You stepped outside into the cool night air again. Nora and Erika said their goodbyes before heading to their vehicles. Phyllis was about to do the same, when you decided to approach her, remembering you had some unfinished business with her.
“Phyllis?”
She turned around from her open car door. “Yes?”
“I would like to apologize for my behavior toward you this morning. It was rude of me to make assumptions about your qualifications for this position.” You bowed your head slightly, to show some respect for your fellow maid.
“Oh, the bit about my tail being too short? You weren’t THAT rude about it.”
“No,” you corrected her, “about you being, well… male.”
“That? Still no big de- Wait…” Phyllis looked confused for a moment, then seemed to remember. “How did you remember that? Madame Minazuki said that only I and the current employees would remember my old self. I mean, I guess you weren’t hired that long after me, but still…”
“I’m not completely sure myself,” you admitted, “but still, I wanted to apologize for it.”
“It’s fine,” she waved dismissively.
“If you say so, Phyllis,” you said. “Would you like to visit my house for the evening? I only live a few blocks away, so it won’t add much time to your drive.” You figured that if you’re going to be working together, you might as well get to know each other a bit.
“Sure thing!” Phyllis motioned for you to sit in the passenger’s side.
--------------
After a short drive, you opened the door to your home, letting Phyllis in first. As a guest, you must put her first, you felt. “Here we are.”
“Beverly!” You heard your mother’s voice call out from the dining room in the back of the house. “Is that you? How did your interview go?”
“It went great! They gave me the job, and had me start working right away.”
“Really? Well, congratulations, Beverly!” Your mother stepped out into the living room to greet you. “It really is nice to-” She stopped in mid-sentence as she saw you and Phyllis, gasping. “Wait! Tell-tale signs of low level reality stretching. Matching uniforms. Cat ears and tails. Could it be?” She smiled wide. That was not the reaction you were expecting if your mom had realized you had been changed. “Beverly! Did you join a magical girl team?”
You expected that question even less. You weren’t quite sure how to respond. “No? I don’t think so. What is a magical girl?”
Phyllis answered immediately. “You remember the ‘Mahou Shoujo’ option on the list back at the cafe?”
“Well, yes, but nobody I was serving had selected it.”
Now it was your mother’s turn to be confused. She spoke again before Phyllis had a chance to elaborate. “Hold on. People can ‘select’ magical girls at this place you’re working for? Just what kind of a business are they running?”
“A maid cafe,” You stated plainly.
“A maid cafe? Those are pretty rare outside of Japan.”
“That’s what I thought, too” you added.
“And they serve magical girls to customers at this cafe?”
“No!” Phyllis jumped in. “It’s more like we sometimes dress up as magical girls for the customers.”
“That’s a little weird, even for a maid cafe,” your mother said. “But, if you didn’t become magical girls, what on earth would a maid cafe need to put a reality stretching spell on you two for?”
“That’s to make our becoming catgirls and acting like maids, even in our downtime, less conspicuous,” you answered.
“What?” Your mother suddenly looked quite concerned. “They used magic to change you? And your personality too? That is just...” She shook her head, looking even more stressed.
You recalled Nora’s advice from earlier, if your parents were able to see through the reality warping. “Well, it was all in the contract, which I had read beforehand.”
“Wait! You’re telling me this spell was part of your employment contract? I thought for sure the League had been taking steps to discourage the magical world from weaving spells into employment contracts.”
“Mother, with all due respect,” you sid, as politely as you could, “what are you talking about?”
She looked at you with a weak smile. “I’m sorry, you’ve had a very big day, and I come in and make things even more confusing.” She sighs as she looked at your outfit. “It’s just, when I saw you dressed so differently from usual, with cat ears and a tail, and even a friend with the same, I thought you’d finally found your destiny… And instead…” She looked away. You felt as if you had somehow let her down. Your own mother! How could you, as a good maid, disappoint her like this? “It looks like my daughter’s been roped into some mind-altering contract, to be a maid for… How long does this contract last?”
“It promised lifetime job security,” you said quietly.
