August 2024

  ***

  Seika clocked out in a particularly bad mood. Being confronted with her old friend who lost all memories of her was emotionally and physically draining, especially since she would have no idea why Seika was upset at their meeting, which forced her to keep her feelings bottled up.

  Today she took the train not home, but in the other direction, to Akihabara, the famed electrical town turned otaku paradise.

  Whenever Seika felt down, she liked to cheer herself up by using her disposable income on her favorite kind of merchandise: Magical Girls.

  She walked through various shops, humming along with the Vocaloid themes playing on the speakers while examining figurines of Magical Girls, both fictional and real through a panel of acrylic glass.

  There were figurines of the original Kuma Group; a rarity! The one she recognized as ‘Sayaka’ was still in stock, and she inspected it.

  Every detail was exactly as she could recall – though she only ever saw them from a distance after her initial encounter with Kuma and their powerup that made them more prominent participants in the wider fight against extradimensional threats.

  She checked the description, with Sayaka being labeled ‘Kuma Group Leader 1st Generation’. They called each other by their real given names and never invented any names that they told the public, so it made sense that this was what the manufacturers would go by. By the way, Fuuka was labeled as ‘Kuma Group Brawler 1st Generation’ and Haruka was ‘Kuma Group Spellcaster 1st Generation’.

  It was only a matter of time until the figurines of Haruna, Sarina and Rei would be released with the same labels for the fourth generation.

  For now, cute little Sayaka vanished in a bag after over ten thousand yen changed hands.

  After the figurine purchase it was time to get some reading material.

  Mandarake was right in front of her and she clenched her fist close to her heart in anticipation.

  “Oh, we are going into that one again. You got anything in mind?”

  Seika let out a slow laugh in response before answering with her declaration.

  “We’re going to do a bit of ego searching in the doujin section!”

  To find what she wanted to buy she needed to ascend all the way to the fourth floor. On the second floor she lost a little bit of time as she admired the selection of Magical Girl toys on display. Cute little heart-shaped wands that would play sounds whenever they were moved around were the ideal tool for little girls and otaku in their thirties of any gender to live out their Magical Girl fantasies.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get why you are so fascinated by all the fake stuff when you are an actual Magical Girl, Seika.”

  It’s the romance of it all. One of these days you will get it.

  “Hmmmm…”

  The sound of contemplation continued for a while – communicating clearly enough that right now Minerva was clueless about what her partner was talking about, but she was taking it under consideration.

  After she had enough of looking at the toy wands, she ascended the stairs again and arrived at her destination.

  What she was standing in was the ‘male doujinshi’ section, self-published works aimed at men, mostly, which meant they featured beautiful women, most of them popular anime characters, engaged in lascivious activities with men or other women.

  Naturally, with her being here, there was a case to be made that it wasn’t just for men. She liked looking at the drawn female form just as much as everyone else in this section – and while she didn’t mind the men appearing in most of these doujins, her preferences were still lying with the action happening with another woman.

  “Now, Seika, don’t get me wrong. My body is amazing and a sight to behold, I know that better than anyone. But it is still a little… strange for us to be looking at depictions of ourselves with… well… that happening.”

  “Learn to live a little!” She threw back with a chuckle, mirroring what Minerva said whenever Seika was the one embarrassed by the other’s actions.

  She walked along the shelves full of plastic wrapped thin books, examining their covers. A lot of them depicted characters from newer anime that she didn’t have the time to watch recently.

  The shelves were organized by doujin circle names, making her search that much easier. She finally arrived at the part of the shelf labelled with the name ‘KAWAGUCHI MAGIC’ – a doujin circle that popped up a few years ago specifically to draw her in sticky situations.

  Drawing R18 doujins of real-life Magical Girls was a hot topic on the net for a while. While those girls were exactly like the depictions from anime and manga, it was an undeniable fact that there were real-life human beings behind the cute, frilled defenders.

  For rather obvious reasons, to this day only doujinshi of Minerva Crimson, the ‘oldest Magical Girl’ and the Celestial Sisters who have been calling themselves ‘forever seventeen’ for four years have been made and sold officially. Before long, people regarded derivative works featuring them in the same light as those done for Vtubers: the person behind the fa?ade was not being depicted, it was her public persona that she put on as an act. Even still, artists always expressed that they would cease the moment a Magical Girl asked to not be depicted that way.

  Luckily for them, one of the Magical Girls they could draw at that point was secretly a massive otaku and pervert herself, so that demand was never made.

  As for the Celestial Sisters, they have given explicit permission for derivative works, as an official manga that dramatized their adventures was printed with the ‘Doujinshi ok’ mark. Another move to spread their fame and influence, no doubt.

