1-3

It happened again. I didn't know how to describe it, but it was a sort of… lightheadedness. Almost like nausea. It had been like this for almost a week. I didn't know when it came. It just did, sometimes at the worst moments. Like at the office earlier, I thought I was… hearing things. I couldn't remember what things, just… things. Someone whispers behind your shoulder, and you look back but you don't know who said it. You even doubt that you heard it in the first place.

I knew that it happened randomly, but it usually happened whenever I woke up, whenever I saw Nagisa Momoe.

I shook my head. No, I shouldn't be thinking too much into it. It would've been bad for my health. Maybe I was just going through some sort of dizzy spell or something. Caused by stress or something like that.

But what's to stress about? I'm in heaven. Never mind.

I took a deep breath, and let it all hiss out slowly. Finally, I can relax. Time for some R&R.

Xxx^.^xxX

I came to a room where there was a sofa. In front of the sofa was a big LED-TV with a Blu-Ray player mounted on the wall. The room itself had light brown walls, modern designs, circular lights, like one of those Architect's Digest cover pages. On a counter, there's a popcorn machine, a fridge full of soda, lots of snacks. There were windows there, glass ones with a view atop a high-rise in Mitakihara City, a hill in Germany during the spring, a bungalow in Kagoshima during the summer, even a cottage on the French alps during the snow, all scenic views switched via remote control.

I call this place the Rec Room, because, well, you do recreational stuff here.

And it was just my place. Superman has his Fortress of Solitude, and Sayaka Miki has her Rec Room. Nobody comes to see me, I don't come to see anybody, and I can just rest and overall slack off. There might be many Rec Rooms like this in the Cycles, but this one is mine.

Xxx^.^xxX

The Girl collapses into the sofa. This was the only time she could unwind in a while. The day had taken so much out of her; put many bad-tasting things in her mouth. She throws off her boots, tosses her cape somewhere near the popcorn machine, and just stares at the paper lantern at the ceiling. It looks like the sun. Maybe it was the sun. How long has it been since she saw the sun? Reached out to it, felt its warmth on her hand, like life?

The Girl takes off one of her gloves and reaches out towards it with her hand. She then pulls it back, hides it behind another hand, as if in shame. No, it's not the same. Not the same at all.

She stands up and went to a stack of blu-rays next to the sofa. To others, they may have looked like ordinary blu-ray movies, popcorn fodder. But no. Those blu-rays, and by extension this Rec Room, these are all nothing more than pieces of reality bent by perception within the Cycles.

This place isn't just for entertainment. It is the Goddess' gift to the Girl. The gift of memories. The gift of the past. For she who controls the past controls the future, and she who controls the present controls the past.

The Girl takes out a single blu-ray disc, shining, no sticker or label attached, and loads it onto the player. She packs herself a fresh bag of popcorn, and a large root beer… no make that a root beer float. She likes that vanilla taste in her drinks.

Settled in her sofa, she uses the remote to dim the lights, before ordering the blu-ray to play.

Xxx^.^xxX

"Balance means good and bad always have to zero themselves out, right? That's what you said. Or something like that. I think I understand what you mean now…"

Some redhead in the screen is sitting next to our protagonist. The way she looks is worried, shocked even. The Pringles she was eating seems to have all but disappeared from her mind. She was too focused on what was in our protagonist's hand.

A Soul Gem. A blue one, streaked with roots of darkness from the bottom to the tip.

"The good thing is I saved a lot of people," she continues. "But the bad thing is, I got angrier, and my heart filled up with anger and hate. It got so bad that I even hurt my best friend."

"Sayaka!" the redhead cried. "Your Soul Gem!"

"For all the happiness you wish for someone, somebody else gets cursed with equal misery. That's how it works for Magical Girls, and that's how it is for me…"

Tears. If anything was going to steal the frame of this shot, it is tears. Tears from our protagonists eyes. Tears of death, tears of despair.

"I was stupid… I was so stupid."

Xxx^.^xxX

One of the features of the Rec Room is a bathroom at the far end. It featured a sink and a sparkling toilet, white and electronic, with even one of those bidets that were all the rage back then. It would've been hidden behind an automatic sliding door, had not it been bumping against the Girl's body, bent over at the toilet's mouth.

