As the sun faded over the horizon and the cold blue light of the artificial moonlight began to shine out from the Central Tower, Olivia stirred sleepily, until a shot of terror wrenched her eyes open. Looking out at the twilight city beyond her window, listening to the distant, muffled sound of traffic, and feeling the blankets shift around her, the terror faded as quickly as it had come. While she was awake, it was buried under the stimuli of normal life, and it hadn’t invaded her sleep, either, but in the brief moments of transition between sleep and wakefulness the fear from that night returned. That night where the red-haloed monster had cut her senses from the world and left her in a void that had felt like dying. She blinked her left eye out of habit, but there was nothing to see – no blur in the corner of her vision snapping into a sharp-toothed shadow. There hadn’t been since that day the sun went out.
Rising out of bed, she fumbled for her phone, and after confirming the time (7:14pm), and date (Wednesday), she set it back down. She knew that under the lock screen the word ‘Wednesday’ was repeated, in a message from Alice she had received a week ago and had never minimized – ‘okay, how about next Wednesday?’ It felt like if she minimized it, the message would disappear, and she might never see Alice again. Even now, on the promised Wednesday and less than an hour away from their meeting time, it still felt like a mirage that could vanish at any moment.
The next few minutes were spent on practical things. She had run though her game plan for the day over the weekend with her chat during a stream, carefully hiding the actual date and location of the meeting and vaguely alluding to ‘a friend that had started feeling distant’. Although they hadn’t pried on the date and time, they had guessed it was with Alice almost instantly. Olivia begrudgingly admitted she really didn’t have many friends. They had also given her no shortage of advice, both when she had asked for it and especially when she hadn’t asked. On clothing: “Don’t bother trying to dress up, you’re a hopeless disaster and that’s what’s endearing about you” (attached to a low-tier blue donation, 114 thumbs up). On cleanliness: “Shower the night before, that way you don’t have to worry about showing up with wet hair. Or showing up stinky because you slept in lol” (mid-tier magenta donation, 242 thumbs up, and an alarming amount of excited responses to the stinky comment). Perhaps most useful had been a mid-tier yellow donation, that just said, “Don’t talk too much about why you want to be their friend, just tell them you enjoy their company and give them space to breathe.” It had only gotten 87 thumbs up, but for Olivia, who’d never had these kind of conversations, it struck true. It also fit into the pattern of what she’d seen in magical girl shows, although there the main character wasn’t being considerate, they just never got in more than a few lines before a monster attacked or the other character would run off until the next episode.
As Olivia left her apartment, a candy bar in her mouth (the palate of a 5 year old, her chat often teased her), she reflected that even if her usual pastel, loose-fitting clothing was an embarrassment, she was at least showered, her teeth were brushed, and she could present herself as a minimally functional adult. For all that Olivia had tried telling herself it was no big deal, that she wasn’t scared of the sun-eating monster, that Alice was Alice and there was no point worrying, she still felt nauseous as she walked down her curving park-side street. Perhaps it was the candy bar. As she reached the small café hiding in the shadow of a skyscraper on the very edge of the central district, she noticed her hand trembling as she reached to open the door. Definitely the candy bar – just a bit too much sugar right after waking up. At the very least, she conceded, the candy bar was certainly not helping things. A sudden temptation to run away welled up inside her, but she pushed it down and stepped into the café.
And almost ran away again, her meagre self-confidence pummeled by the serving androids dressed as elegant Victorian maids and butlers. No doubt Alice would fit into a café like this easily, but Olivia, in a hoody and sweatpants, definitely did not fit in. “You’re a disaster, but that’s what endearing about you.” She hoped her chat was right, because she certainly felt like a disaster right now. Olivia swallowed her nervousness as she spotted Alice at a well-cushioned booth. “Ah, h-hi…”
“Oh, Olivia. Pleasant to see you again.”
Olivia felt her heart sink as she sat opposite Alice. Her expression wasn’t unpleasant, but even after greeting Olivia, it remained distant. Almost cold. It wasn’t the look of someone greeting a friend, it was the look of someone who had already mentally counted the friendship as over. Olivia tripped over her words, “Thanks for coming out to meet me uhhh this is a really fancy place.”
“Are you going to order something?”
Alice’s question made Olivia realize a serving android was standing near their table expectantly. “O-oh! Coffee! Uh, just a coffee please!”
Olivia chided herself miserably. This wasn’t a live stream, she wasn’t behind her virtual avatar, and ordinary people didn’t yelp in surprise when ordering coffee. “Just a coffee please,” she repeated, quieter.
The android returned a few moments later with a steaming mug of fragrant coffee and small teapot and cup for Alice. The entire time the android had been gone fetching the drinks, neither of them had talked, and as Alice began pouring out her tea from the pot to her cup, Olivia tried to bring to mind some of the things she’d been mentally practicing for the last week. “Um, I know running away from you last time was kind of awkward, but…”
Olivia trailed off. It was awkward. That was kind of all there was to it. Just say it! Just say you still want to be her friend! Her mouth opened, but struggled to find the right words. Instead she brought her coffee up to her mouth, and took a small drink.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Your friend isn’t here today.”
“Friend? Who? Oh, you mean Shark. She’s been keeping her distance recently. I’ve been a bit of a mess the last week, and I think she finds it awkward. She’s not actually all that sociable.”
