Chapter 30: Matchmaking Mayhem

Regardless of the strangeness, the sheer improbability of it all, the woman named Yuki Kirishima ultimately, and with a disarmingly charming smile, managed to exchange contact information with Kenji Tanaka. She hadn’t been particularly deliberate or obvious about it, of course; she had, with a practiced, professional ease, equally and charmingly added everyone from their little camping group to her contacts list. She’d cheerfully said that if another interesting, fun event like this came up in the future, they should absolutely, positively invite her along. A masterful and deeply suspicious social maneuver.

Kenji Tanaka sat alone on a large, sun-warmed rock by the stream, a profound sense of melancholy settling over him. Although Yuki Kirishima was undeniably, breathtakingly beautiful, Kenji only saw the faint, ghostly shadow of his late wife, his beloved Kaoru, in her features. He knew better, more painfully than anyone, that Kaoru was gone, lost to him forever. And he knew, with an aching, absolute certainty, that this strange, enigmatic woman, Yuki Kiriyuki, was not Kaoru.

Still… in a world where bizarre, reality-bending Esper abilities were a documented fact of life, perhaps the existence of other, stranger, more inexplicable things shouldn’t be so surprising. If, by some impossible, miraculous twist of fate, it was Kaoru, somehow, miraculously returned to his side—

No. Stop it, you old fool. Kenji internally, viciously chided himself, a hot flush of shame creeping up his neck. That’s a selfish, convenient, and deeply pathetic thought. You’re probably just feeling some lecherous, inappropriate impulses, you lonely old man, and you’re subconsciously, desperately trying to find some kind of noble, romantic excuse for it. Pathetic.

But… finding another partner… starting over… perhaps that particular, terrifying matter really could, and should, be moved up on his life’s long, and currently very empty agenda. When I get back home, he resolved, a new, fragile determination taking root in his weary heart, I’ll… I’ll find a decent matchmaking website, register as a member, pay the fee, and just… try chatting with some people. See what happens. What’s the worst that could happen? (He would soon find out.)

He didn’t want to face Yuki Kirishima again, not really. Not when his heart was in such a confused, vulnerable state. His current new life, as strange as it was, was… good. His work as a magical girl, as absurd as it sounded, was surprisingly fulfilling. And well-paying. As long as his secret identity wasn’t catastrophically exposed, there was probably no better, more exciting job in the entire world. His daughter’s life was also, for the most part, good. She was safe, she had Ren. He couldn’t, he shouldn’t, remain trapped, perpetually stranded in the suffocating memories of the past. He couldn’t just spend the rest of his life yearning for the one person who was gone forever. When Hana and Ren eventually, inevitably married, he would be left to live all by himself, a lonely, pathetic old man rattling around in an empty house. Perhaps… perhaps he really should start getting used to the idea of a life with someone new. Or at least, another life without being completely alone.

After spending some more time “enjoying” the great outdoors in the valley (which mostly consisted of him having a prolonged, silent, mid-life crisis by the river), the group, now tired and smelling faintly of barbecue smoke, finally returned to their respective, deceptively normal homes.

And then, with a deep, fortifying breath and the grim determination of a man about to ask for a massive, high-interest loan, Kenji Tanaka found Ren Akiyama.

“Ah, Tanaka-ojisan! Is something the matter? You look… troubled.”

“Ren, my boy, you… you’re an official Supporter now. That means you should be knowledgeable about many… diverse… things, right? All sorts of things?” Kenji asked, his voice a little sheepish, his gaze darting around nervously as if he were about to confess to a terrible crime.

Ren nodded sagely. “I suppose so, sir. I do my best to stay informed on a wide range of topics. And if there’s something I don’t happen to know offhand, I can certainly help you look up the relevant information, Tanaka-ojisan. What do you need?”

“Well, it’s just… it’s a bit embarrassing to ask, but… which… matchmaking website, in your professional opinion, do you think is a bit more… reliable? And, you know, discreet?”

Ren’s eyes went wide. His jaw dropped slightly. “A… a matchmaking website?! Sir?!”