“A mind altering contract with ‘lifetime job security?’ How is that… Shouldn’t they…” Your mother was aghast.
“Wait, what was that about Beverly’s destiny?” Phyllis asked.
“I… I suppose enough’s been said that there’s no point in hiding it. I had been hoping that Beverly would be chosen to become a magical girl, just like I had, when I was younger.”
Phyllis’s tail went straight up, and her ears quickly turned in your mother’s direction. “Woah! Are you serious? Did you just say you used to be a magical girl?”
Your mother smiled. “Not ‘used to be.’” She held out her right hand to her side. “By the guiding light of the stars…” She spoke, as a light blue staff suddenly materialized in her hand, a miniature silver balancing scale on its head.
A pillar of light seemed to erupt under your mother, and everything except her seemed to go into slow motion. The light appeared to lift her up, only her outline visible to you. Which was probably for the best, as her clothes vanished for a few moments, an additional glow appearing in their place, forming what looked like a knee-length skirt, a pair of bands on her arms, a set of boots on her feet, and a vest around her upper body. Her outline seemed to shrink, looking more like the figure of a child than the woman that raised you, though the glowing garments still appeared to fit fine regardless. You could also vaguely make out her hair growing much longer.
It felt like it’d been about thirty seconds when the light finally faded, and time seemed to go back to normal. Before you, stood your mother, but not as you’ve ever known her: She stood tall (for someone that looked to be around 10) and confident, any sign of wrinkles, or dulling in her brown hair gone. With the bright light no longer obstructing your view, you could see her new clothes more clearly. Her skirt was black, with finely cut diamonds somehow weaved into the fabric, forming a constellation. Her light blue vest had sapphire buttons, while similar sapphires adorned her knee-high, high-heeled boots, and her silver bracelets. A silver, gem-studded gavel had also appeared in her left hand. “I am Lady Libra!” She said in a voice that was familiar, yet so much purer and more melodic than you ever remember, despite sounding much younger. “Bringer of Balance, and the solemn judge of the Constellation Collaborative!”
“No way!” Phyllis had an almost impossibly large grin on her face, and her tail swished with excitement “Not only did I get to be a real cat girl, but I get to meet a real, live magical girl, too! This is the best day of my life!”
“I appreciate the praise, young lady,” your mother said. “Now, as I was saying, Beverly, I apologize for keeping this hidden from you for all these years. I had hoped, in time, that you would be chosen by the Greater Powers to become a magical girl, as well, but I didn’t want you to be disappointed if you weren’t. I’m not the accountant I told you I was. I’ve actually been working with the International League of Magical Girls.” She waved her staff dramatically, sparkles drifting through the air in its wake.
“I… still don’t know what a magical girl is…” You said.
“They’re girls given secret identities and magical powers to fight evil! They’re kind of like superheroes,” Phyllis explained.
“I guess that makes sense,” you said, still pretty surprised at this revelation.
“We’re also capable of seeing through reality distortions, and most glamors, though I suppose that’s obvious by now.”
“Maybe that’s why I was able to remember Phyllis as Phillip.” You remarked to yourself.
“Inheriting some degree of these powers through birth isn’t unheard of,” your mother said, having heard you. “I suppose, this is Phillip, then?” She pointed at your co-worker with her staff.
“Yeah, but honestly, Phyllis is fine now. I’m happy like this.”
“If only I could be sure you had any option but to be happy like that…” Your mother murmured, her body glowing before she reverted to the humble, older woman you knew and loved. “I know you said you read those contracts, but something about a lifetime under mental alterations… I can’t help but be suspicious. I can’t do anything to break the contract myself, but I know, even if you were destined to a mundane life, you were certainly meant for more than… This…” You hung your head. Your mother thought so highly of you, and a maid must live up to expectations… What was wrong with you? “Well, we can’t do anything more about this tonight,” your mother continued, “I’ll let you and Phyllis enjoy yourselves and get some rest.
“Thank you, mother.” You bow politely, as any good maid should. That it helps hide the sense of shame you feel is just a bonus.
