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Morning again. White clouds mixing in with yellow sunlight, criss-crossed shapes that look like the smoke trail above trains, and I imagined that there were really trains there. But who would put trains up here in heaven? Who would need them? Everybody just teleports.

Still…

I dunno why exactly, but I think it would be great if we had trains here. They have this… I dunno what to call it exactly, but… a calming effect, I guess? You ride on a train, look outside, sun sets on the city as you ride by. Breathe a little, try to appreciate the view. There's no other view of a city than from a train. To me it sounds really relaxing.

Maybe I can ask Madoka to install trains here later. What am I talking about? She has more important stuff to think of. Oh well, it's free to dream, I guess.

It was time to get up. Breakfast was almost here.

I got up from my bed and fixed it along with other things. I found out that my hairpin was missing, not where I put it last night. Where did it go? It couldn't had just jumped off the table by some cruel circumstance and landed into some alternate dimension of lost hairpins. Maybe it did land into some sort of alternate dimension of lost hairpins. But if an alternate dimension of lost hairpins did exist, then what kind of people would be in such a place? Would they be people at all? Maybe they would be sentient hairpins, who write their own laws and abide by their own cultures? What if I went after my hairpin and accidentally fell into that alternate dimension, would I have to spend some time convincing my hairpin to go back with me to our world? My hairpin might like staying at that alternate dimension, though, and then I'll be forced to let it be. But that means I'll have to get a new hairpin.

I sighed. What a drag. Good hairpins are hard to come by these days.

Then again, maybe my hairpin's still here. The wormhole to that other place just hasn't opened up yet. If I exert some effort, maybe I'll be able to find it before time runs out.

My room is pretty small, a studio-sized one with a single closet, but comes with a bathroom and a dining table plus kitchenette. There's a desk for reading, complete with a shelf of books I like. No TV, though. Not even a radio. Not like I missed TV, but I kind of miss the sound of a weatherman talking about how sunny it would be while I wake up (then again, his predictions are always wrong. How useless). The room's cute though;it's a really nice place to live in. I'm pretty glad I got a room like this. Anyway, I eventually found my hairpin under the nightstand. I might've knocked it off while I was sleeping or something.

Too bad. I really wished that there was an alternate dimension of sentient hairpins. That would've been pretty cool.

Oh well.

Xxx^.^xxX

It was a temporary lapse in sanity, but it was excitement nonetheless. Excitement was hard to come by these days, just like good hairpins as she said.

The Girl dresses herself up in her usual fashion: A blue bodice, her skirt, the cape she likes wearing so much, and that precious hairpin that let her kill thirty minutes of her empty time.

Time did not flow like ordinary Earth time in the Cycles. It just flowed, but not necessarily in a straight line. It takes turns, cuts corners, leaps over some lines and digs itself under the time of others. If one was to look at the morning sun, she only had to wish for it and she would see the afternoon. In short, it flowed along the person's perception, even if that person's perception was four-dimensional or otherwise.

…is what the Goddess told her. The Girl did not understand it much herself. If someone did, she wished that that person would explain all of this complexity to her later.

So now, time flows as the Girl understood time: Morning, then Lunch, then Afternoon, then Dinner, and finally bedtime.

She cooks herself some breakfast. Sausages. The Goddess and her would have Sausages for today. She would've liked to have something else, but Sausages were all the Girl had in the fridge that morning. The contents of her fridge always changed. Though she couldn't remember what was in her fridge yesterday, she had a feeling that the food inside her fridge was switched. Strange, that's what she called it.

Just like a lot of things in this broom closet they call a room.

Xxx^.^xxX

"So, how did your day go?"

"Well, it was nice. Had to teach the new girls a few tricks, but nothing too advanced. They're naturals."

"It's a good thing we were able to find those girls when we did, huh Sayaka-chan?"

I nodded. "Yup."

Madoka had come somewhere around… eight-ish. She was decked out in a simpler version of that big ball gown of hers: Just a simple white dress with pink ribbons here and there. It went really well with her long hair. Gave off a sort of 'Maiden of the White Forest' vibe.

Sausages and toast were served. Luckily, she brought along a loaf of bread and some coffee. Madoka's always had an intuition for things I needed. That's what I liked about her.

"So how about you, Madoka-chan? What's up?"

She put a finger to her cheek as her eyes went up. "Well… There was a little tiff at the Orion Belt, but I was able to take care of that. You know, Class-A Witches are pretty easy to take care of when you know their weak spots."

"How big was the Grief Seed?"

"Like…" Madoka extended her arms to both sides. "This big. I think we got around… Fifty, sixty girls from that, I think."

I whistled. "That's quite the haul."

"Yup. I'm having Nagisa-chan screen them now for recruits. It looks like you'll have some more girls in your hands, Sayaka-chan."

I thought of how I would fit the new girls into the training program, but that's cool—I'll just wing it and see if they can catch up. "Nah, I can handle it."

"I know you can. That's why you're my second, right?"

I stand up from the table and bow down. "And it is quite the honor, if I may say so myself."

Madoka chuckled at my knightly display. "Hey, do you remember that time you played the knight?"

"Huh? When?"

"That play in elementary school, remember?"

I shook my head. "Um, no, I… I don't." As much as I knew, we didn't even have any plays in elementary school back then.

"It was…" She looked like she was having some sort of difficulty with something, before giving me an apologetic look. "Erm… you don't remember, do you?"

I shook my head. "No, I… I haven't watched everything that far yet."

"Sorry, Sayaka-chan."

