6. What a Fall

Summary: Ten years later, Piko learns that Miki was - is - a magical girl. And suddenly everything he believed is challenged.

Theme used: Magical girls (blatant Puella Magi Madoka Magica setting), expectations leading to greed, letting go, feeling content, despair, the world needs to be saved by teenage girls.

A/N: Inspired by Puella Magi Madoka Magica (such an awesome thing I love it so much it is mindf***ing) especially Sayaka Miki, a few Buddhist books and the post-exam euphoria.

Read/watch PMMM. Yeah. And also, this was written in, like, two days.

Posted: 17/06/2014

Word Count: Around 7.1k+, give or take a few hundred.

Piko didn't believe in fate or destiny. He did, however, believe in coincidences and luck.

Luck, especially. Both good and bad – it was all a flip of the coin, random chances. When a coin was flipped, the side that faced up could have been either head or tail, but the pattern it conceived was never as consistent and as even as one might have expected. There could have been a never-ending streak of heads, or tails. Probability existed, but practice kicked it down to size.

But heads or tails? Good or bad luck? This, he wasn't sure about when he literally ran into a woman he recognized. "Miki?"

The redhead froze and stared at him with horrified scarlet eyes, and the expression was so familiar to him, even after nearly ten years. "It is you," he said.

She blinked, and her eyes widened in further horror. "Piko," she said stiffly. "Um, well, hi, but I've got to go and-"

"Hey, hey, hey," he grabbed her forearm, and for the first time noticed how business-like her attire was. Funny, seeing as she normally hated formal wear. Just how much had she changed in the time they hadn't known each other? They had been so close, once. "Wait a minute – at least give me a way to contact you again, would you? It's been such a long time since we've even seen each other, let alone talked."

A good ten years since they had talked. Back when he had been in the hospital, believing that he would die, she had been there every day, as cheerful and bright as the sun. He had contemplated suicide a great number of times when the pain had been too much, but she had always been the reason for him holding back. He was already going to go – there was no need to make the disappearance of his life any more traumatic for everyone that loved him.

That had been his teenage reasoning, at any rate. Miki had been there, and he wanted to be there for as long as he could like she had been.

Then a miracle had happened – his disease had disappeared without a trace, and all of a sudden he was in possession of a body healthier than it had been before the illness. Doctors called it a miracle, his family called it a miracle, even he thought of it as a miracle.

He, at least, could say that it was a miracle. He knew it was – he had felt the illness drain out of him one night, and the moon had shone so brightly as every last trace of the sick pain had left his body, leaving behind only the pleasant sensation of relieving himself.

Piko hadn't wanted to waste the second opportunity, and so he had gone back to school. Everyone had heard, and everyone had welcomed him back with wide open arms.

Except Miki. Initially he hadn't noticed, because everyone else had been overwhelming, but he noticed it soon. She avoided him, and shunned his company. She did it in a way that made him not notice the distance that had grown between them until it had grown like a canyon. When he had tried to patch things up, she had rejected the attempts. Soon, contact between them was lost, and the last time he had seen her, it had been at the graduation ceremony two years after his miraculous recovery.

"I-" Miki shook her head, and then tugged herself free. "I've got to go – job on the line, sorry."

She fled from him, and even her bright hair was lost in the surging crowds. Piko sighed and let himself get pushed by the crowds towards the general area of his destination. He supposed it was too much to ask for.

His miraculous recovery from the illness had opened up opportunities he had previously thought impossible. Back in the hospital, his other friend had been a boy around his age named Lui Hibiki, bedridden with a disease that was different, but just as deadly as his had been. Piko hadn't forgotten about him, and believed until Lui had died that the blond boy could have been saved as well.

His death had shaken Piko greatly, and at the same time made him truly appreciate life for what it was – a series of chances and opportunities that could be grasped or ignored.

Lui's family had been devastated, but at the same time they had been thankful. Lui's end, the doctors had said, could have been extremely painful. Instead, he had slipped away in his sleep when his heart, weak from the illness and the lack of exercise he got, had failed on him. It had been painless, they assured his family and Piko.

