Not going to help; Hitomom was probably the muggle friend and knows that it's likely still pretty traumatizing. It's a good addition, however.
I would prefer leaving that for later, a "We were actually thinking about reading you in anyway" after we've begun to address her fundamental concerns and given her an overview of our ideals and our plans, both local and grand.
We did say that coming here was our idea.
Lesbians strongly tend towards having short fingernails, for reasons that should be obvious after a little thought.
As far as evidence goes for the two of us being in charge.
I'd say it's pretty clear how she got the impression we were in charge.
Hmmm... I'm not sure about just booting Mami out of the conversation to begin with.
I think so, but I'm not sure we can get Mami out. Maybe she can speak brainmail?
All these but also checking that "what she knows" includes actual magic and not an assumption of "kids playing games" in the first place. 'I was a teenager once too, you know' really doesn't sound right for "I know about magic and Kyubey".
Ideally I would not. This is the perfect time to read her in whether she actually knows anything or not, and her phrasing gives us plausible deniability.
I would really rather we had Hitomi's permission before single-handedly upending her mother's entire worldview?
Orrrrr it might have been that Mami and Sabrina were holding hands?
I don't think asking a child's permission to talk to their parents is strictly necessary. If anything permission normally flows in the opposite direction. With Sayaka and to a lesser extent Madoka it affects their daily lives because they're directly involved, but Hitomi is a self-described side character.
Or she saw our soul gems in ring form and maybe the distinctive painted fingernail too?
*ponders*
Yes, that's what cued her in to us being magical girls, but the reason why Sabrina might think that her looking at their hands would be "GIRLS CAN'T LOVE GIRLS" is because they were holding hands, not because they had short fingernails.
And yet going directly over your friend's head to possibly destroy her social circle is still a dick move. We aren't a teacher or adult voicing our concerns, we're a friend who would be attempting to reassure the parent about something - and if she doesn't know about it, causing the concern in the first place. I'm struggling to find a reading where doing what you're suggesting isn't just being a jerk.
A long enough amount of time had passed in the chapter that I had forgotten they were holding hands - and it seems a bit odd to me if they were still holding hands through the entire scene (walking the whole way, entering/exiting an elevator, entering someone's home, greeting someone for the first time - that's a lot of doorways etc.!) So it didn't occur to me as an explanation, and the only thing I could think of that could possibly identify someone as a lesbian from just their hands was the fingernails thing (or a tattoo saying 'I <3 girls' I guess, and I feel like that would have come up already). You're probably right though.
Completely and totally unbelievable. Your point would be valid IRL, but in this context and given what we've seen from her, it is absolutely the case that she knows about Kyubey. The biggest argument is that she recognized the rings and the fingernails. Teenage LARP communities do not maintain flawlessly consistent settings and equipment literally across generations, and teenagers in general do not have individually customized high-quality jewelry and difficult and unusual tattoos in configurations matching their jewelry. I mean, think about how hard it'd be to make a tattoo work underneath your fingernail - you'd have to get rid of the nail, then get the tattoo into the nailbed, then fix it there with the nailbed being one of the higher-rate-of-change bits of the body, and then you'd have had to hide that operation not just from the parents but the entire practice from the world, all without the benefit of kyubey's memory fuckery. And remember that that entire tradition would have to be consistent and stable enough to remain in operation after thirty years, enough that she can recognize it at a glance. Like, imagine that the D&D community had a secret tradition of getting plastic surgery to get pointy ears or dwarven beards along with jewelry appropriate for their characters. And then that's supposed to remain a secret somehow? On a teenager's allowance? No, she is absolutely read in on magic.