Sour Cream popcorn all over the sofa. A vanilla island of ice cream floats in a sea of root beer below it.

The Girl couldn't take it. Still couldn't take it. She wiped her mouth, before hitting the side of the toilet with her fist. She was mad at herself. Mad at the Girl on the television. Both Girls.

Why was she mad at herself if it was another Her she was supposed to be mad at? A simple answer: Because if everything was exactly the same as it was back then, it would've been the same result—the Her now would've been saying the same words, on that same bench, in that same life.

The Girl stands up, opens the lights and rinses her mouth with water from the sink. She focuses on cleaning up the mess. The popcorn she vacuums with a handheld, but when it comes to the root beer spill, she's at a loss. She had already gathered a small pile of tissues to pick up the scoop of ice cream when somebody comes through the door.

She looks over her shoulder, nervous. When she saw the figure standing there, for a moment she's afraid that the Redhead in the TV jumped out and came to life.

"Sayaka."

The Girl twists her head away, hurries up with cleaning up the mess, intending to hide all of this wasted food. "Yeah?"

The Redhead. The same person on the television, here at the Cycles. She had already been here for some time. The Girl can't remember when exactly she had appeared in the Cycles, but it feels like she had been here forever.

"What happened here?"

"Nothing." The Girl hid the clump of tissues in her hands, discreetly walking towards the trash bin.

"You look shaken up."

"There's a 'Do Not Disturb' sign at the door."

"Am I disturbing you, then?"

The Girl pauses, before throwing the clump away. "…No. No, you're not."

The Redhead looks at the TV, paused at the moment the Girl is tearing up before her death. "So you were watching this."

She still has her back turned on the redhead, still unable to face her. Still unable to talk.

"You don't have to torture yourself."

The Girl clutches her unworn glove with both hands, tightly, stopping herself from breaking down in tears.

"You know what, come on," she says. "Let's go grab some coffee, Sayaka. Where can we get some?"

"…At my office," she offers.

"Then your office it is. Come on, get out of there." The Redhead beckons her to come. "Don't worry about the mess; it'll clean itself up when you come back here. Come on now…"

After a few moments, the Girl decides to just let it go and get out of here. Before she left the room, she gives the face on the TV one long stare. Her face twisted into a smirk, and she turned it off.

Xxx^.^xxX

Did anybody know that Coffee is the world's most common psychoactive drug?

"Did you know that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia?" Kyoko asked me.

I shrugged. How was I supposed to know? "You tell me."

"Apparently, some guy there was curious about the beans that made his goats hyper and jumpy," she said, before drinking half her cup. "So what does he do? Peels the beans, roasts them, puts them into a pot with water and boom, coffee."

When we got to my office, Momoe wasn't there anymore, but she forgot to lock my office up. What a forgetful girl. Oh well, she was totes useful for a lot of other things, so I guess I could let this pass.

I was sitting with both feet on my lazy-boy chair, hands all over a warm cup of joe. Koyko was walking around the room, touring it despite looking like she knew a lot about the place already. After finishing a cup, she poured another one for herself from the percolator, and then just stared out of my windows, looking at the afternoon sun go down in the distance.

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"I just…" Kyoko looked up at the ceiling. "Know?"

"Then how am I going to be sure that's true if you just know that coffee was first made in Ethiopia?"

"Just trust me on this," she says. "Besides, the coffee I made you was good, right? Trust words about coffee from the people who make good coffee."

If there was one thing true about anything, it was that. Kyoko did make good coffee. Just as good as Nagisa's, actually. "If anything, yeah, it is pretty good. You make it just like how my secretary does."

She paused for a while, probably digesting what she had heard. "Not too acidic, not too sour, doesn't taste like dirt. And it won't make you that jumpy either; this was a really dark roast, you know?"

"Funny. I always thought that the more you roast it, the stronger it gets."

"With some beans, the caffeine's actually lower in darker roasts."

"Looks like we've got us a coffee expert."

"Heh," Kyoko emptied her cup. "Thanks."