Lui's devastated family had also been rich. They were the family that owned a rich and powerful corporation that specialized in pretty much everything. Because he and Lui had been close, the Hibiki family all but adopted him. They made him powerful, rich and useful, giving him more opportunities with his second life.

Piko walked into the meeting room. This was a private meeting, with the president – Lui's grandfather, who had been particularly fond of the blond – having kept the contents of what was to be discussed here under wraps for quite a long time. Only a handful of the company's most powerful and influential people were present. He was here, because the family favoured him.

He took a seat somewhere in the middle of the conference table and took a sip of water from the glass provided. Whatever this was, surely it couldn't have been more important than the development of missiles for the country's defense? Or the security camera network that the government had been considering implementing in response to the violent surges of crime everywhere.

Three women walked in, and he didn't recognize them from the company.

From the company, anyways. One of them was Miki.

He stood from his seat. The Chairman said something, but Miki's eyes had been drawn to him, and she had frozen just as she had the morning of that day. She froze in disbelief, despair and hopelessness.

It made him angry to think that he brought forth those kinds of emotions from her. What had he done, exactly, to make her reject him like that? Had she only been with him because of pity? Had he been nothing but a charity case to her?

Miki half-turned, as if to flee; one of the other women grabbed her wrist and hissed something to her. Whatever she said, it made Miki stop and stay, albeit a bit reluctantly. She refused to make eye contact with him, or even look in his direction again.

Fine, Piko thought bitterly, taking his seat and apologizing to Lui's grandfather for his behaviour. Let her be that way.

He had planned on giving Miki the stink-eye the entire time while paying attention – because men could also multitask, no matter what the female race thought – but that had been completely blown out of the water when the leader of the three had stepped forwards and transformed.

It wasn't some kind of quick-change thing or even a magic trick. The blue-haired woman had held out a jewel shaped like a Faberge egg and suddenly, ribbons and streamers of light wrapped around her body. When the light burst and faded away in sparkles, she stood in costume – what could have easily been a playbunny costume, with the exposed cleavage and the white collar attached only to the translucent black material wrapped around her shoulders and arms, as well as the thigh-high socks, heeled boots and the skin-tight jumpsuit that only – barely – covered her torso. A half-skirt opened around her hips, but did very little to add to her modesty.

"What the hell?" one of the younger executives muttered, and Piko thought he could honestly say that the man had just summarized the entire thought process of every male in the room.

"We are magical girls," the woman, who had introduced herself as Alys, said calmly. She flung the braid that her dark blue hair had pulled itself into during her transformation over her shoulder, and attracted quite a few looks with the gesture that made the translucent material wrapped around her shoulders and arms move apart a bit, exposing pale creamy skin for a brief moment.

Next to her, her other colleague lifted an amber-coloured stone and turned her clothes into something that gained quite a bit more attraction and outright ogling, with a skirt that could have been a belt, as well as boots reaching past her thighs. Her hair fell out of its respectful bun and all around her waist, as the open shirt blew back at a wind that had started from nowhere. She smirked just a bit at how she was received.

Miki had hesitated, but she had gone through with it. Her clothes were far less revealing than the other two's. Her colour theme wasn't red, as he had expected. Rather, it was white with the occasional bit of navy blue added. Her dress was long-sleeved, and while there was cleavage shown it didn't appear excessive. Thigh-high leg wear was apparently a theme with the three of them, because her white boots reached very nearly to her skirt – not quite the modest length expected, but tame in comparison to what her colleagues were wearing. The full length of her released hair ran through the navy headband she now sported, and the brilliant scarlet contrasted against the white and the blue of her costume.

"We'd love to demonstrate exactly what it is we can do, other than transform," Alys continued, somehow doing something that made her attire return to what it had been originally – a blazer and dress slacks, respectfully businesslike. The other two did the same, and Piko caught sight of a few men shaking their heads to clear their thoughts. He might have been one of them. "But I think it's first more of a priority to explain just why we exist, and why we're here."