  “Woah, that’s a rare one.”

  “Huh? What is? Oh. Wow.”

  Seika held a true treasure in her hand. The cover showed her sitting on a throne, with the Celestial Sisters flanking her, their heads resting on the armrests while looking up at her.

  It was the rare doujin by the circle – the Minerva Crimson x Celestial Sisters crossover. The circle usually only printed in small quantities and out of passion for their one girl, which kept the number of potential buyers low, but by including the highly commercialized idol Magical Girls the demand skyrocketed and the few copies in circulation were bought out with no reprint. Seika couldn’t help but ramble about it in her mind, with poor Minerva having to listen to it.

  Forty pages of intense lovemaking between the most prominent presences in the space of Magical Girls with barely any dialogue, exploring a variety of positions and fetishes with a passion only rivaled by Shikishima GunTool’s character doujins!

  “Who would sell their copy of this?”

  Seika could feel drool accumulating and swallowed before it would run over her chin.

  “Woah, Paisen? Whatcha lookin’ at, there?”

  She heard something annoying. Did some guy come in here with his clueless gyaru girlfriend?

  “Hey, Paisen? Hellooooo?”

  She stiffened as the voice spoke directly into her ear this time – gently in a way that made goosebumps rise all over her body.

  She turned her head and the gyaru she assumed to be in the store turned out to stand right next to her. Two of them, in fact.

  “Gah!”

  Seika jumped backwards, away from the two. While there are countless manga and anime these days that depict understanding and romance between gyaru and otaku, the real-life interactions were much different – at least that’s what she always imagined. And right now, she came face to face with them in her own territory where she was supposed to be safe.

  The nefarious creature known as gyaru, or gal: always fashionable, though in a way that defied the norms of society, using easy flowing slang, calling each other with cutesy little honorifics like ‘-pi’, ‘-pyon’ et cetera, and often calling their seniors ‘Paisen’, an inverted version of the ‘Senpai’ that Miori used in lieu of Seika’s actual name. Most of them wore a heavy tan, except for the ‘shiro’ variant of gyaru – which was the type staring right at her.

  Both of them wore blonde hair and heavy, dark make-up around their eyes.

  They were clearly in their twenties, yet still wore JK Gyaru fashion, with messy ties, uniform shirts and plaid skirts that looked like they were a number too short, wearing loose socks with loafers. The one closest to Seika wore a white shirt with a red plaid skirt while the other one wore a tan shirt with a dark blue skirt to match. Let’s call them Gal 1 and Gal 2 for now.

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  “Hahaha, that was a crazy jump, Paisen.” Gal 1 laughed, stepping closer towards Seika. She walked back an equivalent distance, resulting in a chase as Gal 2 hopped along.

  “So, whatcha been reading, Paisen?”

  “I think you talking into her ear like that turned Paisen on.”

  “Gross! Hahaha!”

  “…why do you keep calling me that? I don’t recall ever having been your senior.”

  With that distraction, Gal 1 snatched the thin book out of her hand and looked at the cover.

  “Woah, this is, like, totes crazy.”

  “What did she have, Miyu-pyon?” Gal 2 approached Gal 1, now called ‘Miyu’ in Seika’s mental library.

  “Look, Momo-pi! It’s the one where Paisen grows a thing and screws us!”

  “Woah, you’re into that, Paisen? Gross!” The two started laughing.

  Seika was trembling – this was not how she imagined her little shopping trip to go. Right now, she wanted to find a quiet corner and cry and didn’t even notice the weird thing ‘Miyu’ just said.

  “What did they just say? That would only make sense if…”

  Seika blinked and spoke up.

  “Wait, how do gyaru like you know what happens in that doujin?”

  “That’s not the part you should be paying attention to.” Minerva’s disappointment in her lack of observational skills seeped through every word.

  The two of them grinned widely at Seika and came closer again.

  Miyu fished her phone out of a pocket and showed Seika a video in which she transformed back from her Magical Girl form into her plain old office lady self.

  “Why don’t we chat somewhere private?”

  Suddenly, the woman wasn’t using any gyaru slang at all.

  How did I get into this situation?

  Seika sat at a low table in an izakaya – a private room, even. It provided enough space for four people, with the two gals sitting opposite her.

  She was trying to make herself as small as possible as if she could avoid this entire situation that way. The table was already filled with karaage and side dishes, and they even felt free to order beer for themselves and Seika while she sat quietly in her corner.

  Right next to her was a stack of erotic doujinshi – after Seika agreed to follow the two gyaru they strangely enough bought every Minerva Crimson and Celestial Sisters doujin they could find for her.

  “Come on, Paisen, eat up. We’re not going to eat you, that much I can promise you.”