Alice simply nodded, and took a sip from her tea. The distance wasn’t closing. If anything it was getting worse. Olivia took another sip of her coffee, and it felt like each sip was counting down to the end of their friendship. Once the drinks were finished, if they left things like this, there wouldn’t be another time. They’d go their separate ways, and that would be the end. Another sip, and her coffee was already half finished. She didn’t want things to end like this. Alice took another sip of her tea, and panic started setting in. Things couldn’t end like this! There was so much more to talk about! So many conversations they could have, that Olivia couldn’t have with anyone else. That Olivia didn’t want to have with anyone else. She’d tried talking to people about magical girl shows in high school, or with her parents, and they’d either responded with polite disinterest, or impolite disinterest. They couldn’t see past the bright colours, frilly clothing, and school hijinks to see the complex themes, the brilliant character writing, and the meticulous plotting. There were so many things Olivia wanted to talk about. So pick one! Start a conversation! Anything! Alice took another sip of tea, and Olivia couldn’t string two words together. As desperation settled in, Olivia made a decision.
She quickly typed a familiar name into the search bar, and upon finding her familiar digital avatar staring back from a video thumbnail, clicked and turned the screen towards Alice. And was promptly confused, as the voice coming through the phone speakers sounded nothing like her – it was deep and regal, with a measured, imperious tone. “Ceaser you impetuous fool, you’ve brought the enemy to our doorsteps! If this is the limit of your skill, perhaps I need to reconsider my choice of allies!”
Then the voice faded, and a familiar wave of painful embarrassment hit as her normal streaming voice returned, bright and chipper. No matter how often she heard it, she still hated listening to her own voice. “How was that, guys? I can be a pretty good voice actor when I put my mind to it, huh? Would you got to war with the nation of Rustesia for me?”
There were some panting emojis and a few o7 salutes, but there were also plenty of eyebrows raised emojis, and even a few X's (for doubt) sprinkled in. As she heard herself getting indignant from the less-than-enamored replies, with a shiver of dread she suddenly remembered where this particular video clip had come from, and at the same time noticed the video title: “Kiara tries to be sexy, challenge level: impossible.”
Her eyes turned back to the screen in horror, just as her on-screen persona tried ratcheting up her ‘femme-fatale voice’ to an almost comically deep level, purring out, “Hi honey. What do you think? Do you want dinner? A bath? Or me?!”
Her voice cracked from deep siren to an awkward squeak at the final ‘me’ and the chat filled with laughing emojis. Olivia, mortified, fumbled to stop the video. After several agonizing microseconds of trying to bring up the pause button, the phone mercifully fell silent. Olivia swung her head around the café, praying no one else had been listening. Only once she’d reassured herself they were indeed the only ones there apart from the serving androids, she let out a sigh and turned back to Alice. Instead of scorn, as she’d expected, or even the cold distance of earlier in the evening, to Olivia’s surprise Alice was laughing. Hard enough there were tears in her eyes. It was like a sudden flood of warmth on a winter day, and in relief Olivia found herself laughing too. “How on earth was that the first video clip that came up? Why couldn’t it be something like ‘Kiara is cute today as usual’?”
Catching her breath and wiping her eyes Alice responded with mock seriousness, “You know how the algorithm works.” She barely managed to finish her sentence before breaking off into another chuckle.
Olivia was certain that was insinuating something about her streaming persona, and tried to pout at the suggestion, but she was smiling too much. Realizing this might be the only time she’d be able to convince herself to say what she’d really wanted to say here, she forced herself to put her thoughts into words. “Look, in all seriousness, I have my own hidden life, too. I don’t care if you’re friends with the God of the Sun or Cthulhu or whatever, I just want to talk to you about Justice Detective and magical girls and art and stuff. I wasn’t scared because you could turn the sun off, I was scared because it felt like you’d gone somewhere far away.”
The last bit had been a bit of a lie - Olivia had been terrified of the sheer scale of the light tendrils and their ruthless destruction of the fire devil, but it was also honest. It had been overwhelming and terrifying, but the fear didn’t cling to her in the same way the empty blackness had. And after the fear had calmed down, it wasn’t the overwhelming display of power that she replayed in her mind again and again, it was Alice’s expression, an empty abyss in the artificial moonlight. As if Olivia was little more than a mote of dust somewhere far away. What remained, what still ate away at her days after it happened, was the worry that the one person in the last decade of her life that she had resolved to be friends with had left, and didn’t want to be friends back.
“That was a speech worth of Hana in Double Zeta,” Alice said in an even but gentle tone. Olivia couldn’t quite tell if it was a compliment or an insult - Hana’s speeches about the power of friendship were infamously long-winded. Alice took another sip of her tea before continuing, “Hmmm… How about this, then: ‘it’s not like I want to be friends with you or anything. You’re just kind of interesting, so maybe I’ll stick around for a while.’”
Alice’s words were such a cliché something similar came up in practically every magical girl show ever made. Soran from Forbidden Card, Moriarty from Justice Detective, Chris from Lyrical Gear, Saya from Sparkle Contract… And in every single show, that line was a prideful, haughty character admitting that they wanted to be friends too. An uncontrollable smile spread across Olivia’s face. She was certain her smile was too wide, and her cheeks were flushed red, but it didn’t matter. Belatedly, she realized the quote was taken from Zero in Hana Double Zeta, a direct answer to her own Hana-ish speech. She took another sip of her coffee, and although by now it was barely lukewarm, it was the best-tasting coffee she’d had in her life.
Outside the sky was dark, but the city was filled with light – the pale blue artificial moonlight and the warm amber streetlights, both punctuated by the Central District’s kaleidoscope of countless neon signs. For Alice the day was ending, and for Olivia her day had just begun, but for a moment in the twilight, their days had overlapped.