And so he was treated to a story about the universe using up more power than it was producing. From this imbalance monsters were created, and they threatened humanity – they were the ones responsible for the surges in crime, either directly or indirectly.

In a nutshell, the best way to deal with this was to generate emotion. Lots and lots of emotion. And the best source of emotion available happened to be teenage girls, because in that time, the emotions became the very foundations of their world just as it was about to grow larger and face reality. The potential for dynamite.

Tapping into this emotional energy, though, required a conduct of a sort. It was, Alys explained, like sticking a tube in a tree in order to tap the sap inside. The tube, in this scenario, happened to be the awakening of magical powers that would convert emotions into energy usable by the universe and release it for use.

"You've seen our release forms," Alys said. "With the awakening of our powers, though, we are also able to face the monsters that threaten us. They are always capable of hiding themselves from human sight, but from us they cannot run. We are able, in return, to fight and destroy them. It's technically a win-win situation."

Technically. The girls that did this were young, though, and needed more than just their magic awakened. They needed support. Protection. Knowledge. Experience. They needed to know that others, more experienced and aware, were out there and willing to help.

"The average career span of a magical girl is two years," Lily supported. "Chances grow better when we band together, but only slightly. These monsters are powerful, and desperate to continue their existence. Our jobs are bloody."

Miki merely pressed a few buttons on the presentation remote she had been given. The large screen displayed images and clips of girls dressed brightly in clothes similar to the ones these women had transformed into were doing impossible feats. Jumping from seven-floor buildings. Summoning spears from nowhere and shooting them forwards with a flick of gloved fingers. Lifting a truck before smashing it down on the 'head' of a creature composed out of black goo. Shooting fire from a staff.

Then came the pictures of the dead. Initially they were somewhat peaceful – slumped girls that couldn't be older than fifteen, looking more like thirteen – with eyes closed, body intact, clothes returned to civilian wear. Slowly, they gave way to acid burns, decapitations, missing limbs, before moving onto live deaths entirely. Heads bursting. A girl thrashing in what looked like pitch, dying throes so pitiful and fragile. A brightly coloured body thrown across the air, only to be impaled on knife-like claws of a monster from someone's worst nightmares.

Piko had to hold back vomit. He heard one man – the head of accountants – lose his lunch, and was tempted to follow.

Miki never looked at him.

"We need your help," Alys said, and there were tears in her eyes as she choked out the next words. "We want to stop them from dying so easily."

There was a question and answer session – (Why not just stop entirely? The world would die, either massacred or decayed. Why now? Because we've never known how until now.) – before the chairman called for a short break.

Piko hesitated as everyone except the three women filed out, but then he steeled his resolve –

And joined the men outside.

"Just a question before we continue to discuss your proposition, Miss Alys," the head of the company's lawyers said. "Why did you choose this path? You've given us numbers of thousands of girls joining per year, but – and I don't mean this in an offensive way – they can't have all done it for the altruistic reasoning of saving everyone."

"No offense taken," Alys said gracefully. Miki elbowed her, but she continued on as if nothing had jabbed her side.

Nothing sharp and bony and digging and ever-so-slightly offensive. He remembered how she used to prod him in the ribs, and it hurt even now – more so, thinking about memories he hadn't bothered opening for a long time.

"When we are made into magical girls, we create a contract," Alys brought out her Faberge egg-like jewel. "This is a Soul Gem – it is our source of power, and how we are able to transform. When we create this, we are given one wish."

"A wish?"

"A wish in exchange for service," Alys replied, and there wasn't a trace of bitterness in her voice or face. Lily rolled her eyes from the side, but didn't interrupt. "It is for that reason why Mew, the contractor, is able to get girls to sign up into duty."

A cat leapt onto the table. Only, it wasn't an ordinary cat. Its eyes glowed silver, and the markings on its coat changed constantly as it paced.

"Mew, I presume?" the chairman asked gravely.

Alys nodded. "Indeed."

"If I may be rude," Piko spoke up, "may I ask what you wished for?"

