Emi sat down on the end of Adah’s bed and looked around the room. She rarely had a reason to visit her captain’s room, so its contents had changed drastically from the last time she had been inside.

  Between the posters of Pureheart Chu, the map of Letria, and the recently added whiteboard, the walls of the room were entirely covered. Adah’s desk was in a similar state, its surface flooded by loose sheets of paper full of scribbled notes and rough sketches. Even the edges of her laptop screen were lined by sticky notes with reminders written on them in bold ink.

  Adah had been in a rush to film with Seb yesterday, and she’d already spent half of today plotting her next moves with Rika. Judging by the dates written on her whiteboard, she planned to work just as intensely through the foreseeable future. She was tackling all of this work on top of their team’s packed schedule of missions and coaching sessions.

  And Adah wasn’t just doing these things. She had made them all happen. It had been her who had negotiated with Secretary Thibault and who had come up with the plans written out on both this whiteboard and the one downstairs.

  “I’m not doing enough,” Emi said.

  Adah tilted her head and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “When you saw me talking to Seb yesterday,” Emi said, “I was asking him to help me make Raindrop stand out. But now I think I have to be the one to do it.”

  Adah leaned against the nearby wall and nodded. With Emi sitting down, her captain was a little taller than her. Not by much, but it was a change from how she normally had to look down at Adah.

  “And why did you go to Seb first?” Adah asked.

  “He promotes us,” Emi said.

  Adah nodded again, though now she also squinted a little at Emi.

  “I see, I see,” she said. “Of course. Sorry, stupid question. But if you’re saying you need to do it alone, Seb must not have been a big help?”

  “He was helpful, but…” Emi didn’t finish her thought.

  How should she explain it to someone like Adah?

  For Adah, this was probably her default way of doing things. She had changed her identity to Twilight Heartbreak on her own, and she would have tried to save the agency all by herself if Ami and Emi hadn’t demanded their own role in that plan. She recruited Seb and basically extorted Secretary Thibault by herself. Adah was always taking the initiative on her own.

  In some ways, that should have made it easier for Emi to explain what was on her mind. Yet, it was also the reason she was having so much trouble doing just that.

  It wasn’t enough for a magical girl to have fun or try to be cool on the battlefield. Clair had been right about that much. To get a spot on the right battlefield—one where a crowd of fans could actually watch you—took a lot of effort beforehand. You had to promote yourself, grow stronger, and climb the ladder of popularity high enough to earn that spot. Spotlight Sunbright was only now reaching those heights.

  Now that they had earned their spot, having fun still wouldn’t be enough. The spotlight on this stage was still small. Usually, the light only shone on one person at a time. And the fans were few, in the grand scheme of things. Their time and attention was divided among potentially hundreds of other magic users, all trying to stand out in their own ways.

  Even within a single agency, there were only so many resources to go around. Certain members could take priority over others and hog those resources. Inadvertently or not, it happened all the time.

  When Adah had pulled Seb away to film her video, it had all clicked in Emi’s mind.

  Emi knew Adah hadn’t done it with any ill will, but it had shown her that her captain was already thinking this way. To stand out, to capture the hearts of fans, you had force your way underneath that spotlight. That was the battle before the battle.

  To be the deafening downpour she wanted to be, Emi needed to carve out a slice of silence for her storm.

  “I want to take the next mission with you,” she said to Adah.

  Her captain shrugged and said, “Sure. Any particular reason why?”

  Emi still wasn’t sure how to put it. If there was something else she could learn from Clair, it would be how she used the few words she did say. Clair didn’t overthink her words, and she didn’t care what other people thought of them either.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “You’re the only one I can ask to stand aside,” Emi said.

  Adah’s right eye twitched and a weird smile spread across her face.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” she asked.

  “Ami would never do it, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking Rika.”

  The twitching on Adah’s face intensified. Emi was sure she had said something wrong, but she pretended she didn’t notice. That was part of taking the initiative to stand out—she couldn’t worry too much about how someone else might respond.

  “I guess I was asking more about what ‘standing aside’ means,” Adah said. “I’m not sure I understand you.”

  Right, Emi hadn’t explained her whole idea to Adah yet. She had thought through this plan so much on her own that it was hard to keep track of what other people knew or didn’t know. That was something she’d have to pay extra attention to. She would need to point out to the fans what she wanted them to focus on, too.

  “I want to fight a C-Rank alone,” she explained. “You can eat its core, but I want to take it out by myself. It’s the best way I can think of to show the world who Raindrop really is.”

  When Adah looked at Emi now, the weird expression on her face was gone. Her gaze was sharp and her lips still. It was the kind of face Emi saw her make whenever she talked about something serious regarding their agency.