Kyoko… when did Kyoko come here? I can't remember exactly when she came up in the Cycles, but she was fighting Wraiths like everybody else when I left. Of course she was bound to end up here sooner or later. Since she came up here, we talked sometimes, hung out, drank coffee like this. It was always her who was finding me. I was busy with work, so I barely had any time to meet up. I felt guilty sometimes, actually. I was afraid that I wasn't spending that much time with her, considering that she was supposed to be my best friend and all.

"So, what's got our Chief rattled today, huh?" she asked.

"I was just a little…" I waved my hands a bit, trying to catch a memory somewhere. "Dizzy, I guess."

"You've been watching too many of those tapes."

"I gotta get acquainted with my past self, right?"

"Yeah, getting 'acquainted' with your past is one thing, but blowing chunks every time you do is another thing entirely. It's unhealthy, Sayaka."

While she was talking, I had been staring at my feet. Strange things, feet are. They look really weird on people. You got big toes, stubby feet fingers, little pinkies, all that stuff. The feet I have now look perfectly fine, but at the same time they're not. Is it because of the way they look, or some natural prejudice people have towards feet?

"Do you know the difference my left foot and my right foot?" I asked.

Kyoko looked at me, one brow raised. "Um… besides the facts that one goes to the left and the other to the right, I have no clue. What is it?"

"When I was seven, I was in a playground. I was playing there and, well, nothing really happened to my feet," I told her. "But I watched the tapes, and on the same day, at the same playground, with the same feet, the pinky on the left foot got hit with a rock. It bled so bad. My parents even told me that it might be cut off. Heh. They were joking, of course. Trying to scare me."

"But how would your foot get hit by a rock in the first place?"

I was still looking at my feet, trying to see whether I'll feel the same pain that I felt in those tapes. I tried hard, really hard, but no. I couldn't. It was still stuck in the realm of imagination. It didn't feel real enough.

I reclined on my lazy boy and looked up at the ceiling. "I was protecting Madoka from bullies."

There was a little pause, silence. "Oh." She understood. "I see."

"And that's the difference between my left foot, and my right foot."

"But you shouldn't spend too much of your time looking back at the past," she said. "Especially if it's not really your past. It's some other Sayaka's."

I looked at Kyoko. She was frowning, but her eyes seemed like the early stages of tears. She was really concerned about me.

"Why not look at the people in front of you?" She asked me. "The people in front of you right now?"

"It's… tough," I told her. "Besides, the people right in front of me… I can't even begin to talk about them."

She wants to talk about them. The Girl wants to complain, and tell all about how much of a drag her life was with all the people around her. But no one's there to complain to. At least the people in the past seemed more real, more alive.

"But what does that make me, then?" she asked.

Suddenly, it felt a little painful to face her with those eyes of hers at me. I averted my gaze, trying to dig up another excuse. This is what I'm good at, really. Digging up excuses for the people around me. "You're different. You know that."

"But sometimes, it just feels like I'm… bothering you, you know?"

I took a sip from my mug. "Come on, what are you talking about? You're not."

"You're busy all of the time," Kyoko told me. "And you're all business too. Training this, signing that, and whenever you're free you hole up in that little room of yours and stuff like earlier happens. I mean, come on. Live a little." For a moment, she chuckled at that. "Sorry if I was a little blunt, but I hope you get the point."

"Yeah, yeah…" I was already depressed.

Kyoko stared at me for a while, seeming to catch my bad mood. Whenever I was like that, my mood seemed to infect the whole room. I dunno why. I guess it's one of my many talents.

She stood up. "You know what, I think we should call it a night. You need sleep."

She never liked heavy moods. In fact, she's the first person who'll bolt the moment things go emotionally sour. Then again, I think it's my fault. Now I've depressed one of my friends. Terrific.

I couldn't stand up. My legs were too caught up with my guilt, refusing to move.

"See you tomorrow, I guess," she said, walking towards the door.

Midway though, she tripped, her face almost hitting the floor but luckily she spread out her arms. It was an obviously fake trip, where you already know it is because the person's trying too hard to make it look real. But Kyoko wasn't the type of person to do that. She never was. Why would she?

That was it. I stood up, and I reached a hand out to her to help her out. I felt her putting something in that hand, before thanking me.

She rubbed the back of her head, smiling sheepishly. "I've become such a klutz lately. Sorry."

"Yeah, it's weird," I told her, ignoring whatever was in my hand. "You were the more acrobatic between us two. Your joints are getting old."