Pieces were falling into place, and theories were beginning to sprout in his head. Everything fit, and while it wasn't the only probable possibility, it was certainly very likely.

Miki winced, only confirming his thoughts. Lily stiffened and curled her upper lip in fury.

The blue-haired woman didn't react like the others. "I wished for myself and my family to be saved," she said softly, "from a car accident."

He muttered something and backed down. It could have been an apology, or a thank you. He couldn't remember.

"There is another reason why the average lifespan of magical girls are extremely short," Lily had taken over as the speaker. The blonde woman spoke in clipped tones, and practically spat out words when she discussed topics that made the men flinch slightly. Her ice blue eyes were like hail, harsh and stinging as she swept the room, daring anyone to challenge her. "And that is grief.

"As a magical girl, our life becomes tied to the emotions we produce. Hope, love, compassion . . . emotions that can generate power easily. The more passionate they are, the stronger they are, the more energy we produce, and the more power we have.

"But," and here her lips curled. "There's a catch. We store the negative emotions in our Soul Gems. They can be purified when we defeat a monster and find a Core that can cleanse it, but if the impurities stack up too much, then our Soul Gems shatter.

"Have you gentlemen ever seen a grenade go off?" When one man raised his hand, she nodded gruffly. "You were a marine. Thank you for your service."

He shuffled in his seat. His service? He was facing women who had pretty much given up their lives to face horrors at the prepubescent age. Was it fair for his service to be thanked by her?

Lily smirked and continued on. "It resembles that by quite a bit. Our Soul Gems shatter, and with that unleashes the energy of despair. All of our negative emotions – and bear in mind, to a teenage girl these are devastatingly huge and relevant – are released in the form of usable energy. It makes us useful even when we expire. Helpful, seeing as when we bend under the weight of pressure and the realities of this world, we become disillusioned and often end up growing depressed enough to have our Soul Gems explode.

"When we are older, we are more able to face our insecurities. Despair, we can acknowledge as something that can be put away. But teenage girls?" Lily raised a perfect golden eyebrow. "The smallest thing can end her life."

She backed down and let Miki take the stage. "This is why we want to be able to reach out more," she said softly, and the pleading in her voice was a direct foil to Lily's bitter harshness. "If they have someone to even find support from, it helps – it really does. We've been running a program, but we have limited resources and contacts. We need the big guns in."

Someone to lean on and find support from? Piko wasn't as angry as he was betrayed. He would have been there for her – he would have stayed with her and understood, if only she had just told him!

"I see," the chairman said.

The head of the company's lawyers knew how to catch subtle cues. "A very touching story, ladies, but we are a business first and foremost. How can this benefit us?"

Lily smirked like she had expected the question. "Weapons," she said, and transformed rapidly before pulling out some kind of tube out of nowhere. She handed it to the marine, who looked at it curiously. "Our powers manifest in forms of weapons far more advanced than anything on the market. I think that you'll find it useful to study them. Careful," she added when the ex-marine tried to tap it. "I've seen that blow up a warehouse full of monsters."

He set it gingerly on the surface of the conference table. No one paid attention to anything that was said after that, too busy eyeing the bomb, so the chairman had to suspend the meeting again to send the explosive – contained in the heaviest mobile safe they had at hand – down to the labs.

"It won't explode until Lily triggers it," a slightly annoyed Alys said.

"But take it as a token of goodwill," Lily beamed, dispelling her transformation again.

Miki remained silent. They began negotiating deals, but Piko knew it would go through. She didn't look at him once.

He didn't approach her.

Piko finally worked up the nerve to attend one of the talks the older girls and women gave to newer girls, or girls that had been approached by Mew. Somehow, they had managed to make this all go through naturally when facing the public. There was outcry and mixed receptions, but it was settled and explained enough to calm everyone down somewhat. He wasn't interested in the how or the specifics. That was crap for the PR department to settle down and deal with.

Today's speech was about wishes. The speaker about to speak had been a magical girl for a good ten years, and was about to talk about how she had first started.