“Shh! For God’s sake, keep your voice down, kid! Don’t let Hana hear you!” Kenji hissed, looking around furtively like a common, garden-variety thief. “I… thought about it carefully today, on the trip. And I think… I really should, as you all so helpfully suggested, start… you know… looking for a new partner. It’s an important matter, for my future well-being! So—what do you think? Any recommendations? Or am I doomed to die alone?”

Ren, to be perfectly, brutally honest, couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. The fearsome, terrifying, fiend-pulverizing Magical Girl Black… was actually, seriously planning to go on the internet to find a blind date? After all, Black, as a magical girl, had a considerable and rapidly growing number of devoted, if slightly unhinged fans now. If people, if the media, ever found out about this… he couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of massive, sensational, career-ending news story it would become. The headlines would be glorious. And terrifying.

“Tanaka-ojisan… what about… what about that Miss Kiriyuki you met today?” Ren suggested, his mind still reeling. “She seemed quite nice, didn’t she? And you two seemed to get along surprisingly well. Why don’t you just try asking her out on a date first? See what happens?” For some inexplicable reason, that woman, Yuki Kiriyuki, had left a deep, unsettling impression on him. She had an almost supernatural ability to make people instinctively feel that she was completely, utterly harmless. Which, in Ren’s experience, usually meant she was the exact opposite.

Kenji Tanaka immediately shook his head. “Absolutely not! I’m so old, and Miss Kiriyuki looks to be in her twenties at the absolute most! It’s completely, utterly inappropriate! At that point, it would be a classic case of… of an old man robbing the cradle! Do you honestly think that would look good? Think of the gossip!”

“You’re quite the realist, aren’t you, Tanaka-ojisan,” Ren sighed. “But, you know, some girls do actually like the mature, stable, sophisticated older man type. It’s a whole genre. Maybe you’d be surprisingly, even shockingly popular? After all,” he added, a thoughtful glint in his eye, “there were so many of us there today, and yet Miss Kiriyuki came up to talk to you first, out of everyone. That might not necessarily not be a sign that she has a good, perhaps even romantic, impression of you, you know.”

“Ah, Ren, my boy, you… you’ve always been so outstanding, so exceptional, you probably can’t quite understand this feeling,” Kenji said with a sad, world-weary smile. “People generally, instinctively approach someone like me, someone who just looks harmless and easy to talk to, to strike up a conversation with. You could generously call it being ‘friendly,’ or you could, more accurately, call it being ‘weak.’ In any case, it’s a feeling, a social dynamic, that a top-tier, confident young man like yourself would probably have a very hard time ever experiencing.”

Okay, that… that suddenly got a little heavy, Ren thought, a little taken aback. Wow. The Magical Girl Black mode and the Kenji Tanaka mode really do have two completely, fundamentally different, almost diametrically opposed attitudes towards life, don’t they? One is all rage and punching, the other is all despair and self-deprecation.

“Well, in that case, Tanaka-ojisan,” Ren said, his professional Supporter mode kicking in, “I’ll… help you do some proper research on the matter. And I’ll also help you create a compelling, professional-grade online profile to put up on the most promising sites. And then, if you get matched with someone promising, I can… ah… help you do a thorough, discreet background check on them, for safety purposes. Of course.”

Kenji looked at him with an expression of tearful gratitude. “Oh, would you really, Ren? That would be a huge, tremendous help! I’m really, truly grateful, my boy.”

After Kenji, looking slightly more hopeful, had left, Ren, with a grimly determined expression, immediately began his own private, top-secret investigation into one "Yuki Kirishima." He still, with a nagging certainty that went beyond mere suspicion, felt that this woman, this mysterious, beautiful woman who had appeared out of nowhere, was very, very strange. That there was a big, unanswered question, a massive problem, somewhere in her story. But after a thorough, almost obsessive and surprisingly difficult investigation, using all the resources at his disposal, he found, to his frustration and bewilderment, that Yuki Kirishima’s background was completely, spotlessly and suspiciously clean. A ghost.

