Iris slammed her notebook shut as soon as she heard the knock at her bedroom door. The words she’d been in the middle of writing surged back into her head, where she stashed them away for safe keeping. She’d gotten good at stopping her writing all of a sudden and picking up where she’d left off later. It had been a useful skill to develop back when she lived at home.
She called for whomever had knocked to come in. Ekki cracked open the door and peeked his head inside.
“Do you mind if I say hey?” he asked.
Iris exhaled and flipped her notebook open again. She finished the half-written sentence, then set down her pen.
“You can open that door whenever you want,” she said. “It’s Clair and Julie who need to knock.”
Ekki stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “It’d be pretty bad if I barged in while you were changing or something.”
“How insulting,” Iris said. “And all this time, I’d thought you found me cute.”
“Something so cute shouldn’t be treated so carelessly,” he countered without delay. “And a sunset you’ve hiked for is more beautiful than one you happen to see while driving home.”
Iris laughed, and Ekki was quick to follow.
“Your concept works, but your delivery doesn’t,” she said. “You’re better off dropping the second sentence entirely. My heart almost fluttered at the beginning.”
“Almost, huh?”
Ekki sat down on Iris’s bed and shifted himself into a comfortable position with his arm. He tended not to wear his prosthesis at home, so his sweatshirt draped loosely against the right side of his body. His current prosthetic device was entirely passive, so it was more of a hassle to put on than needed when relaxing at the agency. His doctors at the hospital had said it was likely a shoulder-level bionic device would be compatible with Ekki’s body, but the process for fitting one was long and expensive. It went without saying that DreamRise would divert any resources it could toward funding his device and treatment. Iris would make sure of that.
Thinking of that spurred another idea, so she took up her pen again and wrote out a few more words in her notebook. These were merely the beginnings of a truth. She would have to spend more time with the words to fully understand their meaning.
Fuller, yet less complete, on my own.
“You’re writing a lot more lately,” Ekki said.
He was right about that. Iris had returned to the hobby in greater force while Ekki was hospitalized. What began as a way to pass the time had taken on a new meaning for her since then.
“It keeps me focused,” she said. “It reminds me who I am. I got distracted by all the childish drama of the IndieMagie. This allows me to be me again.”
“You say that like you had no part in that drama,” he said.
“I said I got distracted, didn’t I? It won’t happen again. When I write the truth down, I won’t forget it.”
What was written in this notebook was the real Iris, as best she understood herself. For many reasons, such a girl could only exist on those pages.
The notebook was a closed room. Locked away between its covers, all her thoughts gained a distance from whomever ended up reading them. Such a thing was impossible anywhere else. When Iris met with other people, or they saw her on TV or on a stage, whoever she was in that moment would stamp itself in their minds. She could create no gap between how she acted and the perception of who she was. The eyes of those who observed her tainted her. Their thoughts shackled her.
But inside that notebook, Iris could put down her words and revise them, respond to them, and reflect upon them all out of sight from prying eyes. If someone ever did read what she had written in there, it would be long after she had experienced whatever feelings those words expressed. She would be as distanced from her thoughts as the reader was. Other people could not change what she had written, and they could not influence her to write something else. They could only twist and torture what she had written, which was a futile game Iris had no trouble laughing at.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
People could not convince her that her words meant anything other than what she knew them to mean. Those words had come from within her, and she would have reckoned with them countless times before anyone else came across them. They were entirely of her own making, for entirely her own purposes. An untarnished record of the girl called Iris.
When she would go back to reread what she had written, she would know it to be true. The Iris etched onto those pages was pure. She could be certain that she found herself inside of that notebook, and so, that would be how she would learn to reclaim her power outside of it.
And on the subject of power…
“How did your training go today?” Iris asked.
Ekki frowned and said, “The new FP from the carnival helps, but I’m still slow. I don’t notice it so much anymore when I’m not transformed. It’s when I’m using magic that it’s a problem.”
In addition to his normal physical therapy, Ekki trained four days a week in a sort of magical rehab session that he had devised. Flight and spellcasting wouldn’t be covered during his usual therapy, of course.
“It may not be a problem for long,” Iris said. “I’ve asked Iosk to shift his research to focus on [Prerogative of the Perennial] instead. You and I will push that spell to its limit.”