Piko slipped into the auditorium and hid in the shadows. Miki scanned the crowd when she got onto the stage, and began to talk.

"My name is Miki Hiyama," she said, and transformed briefly. "I've been doing this for a very, very long time – I'm the third oldest magical girl alive at present, next to Miku and Ia. I was sixteen when I started this, and I'm now twenty-six. I'd like to tell my story."

I was actually approached by Mew six months before I made my wish and sealed my contract. Mew had seen the potential in me, and had tried to recruit my friend Iroha and I for the cause. When we were hesitant, she had us tag along with an older magical girl by the name of Yukari to see just what it was about.

I thought what they did was noble, but at the same time I had been scared. I had a good family – nice parents, a pair of twins for brothers – and friends I really cared about. I wasn't sure if I could die and lose them willingly.

(Piko is not sure whether to shed a tear or grimace.)

Iroha was a bit more willing, and so she became a magical girl four months after we began our apprenticeship with Yukari. I won't say what she wished for, because she's never liked saying it and I want to honour her memory, but she was good at it. Mew, as you know, is very good at finding girls that would be good at it.

I still hung around – I still watched, and I rooted them on even when I was more of a bother than help. The world fascinated me, and I thought that by doing this, I could achieve a happy medium. Best of both worlds, you know?

(The audience laughs.)

The monster population rose in the area, and so a more experienced girl – woman, by that time – dropped by to give a hand. Her name was Luka, and she had been doing this for four years now. She'd seen it all, survived and gotten the t-shirt, as she used to say.

Now, here's something you need to know. At the age of sixteen, I was in love. Yes, I know what it feels like when you want to be near someone no matter what, and you can't help but think about that person every waking moment. He was an obsession of mine.

But here's where I was selfish. He was sick, and so he was confined to a hospital bed. Restricted to access of the outside world, he didn't mind my presence, didn't mind or see me drinking in his presence like a plant absorbs water.

(Piko groans; one of the girls nearby gives him a look before turning her attention back to the speaker on stage.)

He was confined in the hospital for a reason, and that reason is because he was dying.

I asked Luka for advice. I felt that I couldn't make myself ask Yukari for advice – as kind as she had been, this was a girl who had wished that the orphanage she had grown up in received enough supplies for every child that ever came through its doors to be well-fed and clothed. She was such a selfless person, and I couldn't face her to ask about a selfish wish.

Luka looked at me, this girl who was nineteen but so much older and wiser because of what she had gone through, and laughed.

I was offended, of course, but she gave me an explanation. She said to me that a wish should be used for ourselves – it was the one luxury we would be guaranteed before we all went to hell.

When I continued to pester her, though, she just rolled her eyes and told me that if I really wanted to make a wish for someone else's sake, I had better keep something in mind.

Naturally, I asked her what.

And then, she told me that I had to keep away from the person I had made a wish on the behalf of.

(All the puzzle pieces start to fit together and Piko is swamped with regret, regret from all those years where he had blamed Miki, and he is drowning, drowning.)

Here's the thing about wishes – they are expectations. And over the years, I've seen so many girls lose their hopes and become filled with despair when their expectations are shattered. When we make a wish on someone's behalf, it's always filled with some kind of expectation – we do it, and we expect some response of gratitude.

A lot of times, that someone doesn't know, or hates the pressure it brings. A breaking expectation brings on disillusionment like nothing else. I think it's safe to say that it's the best source of despair for us all.

If I had made the wish and stuck around the boy, what would have happened? If I hadn't told him what I had done, I would always have some kind of nagging thought in the back of my mind, thinking that 'I saved you, so do whatever I say' or something like that. If I told him, then what? The thought would have become words. The boy wasn't a slave or a mindless robot – he was a bright, mindful person. Eventually we would have clashed, and I would have been heartbroken. My expectations would crush me.

(Piko wants to protest, but the sad truth is, she's right. They were both young then, immature, impatient things so headstrong, and even now he knows that he would have eventually reacted in that way.)

