NOVEL NEXT Chapter 5 – Tea Time
The atmosphere was heavy. The silence was deafening. We had returned home, and now Clara was sitting across from me on an armchair, a cup of tea in front of her. She was looking around the place, probably waiting for me to ask stuff, which is when the silence was broken with a loud slurp. Beef Bun was sipping on a cup of their own tea, while Potato Bun looked confused. “How come Beef gets a cup but I don’t?”
“Because you invited yourself in, while Beef counts in the faintest sense as a guest. They are attached to Clara, and Clara is definitely a capital G Guest here.” Mom cleared her throat. “Right, speaking of Clara, we should actually get to the questions at hand.”
“Sure, ask away.” Clara shrugged and took a sip.
“H-how long have you been, been a magical g-girl for?” I asked, not facing Clara, but the ground.
“About two years now? I got picked when I was sixteen. And I didn’t have anyone else to talk to about this, only Beef Bun. My parents are too busy working three jobs each to support the family to ever notice me being on patrol.” She took another sip.
“So if the Buns bothered to, I don’t know, pay you for risking your life, bare minimum, your parents wouldn’t be slowly killing themselves from overworking?” Mom asked, her eyes narrowed and Beef and Potato.
“I… guess? But it’s not all about money and such. I’m doing this because I have to. I have seen what Nightmares can do.” She sighed. “There was a freshman, about a year ago. I was still the only Magical Girl in town. Their parents had extremely high expectations of them, of doing well, of getting into an Ivy League college with a four point oh GPA. The stress of that made them manifest a Nightmare.” She laughed, a sad laugh, a laugh that by itself would say ‘Yeah, right’. ”Still not sure if it was Fear of Failure or Fear of Expectations.” I looked up at her, and saw the pained expression on her face. “Nightmares have different ways they hurt victims based on what they represent. The Fear of Being Taken Away you saw tonight was a kidnapper. The freshman’s Nightmare was a toxic manipulator.” She clenched her hand tightly into a fist. “I couldn’t save them. By the time I reached them, they had lost too much blood. The Nightmare was cackling over them and the only thing I could do was take it out.”
The tension Mom was holding, all the anger and rage at the injustice the Buns were forcing on us melted away in an instant, replaced with a tenderness so intense, one might doubt whether it was genuine. She crossed the room, knelt down in front of Clara, and softly took hold of her hands, looking directly at her face. “I am so, so incredibly, unbelievably sorry you had to go through that. It hurts. It always hurts.” Mom smiled sadly. “It is when it stops hurting that you know you’re no longer human. And I’m glad it hasn’t stopped hurting for me.” Her smile turned into a frown. “Which is why I do not want you to even have a chance to reach that point.” Mom stood up, looking determined, looking ready to do whatever it takes. “I don’t think I could stop you from fighting. Or any of the other three. And according to THAT chucklefuck--” She pointed her thumb at Potato Bun. “David will end up transforming to fight in this war because his heart is in the right place. While I’m proud of that, I don’t want him getting hurt. I don’t want any of you getting hurt.” She held out her hand for a shake. “So I’m declaring myself Team Mom now. No buts, no refusing, my kid’s life is on the line, just like yours is. And while I may be working as a GP thanks to my medical degree, I do have a license to be a therapist.” Mom turned to me. “Helps out a lot when dealing with uncooperative assholes at school to have a triple threat of attack options. What all that means is, I’ll be taking care of your physical and mental strains, for free, in my house, because ‘Our untransformed forms do not get harmed when our transformed forms are harmed’ does not count as health insurance.”
Clara looked surprised, as did the two Buns. “Well that is an unexpected shift, Dr. Cloudton!” Potato said, right before hiding behind Beef to escape Mom’s glare.
“I’m not going to let you recruit other kids, first off. Second off, somebody has to be the responsible adult in this entire operation. And it’s obvious you Buns are not it.” Mom took a look at the clock and began making her way to the kitchen. “Now if you’d excuse me, I should have gotten started on dinner some time ago, but better late than never. Any allergies, Clara?” she asked.
“Shrimp and almonds! But you don’t have to make me anything, I’m fine,” Clara replied, which earned her a tut from Mom.
“This is non-negotiable; you’re a teenager who just exerted herself in a fight and I don’t know when you last ate, you ARE having dinner with us, Miss Everest, and that is final.” Mom began rummaging through the fridge after her declaration, and I cleared my throat.
