2-0

I was dreaming. At least, it felt like a dream. Or my idea of how dreams should feel like.

It was about the time at the playground I talked to Kyoko about. That one where the pinky on my left foot bled.

I could only remember a few scant details. Afternoon. Sandbox. Clear sky. A few kids. I was making something in the sand. I don't remember what it is. I was just making it. Nobody was playing with me because nobody liked building things in the sand. Except this girl wearing a pink dress.

Of course that girl was Madoka.

When I saw her face, I woke up.

Xxx^.^xxX

"I told you, don't touch me in the mornings."

It was always like this. Not always, but rather most mornings it was always like this.

The Girl opened her eyes, looked at the naked back sitting at the edge of her bed. A girl was putting on clothes, the Redhead. When she saw her in the first few waking hours of her day, the Girl reached out to her, to see if she was real.

The Redhead, sensing the Girl's fingers slide down the skin of her back, squirmed.

"Don't… don't do that."

"Why?" the Girl asked. Why was she getting fussy?

"I… I get sensitive."

Usually, that was what ended the conversation.

The Girl would watch the Redhead put on her clothes, dust herself, tie that long mane of crimson into a tidy ponytail. She would stand at the door for a while, looking at the Girl, as if she didn't want to leave her. But it was too early in the morning. The Redhead had to leave, for the Girl was going to have breakfast with the Goddess.

"Remember, keep smiling," the Redhead told her.

"I will," the Girl said.

When she left, the Girl wished that her friend could stay a little longer. She found that everything was boring again, and fell into sleep. Just a few more hours before breakfast with the Goddess.

2-1

Today, we were going to have French Toast with Café au Lait. A fresh loaf of bread and lots of eggs were in the fridge that morning, so why not?

French Toast isn't really that complicated to make. Mix eggs with milk, vanilla extract, and sugar. Damp bread slices in the resulting mixture. Heat on pan until golden. Serve with cheese, maple syrup, cinnamon, all three if you want.

The Café au Lait was instant, unfortunately. Comes in sachets. Heat water, pour over contents in a mug. Stir and drink. It was cheap, but that's fine. Madoka didn't seem to complain at all.

She was very beautiful in her new dress: It was now a pink one with white ribbons. Her hair was styled in a bun, just like how she would in her mornings when she still existed. Like what she told me some time ago, but I can't remember when.

"So Sayaka-chan, how was your day?" she asked.

"It was…" I made a little wavy motion with my hand. "Ehm, so-and-so."

Madoka was worried. "Huh? Why?"

"Ah, nothing much. I just feel like this sometimes, but it'll pass." I knifed a bit of my toast and took a bite. "Other things aside, it was pretty good. Got to know the new recruits."

"Really? How were they?"

"Great. The new batch is really energetic this time," I told her. "Really top-class. I'll make great Agents out of them yet."

"I'll be counting on you for that," she said.

"Hah, of course!"

We were silent for a while. I was almost finished with half of my toast.

"Hmm, Sayaka-chan, this coffee is pretty good," she said, holding up a cup.

"Is it? That's just instant coffee."

She looked at me, not understanding. "Instant coffee?"

Apparently, she didn't know what instant coffee was. That was fine. I was always here to help her out anyway. "Yeah, there are two types of coffee. One's where they use beans and the other's where they just pour them out of sachets."

"Wow, I never figured there would actually be something like that. I thought that you had to get the machine where you pour all the beans in to get some, but you can actually have coffee with just a sachet. I see…"

"Don't you usually drink coffee, Madoka-chan?"

She made an awkward smile. "It's too bitter for me, really." But then she looked up as if to take back what she said. "But this one's good, though. It's sweet. Did you put sugar in this?"

"Yeah, lot's of sugar, yeah."

We were nearing the end of our polite catch-and-toss. I had to think of something.

"So, Madoka-chan," I began. "How did your day go?"

She put a finger near her lips, wondering of what to say. "It's been…" After a few moments of effort, she dropped her elbows with a sigh. "Terrible."

I could tell she wanted to talk about it for some time now. But Madoka on a terrible day? This was something new. For the first time that morning, I was actually interested. "Huh? What happened?"

"It's been terrible for… everybody on Earth. Magical Girls are being overrun by Wraiths. That's why you've been having quite the traffic for recruitment."

It was true. For the last week, there had been an odd increase in residents here in the Cycles. Kind of like a population boom. Of course, that translated into more recruits for Cycles Agents.

But population booms like this were bad. It meant that there were a ton of girls dying back on the ground.