No, the best way was to forget about my wish and to denounce expectations. I had done something, and now I had to treat it like a simple action – a breath taken in, a step forward. It had to be a phenomenon, something beyond my control. I had to accept it and let it go. I couldn't let it sit and fester in my mind, or I would die.

Luka told me a story about a girl she had known. She had been Luka's friend, and had become a magical girl because her brother had gone into a coma after a car accident. He enjoyed his new life and opportunity so much that he grew a bit apart from his twin sister. She would have understood in normal situations, but with the knowledge that she had saved him always present, she considered his actions betrayal. She became filled with regret and bitterness, and cursed everything.

Luka told me that she watched her friend finally lose her last hope when her twin brother confessed to her friend without telling her first. She was forced to watch her friend's Soul Gem shatter and see the life slip out from her body, forever, as she became nothing but energy for the universe.

Up until then I had been building myself as a saint of a sort – Mother Theresa, you know. I would have saved him, somehow he would have known it was me and then we would have ridden off into the sunset, happily ever after.

When I thought about it, I knew Luka was right.

I continued to tag along with Iroha, watching Luka in action now as well. She was good, and from her both Yukari and Iroha learned a lot. I learned a lot, too, but I only realized that later.

One day, though, we met a huge monster that had formed under an elementary school. Kids from Yukari's orphanage went there, and so she was particularly invested in taking this thing down. She was so focused that she didn't see a shadow turn into a tentacle until it had impaled her leg.

Luka was busy fighting. It was a lot easier if Iroha went to help her, so she did. I watched out for any enemies that might have crawled up, as I usually did in an attempt to feel useful.

I was particularly useless that day; I noticed the explosive monster crawling towards them far too late. When I screamed, Iroha turned and saw it just as it detonated and left nothing but a smoking crater.

I prayed for a very long time that their end was painless, and that their last surge of energy was something positive. Not happiness, no, that's too much for me to ask, and it's unrealistic – I don't know, maybe hope. Hope that they could have gotten away from it all.

Yukari and Iroha's deaths left Luka all alone to face what was turning into a battalion of monsters. She was good, but not that good. She needed to retreat, or get help. Mew, in my arms, offered a contract.

The morning of that day, I had visited the boy I had a crush on. He had just gone through something that had to be horrifyingly traumatic, early in the morning, before most kids his age was even awake, yet he had greeted me with a smile.

Yukari had died trying to protect kids like she had been. Iroha had died so young, without even getting the chance to feel the despair – that was how short she had been a magical girl, to never even be able to feel the weight of what her choice had brought. In the face of such sacrifices, well, what was staying away from one boy? Paramedics and doctors, firemen and police officers did it all the time, didn't they? They accepted being a hero as part of their jobs, risked their lives, got into dangerous situations and still lived happily. They let the people they saved continue on with their lives, not getting involved again most of the time.

I could stay away from him, I thought. So I made my wish and asked that he was healed, completely, entirely, and received my Soul Gem. I transformed – and I'm sure you know, that when you just start out, with your Soul Gem completely free of any taint, you're powerful. You're a supernova, and you feel ready to do anything because you – you're a superstar.

We beat the monster. Luka just patted me on my shoulder and told me to do what I had to do, but she said – and I quote – "at least kick the guy's ass first if you decide to die of despair."

Luka, incidentally, wasn't a man-hater. She got married to a nice guy who was saved from a monster by her, and managed to remember her. I think he would have helped her feel a lot less despair if she had lived longer – a year after she got married, her luck ran out and she died while saving a school bus full of kids. She saved those kids, though – some of those kids had been from Yukari's orphanage, and the bus was from the same school.

Luka had assumed that I would stick around and cling to the boy. I wasn't sure what I would do. The next day, I argued with myself the entire time. I could go see him, one last time, and then that would be it. Or, I could cut myself off now.

My dad smoked, and I learned from observing him just how to quit addicting substances. I chose to quit gradually, and went to visit.

He smiled at me and told me that the doctors were very, very hopeful. I told him I was happy for him, and would he forgive me for leaving early because I had an appointment.

