A Night at Eve's
You threatened me like that—just to ask for this?
"Hey! When a mom wants to take her own kid overnight, you think that's something you just casually agree to?!"
"I didn't even give birth to her. Is it really that big a deal?!"
"She's your kid and you know it!"
Our bickering dwindled by degrees once we felt it—the gazes of everyone else in the café sliding toward us, the look people give a pile of garbage left out on the street.
"So, Kabe."
"Yeah, Mommy."
"Dad wants to take you over to Dad's house tonight and have you sleep there. What do you think?"
"Don't wanna."
Kabe cut it off at the root. She didn't waste so much as a second thinking it over, just kept sucking down the yogurt Dusick had bought her and refused. Eve's face falling at the sight of it was a free bonus.
"How come?"
"I wike sweeping with Mommy."
She was a child, so of course she would say that—but strictly speaking, I wasn't even her mother. Or was I? Was I her mother? I'd made her with my own hands, so if you asked whether that made me her mom, the answer was yes. Sort of. Mostly.
"If Mommy comes too, I wike that."
"That's what she says. Eve, what are you going to do?"
One thing was certain: Eve liked the child too. She wanted to take Kabe with her. She also very much wanted to avoid taking me. But if I didn't go, Kabe wouldn't go either, which meant she was going to have to bring me along whether she liked it or not.
"Fine. Let's do that. I'll go meet with the landlord, then. Mother, you talk things over with your people."
"Alright."
Eve trotted out through the front door, and I let out a long breath and sank into the office chair.
"Mommy, up."
"Yeah, okay."
I scooped Kabe up and set her on my lap. She immediately started fussing with a fresh yogurt, trying to stab the straw through the foil, and when it wouldn't go her whole face crumpled.
"Here."
Dusick pushed the straw in and held it out. Kabe snatched it up at once.
"Thank you very much, Uncle!"
She really was cute. I stroked her hair and sighed all over again.
"Mother. Is something troubling you?"
"I don't know if I'd call it trouble. Something rather sudden came up."
Sudden wasn't even the half of it. Bewildering, too.
"Go on out and tell the Mains to come in. All of them."
The office wasn't huge, but it wasn't so small they couldn't all pack in if they stood close. It was a CEO's office to begin with; cramped was not the word.
Before long, Dusick came bustling back in with the Mains at her heels, and they snapped into a neat rank-and-file. I shot Dusick a little smile, thinking she must have been drilling them properly.
"Everyone here?"
"On you. Count off to the right."
Dusick gave the order to the Main standing at the far left, and they turned their heads in crisp succession, barking out numbers.
"One! Two! Three! ... Twenty-four! End of count!"
"Boss. All twenty-four present and accounted for."
I couldn't stand with Kabe on my lap, so I stayed seated and swept a look around the room. Twenty-four, was it?
Now that I was here, once this mess got sorted I was going to pour magic into them until I had ten times this number. The space problem would take care of itself after that.
"Well. Seeing you all gathered like this, you actually look pretty reliable. Anyway—there was a bit of a commotion early this morning. We're still cleaning it up, but I figured you'd all want to know what happens next."
They must have been dying to know already. The Mains had gone dead silent, every eye locked on me.
"Our Mogumogu-dan is going to leave this shabby, cramped little space behind for somewhere bigger and—"
"Mommy, can I have another yoguht?"
"Glamorous—eat!"
Ah, for—
While my face went scarlet, Dusick moved in my place, jabbing a straw into a fresh yogurt and pressing it into Kabe's hand.
"...Anyway. We are leaving this shabby, cramped little space for somewhere bigger and more glamorous."
Whether it was actually bigger and more glamorous, I couldn't say. But I had seen the Magical Girl Association building before. It turned up on the news often enough. The place was genuinely enormous—five basement levels, thirty-six floors above ground, a monument to its own importance.
And we were going to be using the very top of it, the floor reserved exclusively for the Association President. So calling it a bigger, more glamorous space was not, strictly speaking, a lie.
"Pardon? Boss, this is the first I've heard of any such thing."
"Mother, it's the first I've heard of it as well. We hardly have the funds for something like that."
"I took care of it."
"How?"
"I handled it through Eve."
"So you cleaned out Eve's wallet."
"If you put it that way, I sound kind of terrible. That's not what happened."
"Then what did happen, Boss?"
"We're moving into the Magical Girl Association building."
I'd made the announcement.
Dealing with the fallout was on me.
"Mother, this is absurd."
"She's right, Boss. Magical girls are all a few screws short of a set. You've seen it yourself, haven't you?"
After the Mains had filed back out, Keru and Dusick planted themselves in front of me and set about talking me into reversing the decision, over and over.
"So what, we just keep living in this cramped, filthy place, watching the landlord's face for the rest of our lives?"
"We could simply earn the money, could we not?"
"Keru. You said something useful for once."
Kabe had fallen asleep at some point. I stood with her in my arms and eased her down onto the chair.
Then I pressed the earring. A rush of darkness swept past, and my clothes changed.
I flicked aside the coat I'd been wearing half-shrugged over my shoulders and let my left hand show. Whether turning the coat back was the trigger or not, black energy bled from the rivets set into the glove, coiled around my fingers, and began to rise in a low, smoldering haze.