"Joints are getting old, what the hell…" She made a chuckle. "Hey, that was a cheap shot."

I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of looking at her note. I knew Kyoko well, and she always had trouble expressing whatever she was feeling. But it was weird for her to write out a note. Usually, she would just grab you by the neck and shout it at your face. But then again, she was always acting tough. When it came to me, though, it was different. I was something else in her book.

"I guess… good night, then," she said with a light smile.

I nodded. "Yeah, good night."

"See you tomorrow."

"Yeah, see you."

When the door to my office closed, I didn't know what possessed me to check the note.

I love you.

"Hey, wait!"

She was already at the end of the hall when I called for her. In the darkness, I could only see her eyes in the light from my office. Her eyes were bright, glittered a little. Looking scared, maybe. She looked like a frightened little girl, lost in the rain. I was offering shelter.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "I was being a jerk."

She looked back at me. I could hear her voice echo in the hall. "And?"

"I was being stupid."

The head of her silhouette tilted to one side. "And?"

"I was being… you know what, whatever; I've read your note. Just come back here already."

As Kyoko was walking towards me, I was already locking up the office. The coffee mugs were on my table. Momoe-san would clean them tomorrow; shouldn't be too much to handle for her.

Xxx^.^xxX

As the Girl waited for the Redhead to return, she concerns herself with matters of importance such as if there was enough food in the fridge, if she left the room tidy that morning, if the bed was large enough. Of course there was still food. The rooms always cleaned themselves here in the Cycles. And the bed would always be big enough for the two of them.

The Girl wants to be with someone that night, as with a lot of other nights. She could never sleep alone, never be alone. Because even if she is alone, she always has someone else with her. She is sick of that person, so she wants to be with more pleasant, more interesting people.

That's what she always wanted, right? Being with more pleasant people?

Before the Redhead could notice, the Girl makes a smirk.

Who is she kidding? Of course she could never be honest with herself. She was just trying to fill something up. In this body that didn't even have a Soul.

Xxx^.^xxX

While we did it, Kyoko called out to her mother for some reason.

We were sweating the whole time. In the end, I was already laid on top of her, panting as much as she was.

A quarter of an hour later, I had her make more coffee while I leaned on the bedpost, reading a clipboard for lessons tomorrow. I got bored though, and just stared outside my window. There were a lot of stars, just like what our grandparents said the old days looked like before the sixties. And there would be creeks with the chirping of crickets, woods the cries of cicadas, grassy fields full of the lights of fireflies. I was becoming quite poetic.

When she came back, we shared a mug in my blankets. I lowered myself to lie on her chest.

"It just feels so wrong," I told her. "When I tried talking to them earlier, it feels like I'mspeaking to them behind glass or something."

She nodded. "Yeah, recruits can be weird like that sometimes."

"Like, I'm speaking Japanese, they're speaking whatever… whatever language they talk in. They still speak Japanese, really, but… anyway, the stories they tell me, they're all nuts. As in nuts. And they smile while they talk about them. It's like they… I dunno it's just—doesn't that creep you out sometimes?"

Kyoko put a finger to her chest. "You see me making friends around here?"

"Heh, yeah, you weren't really known for being friendly, I guess."

She sipped some coffee. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"You're lucky. I have to put up with it every day. All smiles and stuff; bleaugh." I ask her to pass me the coffee, and I take a sip. God, I swear Kyoko makes great coffee. "There's this girl I work with, Momoe. I don't know how she does it. She's always so good with dealing with the new girls, all the girls. She has this smile that just… lights up a room, you know?"

"I think the key to your job is to keep smiling like her."

"To tell you the truth, it's disgusting how good she is."

"Eheh, yeah, um… maybe she's just really into it."

"I dunno, maybe. I don't really care." I look up at her. "Hey, how about your job? What did you get?"

"Oh, I'm… you know, just lazing around like everyone else."

"Psh."

"Hey, cut me some slack. The jobs here are hard. I can't pick out easy ones, you know? If you're not an Agent, you get to stack paper. Sometimes you get to be an Agent and stack paper. I can kick ass, sure, but I'm tired of that. And I don't like doing paper jobs, you know?"

