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Mayu wasn't sure how it happened, but asking Haruto about his rings had somehow morphed into an impromptu gathering at Omokagedo. The wizard himself stretched his legs out, hands folded on his stomach. He had his usual transformation ring and Connect on his fingers, but they weren't what she was after. Mr Wajima was in the back making tea, Nitou sprawled on the sofa checking on Gryphon in his pocket mirror. Koyomi adjusted her gloves to keep the crystal ball from slipping out of her grasp, perched on a chair with a lacy cushion. Rinko and Shunpei performed some manzai comedy act in the background while Mayu quietly filed this attempt to steal Infinity as a bust. She ignored the mix of anger at the lost opportunity, and relief that she wouldn't have to destroy her shaky new connection to these people just yet.
"Honestly, I just use them. If you want to know more about the rings themselves, old man Wajima is your best bet, and even then he can't predict what they actually do until I test them out," said Haruto, ruffling the back of his head. "Or you, now that we have a second gem-based wizard."
"Still unfair," grumbled Nitou. "Chimera you stingy bastard, let me use Haruto's rings! Maybe I can only use animal-based ones?"
Shunpei perked up. "Oh! Do Haruto's dragon rings count as animal-based?"
"Ohoho, they definitely do." Nitou grinned, reaching out.
"You said we should never talk about the dance stage ever agai- hey!"
He grabbed Haruto's shoulder with one hand and started digging in his pockets with the other, mirror forgotten. "Where do you keep your rings, man? We should go try the other ones!"
"Ack! Do my pockets look big enough for rings to you?!"
"Don't say you keep them up your ass-"
"Ahem." Mayu couldn't believe these two were holding off Phantoms for a year. Actually, they were pretty good fighters, even if Haruto seemed to get beat up a lot. "Why did you call everyone else, if Wajima is the expert?"
Haruto shoved distractedly at Nitou's arm. "Koyomi helps out at the shop a lot, she might have relevant observations. She can also scry, and crystal is a kind of gem, right?"
Nitou trapped him in a headlock. "More like gems are a type of crystal. I don't know what mineral your magic stones are though."
"Like I said, ask Wajima. Nitou is the only other mage I know. Rinko is a detective, and Shunpei was already here." He elbowed Nitou in the ribs and shuffled farther away. "They might have ideas we don't."
"I'm not the only other mage you know," Nitou pointed out, bristling. "That White Wizard bastard uses the same rings you two do. Too bad we don't have a way to hunt him down."
Haruto threw his hands in the air. "Even if we did, good luck getting answers from him. He dumped the Wizardriver on me the first time we met with no explanation. Mayu probably knows as much as me if not more." He tilted his head to look at her. "You got actual training from him, I assume."
"Man, really? That sucks. At least my becoming a wizard was on me." Nitou gently kicked his leg, face softening slightly. "And don't assume, hypothesise!"
"For once, I agree with him." Rinko dug a notebook out of her bag. "Let's state all the facts before theorising. Mayu, why don't you go first? Can you tell us about your experience with the White Wizard, and what you know about magic?"
"Ah..." she clenched her fists. How to summarise that time? Monsters were real. One had stolen her sister's face. Her family was dead because of that monster. There was one waiting to hatch inside her soul, too. The awful clarity of what she had to do, keeping it inside. When her heart was filled with grief and rage, her goal a light in the darkness. Kill Medusa. That stern voice, not soothing or supportive, but reassuring in the way that it was unrelenting, filling her mind with lessons about her new power. Lessons. Crap. She'd missed months of school!
"Mayu? Do you need a moment?" Rinko looked concerned. Shit.
Koyomi frowned, looking up from her familiar surveillance. "Maybe you're all crowding her."
"Wajima should be done in the kitchen soon, if you need a breather," said Haruto. There was her chance.
"I. Don't want to tell everyone. Like this. I'll tell Haruto, then he can tell all of you, if that's alright," she said flatly.
"Of course," said Rinko, smiling reassuringly.
Everyone was nice enough to not point out her change in demeanour.
They passed Wajima with a tray of tea, flattening themselves against the wall in the narrow hallway. He nodded amiably.
As he disappeared into the main room, above the sound of conversation starting up again, they could hear a chair dragging. Koyomi's head peeked out of the entryway and nodded once, seriously, before disappearing. Mayu realised she was acting like a grumpy guard dog against all of Haruto's exuberant friends.
She tried to focus on the texture of the wallpaper against her palms.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
"We don't actually have to go into the kitchen if you don't want to," said Haruto. She watched him retrieve two wooden stools from the kitchen and set them up just outside, in the hall. "You also don't have to talk about it."
"Ha." She sank down on the one next to a wooden display cabinet. He took the one in the corner, next to the kitchen entrance. "It's just. I realised. It's not a good thing my parents were killed. But. At least nobody cares that I missed school. Except me."
They sat in silence. It was, somehow, not uncomfortable. She ran her fingers over the cabinet's elaborate carvings.
"Same." He kept his eyes trained on the wall opposite them.
She looked at him.
He stared unwaveringly at a clock on the wall. "My parents were already dead before the Sabbat, but the konbini didn't even notice I missed my shift. They'd already hired my replacement by the time I showed up again."
