As the two girls spent more time together, the carefully maintained social fronts they wore around acquaintances started to slip away—and their real personalities began to show.
Put another way: the more comfortable you get with someone, the more you let yourself go.
The icy, calculating, socially surgical goddess Maya had built up from her memories of her past life was nowhere to be found. The real Natalie had her moments of calculated maneuvering, sure—but it was the kind Maya didn't mind at all, because she couldn't exactly claim innocence herself. How many of her own "small moves" had she pulled over the years, just to get ahead and make life a little easier?
Not everyone got to grow up in a fairy tale, living in a prince's castle, happy ever after.
In Maya's estimation, Natalie was sharp, driven, and self-aware. While the Upper East Side social circuit girls her age were already deep into cocktail parties and networking brunches, Natalie was grinding on set and planning her future. That was worth respecting.
Of course, Maya could afford to be generous in her assessment precisely because the two of them had no competing interests. If Maya had been aiming for a career in film, Natalie would have been her biggest obstacle overnight.
After lunch, the two of them strolled along the street, walking off their meal while searching for a theater.
The blocks around West 56th Street, while still technically on the west side of Manhattan and not far from Hell's Kitchen, were a world apart in character. The fifties were home to many movie stars who lived within a short walk of Central Park, with all the quality of life that implied.
Which meant there were a lot of old repertory cinemas in the neighborhood. Not all of them ran Star Wars every day, though.
They wandered all the way to the corner before finally finding a theater currently running a marathon of the original Star Wars trilogy. By the time they got inside, A New Hope was nearly over.
Maya didn't mind. She'd seen the original trilogy in her past life—she just needed a refresher on the broad strokes. A quick skim was enough.
Natalie was a different story. She hadn't seen the old trilogy either, but with her entire Hollywood future potentially riding on it, she was completely locked in—sitting upright, eyes glued to the screen, popcorn untouched.
Maya, on the other hand, was watching with half her attention elsewhere, occasionally eating a kernel and taking a sip of Coke. She wasn't slacking—the information density just wasn't enough to fully occupy her mind. It was like how future generations would watch historical dramas on 2x speed, or how certain legendary figures could type 3,000 characters an hour while watching a movie at the same time.
Natalie was sitting right next to her, though. Using any ninjutsu in a dark movie theater was obviously not an option—even the shadow technique would be a solid black mass, and if Natalie saw that, she'd have a breakdown.
Maya stretched in her seat and did a casual sweep of the room.
The theater was tiny—maybe a few dozen seats total—and right now, only three people were in it. Herself and Natalie, and a young woman with short, chin-length blonde hair sitting two rows ahead.
Maya found herself thinking of a certain director's famous line from Kung Fu Hustle: "It's Sunday night. The cinema is completely empty. I would never go into the film business."
She snorted.
(PS: It's Feng's line in Kung Fu Hustle.)
Which was a mistake.
The girl in the front row turned around immediately, staring at Maya with visible fury. Her cheeks were streaked with dried tears and her eyes were puffy and red—but the sheer intensity in her glare made itself felt. Even Natalie, sitting beside Maya, cringed and tugged at her sleeve.
Maya blinked.
It was the scene where Darth Vader tells Luke that he is his father.
Seriously? Over that line?
Being a transmigrator from a completely different cultural context, Maya had never quite understood how "I am your father" became the most iconic line in Hollywood history. The girl in front of them was practically sobbing over it. She had such a strong, capable look about her—short hair, an assured jaw, the kind of face that projected toughness—and yet here she was, apparently this sensitive. It didn't quite match the image.
Then again, it wasn't just American girls who got like this.
Maya had seen entire theaters weep when Thanos beat down Earth's mightiest heroes. She'd been the one sitting there with goosebumps from secondhand embarrassment.
Anyway. Maya offered the girl an apologetic smile.
The girl—probably seeing a small kid who clearly just didn't get it—apparently decided to let it go.
Maya patted Natalie's hand reassuringly, then quietly divided her attention and began cycling through her Hansen Sage Ninja breathing technique.
The second and third films combined ran nearly five hours. By the time they were done, Maya had cycled her chakra back to full several times over—since refining chakra was energy-intensive and couldn't be sustained for long, unlike cultivation in the immortal arts. Natalie and the blonde girl, apart from one bathroom break between films, watched straight through without moving.
Natalie at least had professional motivation—she needed to understand the source material to land the role. But the other girl? She was clearly an adult, which meant she'd almost certainly seen these films when they first came out. The fact that she was still this invested...
Real ride-or-die fan energy, right there.
Once the films ended, it was nearly seven in the evening. Maya had been planning to find somewhere for dinner, but Natalie grabbed her arm and dragged her upstairs to the theater's merchandise floor, insisting on buying a few Star Wars collectibles.
Maya picked up one of the replica lightsabers and pressed the button. The red plastic blade hummed to life with a satisfying glow. She held it up in front of the mirror the shop owner had helpfully positioned and slashed it around a few times, going "Ha! Hut! Hyah!"
...She looked absolutely ridiculous.
In the end, Maya walked out with two lightsabers: one pure white—Grand Master Yoda's—and one crimson—Darth Vader's. The shop owner had been so enthusiastic that she felt obligated to buy something. It absolutely had nothing to do with her thinking they were incredibly cool and wanting to take them home to practice with.
Absolutely not.
Natalie also bought two, but hers were both Jedi—one Luke Skywalker's, one Obi-Wan Kenobi's. The franchise heartthrobs.
At the register, Maya ran into the short-haired blonde from the theater. She was holding an enormous bag—lightsabers, Jedi robes, and most impressively of all, a model of the Death Star.
Maya had clocked its price tag earlier. A box of pre-cut wood pieces: $99.
Ninety-nine dollars. For parts. To build yourself. Talk about getting ripped off.
Maya had privately thought only an idiot would buy it. She had not expected to meet one in person within the hour. She was now starting to understand how this shop's owner was clearly living very comfortably despite only drawing three people into his theater on a Sunday.
For the record: that kid in Spider-Man: Homecoming who had a Death Star model? Definitely not broke. No broke high schooler in the world plays with Death Star models. The director really miscalculated that one—a high schooler in the 2010s still obsessed with 1980s toys. It was like putting a Gen Z kid in flared jeans and sending him to school—nobody's calling you retro. They're calling you something else entirely.
Not that the author has any room to talk. I owned several pairs of flared jeans in middle school, and my classmates were very impressed. Whether any of you 2000s kids can say the same, I genuinely don't know.
Anyway—Maya stood in the line behind her, watching as the blonde girl counted out her bills and then her coins.
The shop owner shook his head.
He reached over and, with considerable effort, pried the Darth Vader helmet out of her hands.
As a bystander in this whole scene, even Maya felt a twinge of secondhand embarrassment. Girl, you spent every last coin on merch—and it's not even the end of the month yet. What are you going to eat for the rest of March?