"The Wraiths are becoming too powerful," she said. "Too many of them spawn on the planet. For every one Wraith that dies, five come out to replace it.

I whistled. "Woah, that's a lot, isn't it?"

"I think it's because people on the world are too stressed. Wraiths are the manifestations of negative feelings made by humans. How many of them can grow out of a tiny amount of stress is really scary."

"Why can't we just go down there and smash them, then?" I thought of it for a while. Yeah, that would've been cool. It'd be like the heavens opening up, and thousands of us would fly down, Ride of the Valkyries sounding off in the background.

Using a fork, Madoka played a little bit with her French Toast. "We can't."

"Well, why not?"

"Because… that's just how it works."

Like most things in this universe. Right.

She smiled at me. "Besides, you might fall asleep if I explain it, Sayaka-chan."

"Heeey, I can take an explanation or two sometimes," I told her. "Just make them simple."

"Whenever it comes to the rules of this universe… nothing is simple."

"Then make them simple. You're technically like God now or whatever. Why not?"

She took a sip of her coffee. "It doesn't work that way. And no, I'm not God. Even for someone like me, there are rules I just can't break. In fact, when you're where I am, you'll find that what you can do is actually… limited."

Not knowing what to say to that, I knifed up what remained of my toast into little bite-sized squares.

"You know, Sayaka-chan, I'm…" She paused, trying to find the right words to say. I've noticed that she always had trouble finding the right words lately. "I'm actually very glad that I get to talk with you like this."

"Hey, come on, Madoka-chan. It's nothing. I'm always here."

She had her hands clasped on the table, squeezing them together lightly. "It's just that I… I don't really have anybody to… talk about these things with."

"For reals, Madoka-chan? Come on, now! We just talked about really basic stuff. You can talk about that stuff with anybody. What's the matter with you?"

She was an omnipresent being that could be everywhere at once. She had the whole universe in her palm, her own audience. What's she worrying about?

"…you can't, actually."

"I'm sorry?"

"Erm… nothing."

"Madoka-chan, you've been acting like that since yesterday. Come on, cheer up. I haven't seen you like that ever since…" I tried pulling a name out of my mind. Luckily, I found one. "Tanhauser Gate."

The minute she heard those two words, Madoka crashed into the table, her head nearly missing her plate. "Fuwaaah, don't remind me…"

"Crap, I'm sorry." I would've hit myself on the head if I could. What happened there was a real fiasco. "But I just can't stand seeing you like that, you know?"

"I'm…" She sat up and looked down on her lap. "I'm sorry."

"There you go with that sorry again. You know, this is just like that time when we missed passing our macaroni sculpture in elementary school."

Madoka looked up at me, eyes seeming as if they found some sort of wonder. "You remember that?"

"Like, yeah." I had already gotten that far with the current set of blu-rays Madoka gave me. "I already had the glue and whatnot, but you forgot to bring the macaroni. Ring any bells for you?"

"And I had papa leave Tatsu at the day care so he could buy us a new box of macaroni."

"Yeah, that was a little bit of a waste. But hey, he sure did make good macaroni and cheese with the one you left at home."

She chuckled. Good, she was a little happy now. "Yeah, I know, right? Papa really liked making macaroni and cheese. It was really good."

"How many cheeses did he put in that?"

"I don't know… four, I think?"

"Woah, that's a lot of cheese."

"Papa's pretty serious about cheese. He has them all vacuum-packed in plastic bags inside our fridge. So when he cooks something then he knows that he has the right kind of cheese."

"Yeah, your dad was a really awesome cook…" I began.

Xxx^.^xxX

It was a miracle that the Girl was able to find something to talk about. That morning, the game was Grasping Straws. She would grasp topics from the back of her mind, and the Goddess would discuss them.

It had always been like this.

Again, it had always been like this.

The Girl was getting tired of it. Talking about memories, memories that weren't really hers. She could remember her life as a sort of picture book, with all the pictures from the highlights of her existence. Any new people or places, they were all new pictures added in. But the Goddess wasn't simply a part of the picture book, not just an extra page. No, she was grafted onto the picture book, maybe even the onto the book's spine. She was supposed to be totally ingrained into every single picture of the Girl's life.

