For a guy who supposedly got to where he was by charming people, Michel didn’t say a whole lot during the drive to the studio where the Pominomi shoot was scheduled. Ami made sure not to give him any peace and quiet though. She figured this was a good chance to get to know their producer a little better. He’d been showing up around the office a lot more lately, so she’d gotten a little curious about him. So far, she really only knew that he was a lazy bum who took the path of least resistance on most problems and that he had a serious crush on Grace.
Ami spent a good chunk of their drive pestering him about what music he liked, but most of his answers were these ancient rock bands she’d never heard of. She had him play some of their songs over his car’s speakers. The guy couldn’t have been older than thirty-five, yet he had the musical tastes of a retiree. Ami couldn’t handle a whole car ride of these slow, sappy rock ballads, so she decided to introduce Michel to some newer music. A little hardcore would do this guy good.
Surprisingly, Michel took to Ami’s music about as well as she took to his. He called the drums “guerrilla warfare” and said they must have recorded the vocals at a medieval dentist’s office. Ami didn’t see what the issue was, but they agreed to compromise. They put on a random radio channel at a volume so low neither of them could really hear it, which gave Ami a chance to toss more questions Michel’s way.
His answers to all of them were short. Not rude, exactly, but more like he didn’t bother elaborating. Favorite animal? Dogs. Ideal vacation? A ski resort, minus the skiing. What he liked about Grace? None of your business. Ami felt like a toddler with the way she had to constantly ask him, “Why?” after every other question. Even then, he barely expounded upon his original answers.
By the time they reached the studio, Ami wasn’t sure she knew anything more about him. To feel better about it, she made up a fact in her mind: Michel wanted to take Grace on a dogsledding date through some snowy mountains, just the two of them. That sounded about right to her.
With that discovery settled, Ami set her mind to the task at hand and walked with Michel into the studio. From the outside, the place looked like another old and empty warehouse similar to the one they had gone to for Lina’s photoshoot. Were abandoned buildings the most cost-effective real estate for these companies or what?
The interior of the studio looked like the renovations had stalled halfway through. The inside was all one huge, open space studio, so Ami could see the whole venue at a glance. Some of the walls around her had maintained the stained, gray surface of the old warehouse, while others had been replaced with white boards that mimicked the appearance of a boardwalk dyed by the ocean’s spray. The rest of the interior looked as though someone had gotten bored while designing a beach house aesthetic and swapped to a barn vibe instead. Neither style came to fruition, though, since there was a total of three pieces of furniture throughout the whole place. A couch here, a desk there, and a rocking chair right in the middle of it all.
Despite all that, the studio was brimming with a welcoming atmosphere. The far wall featured plenty of windows that flooded the studio with natural light, almost like a greenhouse. The skeletal furnishings and bare walls helped the place feel more like a blank canvas than a building that needed to be condemned.
A clump of a dozen or so people had gathered at the opposite end of the studio, including a young woman who stood in front of everyone else. Even at a distance, Ami heard the now familiar clicks of a camera shutter. Apparently whoever else Pominomi had booked today was still getting worked.
While Ami surveyed the studio space, a woman in clattering flats ran up to her and Michel. The woman clutched a clipboard against her chest as if it was a precious antique. She was done up as far as Ami could tell, but her hair was just a bit frazzled and her makeup just a bit rubbed off, such that she looked like a painting left out in the sun for too long. No doubt she’d been running around like this all day.
“Ami, you’re right on time,” she said as her running came to temporary stop. “Our last slot ran late, so give us five minutes before we pull you in.”
The woman—probably an assistant of some kind—gave Ami a warm smile, then disappeared as suddenly as she’d arrived.
“Doesn’t look like it’s gonna be just five minutes,” Ami said to Michel. She didn’t care much either way, but she did find it funny.
“Hopefully it’ll be long enough to bill them extra,” Michel said.
“Can we do that?”
“They might have reached out to us first, but we proposed the rate,” Michel explained. “More of your time equals more of their money. If that’s not in their budget, they should have thought about that before they double booked.”
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Ami didn’t know if the guy was talking out of his ass or not, but figured he must have understood something about this industry after being in it so long. While they stood there waiting, Michel started tapping his pants pockets.
“Well, I’ll talk to them about that later,” he said. “Things look good in here, so I’m going to have a smoke.”
Ami lunged for his arm before he could walk outside again.
“You’re not going anywhere!” she told him. “Don’t you have anything to say to me?”
“Good luck?” he said.
She wished he had put a cigarette in his mouth so she’d have a good reason to smack him.
“This is my first real job,” Ami said. “You’re supposed to be some hotshot model, right? Give me advice! Grace even told me to listen to you, and now you’re ditching me!”
