Ironically, the hectic atmosphere that had consumed the studio before the shoot vanished once Neil began taking photos. Adah had assumed Lina would be at her most diligent when the girls were actually being photographed, but she held true to her words and shifted her focus entirely toward having fun.

  She would stand behind Neil and watch the girls for a while before sprinting back behind the photographer’s laptop to see the photos pop up in a higher resolution, then rush back to the set to watch the process up close once more. She looked like a kid at a water park, hurrying to get back in line for her favorite slide again and again.

  “Can you rein it in a little?” Neil had to say to her at one point. “I keep feeling like someone’s running up to rob me.”

  “Excuse me for trying to appreciate your camerawork,” she shot back. “If I simply wanted to admire how cute my own designs look, I could do so at my own studio.”

  “The point of photos is that you can look at them whenever you want, you know.”

  “And I want to look at them now!”

  Lina had mentioned the two of them were friends, and it was clear Neil had known her long enough to understand when to give up. He dropped the issue and Lina continued to sprint back and forth across the room. In that way, maybe the atmosphere was just as hectic as it had been, but now it was only Lina who was hurrying around. Adah and her teammates mostly got to stay in one spot.

  They began the shoot as a full team, with Neil starting them off by taking some standard group shots of the girls in simple standing poses. These photos were meant to get a clear view of all the outfits together, as well as to help break the ice while the girls eased into their modeling mindsets. As they grew more comfortable, the complexity of Neil’s compositions ramped up and began to involve more of the studio’s environment. The girls started to pose with the room’s furniture—lounging on the chairs, reaching up as if they going to take a book off the shelf, anything to add a bit of variety to their poses.

  Adah wasn’t going to be satisfied with shuffling through basic poses at Neil’s instruction, though. This shoot was a performance as much as any battle against a Cruelty was. To make the most of it, she had to show her audience something they hadn’t expected.

  “What do you think of this?” she suggested at one point as she sat down in front of the set’s black vanity. “I’m getting ready here, and everyone crowds around behind me. Can you shoot that in the mirror without getting your own reflection?”

  Neil’s face lit up like it had when Adah had the idea to get close to Rika during the IndieMagie shoot. If he was excited by the idea, that was a good sign.

  “I can find an angle,” he said, “and we can edit anything else out. I like that—like everyone wants to get a good look at you. They’re surprised to see you like this so they come over to watch you do your makeup. I like that a lot.”

  Exactly. Adah hadn’t wanted to spell it out. There’d be no explanation on the photo itself, but if Neil could interpret the story from her idea alone, then the fans would be able to see it in the photo as well. It was just up to her team to pose it in the most effective way.

  Her teammates quickly proved they were as invested in impressing everyone with this shoot as Adah was. This new arrangement started out simple enough, but once everyone got into position, Adah could see their minds getting to work in real time. This was another advantage of placing them all around the vanity’s mirror. With their reflections right in front of them, everyone had an even easier time considering how to pose themselves.

  Ami and Emi started to exchange curious looks with one another, as if they really were surprised by this new version of Adah sitting in front of them. Those faces got plenty of action from Neil’s camera. As the shooting went on, Rika leaned ever nearer to Adah, looking at her face closer and closer, though always via the mirror’s reflection. By the end, their cheeks were almost touching, and the twins even joined in to stare at Adah like she had transformed in a way they’d never seen before.

  “It’s perfect,” Lina eventually erupted. “It’s spot on. Oh, how lucky did I get with you four?”

  The designer may have been praising them a little prematurely, especially since Adah had quite a few tricks left up her sleeve. That said, Adah wasn’t one to turn down some free adoration.

  They posed as a full group for a bit longer but, after Lina reviewed that she had all the shots she needed to properly highlight her lineup of outfits, the girls broke into duos. Here, the atmosphere shifted once again. Although the girls had been enjoying themselves before, now they started to truly have fun.

  The competitive feeling that had pervaded the IndieMagie shoot was nowhere to be found, replaced instead with the kind of friendly vibes that filled the Last Light agency lobby whenever Adah and her teammates stayed up late together. Whichever teammates weren’t part of the current duo would call to the ones being photographed, screaming out “Cute!” whenever they saw something they liked, or making jokes about the different poses the girls took. Lina, Colette, and Kritika joined in as well, cranking up the volume in the studio and making it abundantly clear why these rooms needed some soundproofing.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The team took photos in every duo configuration, from the obvious ones like pairing up Ami and Emi to those that they highlighted less often like Ami and Rika. When it came time for Adah and Emi to pose together, Neil wanted to see them face-to-face, holding each other’s hands up by their chests as they looked into the other’s eyes. This necessitated Adah standing on a block so that their height difference wouldn’t be so extreme—Emi easily had half a foot or more on Adah otherwise. Adah put up with the embarrassment of the block, but really it was Emi who wound up turning red.

  Every time Adah tried to stare into the girl’s eyes or put their faces close together, Emi would either would turn away from her and laugh nervously or look up to the ceiling as she tried to collect herself.

  “What’s the matter?” Adah asked. “You and Ami were goofing around without a care in the world earlier.”

