Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 10 - Chapter 5

The Great Leader’s Distress

The group of magical girls that Ruler commanded, also known as Team Ruler, occupied a ruined temple in N City’s Monzenmachi region called Ouketsuji as their gathering place. It had no antitheft devices or security service, and kids didn’t even dare each other to come out here at night. In fact, there were rarely even any cars or pedestrians passing by, so it was an appropriate place for magical girls to make their base. However, some repairs were being done on the gas pipes in the neighborhood at the moment, so there were a few more passersby than normal.

If Ruler had been the only one there, this would have posed no problem, but her underlings were careless and might be seen by regular people. Any commotion they caused could potentially prevent them from using Ouketsuji for an indefinite time, and Ruler wanted to avoid that at all costs. When you had incompetent subordinates, you needed even more scrupulous risk management.

The construction on the gas pipes wouldn’t go on forever. They could just go back to using Ouketsuji as their hideout once it was done. Until then, it would be best to meet in other deserted places around town as they went about their magical-girl activities.

Ruler ignored the two angels’ complaint—that without their hideout, they couldn’t play video games.

The meeting place on that day was the Muradana building on Kinote Street in Monzenmachi. There were more passersby compared to the Ouketsuji area, but it wasn’t such a fancy building that it had nighttime management on patrol. Ruler had obtained this information from the chat, where Top Speed had commented that the roof of the building was a perfect place for magical girls to meet up. The wise could also learn from fools.

Ruler raced from roof to roof, from high-rise to high-rise, flying to the top of the Muradana building. The roof was dead silent, and she found it was indeed true that here, you wouldn’t be bothered by the eyes of others. Ruler pulled her magical phone out of her pocket and checked the time—right on schedule. She breathed out, breathed in, and muttered, “Fools,” then tucked her magical phone away. She could understand if one or two people showed up late. But not one single person, except for the leader, making it on time to the meeting—that was inexcusable.

Muttering complaints about the character, motivation, proficiency, and other qualities of her subordinates, Ruler did a full circle of the roof, but even so, not a single one of them appeared. She raised her scepter at the iron fence, ready to swing it down, but then restrained herself. Smashing the fence wouldn’t get her anywhere. She turned the other way and swung the scepter down into empty air, but it didn’t make her feel better. In fact, she was even more irked.

“Aghh, good grief! Why isn’t anyone coming?!”

There was no one to reply. Pulling out her magical phone, she checked the time: Five minutes had passed since their meeting time. She launched her schedule app and checked the place recorded there. It was the Muradana building. There was no mistaking it. So then why had nobody come?

Ruler did another three circles of the roof, and next circled three more times the other way. She watched the dreary, cloudy sky to see if perhaps the angels were coming and checked the street below to see if perhaps Tama or Swim Swim was coming, but not a single one of them appeared. Giving in to her welling anger and irritation, she stomped on the roof, and it made a nasty creaking sound, so she stopped in a panic.

Ruler leaned against the iron fence and gritted her teeth. To make someone wait was to consume wastefully the time of the one you made wait. Time was a limited resource, a finite material, a valuable commodity. It wasn’t something you could just go wasting. But even if she were to go, “Who cares about those idiots” and leave, it wasn’t as if that would bring back her wasted time. Maybe, if she waited another minute, or another thirty seconds, the people she was waiting for would come.

Should she contact them on their magical phones? But if they knew their leader was waiting for them impatiently, it would hurt her dignity. That wasn’t good. The subordinates should be the ones to call when they were late, not the leader.

Heaving a sigh, she looked down upon the street below. With the excellent vision of a magical girl, even from the roof of a tall building, she could clearly see what was going on at ground level. The young school-age guy coming out of the convenience store was carrying something steaming in a plastic bag—probably oden. The middle-aged corporate-looking man who came out next wasn’t holding anything. Maybe the store didn’t have what he was searching for, or maybe he’d gone in just to browse the magazines. Next to exit the convenience store was a girl around high school age. She held a thin magazine in her right hand. Ruler couldn’t understand why someone would expressly refuse a plastic bag and walk around with a loose magazine. It was a local magazine that was distributed for free, and plain in appearance. It had been in publication ever since Ruler—Sanae Mokuou—had been a student, but it was nothing but ads and had little to read, and even when it did include some feature, it was all stuff that was functionally ads, like, “Check these places out for solo drinks,” or “The N City Ramen Shop special.”