"So. Before I got here—what kind of shape were you in, exactly? Was the organization even running?"
"Boss, th-that's—"
"Dusick. Stay quiet."
"Yes."
"And Keru. I've only shown you the screws-loose version of myself since I arrived, so I suppose I look like a joke."
I closed my left hand into a fist. The black haze flared, scattering harder, brighter.
"If you've got a better idea than this one, I'm listening. Fix this place up and keep using it? There's not a scrap of sunlight in here for Dusick in the middle of her growing years. And when the Mains start multiplying, where do we feed them? Where do we put them to sleep? Food, rent, upkeep—and the ones who never earned a single red cent except for the sponsorship I brought in are talking back to me now. I don't even know where you get the nerve."
"Nngh."
"Looks like we've got a Boss with her head on straight this time."
A clear, lovely voice. Eve was already there, leaning in the office doorway; I hadn't even noticed her come back. She uncrossed her arms and stepped inside.
"Dusick."
"Miss Eve."
"Looks like your hardships are finally over. Between Keru, who talks a great deal and helps with nothing, and the previous Boss, who was so frail and timid she did nothing but churn out Mains—you've really had it r—"
"Eve. Watch your mouth."
"What?"
Eve turned to look at me as if she hadn't expected me to cut in at all.
No matter how disappointing my own kids were, I got angry when someone else talked about them. I was the one who was supposed to scold my kids. I opened my eyes properly and stared Eve down.
"Hah."
Eve let out a short, incredulous breath and stared right back. The standoff didn't last. She snorted, then waved a hand as if brushing the whole thing aside.
"Fine. I overstepped this time. I've been around them so long they don't feel like strangers anymore. Hostile organization or not, I went too far. Sorry."
"Yeah. Be careful."
"I will."
"Anyway."
I took my eyes off Eve and looked at Keru and Dusick. Both of them wore the expression of people who would rather be anywhere else, but they seemed to have grasped that I was not going to be moved. Neither of them said another word.
"Eve. Did you work things out with the landlord?"
"Yeah, more or less. Don't just stand there, you two—come sit down. The ceiling isn't going to come down on us or anything."
Eve dropped onto the office sofa and waved Dusick and Keru over. They glanced at me first; then, watching me drop the transformation, they hesitated their way across the room and sat.
"I papered over the mana explosion well enough, and the forensics team just needs a conclusion handed to them, so I smoothed that over too. I'll cover the repairs on the building. I told them to send the estimate straight to me the moment they have it, so I'll handle everything from there. And."
Eve looked at me and grinned. I did not like that grin. That grin of hers meant something.
"You can't stay here while the place is being repaired. Got somewhere to go?"
Of course I didn't.
"Work on this scale will take a month, at least. You, Dusick, Keru, the Mains—none of you have anywhere to go, do you? And with Kabe to think about, you can't exactly rough it."
My brow drew together. I could feel my whole face folding in on itself. What was she about to pull now?
"I'll put you all up in a hotel. One room per person. Oh—Mother, you'll need to stay with Kabe, so a family suite."
"Include breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The kids have to eat."
"Wow, Dusick. Your Boss has some nerve, huh?"
I shrugged, but I already knew. Anyone who could offer to put nearly thirty people in a hotel, one to a room, without blinking was richer than I had the imagination for. She really would do it.
"I believe she is an excellent Boss."
Dusick answered without a second's hesitation. Eve snorted.
"Well. I think so too, actually. Fine. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner included, like you said. One month. And in the meantime, I'll have the Association President's office renovated as well. Spatial partitioning plus an expansion—that'll take about a month on its own. I'll have it ready so you can move straight in."
"You."
The terms were, frankly, too good. If the building was under construction, not being able to live there was within the expected range.
Dust in the air, the smell of paint—you couldn't stay through that even if you wanted to.
Where we would go in the meantime, what we would do with the Mains—those basic problems had still been sitting there unsolved. And Eve had just dropped the solution in my lap.
I had a head on my shoulders.
Conditions this generous did not come free.
This was not going to be settled with something like letting her have Kabe for a single night. I was sure of that.
"What's the condition? Be honest."
"The condition. The condition, huh."
Eve lifted a hand and stroked her chin. Her eyes, though, never left me. That hazy little smile of hers was starting to get on my nerves.
"Itaewon?"
"Yeah."
"Why Itaewon of all places?"
I had figured we would have to fight eventually. Sooner rather than later, really—not someday, but soon. Once the situation with Kabe settled, I had been planning to start turning out Mains in earnest. And she had just made that the price of the deal, and the place she wanted was Itaewon.
"One month from now. End of October. It's Halloween. Meaning lots of people. You raid the place, we defend it—that makes for a good look."
"What kind of look?"
"Hmm... a look that shows the sponsors just how marketable our magical girls are. Does that explain it?"
"Not even a little."
"I'll give you the details tonight, Mother."
"So I'm going too, after all."
"Of course you are. The deal was that I get Kabe for one night, remember?"
A promise was there to be kept. I had no intention of pretending otherwise. I just hated the idea of walking into the magical girls' home base on my own two feet.
"The Magical Girl Association, huh..."
"Oh my. What are you talking about? I never said we were going to the Magical Girl Association."
"Then where?"
"My house. Where else would we go?"
It felt like I was heading somewhere even more dangerous.