  Emi thought this kind of face showed the real Adah. When she was all alone with no one watching her, this was definitely the face she wore. In Emi’s view, Adah was always thinking about something, and lately even more so. She had bags under her eyes that hadn’t always been there. Her hair used to be brushed smooth all the time, but now it was always a little bit frazzled.

  When Emi noticed these shifts in Adah’s appearance, she didn’t think they made her seem less put together. The small signs of tiredness gave her an edge, but it was cool in the same way an office worker’s disheveled clothes at the end of a long day could be cool. During Emi’s first two years at the agency, it had seemed like Adah was putting on an act as she tried to be something she wasn’t. Now that the facade had fallen away, Adah’s rougher appearance drew Emi’s eye in.

  Emi couldn’t explain why those rough edges looked cool, but she also couldn’t explain why the office worker’s loosened tie and rolled sleeves looked cool. Maybe seeing the truth of someone’s feelings behind their appearance was inherently cool.

  This, too, was something Emi needed to learn for herself.

  “I don’t know about that,” Adah said. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it is dangerous. Your spells and weapon are strong, probably the strongest next to Rika’s. C-Ranks are strong too, though. There’s a reason we still go out in pairs.”

  “I’m not scared of them,” Emi said. She pressed her palm against her left shoulder, the one that had been bitten by a Cruelty once before. “Even after this, I’m not scared. Let me show you—everyone—what I can do. I want Raindrop to stand out on her own.”

  If you wanted something in this industry, you had to ask for it. That included asking your teammates to step aside and give you a chance to hog the spotlight for yourself. Emi couldn’t scream like her sister, or sing like Rika, or tease her fans like Adah. But if she could take over the battlefield alone, then maybe…

  “I get that,” Adah said, “but none of us has fought a C-Rank alone. Even Ami needs someone to load up her shield. Or at the shopping center, she had Seliah do all the damage to that Cruelty, and it was only D-Rank. What’s wrong with something like that?”

  “That’s not what I said,” Emi replied. “This isn’t about Ami. It’s about me, and what I can do.”

  Clair was wrong. Other people didn’t hate them, but sometimes other people misunderstood them. Not just what they said, but also why they said it.

  Maybe Clair had found her own way around that by shutting other people out entirely. That may have been why she was so comfortable poking around in other people’s minds. Her method of dealing with people was to distance and differentiate herself from them. Even to Emi, hadn’t she said that? We’re nothing alike. She didn’t care about any damage she caused because she didn’t care about other people in the first place.

  Because of that, Clair was also right. They were nothing alike.

  Emi still cared. She still wanted to talk. She still had something to say, even if it wasn’t much. She wanted other people to hear those words and understand them. Talking with Clair had shown her something: she was distancing herself from people in the same way, but for a different reason. She was letting the walls close in on what she thought was important enough to say aloud. The less she cared about her voice being heard, the less she had to deal with being misunderstood.

  That wouldn’t work at all. She needed to throw her body against those walls and push them out. They weren’t just boxing her in words—they were trapping her.

  If she had something to say, she needed to say it until it got through.

  Adah’s head perked up now, which Emi took as a sign that her meaning had been heard clearly this time.

  “Sorry,” Adah said, “you’re right. Let’s talk about you, then. Are you planning to defeat this Cruelty and just walk away after? You’ll leave the scraps for me? Won’t that look weird to your fans?”

  That had been Emi’s plan, more or less. Her fans would understand why she left the core untouched for Adah, but she did see how it could look strange if Adah wasn’t involved at all beforehand.

  “Then I’ll destroy the Cruelty entirely,” Emi said.

  “So why would I be there?”

  “Just… as backup.”

  Adah leaned forward and lowered her head close in front of Emi’s face. Her raised eyebrows said everything that needed to be said. Still, Adah was right that taking a C-Rank alone would be a dumb risk at this point. Emi needed Adah there just in case.

  “You and I know why I’m there,” Adah said, “but it conflicts with the message you’re trying to send to the fans. Even if you want to get by on your fighting prowess alone, the way you promote that is still going to matter.”

  Right—if there was a battle before the battle, it made sense there could be a battle after, too. Just like Emi couldn’t allow her words to be misunderstood, she also needed to reinforce the meaning behind her actions as a magical girl.

  “That said, if you believe in yourself, I’ll believe in you as well,” Adah continued. “If you’re open to another idea, maybe I could help you out? Not with defeating the Cruelty, but with the reason you’re defeating it.”

  “What is that?” Emi asked.

  “If I’m stepping aside for you to take the spotlight,” Adah said, “why don’t I draw open the curtains for your stage while I’m at it?”