  “You’re more intense,” Emi said, staring up at the ceiling still.

  “More intense than her?”

  “It’s different, I don’t know,” Emi said, then laughed and shook her head. “Honestly, this might be impossible.”

  “Impossible?!”

  Emi’s natural talent for comedy set everyone else off laughing as well, though she did finally manage to look at Adah with a straight face and give Neil his photos.

  Adah and Rika were the last pairing to go, at which point they finally got an answer to what Lina meant by her mysterious comment about Rika being a garter. Their duo pose saw Adah sitting atop that jagged throne centerpiece while Rika knelt down beside her. From there, Rika leaned over and rested her head across Adah’s thighs, such that she was sprawled out as if exhausted.

  “Two lovers at the end of a long journey,” as Lina put it. “Not burning bright with the roaring flame of passion, but smoldering silently, clinging to each other and waiting with bated breath for the moment when they’ll finally be left alone. When they can finally let their guards down and expose their true selves to each other. A contrast of the lover who can hardly contain herself any longer, and the princess who holds onto her regal facade until the last moment.”

  With the intense red of Rika’s hair and makeup, her presence did function as a bright accent to the black and white of Adah’s outfit and the set, just as a garter might have added some color to Adah’s pale skin.

  Though, because of the extreme exposure at the bottom of her outfit and the warmth of Rika’s cheek against her thigh, Adah worried that her own face might start to match her partner’s color.

  After some deep breaths, she calmed herself and delivered what she knew the photo called for. Heartbreak was a forlorn princess on the precipice of realizing her dreams, and the head in her lap belonged to the precious partner she always wanted by her side. It was a scenario not far from reality, and she had no trouble placing herself into it.

  Adah put a hand on Rika’s head, stroking her hair on pure reflex. She gazed into the distance past the camera—for once, she wasn’t thinking about the camera at all. She let herself fade into this fantastical moment, only returning to the present when she heard Lina’s excited clapping.

  “Perfect and perfect again,” the designer declared. “I finally have something to thank Michel for. We’re in the homestretch now, please give it your all for the grand finale. Now is the time to take what you want from the camera. Grab Neil by the collar and demand what’s yours!”

  If they had photos of themselves in pairs, of course they needed solo photos as well. The process for the solo shots went similar to the duos, though now each girl had three of her teammates cheering for her at once. Being alone, there was only so much variation each girl could offer Neil’s camera, and the solo sessions were thankfully short. The team had endured a long day of shooting at this point, and Adah felt the exhaustion that had seized her during the car ride over here returning once more.

  However, at Lina’s insistence, Adah was the last member to step in front of the camera.

  Neil placed her standing in front of the throne this time, its blackness making a clean contrast to the white of her outfit. Beyond Neil and the lights, Adah saw the small crowd watching her—her teammates, Grace, Lina, and the makeup artists Colette and Kritika. They had all been there the whole time, of course. During the duo sessions, there had only been one fewer face watching Adah. Yet, something felt different now. Adah had enjoyed cheering for her teammates while they posed alone, but now she felt strange standing by herself.

  She glanced down at the outfit Lina had made for her. This truly was an outfit a magical girl would wear. Over the past four years, even after reinventing herself as Twilight Heartbreak, Adah had only ever worn costumes of her own design. But now someone as talented as Lina had poured all her passion into this outfit. These were clothes created for Adah and Adah alone—not drawn by her own hand but stitched together by someone else’s.

  And this whole photoshoot—it wasn’t for the benefit of someone else’s scheme. No one had gotten in front of the camera except for Adah and her teammates. All the time spent dressing, applying makeup, curling and braiding hair—that was all for Adah and her teammates.

  This sort of thing… it had been what she wanted.

  Her dreams may have evolved, but a moment like this had been at the heart of it, hadn’t it? The desire to shine, to reach some place above the routine of everyday life, to do so through her own effort. That was a kind of magic even the mascots couldn’t reproduce, wasn’t it?

  Maybe she had only gotten this far thanks to everyone’s help, but at the same time…

  It was okay for her to take some of the credit, right?

  She had worked hard, hadn’t she?

  It was okay to savor this moment, to enjoy being the center of attention, and to feel like she’d accomplished something amazing. Wasn’t it?

  There was so much left for her to do, and so much of being a magical girl wasn’t what she had thought it would be. Why had she seen people she cared about get hurt? Why was she fighting against politicians and the shadows that moved behind them? Why did she feel more tired than cute most of the time?

  Adah didn’t have an answer for herself but… The girl she had been all those years ago, who had fallen asleep each night with a Pureheart keychain clutched in her hand—she’d be proud of Adah, wouldn’t she?

  Neil said something to her, but Adah didn’t hear it. Her ears were filled with the thumping of her heart.

  She felt something warm roll down her cheek.

  Ah, was she this overwhelmed by it all? Enough to cry? Or maybe she was simply too tired to think straight…

  Out there beyond the lights, Lina covered her mouth with both hands. Her eyes sparkled and opened as wide as they would go as she stared at Adah.

  The room fell silent, and then the shutter on Neil’s camera clicked.