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Much like true love, the course of translation had never run smoothly for anybody. Anyone who said otherwise, in Murikabushi’s opinion, fell into one of three categories: people who didn’t understand what they were talking about and probably didn’t respect the art of writing; people suffering from delusions about their own skill with language (give or take only having experienced fairly simple, straightforward sentences, all of your “Sorry, I don’t speak English”es and “I enjoy the theatre”); and people who were liars. Regardless of which category someone fell into, they couldn’t be trusted and neither could their alleged opinions.

Magical girl homeworld things couldn’t be trusted either, apparently. Or at least, it seemed as much to Murikabushi, sitting crosslegged beneath a red-violet-leafed tree in one of the capital city’s public gardens, the ones that Airan and his lover had had built after the old queen and some of his worst nobles had been deposed and executed. Open in Murikabushi’s lap sat one haphazardly assembled book that he’d found backstage at a hole-in-the-wall little theatre a few blocks away, and one college-ruled, spiral-bound, five-subject notebook full of increasingly messy English renderings of that book’s contents and notes about how he’d chosen to translate things. A ballpoint pen scratched against the notebook’s paper, distinctly out of time with Muri’s under-his-breath singing.

“This way, you’ll know what your place is. This way, you can’t cross the line,” he half-murmured, going over the lyrics more than anything, trying to commit them to memory as much as he could manage while also puzzling over the text in his lap. “This way, when all is over, you’ll keep yours and I’ll keep mine.…”

Maybe not Murikabushi’s first choice, on his own time. But, well, it wasn’t about himself or his own preferences right now. He hadn’t really paid attention to Epic: The Musical while it had been coming out. Had Jorge Rivera-Herrans chosen to adapt the Iliad, then there would’ve been more of interest to Murikabushi, but he’d gone for the Odyssey instead and, per everything Kiyoshi had seen and heard, Rivera-Herrans hadn’t really honored the musical theatre tradition of giving the women in his show Big Diva Solos, the way that they deserved.

Even so, Elijah had struggled with finding a partner to play Athena for a number that he wanted to do. Maybe they weren’t officially drag siblings anymore. After all, Kiyoshi hesitated to clear up that relation with Elijah, despite Yuki urging him to have pity on his QPP and tell Elijah that he used to be Reiki so Elijah could stop having a massive Pepe Sylvia moment all over some conspiracy board or other. Part of Kiyoshi really wanted to do that. Yet, too many potential dangers stood out in his mind, and thinking about those made him loath to act.

But even if Kiyoshi didn’t know for certain that he could trust Elijah not to have gotten suckered into the Negaverse, how could he turn his ex-brother away when none of the other queens at Scandals were signing up to help with a number that clearly meant a lot to him?

Even without really performing right now, the song made something snag in Murikabushi’s throat. Made his hand pause in its work, sagging onto the notebook’s paper. Somebody he knew, or at least somebody that he used to know, deserved to hear words like these. Maybe not these words exactly, Murikabushi could concede, but something similar enough, the way that he’d promised Elior he would do as soon as he could manage finding the little b*****d.

“Not that it would even ******** matter to him.…” Murikabushi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he let his other hand slip around the notebook paper. “Why would it? He’s not exactly hard up for Boys. Losing access to one he never really had in the first place doesn’t mean anything.”

The more Murikabushi lied to himself like that? The more he told himself that Faustite likely hadn’t felt anything about him anyway, besides “general persistent desire for Boy as long as Albite or Heliodor isn’t around to be more preferable” and “obvious annoyance (fair enough, Muri talked more than his fair share and was, he knew all too well, something of an acquired taste for everybody, even people who felt like he was attractive on some level)”? The more he desperately wanted to believe them, and yearned to throw something at the nearest wall as though that would help him manage that.

Repetition, unfortunately, didn’t make the lies more true.

A soft, plaintive sound above him got Murikabushi to look up from his work. Dimly, he thought it sounded like Fang, but of course, it wasn’t. Murikabushi had come here alone tonight, so Fang couldn’t be making any noise at him now.

