Caring only about herself—that was the conviction Kyoko had clung to ever since her family fell apart. Across multiple Timelines, she'd always been drawn to Sayaka, wanting to drill her own philosophy into the girl so Sayaka could find some peace.
But in doing that, she'd actually fallen right back into acting "for someone else's sake."
And it was true in every sense. Across various Timelines, the number of times she'd died trying to save Sayaka—or simply detonated alongside the Witch Sayaka had become—was far from small.
No matter how you sliced it, she was just a girl the same age as Sayaka.
For a girl that age, feeling lonely was only natural. Feeling grief over the abnormality of her own existence was perfectly normal too.
Kyoko held up the pendant that had re-condensed—somehow different from before—and studied it against the light for a good while.
"So that's it. That's where Sayaka's power comes from. No wonder she never worries about magic consumption—she doesn't even need Grief Seeds."
She didn't know the tragic fate that awaited all Magical Girls, but perhaps Homura Akemi's time loops always left something behind.
Just as the most central, most critical person in Homura's loops—Madoka—had dreamed of facing Walpurgisnacht alongside Homura before the transfer student had even arrived at school.
Even though the reversals hadn't been for Kyoko's sake, she still felt an inexplicable sense of having stepped out of some predetermined destiny.
A future where there had been none before. That was roughly the feeling.
"Why are you crying?" Yimi rose onto her tiptoes and reached up to wipe away Kyoko's tears.
"I don't know. Probably because that thing was so hard to swallow." Kyoko scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve.
Was it because she was alive as a human being again?
That was the only explanation she could find. She'd assumed she didn't actually care about any of this—that her Soul Gem being her true self was just how things were.
I can do this. With this power, some rookie Magical Girl couldn't possibly be a match for her.
Vivid red magic burned around Kyoko, almost visible to the naked eye, swirling like some kind of villain-transformation special effect. She looked down at her multi-section staff, her gaze lingering especially long on the final segment at the tip.
"Now that I've gone along with your little 'scam,' mind telling me what the price is?" Kyoko looked down at Yimi, only now fully realizing that this child was no ordinary Magical Girl.
She really had been fooled by those childish looks.
"I need you to taste-test for me." Yimi pulled out the leftover Kyubey sashimi she'd sliced and saved from last time.
Kyoko threw up her hand to block her face and backed away a step. "What is that—it looks as gross as rat meat…"
"Gross!"
Kitty was deeply offended.
Her toys (mice) were gross?!
"And when you say taste-test, you don't actually expect me to eat it raw, do you? Don't go thinking you can make sashimi out of just any meat." Kyoko pinched up a piece and gave it a skeptical look. Eating this mystery meat raw would be about as revolting as gnawing on raw chicken skin.
"I'll make you… a cooked version." Yimi reclaimed the Kyubey meat and darted out.
A hotel obviously didn't come with a kitchen, and most hotels weren't situated near the sort of restaurants still bustling at night.
After her previous failures, Yimi was taking the Kyubey meat back to basics this time—grilling. Street-stall BBQ was expensive, sure, but grilling legitimately counted as fundamental cooking knowledge.
No equipment? No problem. Yimi knew that in human society, the most important thing was negotiation.
Step one: find a BBQ stall—one that happened to have no customers. Step two: hand the owner the pocket money Tomohisa had given her and buy two skewers.
Step three: tilt her head up at a forty-five-degree angle, look the owner in the eye, and commence negotiations. "Can I try… grilling by myself?"
The stall owner looked down at the little girl standing with her legs together, hands clasped anxiously, peering up at him with such trepidation (in his eyes) that he couldn't help but think of the daughter he'd never actually had.
"Of course you can—but if it comes out bad, that's on you."
So she threaded the Kyubey meat onto skewers, dragged a step stool over to stand on, and started grilling. The owner even offered pointers from the side.
But the owner declared that in ten years of the trade, he'd never encountered meat this terrible—it was like the Emperor's New Clothes of meat.