Helpless, and with a heavy sigh of resignation, he could only, as promised, start researching the strange, alien world of online matchmaking websites for his future father-in-law. My life is so weird.

S-City was remarkably, almost unnaturally peaceful for the next few days; not a single fiend dared to show its ugly face. It was so peaceful, in fact, that the ever-busy Strawberry Sweetheart even went on an official, out-of-town business trip to the distant A-City. The official reason given was that she was going to meet the new-generation, up-and-coming magical girl, the fiery Magical Girl Red, and provide her with some much-needed, high-level senior mentorship and training. As for why Magical Girl Black didn’t have to go through this kind of formal, "rookie training" step? Well, that was because Magical Girl Black was, from the very beginning, ridiculously, unfairly strong. Fiends were, as a rule, brutally, efficiently obliterated the very moment they so much as showed their faces in her presence. And the higher-ups in the organization, it seemed, were very, very pleased with Black’s no-nonsense, results-oriented performance, apparently believing that this, this terrifying display of overwhelming, merciless power, was how a proper, effective magical girl should be. He’d heard, through the grapevine, that poor Magical Girl Red, in stark contrast, had faced a bitter, humiliating struggle in her own debut battle, and was now apparently growing through a painful, angst-ridden process of repeated failure and personal suffering. Sounds rough.

Kenji Tanaka, true to his word, didn’t hide the fact that he was planning to go on a blind date from his daughter, Hana. He decided, for once, to be open and honest with her.

“Dad, you’re going on a date? Seriously? Wow.” Hana’s reaction had been… surprisingly supportive. “Do you… do you need me to cast a little, temporary charm-enhancing spell on you? Just a little one?” she had offered, a mischievous glint in her eye. Hana and Kenji’s relationship, ever since the camping trip, had miraculously eased a lot. She was actually very concerned, and surprisingly enthusiastic about her father’s sudden, unexpected foray into the terrifying world of modern dating. So, she had proactively, and with a certain amount of daughterly pride, brought up the offer of magical assistance. “It’s not like, you know, that creepy hypnosis stuff you see in those weird manga, Dad. But making someone subconsciously, inexplicably have a slightly better, warmer first impression of you? That’s totally, easily doable with my current skill set.”

“No, no, that’s quite alright, Hana. Thank you for the offer, though,” Kenji had said, a warm feeling in his chest. “I think… I’d rather meet my date as my own, true, un-magically-enhanced self. For better or for worse.”

“Okay, Dad. Your loss!” Hana had shrugged. “Well, your clothes don’t look too terrible, I guess… so, yeah! Just go like that! Good luck! Don’t mess it up!”

And so, Kenji Tanaka, wearing a new, relatively stylish, and only slightly-too-tight-around-the-stomach casual shirt he had bought specifically for this momentous occasion, headed, with a profound sense of impending doom, to S-City’s largest, most intimidatingly modern shopping mall. Of course, this being the magical-girl-obsessed S-City, statues of famous, and not-so-famous magical girls could be seen practically everywhere, on every street corner. The second basement level of this particular, sprawling shopping mall even, almost absurdly, had a complete, life-sized collection of statues of all the magical girls from throughout recorded history, including, to Kenji’s slight unease, the infamous Magical Girl Crystal, and even a rather dramatic, and frankly quite terrifying statue of her monstrous, destructive Inverted form.

However, the designated meeting spot for his blind date was, thankfully, in a quiet, respectable, and hopefully fiend-free restaurant on the third floor.

Just as he was about to enter, Hana called him. “Dad! So, what kind of person did Ren pick out for your super important blind date, anyway? Is she nice? Is she pretty? Does she like gacha games?”

“Relax, Hana-chan,” Ren’s voice suddenly chimed in from the other end of the line; he was clearly with Hana. “Tanaka-ojisan is such an outstanding, wonderful man, so the person I picked for him naturally couldn’t be anything less than exceptional. She’s a twenty-eight-year-old female PhD who recently returned from studying abroad. Her family is quite well-off, I believe. Her vital stats, for your information, are: height 168 cm, weight 52 kg. She has an annual income well into the seven figures, is reportedly quite attractive, and is, by all accounts, a very cultured and refined individual. I had to, you know, use the organization’s supercomputers and run some advanced compatibility algorithms to pick her out from the thousands upon thousands of profiles in the database. She’s the optimal match.”

