My Sister is a Magical Girl

Chapter 3: Unseen Cost

"What happened to Phyia?" Mallory suddenly asked.

"Um, well," Sora wasn't sure how much he could or should say. Obviously nothing involving magic, but still, how could Sora describe what it was?

"I heard that he passed out," Mallory then continued.

"Yeah, he did," Sora said. "But he rested at the nurse's office for a while, and then they let him go and he seemed to be perfectly fine.

"Oh, good, cause I was really worried about him."

Sora didn't know that Mallory and Phyia were good friends. He'd seen them around together a couple times, but didn't think anything of it. Maybe they were something more even. Though he was pretty sure that if Phyia was going out with someone everyone in a 12 mile radius of him would know about it.

"By the way," Mallory said, "Did he...um talk to you about anything today?"

Sora tried to think back to earlier, though really he didn't think about much other than Phyia passing out. But then he remembered what had happened after they had talked later, and how Phyia was trying to get Mallory's number, and as Sora thought about that, he could feel his cheeks starting to turn red.

Did Mallory asking that mean that she was actually interested in him? Sure, Sora knew that's what Phyia said, but Phyia said lots of things that didn't end up being true, like that time he thought the substitute gym teacher was really from the NSA, or that he found the Pentagon's phone number written in the teacher's lounge, but maybe Phyia was actually right about something!

"Yeah...he did," Sora said, feeling his palms beginning to sweat at this, knowing that just maybe this was his chance. All he had to do was to take advantage of it, to ask if they wanted to hang out or something. He didn't want to scare her, just something small; that would be enough for a start. "He asked if I had any plans this summer." That was true, or at least for the most part.

"Oh, did you?" Mallory then asked.

"No, I figured I'd just see if anything came up."

There was a few seconds pause, so Sora decided to speak up again. "What about you, any plans?" That seemed like a logical direction to take the conversation.

"Just some vacation to see my grandma at the end of the summer. Gonna be pretty boring other than that," she said with a shrug of her shoulders. She started to open her mouth to say something else, but didn't.

"Hey, maybe we could hang out or something?" Sora suggested, which caused Mallory to smile a bit.

"Yeah, that might be cool," she said. "Why don't I give you my number, and we can come up with something?"

"Sure..." Sora said, pulling out his phone. He actually said it. He asked if he could hang out with the girl that he'd had on his mind for longer than he could remember. Of course, this didn't really mean anything, they were just friends, but at the very least they wouldn't be friends that would never see each other again after this school year ended.

"I look forward to it," Mallory said. The bell then rang, shocking both of them. "Oh crap, my class is all the way in the east wing, I've got to go!" she said, starting to take off.

"All right, see ya," Sora said waving to her as she rounded the corner, and despite the fact that he was almost late for his class, he felt like he was walking on clouds.

"I don't remember a pen flying at my head at high speeds!" Sora heard someone say as he entered his last class for the day.

"That's because it hit you in the head so hard it knocked you out and made you forget about it," a girl then responded.