Mitsuba Daiki wasn’t sure what to make of the way his older sister had been acting lately. For the longest time, she’d been some sort of strange, obsessive cosmetics nerd with practically no friends besides her whatever girl she was seeing at the time and her various exes, almost all of whom were a couple of years older than her. Oh, she’d always been very responsible at home, taking care of her chores and helping her siblings and all that. But outside her family, she seemingly had zero interest in anything that she didn’t want to put on her face… “Sis! Daiki is thinking about something weird again.” Daiki shot an annoyed frown towards his twin sister. “Am not!” “Are too! I can tell form the weird look on your face.” “Your face is weird!” “Daiki, Nozomi, be nice! If you fight, you’re not getting any chicken in your lunches, OK?” Daiki immediately went quiet, and his twin followed suit. After all, no quarrel was worth the risk of missing out on his sister’s fried chicken. He had no idea how she even made it with those lethal weapons she wore on her fingernails these days, but it somehow turned out perfect every single time… She never used to wear those long false nails, or go to tanning booths, or wear such loud, flashy, sparkly makeup, or bleach her hair. Sometime near the end of middle school, she had started changing little by little, and now she was barely recognizable anymore. The classical, refined beauty of her old makeup had completely vanished, replaced by something loud and in-your-face and… also very pretty, honestly, but a completely different type of pretty. At the same time, her personality seemed to change. She started picking up new hobbies, going out for activities in her free time, hanging out with people she didn’t want to suck face with… He’d heard about people making ‘high school debuts’ before, trying to give themselves a new image for high school, but this seemed like it was too much. It was almost like his sister had turned into a whole other person… “Here we go. Breakfast is served. I made omelettes, because I know you love them, Nozomi. And plenty of cherry tomatoes for Daiki. Don’t worry, I put a bunch of them in your lunch box, too.” As his sister petted him on the head, careful not to scratch him with her long nails, Daiki quietly amended that last though. Sure, a lot of things had changed about his older sister, and he didn’t really understand why, but some things were still the same as always. “Thanks, sis.” Pretty Sparkly Mystical Maginon, or Nonohara Rie in the boring real world, was working on the fifty-seventh iteration of her magical girl costume. And for once, she was able to do so without having to endure any ridicule from her peers. Because there was a place for her, here. Not just a place for Nonohara Rie, but a place for Maginon! Up until the nice people from the Nekoyama group had found her, she had been dreading the very idea of going to high school, but the production staff had offered her salvation, and they had delivered! She still remembered what it was like, back in preschool and the early days of grade school. Back then, all the girls had loved looking at her pictures and hearing all about Maginon. The time she’d made a real Maginon outfit together with her mother when she was seven was one of the happiest memories of her life. But as she got older, the other girls got less and less interested in magical girls. By the end of grade school, she’d gotten used to sitting alone, designing new costumes all by herself and never talking to anyone in school. But middle school was so much worse. The boys started making fun of her drawings, and the girls started talking behind her back. They called her stupid and childish, even though magical girls were much more interesting than stupid things like boys and makeup. Once, one of the boys had stolen her notebook where she wrote stories about Maginon and read it out loud to the whole class while the rest of them all laughed at her. But the worst thing was when someone stole her sketchbook and threw it in a toilet. She’d tried everything she could to save it, but it was too late. The drawings were too damaged. Design number thirty-four through forty-one were lost forever. She’d stayed at home for days after that, just crying in her room. She’d thought that if high school was going to be just as bad, she didn’t want to go at all. But that was when the producer found her. She had no idea how, although she suspected that her mom had gotten in touch with him somehow. He had told her that he wanted her to enrol at a very special school. A school where she could draw magical girls as much as she wanted, and where nobody would bully her for it. He even said that the more she focused on Maginon and her adventures, the better! She almost didn’t believe him at first, but her mother encouraged her to at least give it a try. And she was so happy she did. Sure, a lot of the other students still didn’t understand what made Maginon so great, but none