If you took a picture of the Girl from her childhood, you would have her standing in front of Mitakihara Middle School just by herself, maybe with that Green-haired girl. But if the Goddess was supposed to be there, then she would have to be next to the Girl, with an arm over the Girl's shoulder. She could not be grafted in; it would destroy the picture. Forcefully grafted in, with duct tape or superglue or Adobe Photoshop, it would look fake. A new picture would have to be taken, with the Girl and the Goddess posing in front of a camera. A large-scale photo shoot that rivaled the ones for magazine covers. Professional photographers, an army of make-up artists, blazing heat lamps behind mirrors. So artificial, so unnatural, so fake.

New pictures. Worked shoots. Forced identities and forced memories and forced friendships.

While she was talking about cheeses and cooking, cooking and cheese, she could not help but feel how ridiculous it all was.

Of course, she wouldn't confess it to herself. The Girl was not that brave enough.

Xxx^.^xxX

We ended breakfast on a high note, with Madoka all cheered up with that talk about her family as she left my room. I saw her out, of course. Exchanged goodbyes, wished each other well, and the rest of those pleasantries, rituals.

But before she got out the door, she turned around and told me something. "Um, Sayaka-chan. There's something I'd like to tell you."

"Yeah, shoot."

"About what you were saying earlier, about… going down to Earth," she said. "I think we'll do something like that in the future."

I was genuinely surprised by all this. "Really?"

"Yes, but it's smaller than you would think… just a few of us, actually."

"Why are we going, then? Is it some sort of big-ass Witch hiding in the Earth's core, or Global Warming, or what?"

Madoka suddenly looked wary to talk. She had made a mistake. She shouldn't have told me that. She wasn't letting it on, but the way her eyes shifted from left to right betrayed her. What was she hiding?

As a saving throw, probably noticing that I noticed, she shook her head. "I'm still working out the details. But we'll talk about them later once I've… confirmed some things. Don't worry, we'll talk about it. Soon. I just wanted you to know."

"Well, uh… thanks."

Madoka smiled at me, and turned her back to leave. But she stopped herself midway and looked at me again. The look on her face was like yesterday's, when she asked me that question at the table.

"Sayaka-chan, are you… are you happy here?"

What was with her? "That's like, the second time you asked me that. Of course I am. What gives?"

When she heard my answer, she looked like she didn't know what to do with herself. Her face scrunched up a little, kind of like a wince, but it wasn't at the same time. It was hard to describe; Madoka was the only person I knew who could make that sort of face. If anything, she must've felt flustered.

"I'm… I'm sorry if I made things awkward."

"Hey, don't say that, Madoka-chan. You didn't make things awkward."

"…See you tomorrow."

I nodded. "Um, yeah. See you tomorrow."

"Thanks for the breakfast."

"It was nothing; you're welcome."

She stared at the air next to me before tilting her head a little forward. "Bye."

I raised my hand a little to make a wave of sorts. "Yeah, bye."

When I closed the door, I leaned on it, listening to her steps. There weren't any. I opened the door again, and she wasn't there anymore. Well, you could always teleport, I guess.

Immediately, I thought of how strange Madoka was acting the whole morning. Must've been the stress. Having to manage the Cycles, on top of picking up girls and killing Witches, it must really take a lot out of a person.

And a person like Madoka, I was quite surprised at how strong she was to take all of it and manage to keep a grin on her face. I wonder, managing all those copies of herself, how could she deal with that? Of course she can't be all of those Madokas at once, so do they have their own personalities? What happens if one Madoka argues with one another? Does some other Madoka step up and settle them down? Is there some sort of like, 'Boss' Madoka or something that settles disputes between them? Of course, Boss-Madoka would be the real Madoka, so does she have some sort of middle-management? Like, Madoka-Lieutenants? Of course, there would be Madoka-Grunts too, so there's some sort of Chain of Command between them. That sounds pretty complicated if you're just managing yourself, though. It's a wonder how she hasn't lost it yet.

I thought that Madoka needed some R&R, a quick period of 'disconnecting', so to speak. I didn't work out the details that much, but I was thinking of something like going out for a quick drink just so she could loosen up a little. I could even bring Kyoko along. Yeah, that would be a good idea. Maybe I should talk to Kyoko sometime today, like after work. Where was her room again? I couldn't remember; I would just ask Momoe where it was. She knew where everything was in the Cycles.

The dishes were already washed, the fridge clear, the bed made. I did some sweeping in my room, and I found some long strands of pink hair on the floor. Terrific. Madoka was so stressed-out that her hair was falling off. While I was dressing up for work, I kept thinking of good drinking spots.

"Seriously, that girl needs to chill out," I muttered, putting on my hairpin.

I couldn't think of any good drinking spots. I'll just ask Momoe for those too.