Potato Bun’s wording of the group was still heavy on my mind. “Potato B-Bun called you ma-magical mostly girls. What, what does she mean by that?” I asked, fidgeting with my hands in my lap, my gaze turned away from Clara and towards my bedroom door.
“Ah yeah, there’s the gender question. I’ve been expecting one since I saw you, but to be honest not this one. One of the others is nonbinary. A demigirl that uses they/them pronouns, to be specific,” Clara answered, and I turned to her, eyebrow raised. I knew what nonbinary was, but I hadn’t come across the term demigirl in any of those stories I read.
“What’s a de-demigirl?”
“Somebody who is mostly a girl, but partially another gender. Ours puts it that they’re eighty percent a girl, and twenty percent something else,” Clara answered. Twenty percent something else. Maybe that twenty percent was boy. Maybe I didn’t have to be a girl to be a magical girl, and I could stay as what I’m supposed to be. Of course, that’s when Clara shattered that notion. “Nothing male though. They keep choosing joke answers for it? Like that chef in Ratatouille that went to jail. Last time it was ‘the satisfaction of punching a fascist that’s calling me a dyke.’ Which, honestly, mood, but I’m cis so I’ll refrain from making similar jokes.”
“Oh…” I curled up on the couch, knees to my chest and my head resting on them. The revelation was a bit too much. But I had another idea. “Aren’t, aren’t there Magical Boys? M-maybe I’m supposed to be that, and not a Magical G-Girl.”
“Might Knights. They’re awakened by an ancient alien watching over the planet to fight invaders from other worlds. And they don’t have Sparks,” Beef Bun answered, taking another sip of tea. “And the ancient alien arrived after the pyramids were built, for the record.”
“Does that lot get to say no to the job offer?” Mom asked from the kitchen, the smell of sizzling beef coming from it.
“They do; they also have a dormitory to stay in in the form of a space station if they need it, and a salary,” Beef answered, and frowned. “She’s making burgers to tick me off, isn’t she.”
“Quick chilli, not burgers! And that sounds fucking typical! Can’t believe this transformation bullshit has the Magical Girls be unpaid housewives in the equation!” Mom kept quietly muttering swears to herself while cooking.
“But you DO have a Spark!” Potato spoke up, moving from her hiding spot behind Beef “And that means you can be a Magical Girl!”
“But, but I’m supposed to be a b-boy. Being a, a magical girl w-would mean that I’m a g-girl. But…” I was twiddling my thumbs, still sitting curled up.
“You know, I’ve only ever heard you say that you’re supposed to be a boy. Not that you ARE one,” Clara said, and I looked up at her, opening and closing my mouth a few times. She was right. And that fact made me go nonverbal from shock. I got off the couch, nervously looked at Mom, and decided she was too busy to translate sign language for me. Which meant option B. I dug out my phone and opened the text to speech app.
“I mean,” the synthesised feminine voice began. I’d been trying to avoid using it, because the voicebank was the same as the digital idol I resembled in my transformed state, and I didn’t want to endure more shit from Horton. But Emily said it was cute when I used it, so I kept it for her sake. “I am supposed to be one. Am I not?”
“That’s outside expectations you’re trying to meet. You should think about what you really want to be, what you really are. Experiment with stuff, figure out your likes and dislikes, your identity. I mean, how old are you?”
“Sixteen. A sophomore.” The voicebank had trouble with some English words, but that just meant there was an accent.
“Yeah, you’ve got plenty of time to sort stuff out. Hell, I can send you some links to read up on, to know more about trans people,” Clara offered.
“I already know a lot about trans people. But I do not think I am trans. I do not feel any dysphoria. And I did not feel any dysphoria when transformed,” I typed out, and Clara hummed and nodded.
“What about euphoria, though? When transformed, that is,” she asked, and I sat down on the couch again. I hadn’t really thought about it. I was so scared to transform, I hadn’t considered trying it again, because it would partially be admitting I was going to fight, and I didn’t want that.
“I do not know. I am scared to try,” I typed out, and put my phone down, hopefully making it clear I wasn’t going to keep talking in any capacity.
“That’s fair. I can’t really claim to understand, so I won’t. Try stuff out, though. I dunno, it’s Tuesday, try being a girl for the weekend. Transformation and pronouns and such, maybe a name,” Clara offered.
“I’m more than okay with you doing that sweetheart!” Mom called from the kitchen. “Also, could you come here and keep an eye on the chilli for a minute?”
I got up and walked over, with more questions to ask myself. Nobody told me being a teenager would require so much self-reflection.