Hana was audibly, completely stunned. “Wait, wait, wait… what?! Are you serious, Ren?! Are you trying to make my dad become a kept man?! A sugar baby?!”

“I don’t think so, Hana-chan,” Ren said calmly. “Tanaka-ojisan is plenty outstanding on his own, you know.”

“Hey! Is your brain broken, Ren Akiyama! That’s my DAD we’re talking about! My dad! Do you honestly think I don’t know what my own dad is like?! You call him outstanding?! This woman’s qualifications are way, way too high! They’re off the charts! How could someone like that possibly be interested in my poor, old dad?! He’s going to be so crushed! His fragile, middle-aged heart won’t be able to take it!” Hana wailed.

If only you knew, Hana-chan, that your ‘poor, old dad’ is actually the terrifying, meta-defining Magical Girl Black, Ren thought with a silent, internal sigh, you’d probably be thinking that poor, overqualified PhD woman isn’t nearly good enough for him…

“Don’t worry, Hana-chan, please calm down,” Ren said soothingly. “I have many other, perhaps more suitable candidates on standby, just in case. I just thought we should try our luck with the best-qualified one first, you know? See what she’s looking for, what her demands are. We still need to understand the complex, often baffling psychology of these high-level matchmaking participants, don’t we? It’s all part of the process.”

What he said, as usual, did seem to have some twisted, logical truth to it, so Hana, still looking a little worried, didn’t pursue the matter any further. For now.

At this very moment, Kenji Tanaka, with a heart full of nervous anticipation (and a healthy dose of existential dread), was waiting for his blind date to arrive. He had even, for this special, momentous occasion, specially worn a rather handsome, if slightly ostentatious men’s watch that had cost him over forty thousand yen. For Kenji Tanaka, the man who usually bought his clothes from discount stores, this was an incredibly, sinfully expensive item. Although his current income as a magical girl was ridiculously high, his deeply ingrained, frugal spending habits, honed over decades of penny-pinching corporate servitude, hadn’t really changed all that much from the past. Old habits, especially those involving money, died hard.

Soon, his blind date, his potential future partner, appeared before him, striding towards his table with an air of supreme and intimidating confidence. It had to be said, the person Ren had picked out for him was very, very attractive. Kenji was so stunned, he almost forgot to breathe. You’re… you’re this unbelievably good-looking, and you actually need to go on blind dates? Is there no justice in this world?

“Mr. Kenji Tanaka, I presume?” the woman said, her voice cold, crisp, and utterly professional.

Kenji immediately, and perhaps a little too eagerly, nodded. “Yes! That’s me! And you are…?”

“No need for unnecessary pleasantries, Mr. Tanaka,” the woman said, cutting him off before he could even finish his sentence. She sat down opposite him, her posture perfect, her expression unreadable. “We are here for a blind date, a mutual assessment of compatibility. I am a person who, above all else, pursues efficiency. So, let’s be direct, shall we? I possess a doctorate from the prestigious XX University and am currently employed as an honorary professor at a well-regarded university here in the country. My father is the director of the XX Bureau, and my mother runs several successful international businesses. My personal, officially certified qualifications include XXX, YYY, and ZZZ… And you, Mr. Tanaka? What are your qualifications?”

The woman’s words, delivered with the rapid-fire, almost machine-gun-like precision of a corporate presentation, made Kenji freeze up completely, his mind a total blank. He awkwardly touched the expensive watch on his wrist, a desperate, subconscious attempt to bolster his own flagging sense of self-worth. And then, to his utter, crushing horror, he saw it: the brief, almost imperceptible flash of pure, unadulterated disdain in her sharp, intelligent eyes as she glanced down at his precious, forty-thousand-yen watch. Clearly, the watch he considered to be a high-class, luxury item was, in her impossibly high-class, probably-bathes-in-champagne eyes, utterly, completely, laughably shabby. Pathetic.