of them made fun of her or stole her things. And some of them even asked questions, or made suggestions about more fun adventures for Maginon. After a while, she even dared to tell people that Maginon was actually the magical girl version of herself, and they were still just as kind to her! She joined the manga club because the producer told her to, and she was very glad she did. She got along really well with all the other people in the club, even if they were a little strange. After all, if the people in her club were a little strange, that just meant she had to meet them in the middle. She was a little strange too, after all, so she just had to make the two types of strange match up with each other. Some of the people in the club were very interested in girls being in love with girls, so she wrote stories where Maginon got a girlfriend. And some of them preferred when boys loved other boys, so she wrote stories about the evil generals that were Maginon’s sworn enemies kissing each other, and they loved those stories. And the two boys who loved giant robots got really excited when she made Maginon’s fifty-sixth design ‘Mystical Robot Pilot Maginon’ and asked them to help her design the magical transforming robot she piloted. There were also two people in the club who loved extremely naughty manga where girls had very naughty encounters with boys or tentacle monsters or whatever else. Getting along with them was a little more embarrassing. Maginon was her, after all, so drawing Maginon doing naughty things was a little strange. But as long as she made it clear that those stories were all just dreams and not things that really happened to Maginon, it was fine. But the nicest person of all in the manga club was Nekoyama Michiru. The producer had told her that the whole school had been created for Miss Nekoyama’s sake, so Rie had been inclined to like her right from the start. After all, if it wasn’t for her, this school wouldn’t even exist. She had been a little sad when she wasn’t in the same class as Miss Nekoyama, but she was all the more excited when she actually ended up joining the manga club! She was just as nice as Rie had imagined she would be. She was polite and had a friendly smile and she always listened properly when Rie talked to her about Maginon. To Rie, Miss Nekoyama was something like a saviour, and she really wanted to be one of her very closest frie… “Oh my, is that a new design?” Rie looked up, and found Miss Nekoyama looking intently at the new drawing. “Umm… Yes! This is Pretty Sparkly Mystical Maginon version fifty-seven. The layers of frills under the outer skirt is the charm point on this one. And the nurse’s cap is there because this version of Maginon is a magical healer who works together with a team of other magical healers to fight against the dark forces of the Plague King.” “I think it’s a lovely design. Would it be all right if I borrowed your sketchbook for a moment?” Rie hesitated for a moment. She hadn’t let anyone touch her sketchbook ever since the time one of them got stolen. But she knew Miss Nekoyama wouldn’t do that. Miss Nekoyama would never do something like that. Pushing down on the little voice in her head telling her she mustn’t, she slid the sketchbook over to Miss Nekoyama. “Thank you very much. Now, if you would give me just a moment…” Rie watched in stunned silence as Miss Nekoyama started sketching a different girl standing next to Maginon, holding her hand. A taller girl, with silky hair and a curvier figure, dressed in a similar but distinctly different outfit. “Miss Nekoyama… Is this…?” “Why of course, it’s Pretty Sparkly Mystical Maginon’s friend and comrade, Pretty Sparkly Magical Mimi.” Rie drew a sharp, shocked breath as her heart hammered in her chest. The quick, simple sketch seemed like it almost glowed as she looked at it, and before her mind’s eye, visions of the two magical girls having wonderful, mystical adventures together played themselves out in vivid detail. Before she knew it, tears had started streaming down her face. “Oh, oh my goodness. Are you all right? Did I do something wrong?” Rie shook her head, trying to wipe her face dry even as the tears kept flowing. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just… I’m just so happy!” Kobayashi Miki looked over at the girl who was supposedly her best friend. Which was a bit of a big ask since they only met like, two months ago. According to the setting, they had joined the swim club together last year and hit it off almost immediately, and when Miki had to retire from competitive swimming due to an injury, she had taken up the role as the club’s manager while her supposed best friend took the role of team captain. The injury was real, admittedly, but it happened in the second year of middle school. It wasn’t too bad. She could still walk and stuff. But it impeded her enough that swimming at all was a little difficult, and doing it on a competitive level was downright impossible. It had made