SHE coughed, a soft dry sound escaping her lips. The cough turned white as soon as it left her mouth and disappeared into the dusk.
“It is positively freezing…” Mia mumbled, perched on a bench.
It was a small bench in front of the police station. Mia was waiting for everyone to finish work and come out. Today was the day Misaki was finally going to make good on his promise to treat the group to a meal. Having asked Subaru what time they clocked out in advance, Mia decided to wait. After school had ended, she changed out of her uniform, and after idling some time away in her room, she came to the police station to wait on the bench.
Sometimes she had difficulty believing her own actions. Before she knew it, she had gotten used to spending time with the Crow Rangers. And...there was a part of her that felt like she belonged with them. It felt nice, so she wanted to be with them. She had fun around them, and that made it so easy to nod along with their antics.
Whenever she went about her duties as the Supreme Ruler of Evil and dusted the floor with some small-fry who opposed her morals, the Crow Rangers always appeared for reasons beyond her. She had every intention of giving them a proper fight, but in the end, they always let her slip through their fingers and escape.
Somewhere deep inside, Mia knew she was no match for them, especially Subaru, Shou, and Ren. With her own petite stature, she stood no chance of winning against their bigger build and speed. Moreover, they fought her with terrifying efficiency stemming from prior experience battling her; she always found her mouth covered and her arms restrained within mere minutes.
She should have been more frustrated, but Mia was finding that it didn’t bother her as much as it used to anymore. That didn’t mean she had given up though…
She still wanted to realize the one true dream of all Supreme Rulers of Evil, which was, of course, world domination. However, Mia struggled to see a reason to fight the Crow Rangers. It wasn’t as if they arrived to interfere with whatever it was she was doing. If anything, it seemed as if they appeared to check in on her. She’d fight them, naturally, but would unsurprisingly fail to get the upper hand, and eventually be let off the hook. Some days, Ren even went through the trouble of walking her home.
“Am I doing something wrong?”
She had originally envisioned fierce clashes between herself and the Rangers, but from the very beginning their skirmishes turned out to be mild at best. If she continued down this road, could she ever truly take over the world? What was this “world domination” her family was aiming for anyway? Whenever she was alone, all kinds of thoughts would slip into her head, plaguing her. Mia was no deep thinker, so this resulted in a downwards spiral of doubt overtaking her mind, making her feel as if her brain could short-circuit at any minute.
She was wondering what was keeping the Rangers while she had her eyes trained on the police station, breath escaping her in small white clouds, when she suddenly noticed a man leaving the building through the back door.
“Huh? That man...” Mia stood up and walked towards him.
Alerted to her presence, he let out a small cry of recognition, “Mia Oonari, was it? It’s been a while!”
“Indeed it has. Please, let me express my gratitude again for all the help you provided me the last time we met!”
It was the same kind middle-aged man who had shared the Crow Rangers’ personal details with Mia. Like the last time, he wore a wrinkled shirt and a necktie skewed to the side. He had no jacket on despite the terrible weather, which slightly surprised her.
“How have you been? Your voice seems a bit off, are you getting sick?”
“I wonder... To be honest, I have never caught a cold before, so I am not entirely sure.”
“Now, now, we can’t have that, can we? One’s health is one’s most prized possession. If you stay out here in the cold, you’ll definitely come down with the flu. Are you waiting for someone?”
Mia nodded affirmatively while the man calmly squinted at her. “Hmm… I see. I take it you’re getting along swimmingly with Ren and the others?”
“Ugh! N-No, it’s nothing like that! I’m only here because I was promised food!”
When confronted like this, she felt an overwhelming urge to deny everything. As Mia frantically corrected him, the man laughed in a booming voice, “Ha-ha-ha! It’s cute how you get so defensive. Well, they’ll be coming out soon—they should be done for the day. You can wait inside the station if you’d like?”
“N-No! I-I am j-just fine r-right here, th-thank you,” Mia stammered out.
The man dubiously cocked his head to the side, and went back inside, throwing a quick, “See you later then,” over his shoulder. As she blankly followed his retreating back with her eyes, his phone suddenly rang in his pocket and he took it out. …At that same moment, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground at his feet. The man didn’t seem to notice as he was already entering the building.
“You dropped something,” Mia called out to him automatically, and went to pick up the said piece of paper, but he was too absorbed in his phone call to hear her. “What do I do with this? Hm? A photograph?”
She flipped over the paper the man had dropped, discovering that it was a picture. At first glance, she had to do a double take in sheer shock, her eyes flying open, “Huh? Why…this…?”