Seeing him utterly speechless, completely unable to say a single, coherent word in his own defense, the woman shook her head with a small, pitying sigh. “I really, truly don’t understand how the matchmaking platform’s algorithm could have possibly matched me with you, Mr. Tanaka. It must be a bug in their system. But,” she continued, her voice now a little softer, adopting an air of magnanimous, patronizing kindness, “Mr. Tanaka, I feel, with all due respect, that you may not be quite… outstanding enough for my particular requirements. Hmm, perhaps, if you’d like, we can just… be friends—?” She put on a benevolent expression, as if she were bestowing a great, charitable honor upon him. And then… just as Kenji was about to die of pure, unadulterated humiliation…

“Mr. Tanaka!”

A young woman’s sweet, familiar voice suddenly called out from behind Kenji. He turned his head, his heart lurching with a mixture of hope and dread, and he saw the familiar yet strangely unfamiliar, and currently very welcome face of Yuki Kirishima. “Yuki? What… what are you doing here?” he stammered, completely bewildered.

“Oh, I was just coming here to get a bite to eat…” she said, her eyes wide with feigned innocence. Then, she looked at Kenji, and then at his stunned blind date, and her expression instantly shifted, as if she had just, in that very moment, understood the entire, tragic situation. A sly, almost wicked smile flashed across her face for a microsecond, so quickly that Kenji almost missed it. And then, just as quickly, her expression completely transformed into one of profound, heart-wrenching, theatrical pitifulness. “Oh, Mr. Tanaka! Are… are you really going to date… another girl?!” she cried, her voice trembling with unshed tears.

She looked as if she were about to burst into a torrent of tiny, precious, pearl-like tears at any second. “I… I already showed you my true, sincere good intentions like that, back at the campsite, Mr. Tanaka,” she whimpered, her lower lip trembling pathetically. “And yet… and yet you’d rather have a cold, impersonal blind date with a woman like this… than be with me? Is that it? Is my love not enough for you?”

The blind date, the PhD, the woman of culture and refinement, was instantly, royally, and quite vocally angered. Her brow furrowed, her eyes flashing with a competitive fire. “What, exactly, do you mean, you little tramp, a woman like this? Who do you think you are? What’s your status? I’m the one who is currently on an official, pre-arranged blind date with Mr. Kenji Tanaka, not you! What kind of ridiculous, melodramatic trouble are you trying to stir up here?!” People, Kenji knew from long, painful experience, are like that. The very thing you look down on, the very thing you are about to discard, the moment someone else tries to snatch it away, you suddenly, irrationally, can’t bear to part with it. A primal, almost childish sense of competition instantly, inevitably, emerged.

“Now, now, Miss, please, calm down…” Kenji began, trying to de-escalate the rapidly deteriorating situation.

“KENJI TANAKA!” the woman shrieked, her voice now several octaves higher, attracting the attention of the entire restaurant. “You come on a blind date with me, and you actually have the gall to bring another woman along with you?! What kind of despicable, two-timing person are you?! What is your social credit score?! I am going to report you on the matchmaking website immediately! This is blatant, undeniable fraud! I’ll sue you for emotional damages!” The woman seemed quite, quite agitated now.

Kenji Tanaka was utterly, completely speechless. His life was a farce.

And then, with a soft, delicate motion, Yuki Kirishima suddenly, possessively wrapped her arms around Kenji Tanaka’s arm, clinging to him like a lifeline. “Oh, Mr. Tanaka, she’s so scary! So loud!” she whimpered, pressing her face against his shoulder. “You really can’t get too close to this kind of unstable woman. Her emotions are completely, dangerously unstable. She’ll definitely, absolutely cause you nothing but trouble in the future. If it were me, on the other hand,” she added, her voice a soft, alluring purr, “I would definitely, absolutely, always treat my dear Mr. Tanaka with the utmost gentleness and care. Always.”