things extremely awkward between her and her former team-mates, and rather dashed her original plans of joining them in the swimming program of a specialized sports high school. She’d spent a year in a forgettable third-rate school, the best she could get in to with her grades and no sports scholarship, but she didn’t bother making any friends there. After all, by then she was already in talks with the producer, and she knew she’d be transferring to this outrageous theatre production of a school for her second and third year. But by the time she actually transferred in, she had grown used to being a loner. Which made it a little awkward that she was supposed to be friends with a bunch of the people already here. Her salvation, somewhat ironically, turned out to be Yamashita Umi, her faux best friend. Because that girl was floundering just as hard when it came to this whole ‘fake friendships’ business, and had been perfectly willing to join her for private study sessions, where they went to each other’s homes and spent entire evenings just studying and quizzing each other on the various friends and acquaintances the two of them were supposed to have at school. After about six weeks, they felt pretty confident in their ability to act out their respective roles. But by then, they’d gotten so used to occupying each other’s space that they just sort of continued meeting up a couple of times a week. Their study sessions had turned into long, meandering talks about anything and everything that crossed their minds. In a weird, backwards kind of way, Miki felt like they might actually be well on the way to becoming best friends for real. She just kind of wished that Umi wasn’t quite so debilitatingly gay. “…and did you see the necklace she was wearing today? I bet you anything she got that from Mitsuba Ayako! I’d do anything to give her a present like that. Can you imagine? Nekoyama Michiru wearing something I had given to her? In public? I’d be so happy I could just die!” “Then give her something.” “I can’t do that! It’s not like we’re friends. We’re barely even acquainted! I’ve only spoken to her like, twice, and the first time I was acting in an official capacity as captain of the swimming club. It would be weird if I just gave her a present out of nowhere!” “Then talk to her! Come on, Umi! You’ve been gushing about her for the last thirty minutes! If you could spend even one tenth as much time actually talking to her as you do talking about her, you’d be friends already!” “I can’t do that! I’m way too shy!” Miki sighed as she tried to think of a plan that might actually make her favourite useless dumbass marginally less useless. “How about this, we pick out a nice accessory, we put it inside an anonymous fan letter and then put the letter in Nekoyama’s shoe cubby at school. If she wears it, then that’s an in for you. If she doesn’t, you can just pretend you had nothing to do with it.” Umi looked thoughtful for a moment, then clapped her hands together with a smile. “That’s it! Miki, you’re a genius!” “Only by relative standards.” As Umi started blathering on about what kind of accessory she should give to Nekoyama, Miki decided she’d better keep a very close eye on her real fake friend. Because frankly, this level of obsession was kind of borderline already. If Umi actually turned into a full-blown stalker, it wouldn’t end well for anybody. Yoshida Sei was the student council president. But only for the first few months. After summer vacation, he would be stepping down to focus on studying for his university entrance exams and hand over the reins of the student council to the current vice president. Not that either of them had actually been voted into their position. The whole thing was just as much of a sham as the rest of the school. All Sei cared about was the quality of the lessons, which was actually shockingly good, and the funds to attend a high-end cram school. He was dead set on entering one of the most prestigious universities in the country, after all, and competition was fierce. Thankfully, despite his role looking important at a glance, it was actually about as insignificant as it could be. Even if the heiress decided to join the student council, which seemed very unlikely now that she had thrown in her lot with the manga club, she wouldn’t be able to join until the second term. And by then, Sei would already have retired from the council. He didn’t even have that many fake social bonds to consider. Besides the student council, he had a handful of supposed friends in his year and a degree of faux camaraderie with the school administration. But even his made up character for this enormous play was almost as focused on studying as the real Yoshida Sei, so the extra effort spent on maintaining the character was more than worth it for the monetary means to attend his cram school of choice. It also gave him an excuse to cut a few bothersome childhood friends out of his life, since he now went to school in an entirely