows that, and Iris does too. That’s exactly why they might try to do something stupid. Something like forcing us onto a B-Rank mission early.”

  Adah had only interacted with Secretary Thibault directly a few times, but from those interactions she had learned he was hotheaded. She’d also learned that he didn’t know very much about magic. Ekki was right about his plan with the C-Ranks—it wasn’t an idea anyone who’d ever gone on a mission would think of. It was a plan devised by someone who had looked at a bunch of numbers in a pie chart and a bunch of expenses on a budget sheet and decided they needed to do something to get different numbers to show up. It was easy to imagine he’d send DreamRise after a B-Rank with as little consideration as he’d built his original plan.

  “Then tell Iris it’s stupid,” Adah said. “She’ll understand it’s a suicide mission.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing,” Ekki said. “But I don’t know how long that will last. After what happened at the IndieMagie, she’s been pushing herself to the limit. After enough pressure, I think she’ll be willing to risk the danger in order to meet Thibault’s expectations. If things get to that point, I’d rather our teams fight together than risk dying just to get to the finish line first.”

  “Not this shit again,” Adah muttered. She wasn’t sure if she’d said it loud enough for her words to go through the phone, but Ekki’s silence made her think they probably had. “There’s no reason for us to help you. You want to talk about risk? We can’t trust you to have our backs. We’d be fodder for you on the battlefield, just like we were during the IndieMagie.”

  “Can we put the IndieMagie behind us?” he said. “There’s no reason to help us? There’s no reason for us to be enemies! It’s the Cruelties and people like Thibault we should be fighting against, not each other.”

  “Iris is like Thibault!” Adah wanted to yell the words, but held back so as to not to attract the attention of any of her teammates in the dorm. “You said it yourself—she made that competition into something other than what it was. It was personal for her. It was her war against the world. She didn’t care about us, she didn’t care about the region—she only cared about getting what she wanted. How is that any different from someone like Thibault? Everyone’s lost sight of what actually matters a long time ago!”

  “I haven’t!” Ekki answered in the same restrained yelling tone. “I told you before the duel—I don’t want things to be this way. Thibault is my enemy, too. Him and everything he represents about this industry.”

  Liar.

  “And yet you did whatever he asked you to during the IndieMagie,” Adah said. “You took his help and followed his plan. Why don’t you follow this one, too?”

  Ekki started to respond, but Adah wasn’t interested in hearing anything else he had to say. He had made it clear he would only contact her when he needed her help, and she had no intention of giving it. Instead, she would alleviate his concerns by defeating a B-Rank and putting this rivalry to rest. That would be her answer to anything he wanted to ask of her.

  Adah hung up the call and turned off her phone.