  The two still had a laugh among themselves at Seika’s expense.

  “Sh- shut up! You’re acting all friendly after showing me a video to blackmail me?! Who are you, even?”

  The two exchanged puzzled looks and shook their heads.

  “You still haven’t realized?”

  “You still haven’t realized?” Minerva chimed in.

  Whose side are you on?

  The girls got up and struck the Celestial Sisters’ signature pose – with Momo standing on Luna’s side, and Miyu on Sol’s.

  Wait…

  “May the light of the heavenly bodies protect you from evil! …or, like, whatever.” Momo said nonchalantly.

  Seika shot up into a standing position, staring at the both of them with her mouth agape.

  “How…? Wait, why are you…? What is all this?”

  Miyu groaned.

  “We’re gyaru, and we are professionals. We like fashion, we like to talk in slang, and at the same time we can suppress that and put on our wigs and dance for the camera as long as we get paid for it.”

  “Hahaha, look at her face, Miyu-pyon, she’s going to pass out. Hilarious!”

  “So much of an otaku that you can’t ever imagine that idols might be something entirely different behind the scenes? Even though you’ve led one of the longest double lives yourself?” Miyu kept teasing her.

  “I’ll tell you another secret. We’re not actually sisters, either. It’s just a catchy name.”

  “Yeah, because that would be, like, gross!” Momo added with a laugh but shrunk a bit as Miyu cast her a glare.

  “That’s different! My Magical Girl form isn’t… entirely myself.”

  Seika let her head hang and looked at her plate – then she ate. Maybe some calories would help her process this information.

  “So… what do you want?” she asked in-between bites, staring at the plate as if not looking at the girls would preserve her otaku delusions.

  “Well, Paisen. We still intend to, like, blackmail you.” Momo chimed in.

  “Again, why do you call me that?”

  “Aren’t you our Paisen? Our Senpai in the Magical Girl department? I believe some of them call you the ‘first Magical Girl’. Or the ‘oldest Magical Girl’.” Miyu added.

  Seika grimaced. She only turned 30 in March. Way too early to call her a title that included the word ‘old’.

  “Then I’ve been a terrible role model to you. Getting so careless that I let myself get caught while transforming.”

  “Oh, no, no, Paisen. You weren’t careless, we were just too good and have too much money.” Miyu said with a laugh.

  “Like, it’s not cheap to get a personal investigator with a drone to catch a Magical Girl. The money they want is, like, crazy!” Momo added.

  “You never stood a chance.” Finished Miyu.

  So I was outplayed from the start.

  “And what do you want from me?”

  Momo grinned and walked over to sit down next to Seika, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and squishing her cheek against the meek office worker’s.

  “We wantcha to do some shoppin’ for us… in another world.”

  Seika went from timid and intimidated to intrigued. She looked straight at Miyu, as Momo was still squishing their cheeks together in an overly familiar way that she didn’t mind too much, now that she knew that the gal was Luna, the Celestial Sister.

  Another world, so in other words an isekai. The biggest genre on the Light Novel market. She was innately aware that there were other worlds out there – at least that’s where the Shadows, Jove and Juno came from, and Jove explained sixteen years ago that many of these worlds overlapped. She never got the opportunity to visit any of them, though.

  “You want me to go to another world? How would I do that?”

  “Relax. We have all the things you need for that.” Miyu put something on the table and pushed it towards her. It was a key; an old, antique-looking one.

  Seika blinked and stared at it as Momo finally detached from her cheek and tapped on it.

  “See, like, somewhere here in Tokyo is a passage that leads, like, straight into the dimensional fault. And in the fault this key will open a door to where you need to go.”

  Seika looked from one to the other.

  “So, explain to me why you need to blackmail me instead of going there yourselves?”

  “Ahh, Paisen, I knew you were gonna say that.” Miyu let out a long sigh and stared at the ceiling.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Unless a monster appears outside, I have time.”

  “Right, right. Come on, come back here Momo, don’t get handsy with Paisen, now.”

  Momo poked out a tongue towards Miyu as she kept clinging to Seika’s side.

  “Tch, suit yourself. Anyway… we used to be proper good Magical Girls, as you know. Fought the Enraged and made sure the civilians weren’t getting hurt. We managed. Most of the time.”

  Seika didn’t like the implications of the last bit and the tone of regret it was carrying. Miyu even looked unwell and clutched her chest after saying it, remaining quiet for a few seconds to regain her composure.

  “Three years ago we destroyed the cause of the needles. That was it. No more Enraged. Our patron left us behind, so there was no new generation of Celestial Sisters. We used artifacts left behind by some of the creatures entering our world and sold on the black market to keep pretending that we could still use our powers.”