(Her voice cracks.)

He let me go without knowing. I stopped visiting – didn't have to, because he came back to school, all healed just like I had wished. Everyone was so happy, and I was too, but I made myself stay away. I cut contacts with him – I avoided him as much as I could, got distant and vague. He tried to make it up, because he probably thought that he had done something wrong.

Silly boy, it had never been his fault. From the very beginning, it had never been his fault.

Anyways, so I was careful to choose a university that he wouldn't be interested in. He got accepted into his dream school – he'd always had a talent for writing – and I got to a decent place I grew to love. I grew up, and I found that it became easier to accept.

I'm sorry, this is such a long story and I think I keep getting off track. I see Alys gesturing at me to wrap this up so we can go and eat brownies –

(A girl in the crowd cheers, and there is a wave of laughter rippling, spreading happy emotions, building up the powers these girls and women need to fight the evils to protect all of society.)

Yes, chocolate, girls. The moral of this story of mine, everyone, is that you need to expect nothing. That way, it doesn't hurt when you fall – there is no fall, you see. Don't build yourselves up in what you believe others should view you as. Build yourself up for yourselves. Love yourselves. Don't despair, don't expect. Just give and give, and find happiness from that. It's hard – but I promise, when you find yourself able to let go, it doesn't hurt. Not anymore.

I'm not saying you shouldn't wish for your mother to get better when she's on her deathbed, and then leave her forever. There are other girls who have wished for their family to get better – examples other than the twins that worked out fine. But this is your one final chance at selfishness before you're cast into a balance of altruism for survival. Keep that in mind. Thank you, and god bless you all.

That night, Piko drinks vodka while Miki gives and receives hugs. Both of them draw comfort from the act - somewhat.

A few months later, in the weapons division, Piko 'kidnapped' Miki during her lunch break. She came to demonstrate the star rifles, which had amazing accuracy that may or may not be reproducible, and he knew it.

So when she had been released from her demonstrating responsibilities to go and grab lunch from the staff lounge, well-stocked with a fridge, a salad bar and a snack drawer that never ran out, he had cornered her in the elevator, and then refused to let her out.

He might have also abused some of his powers to manipulate a few things here and there, but those weren't details worth mentioning.

Miki shuffled uncomfortably in the small boxed space. "Look, Piko," she began.

"I heard your story at one of the meetings for the girls," he said simply.

The colour drained out of her cheeks, and she sprang at the door, beginning to press every button. He could stop her – yank at her wrists, hold her, shove her against the wall – but magical girls have been both blessed and cursed. A mark of this mixed blessing was their super strength. She could easily break his bones, and he knew it.

"And I understand your reasoning for it," he said, jamming the elevator buttons. Miki slapped at his hand, but he didn't budge. "Miki, please."

She glanced around like a trapped animal. It made his heart break to see her like this.

"I just want to say thank you," he said softly. "If this builds up expectations, then I'm sorry, but please know -"

The doors slid open, and a magical girl laughing with one of the employees looked in. They saw the grim mood and their amusement disappeared; they were wondering if they should do something, or just leave the scene altogether.

Miki wasn't in despair – she was just panicked. She was about to spring out when he finished.

"That I'm grateful. And that I'll stay away now. But thank you, Miki. Thank you."

Surely this couldn't build up expectations?

Miki had frozen now. He bowed his head slightly, feeling a weight both lift off and rest on his shoulders, and left the elevator. He took the stairs back to his floor.

He never once looked back.

It was not a selfless act on his part – thanking her. For all he knew, that alone had built up and crushed expectations she had held. For all he knew he had killed her.

Well, no – Piko knew he hadn't killed her. Maybe confused her, but not killed her. It might have ended her, or served as fodder to end her if she had been younger, but Miki was tougher now. That much was evident in the way she carried herself, in the way she interacted with the younger girls and in the way she had told her story. Miki was a magical girl, yes, but she was a powerful woman as well. She wouldn't fall from this. She had grown up.