"Yeah, you're right." She was right. The jobs at the Cycles were hard. The hardest was being an Agent. I couldn't even begin to describe how hard being an Agent was. "If you've seen… the stuff I've seen with my own eyes, you'd really think that."

"The stuff you've seen, I've probably seen too," she said.

"No. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe." I shook my head. "Agents travel with Madoka sometimes, to really far-off places. The dark bits of the universe she hasn't reached yet. You don't know what's in there. That's the scary part about it."

"Madoka, huh… Yeah, what's up with her?"

"What do you mean?"

"You have breakfast with her all the time," Kyoko said. "I'm just asking, how's it going?"

Everybody always had breakfast with Madoka. It was a given when somebody was in the Cycles. "Don't you have breakfast with Madoka?"

"I…" She shook her head. "I go out early. It's a total bore at my room. I don't catch her."

Maybe Kyoko was afraid of something happening between me and Madoka. Yup, typical Kyoko. "Well, its total bore having breakfast with Madoka too sometimes. She just drops by, eats with me, and we shoot the crud or whatever. Then she leaves, and I go to work. That's pretty much it."

"What do you talk about?"

"You know, she's my best friend, so… usual stuff. Like, what we do in school, or… did rather."

"I see. So what's that look on your face?"

I looked up at her. "What look?"

"That look."

I tried looking at the mirror opposite my bed to see the look Kyoko was talking about. While I was distracted, she took the coffee from me and took a sip for herself.

"Hey!"

"Always be on your guard." And after a few moments with the coffee in her mouth, she stuck her tongue out. "Ew, its gone cold."

I crossed my arms. "Heh. Serves you right."

She put the coffee on the night stand, giving it a glare before coming back to me. "Anyway, is she bothering you somehow?"

She had to ask it. She just had to ask it. Terrific. "…Yeah, sort of."

"And why's that?"

"Because I feel that I can't… be honest with her on things. Like, whenever she's around, I have to keep talking about pleasant stuff because I have to. I don't know if I'm making sense; am I?"

"Kind of."

"It's hard to explain; I know. I'm just bothered by… whenever I see her; I just don't like the idea that she's everywhere at once."

Kyoko draped her arm across my midriff. "What, you're afraid that she's peeping on us right now?"

For a moment, I thought if that was the case. Nah. "No, not that, silly. She won't do something like that. She's too much of a nice girl."

"Then what's the worry?"

"She's everywhere at once, like God," I told her. "So like God, she has to be friends with everybody, right?"

She nodded. "Right."

"But then she comes around, tells me I was her best friend. And I was like, I don't even know you. Where the heck did you come from? Some alternate universe or whatever and I was friends with her there. And then, I buy into all of it and like, okay, here are your complimentary tapes. Please enjoy. I watch all of them… most of them, rather, and I bought into the whole deal. So I should be getting something, right?"

"Yeah, you should."

"So where is it?"

"You tell me, Sayaka."

"I know it's really selfish to say this, but… I don't like sharing Madoka. I don't like sharing Madoka at all."

Kyoko was silent for a while. "Ah, I see," she said. "Well, hey. That's reality for you. She has to be everywhere all at once. Be with everybody. It's her job."

"Yeah, yeah, I understand."

"Well…" A smug grin appeared on her face. "At least you don't have to share me, right?"

Kyoko, always joking like this. That's why I always liked her when we were alive. "I guess you're right."

We stayed like spoons for a while, trying to share each other's warmth, cuddling in this awfully cold room. At that time, I was thinking of something.

"About the coffee," I said. "Will we not fall asleep because we drank some?"

"Nah, don't worry about it. The coffee you got here is weak. It's even better at making people fall asleep than a nightcap."

"I dunno about that…"

"Just trust me on this," she told me. "Just close your eyes, and sleep."

I followed her, and soon I knew she was right. I was feeling sleepy.

"You know, Kyoko, I've… I've been a real jerk to you, haven't I?"

"Don't say that."

"The stuff I told you when we were alive… I can't believe that it's the same crap another me told you before."

"Forget it, Sayaka... That was over."

"I'm so sorry… I'm so, so sorry…"

I was meaning to tell her a few more things, but I had been dragged into the rabbit hole of sleep.

And so concludes Day 1... Three left.