different part of the city than they did. He wasn’t sure what misfortune had led those loudmouthed goofballs to attend not only the same middle school as him, but even the same high school, but thanks to this third year transfer, he had finally been able to leave them behind. For the first time, he was truly free to focus his full attention on his studies. Shibata Emiri looked into the mirror with a frown. “Do you think the beret is too much, after all?” Her boyfriend sighed loudly. “You ask me that every single day, babe. I think it’s fine. You’re supposed to be the ‘eccentric young art teacher’, right?” “But a jaunty beret is such a stereotype. I might as well go to school with a paint splatter on my cheek.” “Then why don’t you? I bet you’d look cute.” “I’d look ridiculous.” “That’s the point, babe. I know you want to be a professional and everything, but that’s not the sort of job this is.” “But this job might end up being the only salaried job I ever hold. I want to do it properly.” “Looking strange is doing the job properly, babe. I get that you want to do a good job, but in this case doing a good job means playing the character.” “It’s so ridiculous! Sometimes I wonder why I even took this job in the first place.” “Because no other school would hire you knowing you’re planning on retiring within just a couple of years. Besides, we need the money. I make just about enough to support a family, but not enough to let us have the wedding and move to a larger place and then support a family.” “I’m still a little iffy about doing this on their time frame. Making my marriage a part of their storyline feels a little… off.” “I think it’s sweet. Those students of yours might be acting out their own parts, but they’ll all remember the cute young art teacher who got married while they were in high school all the same.” “And what if we don’t manage to hit their timeline for the pregnancy? Their storyline says I’m supposed to get pregnant in the third year and retire, but things don’t always work out like that.” “They have promised to help with fertility treatments if we end up needing them. Or faking the whole thing in the worst case scenario.” “That’s just it! It all feels fake.” “Hey, it might be scripted, but there’s nothing fake about this, babe. I love you more than anything. We’ll get married, move to a nice little house, and then you can focus on raising the kids and making your own artwork just like you always wanted. OK?” Emiri sighed and leaned back as her boyfriend wrapped his arms around her, closing her eyes with a soft sigh as he planted a little trail of kisses down her cheek and the side of her neck. Then she yelped as something wet that absolutely wasn’t a pair of lips brushed her other cheek. Opening her eyes, she immediately spotted the small blot of blue paint on her cheek. “What are you doing? I have to leave in a moment! I won’t have time to clean that off properly!” “Just keep it, babe. You look cute as a button.” Yamamoto Rika was washing the dishes after breakfast. As usual, her husband had barely said a word to her that morning. But of course, he had plenty of words for his son, all of them as cold and unfeeling as a stone. She’d always known what she’d been getting herself into, marrying such a man. But she had no particular talents, no family to rely on, and barely any friends. To her, marriage had been a lifeline of sorts. Sacrificing her freedom for the sake of financial stability. It wasn’t until much later that she had realized what that decision would mean for her own future child. Kyoya was her treasure. Her pride and joy. And it broke her heart every time she saw the way her husband treated the boy. To him, Kyoya was a means to an end. Someone to help him forge new business connections, to work for him, and to ultimately take over the business when the man finally decided to retire. She had quickly learned that doting too much on her son would only draw the ire of her husband. And when the man got angry, he took it out on her and Kyoya in equal measure. Oh, he wasn’t violent, never that, but his words turned vicious with little provocation, and he didn’t hesitate to take away Kyoya’s allowance or even possessions if the mood struck him. If he ever got into his head that Rika was ‘spoiling’ the boy, it never ended well. Because of that, she had taken to saying as little as possible when her husband was around. She did what little she could to help Kyoya, of course. She had managed to convince her husband that letting Kyoya join the drama club in middle school would be good practice for future social events, and she still prided herself on that small victory. But of course, he had no intention of letting Kyoya continue with such ‘frivolous’ things in high school, despite the boy’s obvious and unrelenting love for theatre. Once her husband had left for work, she quickly cleaned the entire house and made all the necessary preparations for dinner. It didn’t take very long. Nobody did much of