“And that’s all right with you?” Ekki asked. “Putting all our power on me?”
“It’s my prerogative, isn’t it?” Iris said. “Besides, I’ll be exerting my power outside of battle. Our dear Heartbreak has created something of a vacuum for me to fill.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“Look at this,” Iris said.
She walked over to her bed and handed Ekki her phone, then climbed up to sit down beside him. His hair had gotten messy on his right side, so she ran her fingers through it to smooth the strands out. Ekki leaned his head into her hand like a cat asking for further petting, and his action carried the same meaning. They had come to this unspoken agreement, as well. If Iris touched him and he allowed it, that meant she was free to do more. If she touched him and he moved away, then she should stop. For the rest of their lives, they’d have no need to say anything more about it.
Words were for fun. For theater. The two of them already knew how the other felt. That was why, however ambiguous their relationship may seem to those who watched them, they held no doubts about each other.
“‘What’s that horned bitch’s problem?’” Ekki read aloud a message from Iris’s phone, then another. “‘Make yourself useful and knock her teeth out this time.’ Are these all about Adah?”
“Everyone from Region 1 suddenly wants to be my friend again,” Iris said with a grin. “The rest of the messages are the same. Asking for dirt on Heartbreak or telling me to knock her on her ass. Don’t they know I’m a failure of a magical girl? Don’t they remember I was only good for cleaning up their messes? It seems I can be useful to them after all.”
Ekki scrolled through some more messages. Iris’s inbox was full of ones like those, both normal texts and direct messages through her social media. Dozens of magical girls she’d met during her time working in Region 1—and even a couple of staff members—had reached out following Heartbreak’s little political gambit.
“What the hell?” Ekki said. “So this was what they were like to you back then, too?”
Iris moved her hand down the side of Ekki’s head, along his cheek, and gently brushed his neck with her fingertips. He hadn’t gotten used to shaving with his left hand yet, or perhaps did a lazier job of it, and her fingers passed over several spots at which rough hair poked past his otherwise smooth skin. Throughout all this, Ekki still didn’t pull away. Iris wouldn’t have been hurt if he did, but she was happier that he didn’t.
“Our princess still doesn’t understand the true threat to her reign will come from this snake pit,” Iris said. “She’s given all these teams a common enemy—an outsider—to rally around hating. Their own Secretaries are tightening their leashes after seeing what happened here. Not to mention, they simply can’t stand seeing someone they deem unworthy succeed. They’ve gone from undermining one another to plotting against her. In fact, hating on Heartbreak is a buy-one-get-one deal for them. They already despised Apex Vox, and now those two teams are thick as thieves.”
To be fair, all these girls would have hated DreamRise just as much had they won the IndieMagie. The idea of anyone outside their approved cliques winning anything was unacceptable to them. Half the time, someone inside the clique winning was also unacceptable. There were, after all, cliques within the cliques.
“For once, falling behind our competition will work in our favor,” Iris continued. “We can use this feud to our advantage. Like I said, Heartbreak is ignorant to just how hated she’s become.”
Now Ekki recoiled from her touch.
“I’m not stabbing Adah in the back for these people,” he said. “Or at all, for that matter.”
Iris rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Heartbreak I can respect, at least. These snakes barely register as human. We won’t betray the princess—we’ll do the opposite. There’s just no point in saving her before she’s realized how much trouble she’s truly in. We’ll prepare a plan and, when the time is right, we’ll turn the tables on these vipers.”
“If you know they’re going to try to sabotage Adah,” Ekki said, “we should warn her. This is our chance to change the way our teams treat each other. If you want to use this situation to our advantage, that’s the real benefit for us here.”
Iris almost opened her mouth to answer him—on instinct, really—that they stood to gain more by keeping their cards close to their chests. Before she could say anything, Ekki turned to look at her. Just by looking at one another, they both knew how their argument would play out. The points they wanted to make did not need to be put into words. All that was left to do, given that they understood each other, was to decide what the other’s opinion meant to each of them.
On any other night—or perhaps, on any night up until tonight—Iris would have held firm to her own opinion. She and Ekki would have had to accept that difference or bring it to a head.
But tonight, with the words she had etched into her notebook fresh in her mind, Iris decided Ekki was right.
The girl on those pages would have agreed.