Later that day, when my parents got back home, we sat down and had a family dinner of sorts – just as promised, my dad got back home with my favorite pizza (just a regular pepperoni, with no fancy ingredients or storm of sensory nightmares), and we celebrated as we always did, catching up on each others’ days.

“So, sweetie, how was your day at school?” Mom asked.

“Oh, it was fine, you know, business as usual, Lottie gave me a hard time over not having a birthday party, but you know how she is…” It actually took me an embarrassing amount of time to remember what my little recap was missing. “Right, there was also this time during break later in the day where this girl from my class started glowing, and then a magical girl of some sort arrived, and then an older magical girl just teleported in, fixed everything, and then both of them just left. Not sure what that was about…”

Most people probably would have been more enthusiastic about events of the day, one way or another, but alas, we lived in a big city, and I’ve seen a couple students at my school try to be vigilante superheroes, and one of my best friends was magic, so I kinda didn’t have it in me to make a big deal out of this stuff.

My parents, however, turned toward each other, shocked, and then back towards me, giving me a very intense look.

“A magical girl, you say?” Dad asked.

I shrugged, not because I didn’t care, since my parents clearly did, but because I was genuinely unsure.

“Well, that’s what people around the school seemed to think at least. I don’t exactly know how they got ‘magical girl’ from a valkyrie with a sword in gold and white armor, but I guess it’s one of those ambiguous categories anyways…” I explained.

My parents looked at each other again.

“So, that’s really her, huh?” Something about the way Mom said that didn’t sit right with me.

“Right, you must be very confused now,” Dad added.

“So, let’s go from the start,” Mom started. “When the two of us were about your age, something very similar happened, random people started glowing oddly at random times, and the Magical Knight showed up to fix it. At the beginning, it seemed like it might come out of nowhere, but eventually it was revealed that the Demon Queen was behind it, corrupting people. The two of them started fighting each other, of course, and Demon Queen had some sort of evil plan, but she ended up losing in the end, and so, both her and Magical Knight were never seen since.”

Huh, so it wasn’t just coming out of nowhere, there was a whole villain, the Demon Queen apparently, to worry about.

“The two of us were eighteen by the time it ended, but it caused a lot of mess and trouble for those two years for a lot of people,” Dad said.

“How come the two of you never mentioned it before?” I asked.

Something wasn’t adding up about this, but I didn’t know what yet.

“Uhh, you see…” Dad mumbled.

“The two of us were some of the lucky few that didn’t ever really get affected directly, that’s all. I don’t think I’ve ever actually even seen either of them, funny how that goes…” Mom explained.

Something about my Mom that was important to mention was that she was about as good at lying as Lottie was, which meant this lie was extremely noticeable, given that it was a bad lie even by her standards.

“That’s right. I quite frankly have no idea how we managed, but both of us simply happened to almost never be there when the actual action was happening, so most of what we know was what we heard from other people, and also some pictures people managed to take,” Dad clarified.

Dad was, on the other hand, a rather good liar. He was good at hiding things, good at telling untruths straight to your face, which apparently came in rather useful raising me when I was little. However, a couple years back, after he gave me a speech about the importance of honesty, I noticed something – he absolutely hated having to lie with a burning passion. He hated it so much in fact, that every time he did so, around a second or so after he stopped talking, he would flinch just a tiny bit.

And so, it was very clear to me that he was lying just now too.

“I see… Well, let’s hope then that your luck passes onto me, and I simply don’t get involved, because the whole ‘good versus evil’ thing sounds like a huge headache,” I lied through my teeth.

I said, knowing that between Lottie being involved, and both of my parents clearly having been involved too.

“Yeah, that’s right, I’m sure nobody you know is involved in any of this, and you have as normal a school experience as possible,” Mom lied again, with not a small amount of guilt this time.

Call me naive, but I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who the adult magical girl was.

“Well, the question is then, who’s doing it? It can’t be the Demon Queen, she gave up after she was defeated, right?” Dad asked with a hint of worry.

“I’m not so sure… I mean, you’re right that she said… I mean, she was said to have given up on her goals, but for all we know she’s lied and has been preparing to try again for twenty years, and I fear to even think what she might have up her sleeve if that’s the case…” Mom responded, her worry taking the backseat to speculation and planning.

I tried to think about it myself, before the obvious came to me.

“I don’t think it’s her,” I said.

“And why’s that?” Dad asked, concern in his voice.

“Well, for one, the older Magical Knight said the corruption was incomplete, so it seems like whoever is responsible doesn’t really have power or experience, and they’re also starting way too small for… whatever the grand plan that the Demon Queen had was. Oh, and also, if the Magical Knight went to the same school as you, it stands to reason to suspect that the Demon Queen did as well, and I go to the same school as the two of you did… Even if she’s a teacher or has another position at a school, it’d be way too awkward to do it at the same school you used to go to… Not to mention beyond suspicious if you mean to retry your location-specific plans using a secret identity,” I explained my reasoning.

Mom looked lost in thought after that, while Dad simply nodded.

“That… makes sense, actually. Good catch, sweetheart,” Mom said.

“And besides that, whatever is happening, it’s not going to be us to figure that out, and it’s for the better anyways – wouldn’t wanna get caught in something above our pay grade, isn’t that right?” Dad asked.

