EPILOGUE
Students on the way home from school packed into the fast-food joint. Among the crowd, two high school girls sat across from each other. One rested her chin on her hands, apparently bored, while the other swiped through her smartphone with practiced hands.
“It’s tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“You mean when Koyuki comes back?”
“Yeah.”
“According to her e-mails, it’s tomorrow.”
“It’s been two weeks since she left that letter and disappeared. Back in middle school, I never expected her to run away from home. She didn’t seem like the type.”
“Yeah, I totally agree, Yocchan. And she got worse when we started high school… Well, not really. But she got kinda crazy.”
“Her parents were so worried… Like, they were just glad she came home. Uh, what are you doing?”
“Reading up on magical-girl sightings.”
“Suuumiii, are you still going on about that?”
“Look, I know you don’t see them as much anymore, but they’re still there. Koyuki loved them, too, remember? So I was going to get all the sightings for when she comes back.”
“Don’t give me that. That… what was it, Magical Girl Raising Project? That game had to shut down because of some major bug. It was all over the news when their stock plummeted. Magical girls are, like, done.”
“They’re not ‘done,’ stupid! There are still sightings! See? Right here. This one-eyed, one-armed girl in black saved someone.”
“She looks more like the grim reaper.”
“And there was that thing in the Middle East.”
“Oh yeah! Everyone had just given up on stopping all that terrible stuff going on because China and Russia wouldn’t let other countries interfere…”
“… And then the revolutionaries caught the president and his officials and overthrew the government! They say the person who caught the officials and brought in the revolutionaries was just one girl her own. ‘Like the wind, the girl in white appeared,’ or so they say. It had to be a magical girl!”
“Or a tall tale or an urban legend. What she did was basically terrorism.”
“That’s beside the point! Magical girls are not done! Not in the least. I bet Koyuki will say the same thing once she gets back.”
The sky was so blue, heaven so close. The sun seemed to be shining right next to her, and the clouds streamed boldly toward the horizon. Miles above the earth, there was nothing but clouds, sky, and sun.
Her fantastic journeys through the sky, relaxing against the tail of a jumbo jet, had begun after she’d applied to become a master. The battering of the wind, the freezing temperature, the roaring engines—none of it bothered her.
Free rides… no, I guess free flights, since I’m on an airplane. She corrected herself internally. As she could not fly, Snow White always used this method to travel internationally.
Normally, magical girls stuck to helping people in their small, town-sized territories and avoided straying too far from that. The Magical Kingdom would probably frown on interfering in international affairs according to her own morals.
After learning how out of control Fav and Cranberry’s selection tests had been, the Magical Kingdom had immediately dispatched special envoys to Earth. They had apologized profusely to Snow White and Ripple, made them official magical girls, and granted them special rights as honorary citizens of the Magical Kingdom.
Snow White wasn’t sure whether she was grateful for that or not. Whatever the case, the Magical Kingdom was having a little trouble keeping a handle on their selfish do-gooders who got angry at what they saw in the newspaper and set off for foreign lands.
She turned the master phone on, opened the mailbox, and saw she had an e-mail from her director in the Magical Kingdom.
Magical girls are more than capable of becoming assassins and terrorists, which is why we of the Magical Girl Division require self-control. Your dedication to upholding morality should allow you to suppress personal impulses. In fact—
She stopped reading there and deleted the e-mail.
Snow White knew all too well that small kindnesses would change nothing. Just watching from the sidelines would never bring about progress. Leaving it to others would never solve anything. She’d learned all this the hard way, which was exactly why she was trying to change. She wanted to change.
The magical girls she had known would have done the same. Up until their deaths… and even at death’s door, they remained true to themselves.
Another e-mail popped up.
Memory alteration has been detected on testing grounds B-7098 and B-7243. Accidents appear to have caused deaths in both cases. Furthermore, they are caused by the same master. Said master will be holding a selection test soon on testing ground B-7511—
Unlike Snow White, who was a lone wolf, Ripple knew many people in various departments. They were more like fans than friends, though. How exactly that had come to be she didn’t know, but Ripple was cute and cool, so it was probably inevitable, Snow White thought to herself.
“Don’t regret not acting next time. Act before you regret it,” she whispered to no one in particular.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login