--------------
The credits rolled on the first episode of Digimon. You hadn’t expected all those talking heads to spontaneously change into seven distinct, slightly stronger animals, but it hadn’t seemed to actually do the protagonists any good at the time. Still it did leave you curious about the odd land those kids had landed in.
“See, I told you it was a good one!” Phyllis said. “Now, wanna see one of the Cowboy Bebop episodes? That one’s a real classic.”
“I suppose so.” You pulled the DVD out of your computer, and put it back in its case, picking up the Cowboy Bebop case. “It’s just… Such a weird name.”
The two of you were relaxing in your room, both still in your maid outfits. You were sitting in your old swivel chair next to your desk, while Phyllis was lying on your bed. “Hey, don’t go judging a book by its cover. You should know that now more than ever after what happened downstairs. I still can’t believe your mom is a real magical girl! You are so lucky!”
You did your best to restrain a sigh as you tried to change the subject. “So, you said you’ve watched all of these before?”
“Yep! The whole series in most cases. I like to dabble in a lot of genres.”
“How many anime shows do you watch?”
Phyllis sat up, and struck a pose that might have looked menacing were she not dressed like a maid. “How many breads have you eaten in your life?” She said, sounding like she was trying (and failing,) to imitate a male voice.
You cocked an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be a reference to something?”
The wind seemed to go out of Phyllis’s sails. “Never mind.” She looked at the collection of DVDs. “Oh, maybe you’d rather watch Sailor Moon? That one’s pretty much the one that defined the whole magical girl genre. Pretty appropriate, wouldn’t you say?”
Now you REALLY didn’t want to watch it. You would do it eventually, it had been an order from Miss Nora, after all, but you didn’t need any more reminders of just how far you had fallen short of your mother’s expectations.
“Phyllis, do you really think this job is worthwhile?” It almost hurts you to say those words, as a maid, but as a daughter, you feel like you have no choice but to.
Her eyes went wide at the suggestion. “How can you say that? Of course it is!”
As a maid, you wanted so badly to agree with her, but you went on. “We’re little more than glorified waitresses.”
Phyllis shook her head. “No, there’s more to it than that. We have a very important purpose. Let me ask you something: You’ve heard of sex hotlines before, right?”
“Those phone lines guys would call back in the day to have a woman talk dirty and moan seductively for them as they charge by the minute?” You frowned. “Phyllis, I don’t think this is helping…”
“Just hear me out for a minute, okay?” She brushed some hair out of her face. “There were actually lot of callers on those lines who weren’t using it for its intended purpose. You know what they WERE doing on there?”
“What?” You asked, still a little worried about what the answer might be.
“They would just talk about their day. Vent their problems to someone who would actually listen to them. Treat the women on the other end like a friend, something they didn’t have in ‘real life.’ They were so lonely, so desperate for anything resembling real attention, not even for sexual attention, but just for people to treat them like a person, rather than another cog in the machine. But the only place they could get it was from people who were paid to pretend to have sex with them, so they used what was available to them.”
“That’s… not what I would have expected.”
“Yep!” Phyllis nodded. “That might seem weird, but that’s how it went. Our little cafe is a perfect place for people like that. They can come in, meet some friendly faces who remind them of their favorite characters, and just talk for a bit while on lunch break. We can help them feel good about themselves for a while, before they return to the daily grind. We can improve people’s lives, even if just a sliver. That’s worth it to me.”
You smiled. “Well, that was a very passionate speech. Thank you.”
Phyllis grins sheepishly, and scratched the back of her head. “Aw, you’re too kind. Guess I might have gone overboard, but I really do feel passionately about this.” She laid down on her chest again. “He he, I wonder if some part of becoming a maid ‘in mind’ means treating the position with the same importance a Yu-Gi-Oh character treats children’s trading card games.”
“You get what?” You repeated, confused.
“Hoo boy, I forget how much review we’ve got to do for you. How about you start up the next DVD?”
You shrug, and put in the DVD, feeling a little better about your situation.