Different

Ridill didn't accompany me to bed that night. Normally, she slept curled up on a little pink pillow I'd found in the trash and repaired. It sat next to mine, and we shared a thin gray blanket. That night, however, she remained in the kitchen. I ignored the soft, muffled sobs and stared at the ceiling until she quieted. Then I got up, tucked the blanket around her shoulders, and left. I wasn't sleeping anyway, so I may as well go back to work.

Outside, however, I found someone familiar. "What are you doing here?" I demanded of the girl crouched across the street from my apartment.

Anya started, falling to one side, then scrambling to stand and look properly awake. "I –" She yelped and clapped a hand over her mouth, then grimaced and curled in on herself. She looked like she'd bitten her tongue.

I waited.

At last, she whimpered and straightened. "I just... thought I'd... check. That you were okay. After yesterday."

I blinked slowly, trying to process the meaning behind her words. They made no sense. "Why?"

"Because you were fighting, right? Or did they not call you in?"

I wondered if she perhaps hadn't understood that we were on opposite sides in this conflict.

"So? Are you okay?" she asked.

I nodded once, shortly. She appeared to be fine physically as well, though I wasn't sure what to make of her psychological condition.

Her lips curled up into a relieved smile. "That's good." She glanced around, then pulled out her phone and checked it. The smile vanished. "What're you doing leaving at three in the morning? Are they really calling you in after you worked all day yesterday?"

"Couldn't sleep," I said with a shrug. "No reason not to make better use of the time."

She nodded, apparently unhappy, but followed me without voicing any complaint. I wondered whether she'd try to enter my workplace, but she stopped outside and waited while the tech gave me a weirdly sympathetic look and sent me out with a patrol location. Anya was still there when I headed out, and she followed me all the way to my patrol area.

"I didn't know about the attack," she said. "I only heard about it afterward. Colette was complaining about how many people the Reapers killed and... and..."

I was faintly alarmed to hear that her voice had gotten tight, but she sniffed loudly and soldiered on. "I don't understand. How can we say we fight for love and justice if we're - if we're going around and - and just - and kidnapping people? That's not just at all!"

I wasn't the right person for this conversation. I supposed there wasn't really anyone who would be right for it, but... "Not really," I agreed.

"But killing people isn't good either," she replied defiantly as though I'd indicated I thought otherwise.

"No," I agreed, and her indignation deflated.

"Well, good." She glowered at me. "So what are you doing anyway? What do you do if you find someone? Ask their age and then kill them if they're an adult?"

That sounded far too efficient for a government agency. "Unless they're in the middle of attacking people, I just submit a report saying where I felt the energy and, if I was able to determine the source, a photograph of the magical girl." Before she could ask another question, I had one of my own. "Why do you know where I live?"

Anya flushed. She tucked her chin in toward her chest, her pigtails swinging down to hide her face from me. "I... followed you the other day," she said quietly.

"You've been watching me?" Did she know about Ridill?

"Not... closely... or anything, but..." She grimaced. "Don't worry. I don't plan on attacking you or anything. And I won't tell Colette what you are. She thinks you're human. That's why I told her you're a guy."

Because most Reapers—the most powerful ones, especially—were women. That didn't answer my real question. I wasn't sure how to ask her whether she'd seen Ridill without potentially revealing her existence, though. "Why?" I asked instead.

"Because you're, you know, different. Kind of."

Great. She was inventing motives for me. "I'm not." I didn't want to deal with her feelings of betrayal when she inevitably realized I was not, in fact, different.

"You are," she said. "No other Reaper or magical girl would stop and talk to me and tell me about what's happening. Reapers just, you know, try to kill me, and Magical Girls tell me I'm too young and I don't need to worry about that stuff."

I suppose I'd been doing things wrong. I wish someone had warned me sooner.

"That doesn't make me different. It just makes me stupid," I muttered, but I didn't expect her to listen, and she didn't. It made for a very awkward patrol.