Michel had been trying to pull away from Ami’s grasp, but that last line slowed him down. He looked at Ami and frowned.
“Well, what do you want to know?” he asked.
“Everything!” she exercised all her willpower not to scream at him. “Every other time I’ve taken pictures, I’ve just been having fun with everyone. I do whatever that Neil guy tells us and spend the rest of the time fooling around. I don’t have any clue what makes someone a good model. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Isn’t it just about being pretty?”
That’s what she still didn’t get. All Pominomi wanted her for was some pictures. In that case, they could have hired Emi and gotten the same thing. Hell, Ami would’ve worked for half price to have Emi join her. That’d be more fun anyway.
Michel shook his head and said, “It’s not necessarily ‘pretty,’ or anything like that. You just need to look a certain way—whatever way that particular client wants. That’s what gets you in the door, but it doesn’t make you good. Getting good comes down to practice, that’s all. Walking, posing—that’s stuff you can learn as you go. Getting really good is a whole different story, though.”
Ami still hadn’t released Michel’s arm, so she shook it wildly now.
“I want to get really good!” she told him. “If I’m gonna do this, and be here instead of anyone else on the team, then I owe it to them to be as good as I can be.”
“I’m not going anywhere, so let go of me,” Michel said, to which Ami reluctantly obliged. “And the four of you don’t have anything to worry about. I saw it during your concert—you’ll figure out everything you need to know on your own, even if no one helps you. But, since I’m here anyway, let me tell you what I know.”
Ami wasn’t sure if she was flattered by his praise or annoyed by his theatrics, but she kept her mouth shut. He might finally tell her something important.
“The rest of modeling is all in your brain,” he said, and paused just long enough for Ami to make a confused face. “It’s like studying. You research your client. You look at the trends in their market. You think about what customers they’re trying to target by hiring you. When they fit you for the clothes, you figure out what they’re trying to convey through them. It’s all about the why. Why this look? Why right now? And most importantly: Why you? If you’re smart enough to figure that, then you’ll get called back again and again.”
“Study them, huh,” Ami said. “Like fighting a Cruelty. Learn their weaknesses and figure out how to take advantage of them. So it’s the same thing. You want to turn yourself into the perfect weapon.”
“That’s one way to put it, sure,” Michel said.
Maybe he didn’t get it, but Ami thought she did.
You couldn’t fight every Cruelty the same way. Adah’s whip or Rika’s railgun might be badass, but they were next to useless against certain variants. All that power was worthless if you couldn’t use it before you got your head chewed off. Maybe that would be like hiring a real pretty-type like Iris to model some workout clothes. Being a dainty flower with a bright smile could work against her in that case. It’d be like having Adah model a super long dress. No offense to her, but she was too short to pull it off. That must have been why Lina put her in such a short skirt—that’s how she could turn Adah into a weapon.
Come to think of it, hadn’t that clerk at the shopping center said something like that to Ami? She should wear clothes that ran the whole length of her legs. That would show off how tall they were. All right, so that was another spell.
She still hadn’t figured everything out though. Thinking like this, she and Emi would be the same kind of weapon. They both had long legs and similar bodies. Even their parents had trouble telling their faces apart if they both smiled.
To get really good at this, Ami needed to figure out why Pominomi had asked her to come today. They were a brand that always hired magical girls to model for them. Based on the clothes they’d had her try on at her go-see and what she saw on the racks at this studio, they seemed like they focused on elegance. They liked long skirts and dresses. The fabrics were kind of heavy, but Ami didn’t know what they were called. The ones she’d tried on were almost like wearing a quilt, though.
If Ami had to summarize them, they were clothes for bookworms who still wanted to look good. In other words, not the right fit for her at all. And yet, Pominomi wanted her.
Maybe that was like using your spells in ways you weren’t supposed to, like Ketzia had taught the team. You could turn a shield into a bomb if you tried hard enough. So, what could a girl like Ami do with these quiet, elegant clothes? Clothes that tried to swallow you whole.
When she figured it out, she burst out laughing. Michel took a step away from her; maybe he wanted to pretend he wasn’t her producer.
He didn’t need to be embarrassed, though. A girl from his agency was about to show everyone how much of a genius she was.
Ami was like a mirror image of Emi, a girl who might fit in these clothes better than her. Like Michel had said, she had the right look for Pominomi. That got her in the door. What would make her stand out was something Emi didn’t have.
Ami wouldn’t let these clothes hide her at all. They could cover her head to toe in the heaviest fabric off the rack, and Ami would still steal the camera’s focus. She had the right look, but more importantly, she had way too much pride to let these clothes drown her out.
After all, every single second in front of that camera belonged to her.