I knew what it was the second she made that face. She was messed up with her memories again.

"It's fine, Madoka-chan. What are you talking about?"

"I'm sorry, Sayaka-chan. I really am." She folded her arms, and then fiddled with a lock of her hair. "It's just that sometimes, I just get so… mixed up with remembering things between you and… old Sayaka. It's embarrassing."

It was one of those random-memories or whatever that came from all the dimensions Madoka had to be in at the same time. Being a… what do you call that? Omnipresent Being, Madoka processes hundreds, maybe thousands of different memories at once. She was bound to mess some up, and I understood that. I wasn't going to let something like that ruin our mornings together.

"I'm really sorry, Sayaka-chan."

She always had a habit of saying 'Sorry' too muchl. "Hey, chill out," I told her. "It's nothing, alright? You're like, all over the universe at once. It's bound to happen sometime."

"I know, it's just… I just feel bad whenever it happens." Madoka was depressed now.

"Are you getting sad for reals, Madoka-chan? Come on, it happens to me too, you know?" I sat down and sipped some of my coffee. "One time, I was training new recruits, right? There's this one girl, name's Nakajima something, I can't remember her…" She shook her head. "Anyway, that's her surname."

"Nakajima, isn't she the…?"

"Don't ruin the surprise," I said, "Anyway, I saw her face, and I remembered that she was this girl at class who had this super-cool tablet. Remember that? We're like, all using grody old laptops and she has this awesome tablet. Now, I made some small talk. You know, just to get chummy with her. But then I told her that and…"

Madoka took a few moments before her eyes widened, and then she covered her mouth. "You did not!"

I chuckled. "Yes, I did. And you know what happened? She stared at me like this and was all like, 'Uh, what are you talking about?'"

"But she doesn't have a tablet in this universe!"

"I know, right? I kept thinking about the old universe, the one before you made that wish. But then I realize, 'Oh crap, she didn't have a tablet because her parents are poor in this universe.' She became a magical girl so her family can be rich, and, and… well, you know what happened after that, I guess."

She nodded. "Right."

"Anyway, I wanted the ground to swallow me whole right then and there. It was embarrassing!"

"Yeah, I would've thought that too. You know how it is, being like this. It's really hard sometimes when you've got memories going left and right and… stuff."

"That's why you should cheer up, Madoka. You don't have to stress yourself out like that. You've got a lot of stuff on your mind already. I mean, small stuff like this shouldn't even hold a candle near you."

I smiled at her, and she kept fiddling with her hair.

"But sometimes, it's the small stuff that… sets you off, really."

"Nah, that's not true," I told her. "You know why, Madoka? Because if you think you're awesome, then you won't even think of the small stuff. You'll be too busy thinking that you're awesome. Right?"

She was silent for a few moments, but good enough she eventually nodded. "…Right."

"Okay, well, how about a memory I do remember: This is about that time when we picked up Hitomi from her Tea Club …"

We spent the whole morning reminiscing memories, the good old days when Madoka and I were friends before all this happened. Mostly about things that happened in school, sometimes things that happened when we were kids. By the time we were finished, she had already forgotten about the… other things we'd talked about earlier. We were already full, and we were pretty happy to boot. While I was putting away the dishes, Madoka passed me the mug she drank coffee out of.

"Sayaka, I… want to ask you something."

I was scrubbing plates, so I couldn't look at her. But I was listening. "Shoot."

"Are you… happy here?"

What kind of a question was that? "Of course I am. What makes you think I'm not?"

She couldn't look at me in the eye, so I could tell that she seemed pretty worried. "…Nothing. I was just curious."

What was she thinking of? Something was bothering her, but at that time I couldn't figure out what would bother the most powerful being in the universe. "You built a nice place here," I told her. "Why wouldn't I be happy?"

Madoka held what I said close to her chest, digested its meaning, and finally made a slight, wistful smile.

"Thank you," she said. "I'm glad you said that, Sayaka-chan. I really am."

There was a clump of soap suds in my hand. Without warning, I turned around and put some of the bubbly stuff on Madoka's face. She was surprised, of course.

"Huh, what—"

"That's for acting weird," and I put clump of suds on her cheek. "And this one's for being too serious."

By now, Madoka had realized what was happening and laughed, and started dodging my attempts to clean her face.

"Now, start chilling out or else I'll soap the lot of ya!"

"Sayaka-chan, stop it!"

We chased each other around the kitchen, and eventually Madoka got a hold of her own clump of became an all-out soapfest. In the end, we were giggling, hugging each other, being considerably cleaner than we were before we had breakfast.

Xxx^.^xxX

"Well, looks like I'm off," she tells the Girl as she leaves. "Have a good day, Sayaka-chan. Thanks for the breakfast."

"You know I will." Of course she has to sound like she really was happy. "You too, alright?"

The Goddess smiles before walking away. As she leaves, the Girl looks next door. There, the Goddess is already being welcomed by another magical girl inside her room. The Girl looks at the opposite side. The Goddess is being welcomed into yet another room. There are many rooms where in the building where the Girl lives, and in some of these rooms the Goddess is being welcomed, while at other rooms the Goddess is already leaving, saying that she was off, wishing others to have a good day, thanking others for breakfast.

It is surreal to watch so many copies of the Goddess, but the others were lucky—they only got to see one copy of the Goddess. Their own copy. Like time, the existence of certain people was dictated by perception in the Cycles. Only Agents get to see the true number of manifestations of the Goddess' existence.

And seeing those manifestations being happy with other magical girls, the Girl can't help but feel robbed.