One of the dragon-winged wolves that he, Fang, and Soya-hime had found could do that, though. Sat in front of him, with their eyes sparkling as if they expected a treat for a trick well performed, the wolf echoed its previous sound. Like all the others of their kind, the wolf didn’t show any fear in getting close to Murikabushi. As if being this world’s senshi gave him some connection to all the wildlife here.

As he held out his right hand for the good boy to sniff, then (with permission) gently ruffled it over the fur around the back of his neck, Murikabushi let his left hand drag even more across the notebook paper. Thank whoever or whatever designed senshi fukus for blessing him with his half-finger gloves, honestly. Part of Murikabushi shuddered to think of how much the ink might have smudged onto the pinky finger side of his hand by now, rubbing off because he hadn’t exactly prioritized proper hand and wrist positioning while he worked. More than anything else, he prioritized accuracy and accessibility in how he rendered the English version of the text. Whether or not he made a mess of his hand sounded like Future Muri’s problem.

“You’re right that I shouldn’t even be thinking about him, Precious,” Muri said, giving the beautiful beast a fond smile. “There’s a good story here in front of me, right? I—listen, I don’t even know what happened to make it so I could read all this? I’ve looked at texts and things before, but last time I came up here, suddenly, the text I found in whatever language this is? They all made sense in a way they didn’t do before.”

The wolf didn’t offer any suggestion that they understood a damn thing Murikabushi was saying. But eh, that was fair enough, probably. They were only a wolf, after all. Human or humanoid-ish aliens and their affairs didn’t make a difference to the poor baby. What mattered to them more was, apparently, the fact that Muri had welcomed them in getting close to him: with an exceptionally dramatic huff, the wolf flopped into his lap, then squirmed against his thigh a little as they got comfy.

Dutifully, Murikabushi dropped his hand to the back of the wolf’s neck again. “What, do you want to know about what I’m working on? It’s a present for a friend of mine.”

Specifically, for Hybris.

The book Murikabushi was working through right now could more accurately be called a bunch of handwritten pages bound together after the fact, rather than having been laid out and printed with deliberate intent. Somewhat fitting, he guessed, since this Most Excellent Comedy of Jacques Maizun, Private Detective, and the Mystery of the Black Diamond Affair was clearly a script, meant for production on the stage. Making the script easier for actors to handle made sense.

More to the point, the text being that of a play meant that Murikabushi had, in his mind, a short list of people who might enjoy it even half as well as he did.

“It’s a ridiculous story, honestly,” he told the wolf. “So, you have this wealthy noble’s daughter, right? She’s scheming to steal her family’s seat in the senate from her cousin, even though his father is older than her father. And there’s this hapless idiot who flunked out of training to be a priest to—uh? One of the gods from around here? I might have to ask Kaifeng if he’s had any memories about his predecessor that might explain things, since the Kaifeng of the Silver Millennium used to follow some of the Murikabushian gods? But our hapless love interest boy, he’s all mixed up in some kind of shady dealings, even criminal ones, trying to advance his standing enough that he and Miss Diva can be together.

“Then, on the morning of his baby brother’s wedding, an important priest turns up dead and everything points toward our boy. It’s all so messy, right? I love it so much, and—I don’t know how any of this language thing works? Or why I can tell that some of the language choices here aren’t entirely straightforward, but……”

As he trailed off, Murikabushi looked up from his work and from the wolf. Again, something made the breath snag in his throat, but not from emotional upset.

Across the green, beside a nearby bush, there sat a little white rabbit. Ostensibly not noticing Murikabushi at all, the bunny went to town on something that he had not seen on his world before: a strawberry—or at least a red berry that distinctly resembled an Earth strawberry. Had Murikabushi brought any with him from home, he might have understood its presence. He might have dropped it? But he hadn’t brought any food with him tonight.

In light of that, the strawberry had to mean……

“That grew here,” Murikabushi whispered, his eyes going wide with wonder. Still half-breathless, he looked up at the leaves, at the sky. “Food is growing here again.”