“Yeah!” Mom nodded, way too enthusiastically.

“Sure,” I responded, having already made peace that this mess was going to become my problem sooner or later regardless of what I decided to do.

After that, the conversation calmed down, and we ended up finishing the family dinner with a dessert (I wasn’t super feeling like eating it, but it was for my birthday), it was time for me to get up and decide what I was going to do with the rest of my day.

I spared the glance at the abomination known as our living room TV setup – an upside of having parents who were into video games and didn’t like selling their own stuff was that I had freedom of choice between pretty much every notable gaming system from the last 30 years (and some from before that), with pretty much every historically significant game included. The whole thing was even set up with a bunch of video converters and HDMI switches in such a way that you didn’t need to mess with any cables, just press a couple buttons, to use pretty much any console in what was close to the best quality possible with what we had. Lottie used to be so excited every time she came over to try something new, until eventually visiting us and playing the games became a static part of her life.

The biggest downside of the abomination was, of course, the fact that choice paralysis existed – I literally had games in my own personal Steam account that I haven’t touched for years since buying them, getting around to literally everything my parents collected over their lifetimes required a soul much more disciplined than mine could ever be.

Of course, another downside of trying to play anything in the living room, especially on the day like my birthday, was that if whatever I chose happened to include a possibility for more than one person to play, my parents would almost certainly try to join me, and I never had the heart to tell them no. Don’t get me wrong, I loved spending time with my parents, and that included playing games with them, but… They weren’t exactly casual gamers. They started going to gaming tournaments together when they were only fifteen, and they were still doing so as recently as four years ago, and if whatever game they set their sights on happened to be PvP, they tended to get really competitive, especially with each other.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with being a serious gamer as long as you didn’t take it too far, something I didn’t think my parents were capable of doing even if they tried, but alas, I was a casual gamer with fine motor skills of a potato and terrible muscle memory. Me and my parents simply played games in very different ways, and it wasn’t often when I found something where those ways would be compatible.

I shook my head to get it out of the clouds, and back to the present moment. I at least decided enough that I knew I was going to my room.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?” Mom asked, worry in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m fine, just a little tired from an eventful day,” I lied.

She smiled. “Alright then, please go rest as much as you need.”

Of course I, the only person in my life who didn’t need to lie, could get away with it without a problem…

When I got to my room, I closed the door and collapsed face first into my bed as quietly as such an act was possible.

I sighed.

When did I stop being the expressive kid I used to be, and started being the depressed liar that I was now? I mean, lying didn’t even register to me as something special anymore! You just say words, you need to plan more or less what you’re saying first anyways, so what difference does it make if those words are true or false? It’s all part of the same mask, the same big old act, pretending I was alright, pretending I was ‘normal’, whatever that even meant.

It absolutely didn’t stop me from feeling awful about it, of course. It wasn’t fair, really. Nobody in my life could lie, not to me at least, but I could lie to all of them, and for all I knew, they always believed me. Lottie and Mom definitely didn’t deserve it, neither did Dad, and even Raine and her deal – I usually didn’t call her out on it, but I could absolutely see whenever she tried avoiding saying something…

The only other person I had was my grandmom, and her relationship with me was… weird. See, her being on my Mom’s side, she never really approved of the relationship between my parents, for some reason taking quite an offence with Dad for just existing – the two of them have not even been in the same building for significantly longer than I was around for. Grandma still did mention Dad every so often, of course, and it was never good. After years I more or less put together that she saw me as a way to make the best out of a bad situation, but simply speaking, I was more interested in being my own person. She was quite a good manipulator, as she showed by the fact that Mom still kept in contact with her at all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a good liar for no other reason than to accommodate that, but, simply speaking, she much preferred brutal honesty when it came to me.

All of this family mess, now complicated by an extra mix of herbs and spices called ‘secret identity shenanigans’, and I had no clue what to do with myself and my life.

It’s not like I didn’t want to change, didn’t want to return to what I used to be. The young, naive kid whose innocence was stolen by bullies and puberty. Sure, I understood much more now, I could make sense of so much more of the world and people around me, and I was more capable of responding to it without getting too emotional, but what was the point when I was doomed to see it all as pointless?

I mean, come on, my best friend and my mother were both entangled in some sort of secret battle of good and evil, my dad also being connected somehow, and there was absolutely no way I wouldn’t get hit with it like a brick sooner or later, even in the unlikely scenario I wasn’t stuck in the webs already. But no, I didn’t care, not really, and instead of trying to resolve it all and help all the people dearest to me, I was just adding more useless lies on top of the pile and throwing a birthday pity party for myself.

At least I could feel that sleep was going to take me soon. I could use a break…

Rainbow

I promised many secrets, I never said all of them would be well kept secrets... At least we can always rely on our dear MC to set the positive mood in a difficult situation, right? ...right?

I will not bother to write a bespoke one of these each chapter, because I'm scheduling all of them at once on October 22nd, but for now, I still possess enough of my soul to tell you that you can read all of this story already if you support me on my Patreon, or by buying it on itch.io as part of the Autumn Bundle without me dying of self-promotion poisoning!

All that being said, I hope you enjoyed this and that you have a nice day! ❤️?????