"It's done."
Yimi ran back to Kyoko's room with the finished skewers and held one out to her.
"I nearly fell asleep waiting." Kyoko looked down at the suspicious grilled meat with a slight frown. "This stuff doesn't have some weird chemicals in it, right? Or are you using me as a test subject?"
That said, she still took a bite. Burned once before, she really did take the tiniest bite this time.
"Is it good?" Yimi asked hopefully.
"Terrible." The perfectly obvious answer.
It was even hard to chew—like gnawing on a grilled insole. The only flavor came from the oil and cumin coating.
Kyoko bowed her head and took another bite.
During those days when no one had been willing to listen to her father speak anymore, she'd genuinely gone hungry for a long stretch. So even though this thing tasted awful, as long as it wasn't the nightmarish dark-cuisine horror from before, she'd eat every last bit.
The girl turned her face away, a little stiffly. "But there's a real feeling of being alive. Like only someone who's alive would eat something this terrible… Anyway, it was delicious."
But terrible was definitely still terrible.
"Delicious!"
Yimi immediately checked the quest tracker.
The quest that had made zero progress since she'd arrived in this world finally ticked over to (1/5).
The next day.
From the school rooftop, you could see the benches lining the edge of campus. At this age, right in the thick of adolescence, it was common enough to spot couples sitting together. Mitakihara Middle School didn't make much of a fuss about it.
Kyosuke—his hands fully healed, his legs still in rehabilitation requiring crutches—sat beside Hitomi. Sayaka saw every bit of it from up here.
The girl let out a sigh.
"Sayaka…" Madoka, standing behind her, wanted to console her.
Sayaka's brows pinched into a pained shape, but she forced on a smile. "Hitomi and Kyosuke really do look great together. If that guy ever lets Hitomi down, I won't forgive him."
"..."
Is she really okay?
"Never mind that—Madoka, there's something I want to ask you about." Sayaka scratched her cheek, eyes darting awkwardly to the side. "I have this friend… um, someone did something really bad to her…"
This was actually her biggest worry right now. She'd used the back entrance to get to school today.
"Sayaka??" Madoka looked at her with heartfelt concern.
"Don't look at me like that—it really is my friend!" Sayaka grabbed Madoka's cheeks and stretched them side to side.
"Does Sayaka even have friends I don't know about?" Madoka mumbled through her distorted face.
"She's kind of from out of town?" Sayaka let go, eyes guiltily sliding sideways. "The thing is, even apologizing might not be enough to calm her down. How are you supposed to comfort someone in that situation?"
Madoka rubbed her reddened cheeks. "Even if you ask me that, I don't know how bad 'really bad' is."
"Fair point." Sayaka twisted a strand of hair between her fingertips.
There was no way she could tell Madoka about this, right? It was all that little brat Yimi's fault. Maybe she'd grab a bag of mystery-flavor jellybeans and go pay the kid a visit.
"But if it's Sayaka who did something terrible to someone else, the least you can do is show that you're willing to take responsibility, right?" Madoka said this with complete seriousness.
"Since when are you this perceptive??"
...
Take responsibility, huh.
After school, Sayaka steeled herself and didn't escape through the back gate.
Sure enough, there at the front entrance sat Kyoko Sakura—perched on a stone bollard, a biscuit stick dangling from her mouth, wearing an expression that said Don't talk to me, bystanders, you're not the ones I'm here to gut—scrutinizing every student who walked out.
When she saw Sayaka marching straight toward her, Kyoko raised an eyebrow in surprise.
Sayaka, face twisted with indecision, opened her mouth. "About yesterday… I'll take responsibility!"
Kyoko: "..."
The hell are you talking about?!
Having tagged along behind her kouhai out of concern, Mami Tomoe emerged from the school gate just in time to hear that line—and stood there thunderstruck, as if she'd been hit by lightning. She didn't even notice when her satchel hit the ground.