This was selfishness on his part. After hearing the story, he had nearly died in his regrets. He wanted to go back in time and hurt himself, for making her go through all of it, for cursing her name when it had been him who had been guilty, for blaming her, for hating her.

Piko had wanted to approach her that night. He had wanted to embrace her, hold her and kiss her senseless for being so stupid to think that he would have left her.

But then his rational mind had kicked his emotional reasoning in the nuts, and then he had realized that Miki was right – eventually, the truth would have disillusioned them all. It would have killed Miki. She had done the best thing possible to stay alive.

That, of course, was the main priority – that she stayed alive. A magical girl's life was short and unpredictable. Lily, who had been a veteran with eight years of experience under her belt-like skirt, had been killed right after the company had agreed to the deal. Her death had been caused while she had protected the city's biggest water supply from poisonous monsters.

Miki lived her life on an edge as thin and as sharp as a blade. The last thing she needed was some ungrateful dick cutting down more of her life. She deserved to live as fully as possible.

So he had settled. He had spent a few weeks pouring over what to say to her – because he was selfish, and did need to say something to her for his sake, for his sanity – writing long, elaborate speeches with various references to their past together with love confessions and overflowing metaphors of gratitude.

He had written nine different drafts, and all of them had been trashed in anger and frustration. In the end Piko had decided that less art and more matter had been needed, and then cut out everything supposedly essential as well. What had it all boiled down to? It wasn't a I-have-loved-you-since-high-school-please-marry-me-so-we-can-run-off-into-the-sunset kind of thing, it was gratitude unpaid.

Piko had loved her back then. She had been a constant like his family, like the bed he had lain in, staring up at the hospital ceiling as he counted down his days. She had been like the former – a pleasant constant, not like the sterile environment and the pain that never truly left him. Her cheerfulness had always made him light up, just a bit, and feel less empty inside.

He had loved her back then, for sure. He had loved her attention, craved her presence and wished – sometimes, when he felt particularly lovesick – that she would hold his hands and keep him company as he died.

Then he had gotten better, and they had grown apart.

Guilt, guilt, selfishness creating guilt after everything. There was no escaping that – he had no chances, no opportunities presented.

Except one he could make. And so he had seized it, all but accosted Miki and then let his self-indulging rampage.

The pit that had been gnawing on his insides for a very long time – ever since his miraculous recovery – was gone now. Now he just had some guilt weighing on his mind always asking questions about Miki and her welfare.

It had still been worth it. The thank you had been, also, an act of farewell, now that he thought about it. It was the final, belated expression of gratitude, and through that he had managed to make things easier for himself as well. This was no longer an expectation. It was a reality check.

Piko woke up to the sound of heavy, harsh pounding on his apartment door. He glanced at his phone, and saw that it was three o'clock in the morning.

Knowing that his neighbour would complain bitterly about the noise if he didn't answer quickly, he stumbled out of his bed and hurried to the door to open it. "I'm coming, hold your horses, I-Miki?"

The redheaded woman standing in front of his door in the middle of dawn was definitely Miki, and not a hallucination on his part. A discreet pinch on his legs proved that.

She had been crying – her eyes were puffy and red – and she was still sniffling, but she was smiling. "Thank you," she said, and hugged him fiercely, just as fiercely as she had always done while they had been teens.

He didn't invite her in, they didn't confess their love for each other and then have mind-blowing sex. That would probably remain a what-if scenario in his head forever.

Instead, she told him that he had probably taken off a lot off her mind, load that had piled onto her ever since running into him. She told him that he had probably saved her by doing that.

Mind-blowing.

Miki wasn't sure if getting back together was friends was a good thing - odds for her living longer was not good at this point – but he had insisted that they not become strangers again. "Let that be a phenomenon and not an expectation, right?" he asked, paraphrasing her story's lesson.

In response, he received a dazzling smile, and at that moment it didn't matter that they had been estranged for years, that she had essentially exchanged her life for his, that he owed her everything but couldn't ever repay her properly, that she could die at any given time without warning.

Everything felt right.