anything to get the house dirty in the first place, and she had gotten very efficient at housework over the years. With her chores done, she went upstairs to look at Kyoya’s middle school year book. The boy almost never looked through it himself, and of course her husband would never even think to look, but nevertheless the edges of certain pages were already starting to get worn down after just a few months. Seeing the way her son absolutely shone whenever he was photographed on stage or together with his drama club friends never failed to warm her heart. Carefully putting the book back on the shelf, Rika looked around her son’s room. It was almost like two people lived here. One rigid, disciplined, studious young man and one juvenile delinquent. And the fact that she knew perfectly well that Kyoya was neither of those things made the sight almost heartbreaking. But even though the boy had to spend both his home life and his school life pretending to be something he was not, she was still infinitely grateful to the Nekoyama group for giving her son a role in their strange production. Because it gave him an out. She knew that Kyoya planned to leave home the moment he graduated and move far away. With the salary he earned from his role in this production, he had a good chance of making that dream come true. And even if it meant that she might never see him again, Rika fully intended to do everything in her limited power to help him. With a deft hand, she opened up the false bottom Kyoya had installed in one of his desk drawers. His father obviously had no idea it was there, but Rika had found it one day while cleaning the room. In this hidden compartment, Kyoya kept the things that were important to him. Leaflets and brochures from the university he hoped to attend in Kyoto. Keepsakes and mementos from his time in drama club. The scripts of plays he’d performed in… But there was something new. A small folder full of photos of a very pretty girl wearing various outlandish costumes. And in the very last photo, Kyoya was standing next to her, wearing something almost as strange while the girl held on to his arm. Rika didn’t know who the girl was, but she found herself hoping that maybe, just maybe, she would go with Kyoya when he left for Kyoto. She knew it was silly. The two of them might just be friends for all she knew. But she couldn’t help but wish that Kyoya would find the kind of beautiful, mutual love that she would never have. Takagi Airi was not, by any means, a figurehead. But she very well could have been. As principal of a school run entirely for the sake of a complicated theatrical production, she could easily have been nothing more than an administrator in name only. A figure who held speeches at events and occasionally showed her face around the school while the production staff took care of the actual school administration. But she had put her foot down. They offered to make her the principal, and she was damn well going to be the principal. Sure, a lot of the work that was supposed to be hers had to be handled by the production crew to make sure everything worked with the storyline, but she nevertheless oversaw and double checked everything they did, and any work that she did have the authority to do herself, she damn well did. Because this was more than just a job to her. This high school was the alma mater where she spent three of the best years of her life as a student, and once she got her teaching credentials, she had spent another twenty years here as a teacher. When the declining birth rates and the subsequent lack of new students finally forced the school to shut down, she had been heartbroken. When the production staff had reached out to her about the project to revive the school, even just for three short years, she had jumped at the chance. She thought they’d give her a teaching role, but apparently her age and demeanour better fit their ideal for a principal. They had told her she didn’t have to do any actual administrative work, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. If she was going to work at this school one last time, she was damn well going to do best job she possibly could. Of course, at the time she didn’t have any formal education in school administration, beyond the fairly basic administrative classes one had to take to get a teaching license. But she had twenty years of experience as a teacher, and that had given her a fairly deep insight into how a school is run. For everything else she needed to know, she had studied like hell in the year and a half between the day she was confirmed for the role and the day the school once again opened its gates. It didn’t matter to her that it was just three short years. It didn’t matter that it was all a big spectacle put on for the benefit of a single sheltered young woman. Other people might consider it nothing but a rich man’s folly, an extravagant piece of ridiculous trickery. But to Airi, it was real. To Airi, it was everything.