Emily’s phone started buzzing with messages and missed calls the moment she exited the elevator back into Michiko’s living room, and she could hear loud, insistent knocking on the front door.

  “What the hell, Emily!” was the first thing that Michelle yelled when Emily threw open the door, followed by a tight embrace. Michelle stepped back and examined her friend, her face twisted with concern, before peering into the dim hallway behind her. “Are you okay? It’s been almost an hour! Bloody hell, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “I’m sorry, I’m fine, really,” Emily breathlessly replied.

  Beside Michelle was Lachlan, his mouth hanging open slightly, phone pressed against his ear. Emily heard him mumble an apology in Japanese, and then hang up.

  “I was literally in the middle of trying to explain to the police that you had been abducted by a former Space Dragons actress,” Lachlan said, his voice hoarse. “I’m pretty sure they thought I was crazy.”

  “What about Ansel?” Emily asked.

  “Down the side of the house, seeing if he can break in,” Lachlan replied. “Christ, Emily, way to answer your phone! What happened in there?”

  Just then, Ansel came trotting up, his pale forehead beaded with sweat. “Emily! Are you all right?” he said, joining the chorus of concern.

  Emily swallowed, and glanced behind her. Her friends followed her gaze to Michiko, who silently leaned against the wall of the hallway. She had found a new cigarette, Emily noticed, though thankfully she didn’t seem to have yet found a new sake bottle.

  Emily turned back to her friends and their worried faces.

  “You guys need to come in here and… and see something.”

  “Um, Emily, I think maybe we should go for a walk. Get some fresh air,” Michelle slowly replied, emphasizing the last two words, and then lowering her voice. “Somewhere we can talk? Maybe, ah, debrief what just happened?”

  Emily leaned close to Michelle, squeezing her friend’s arm. “Please. You have to trust me.” She turned to look at Lachlan and Ansel in turn. “You all need to see this. Now.”

  Her friends exchanged troubled glances. Emily suddenly imagined how she looked: shell-shocked, pale, clammy, with Michiko lurking behind her like some sort of serial killer. She didn’t know what else to do; she had to show them. They’d never come in if she tried to explain what had just happened—it sounded justifiably insane, even to her.

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  She noticed a minute shake of Lachlan’s head; noticed Ansel as he began to shuffle closer to her, slowly interposing himself between her and the open door. Felt Michelle’s hand tighten around her arm.

  Then Miss Yama ran outside, meowed, and rubbed herself against Michelle’s legs.

  “Oh, a cat,” Michelle whispered, blinking. She let go of Emily’s arm and leaned down, rubbing Miss Yama behind the ears to a contented purring. Emily could feel a shift in attitude, her three friends glancing between the contented feline, Emily, and the lurking figure of Michiko behind her, and she could follow their thoughts: She has a pet cat. A quite pretty one too. Maybe she isn’t a serial killer after all. Of course, Emily imagined that plenty of serial killers had pets, especially cats, but there was something about Miss Yama that seemed to dispel those concerns.

  “I guess we could come in,” Michelle said reluctantly, watching Miss Yama swish her tail and retreat back into the house with a chorus of meows. Ansel shrugged his tall shoulders, and Lachlan sighed in exasperation, with a look that clearly said really? “But just for a minute,” Michelle added sternly.

  Emily’s friends followed her inside, dutifully taking off their shoes in the entryway, Ansel’s black boots, Lachlan’s scuffed tennis shoes, and Michelle’s pristine runners joining Emily’s battered Dr. Martens.

  “Dōzo yoroshiku onegai shimasu,” Michelle said, giving an uncertain bow to Michiko.

  Michiko stared at Michelle for a moment, then at Lachlan, then at Ansel. She finally turned her attention back to Emily. “You’re sure you want to show them? Not let them live in ignorance for a few more hours?”

  The thought hadn’t really occurred to Emily. She had been so frantic at what Michiko had told her that she hadn’t really paused to consider what she was asking her friends to do. Which was—what, exactly? Pilot the other Space Dragons? Save the world? The thought was suddenly, laughably absurd. But the idea that Space Dragons the show had any semblance to reality had been absurd less than an hour ago.

  She gave Michiko a quick nod.

  “Just warning you,” Michiko mumbled. “I had friends like these too, once. Better ones. And look what happened to me, and to them.” She sighed and shook her head. “Well. Follow me.”

  Dutifully, Emily and her three friends trooped into the small living room behind Michiko.

  Michiko stopped short, as if remembering something. “Hold on,” she muttered. She disappeared into the cramped kitchen, and Emily heard a cabinet door open, followed by the dull sounds of rummaging.

  Michiko returned a moment later with a plastic grocery bag. Emily felt her stomach twist. Through the thin plastic, she could make out the outlines of four blunt, brightly colored objects.

  Without fanfare, Michiko pulled the Pink Dragon’s wand from her pocket.

  “Isn’t that the—” Ansel began, but his recognition of the Pink Dragon wand was interrupted by a heavy click.

  This time Emily wasn’t surprised, but her friends each took a stumbling step backward as the china cabinet slid apart, revealing the transparent, pink-lit elevator. Miss Yama meowed, overjoyed for a second excursion in one day, and immediately ran inside.

  “Whoa,” Lachlan whispered, his freckles glowing with a blush of surprise.

  “Yeah, whoa,” Ansel agreed.

  Michelle looked between Emily and Michiko. “What is this?” she asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  Emily swallowed.

  “It’s the elevator to the Space Dragons.”