  Seika raised an eyebrow, leaning in towards Miyu, which turned out to be a bit hard to do with a clingy gyaru on her arm.

  “You don’t have powers anymore?”

  Miyu raised her hands in a defeated motion.

  “It’s all showbiz. The idol gigs, the merch and the Magical Girls bit.”

  Now it was Momo’s turn to talk, which she did right into Seika’s ear.

  “So, like, the other world where we get more stuff to be able to do magic is full of… well, magic.”

  “Using magic wands or rings is fine, but once the very air you breathe is filled with that stuff it’s as dangerous to us magic-less humans as radiation. Just look to all the kids born after the Kawaguchi incident whose hair turned a weird color.” Miyu added after concluding that her less read companion wouldn’t be able to bring that up.

  “So, you have to, like, wear your magic armor so you can even survive in there, Paisen.”

  Seika nodded, her finger tapping on the table as she closed her eyes.

  “I don’t appreciate that you are blackmailing me to do this, but I can’t pretend that I’m not even the least bit intrigued.”

  “Ah… you can directly see Tokyo Tower from here. Actually, you can see the people on the main deck. Could probably see their faces with binoculars.” Seika said with a dry voice. She was reconsidering her life choices at this moment, as she stood in front of a large window front on one of the topmost floors of a certain luxury apartment tower.

  Maybe being a sellout Magical Girl isn’t so bad, after all.

  “Don’t abandon your pride just yet.”

  The trip to this place was already a blur in her memory. A terribly long car showed up to pick her and the two gals up from the izakaya; the interior appeared more like a lounge in which shady business deals took place, rather than what Seika knew about the insides of cars. A limousine, they called it.

  The elevator ride up to the two girls’ apartment was also longer than she was used to from other elevators. The longest ride she ever took in one was the way up Shibuya Sky with Miori when they went on their date last month, and this one was an even longer uninterrupted ride.

  “So, don’t people here ask questions when they see two gals come and go?” Seika asked, finally turning away from the window towards the interior – the combined Living and Dining Room alone was larger than her apartment, with luxurious couches providing way more seating space than the two girls could ever need themselves, all facing a TV larger than Seika’s kitchen area.

  If she recalled correctly, normal idols didn’t make nearly enough money to rent a place like this, so these two being Magical Girls must have been quite a boost to their marketability.

  “No one here asks questions about their neighbors. Could be business moguls, or they could be big-shot criminals. No one asks, no one gets bothered.” Miyu said with a sigh.

  “Yeah, and then, like… Satou from one of the lower floors got arrested recently. They, like, said they found his blood in that warehouse raid that exposed a kidnapping ring. Good job, by the way, Paisen.”

  “Wasn’t really my achievement. I was just there. The blue Magical Girl did all the heavy lifting.”

  The two gyaru exchanged an odd look before they continued with what they came here for.

  “Right… we’ll give you what you need to exchange for our artifacts and a letter with instructions and then we’ll let you go, Paisen.” Miyu shooed Momo out of the room – she walked into the master bedroom and returned with a little chest.

  “That’s it?” Seika asked as the chest was handed to her. It was an antique, European design, something that people 400 years ago would have stored jewelry or other small valuables inside of.

  “Is it full of some kind of isekai currency?”

  Momo grinned in response.

  “Why don’t you open it, Paisen?”

  “Oh, I can? Well, here goes!”

  She opened the chest. There was no gold or jewelry. Instead, it looked like the chest was filled with mercury. It reflected the room and Seika’s face brilliantly while ripples formed whenever the chest was moved. She immediately got it away from her face.

  “Do you want to poison me?!”

  “It’s nothing like that, Paisen. Here, look.”

  Miyu stood up and walked over to Seika before simply plunging her hand and then her entire arm into the odd liquid – it didn’t splash or stick to her, and in that moment, Seika realized it had to be a magic portal.

  “Here.” Miyu pulled her arm back and held something in her hand. It was a block of wood – its sides were ten centimeters each, barely fitting through the small chest’s opening, while it measured thirty centimeters in length.

  “There’s a lot of this in the chest. Two tons of it. The chest is magical, so all you’re feeling is its own weight.”

  “That’s it? Just wood?”

  Seika looked into the chest with some disappointment.

  “It might not look like much to you, Paisen, but, like, for someone out there it’s worth a fortune.” Momo grinned at her.

  “And we have money to get some ‘ordinary’ wood, so getting magic artifacts in return is a great deal for us.” Miyu continued.

  “Anyway, Paisen. Is your evening schedule free this Thursday?”

  Seika blinked and looked around between the two.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re leaving on Friday.” Miyu said in a rather matter-of-fact tone.

  “And before that we’ll go shopping so you don’t stand out as much.”