"Ah."
The clock ticked.
"For what it's worth, there's no shame in repeating a year. Rinko could help you out with a good excuse for your absence."
She hummed noncommittally. "After I moved back to Japan, school was just. Going through the motions. I didn't care. Killing Medusa is something I can work for."
"It's something to do. Keeps you moving forwards. Sometimes that's all you have," he said, looking at his ring.
She didn't feel better, exactly, but it was comforting to know she wasn't the only orphaned wizard in Tokyo. "We should start a club."
"Nitou's parents are alive, so that rules him out. He's from a rich family, actually. We met his granny, she's terrifying."
"Really? Him? Rich?"
He finally cracked, looking back at her. "Right? If Rinko wasn't the one telling us I wouldn't believe it." His smile looked real this time.
She wrinkled her nose. "Money and a living family. Some people have all the luck."
"Besides the risk of Chimera eating him."
"Oh, yeah. And his sword rolls."
"Hah!"
She watched him stretch his legs out as much as he could. Where did he keep his rings? Surely they would all hear it if he did have a Connect portal up his-
"Are you ready to go back out now? I don't really mind, but it's kind of cramped. Good for panic attacks, bad for legroom. I could probably get Nitou to test the dragon rings as a distraction and they'll forget about grilling you until tomorrow, at least." He didn't reach for them, crossing his arms across his chest instead. No dice.
"Ah, no." She glanced sideways at him. "Speaking of rings. You're a pretty good listener. I can tell you about my training. You tell me what you know about magic. I'll ask Mr Wajima what he knows later."
"Alright. I could use a drink though, one second." He activated Connect and reached into the portal, passing her a cup and keeping one for himself. "Wajima always makes more than he can fit on the tray."
It had been sitting long enough to be warm instead of hot. She took a sip before starting. "I didn't really think about it before now, but the White Wizard sort of kidnapped me? The first thing he taught me was the Teleport spell, so I could leave whenever I wanted, at least, but it took me two weeks to finally cast it, and by then it didn't seem... worth it. To go back to school."
"Mmm. He grabbed me too, once. I was knocked out in a fight, and I came to in a weird pedestal room."
"The pedestal room! That's where we trained most of the time."
"Haah? I hope you didn't have to sleep there. Does it have a bathroom?"
"It doesn't! We had to Teleport to my apartment inbetween lessons! If he hadn't given me the swordgun immediately, I might have thought he was a creep. I still didn't tell him my apartment number though, just the building's address."
His hands tightened on his cup. "That's smart. Rinko had the same concerns. We tried to look into him right after you both disappeared, but we had nothing to go off besides how so far he hasn't been malicious. I'm sorry you had to go through that."
"At first, I was too angry to be scared." She leaned back, turning the cup in her hands. "He really did just train me. How to cast spells, refining my sigils, mana endurance exercises. That's why you use Connect so much, right? The more you regularly exert mana, the higher your limit before it runs out. Like sports."
"Pretty much." He grinned broadly at her. "You're the only one who hasn't called me a showoff first!"
"I mean, you definitely are."
"But yeah, that, and giving Koyomi mana, plus all the fighting we do. I used to pass out after refills early on. It scared her."
"For good reason," she heard Koyomi mutter faintly from the doorway.
"I figured I just had to make a schedule and get better at it, like football. Refill day, rest day, training day where I'd transform for as long as I could, another rest day. Keep hydrated." He punctuated this with a drink from his own cup.
She noted that he avoided saying how he himself had felt about the after effects.
"Speaking of transformations, did your suit always look like that?"
"Ah, no, it used to be plainer, and the coat was shorter. Dragon was unruly, early on, and we fought a lot. I don't know if it was because he started to listen to me more, or it just naturally changed over time. Maybe it learned that I like long jackets."
"So I should wear more colours."
He shrugged. "Can't hurt to try."
"It's just... it's the beige. I look like a paper bag." She slumped against the wall exaggeratedly.
He patted her shoulder. "I believe in you. Think colourful thoughts. And hey, your claw hand is really cool. The crystal shards on your pauldrons are a nice touch, too."
"Really? I've been thinking about adding shoulder bashes to my fighting style, they look sharp enough to do some damage. I don't know how, but sometimes he'd find ghouls for me to practice on. I guess I'll have to wait for another Phantom to show up."
"We should have a training day sometime and you can bash my Defend walls. Ask Nitou for tips, he does a shoulder charge with Buffa."
"I'll take you up on that when it's not a refill day."
"Sure." He drained the rest of his cup. "This is nice."
"Making training plans?"
"I had to figure out how all this works by myself, in the beginning, and Nitou's magic works differently from ours. I'm not glad that you had to become a mage, but. I was reminded, recently, that I don't have to deal with everything by myself. If you ever want to talk shop, or mess around with spells, you're always welcome here. And thanks, for talking." He smiled shyly. It was the realest one she'd seen on his face.
She returned it. "Thanks for listening."
He saluted her with his cup, sauntering over to ask Koyomi about her mana levels.
Mayu looked into the dregs of her cup, feeling more settled than she had been in over a year.
Much later, after leaving the shop, she realised that she still didn't know where Haruto kept his rings when he wasn't transformed. That training session would be her next chance.