Why was that girl walking around with that sort of magazine when she was at the most exciting time of her life? Making good use of her ability to see far, Ruler rudely stared at the girl.

Maybe there was a feature that had drawn the girl’s interest. Ruler tried to get a look at the article in the magazine, but the girl had already grown too distant. Magical-girl vision was high-performance, but it wasn’t all-powerful. The girl turned at the intersection and went out of sight.

“Hmph.” Ruler snorted, then checked her magical phone again. Ten minutes had passed.

Whenever you were waiting, whenever you were bored, worthless moments, moments like this—once some trivial thing caught your attention, if you didn’t go check, it would drive you crazy. Had there been something in that free paper that had drawn the girl? Or was she just a unique person?

Ruler leaped down from the roof into the alley, bouncing off the frame of a second-floor window and then a first-floor sill in succession to break her fall, somersaulted midair, then landed on the stair by the back entrance before detransforming back into her human form, Sanae Mokuou. She’d transformed at home, so she was still in her lounge clothes, but it wasn’t strange to go to the convenience store dressed like that. She figured the only problem was that it was a little cold. Once she was in the convenience store, that problem would go away.

Adjusting the collar and sleeves of her sweater, she stuck one hand into the stomach pocket to check for her wallet. There was enough in it to buy a magazine. With a nonchalant expression on her face, Sanae stepped out from the back alley onto the main street. The convenience store was right ahead. Cutting across the street, she put her hand on the convenience store door and casually looked back—and when she saw what was behind her, she went into a coughing fit.

A group of four girls stood at the entrance to the tall building, chatting under the awning: twin angels, a girl with a dog-ear hood, and a girl in a white school swimsuit. No way—had they interpreted “meeting at the building” not as “meeting on the roof of the building” but as “meeting right in front of the building”? They couldn’t understand unless she laid out every single detail for them? Just how stupid were they?

Though it was late in the evening, there were regular people going down the street, like normal. Some of them pointed at the four girls, raising their phones at them. Furious, Ruler was about to approach them when she remembered she wasn’t transformed. She couldn’t let them know her true identity.

She organized in her head what she should do. First she would go transform someplace where nobody was looking. Then she would contact the girls on their magical phones to summon them to the roof of the building and yell at them, “What the heck are you doing, standing there talking where regular people can see?!” and scold them for having thought they were meeting in front of the building instead of on the roof, and then further take them to task for their regular carelessness and finer errors, finishing off by telling them that such small accumulated faults were bound to lead to irredeemable failure.

She’d made up her mind as to what to do. Now she just had to do it. She had to go back to that alley and transform again.

“…Mokuou?”

And then she had to once more beat into their heads how a magical girl should conduct herself.

“You’re Mokuou, aren’t you?”

“Undisciplined” and “sloppy” were words used to describe people who had been in proper shape to begin with. People who were undisciplined and sloppy to begin with, right from the base, were even worse.

“It really is you!” Someone grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. Their face was close.

Startled, Sanae automatically backed up, and her hand touched the glass door of the shop. She looked back at the other person. It was a familiar face. “Oh…Henmi.”

“I haven’t seen you in so long, Mokuou.”

Until very recently, Sanae Mokuou had been working at a company. At the N City corporate office, she’d been constantly occupied with minor errands, frustrated at how she had no opportunity to display her capabilities in a place like this, making copies and serving tea, when the cell phone game Magical Girl Raising Project had made her a magical girl. Once that had happened, she’d quit the job, as if to say, “I have no more business here.” Yuka Henmi had been a coworker at that time. She’d had the same job as Sanae, but despite that, she’d never seemed dissatisfied with her circumstances. Seeing Yuka enjoying herself every day had been so exasperating. Talk about a girl lacking all potential for growth.

And Yuka had come over without a care to talk to her, completely ignorant of Sanae’s feelings. Sanae was just irritated. If someone quits a job in the middle of the season, then obviously they have some bothersome reason for it, so if you saw that person in town, you shouldn’t go talk to her. But Yuka didn’t think that way.

“How have you been doing, Mokuou? Send me a text sometimes, at least.”

“Well, uh—”

“You disappeared so suddenly. With you gone from the office, it’s all old men there, and I get lonely.”

“Well…”

“Tell me your email address, at least. Let’s go hang out sometime. Where should we go? How about karaoke? You’ve got such a pretty voice. And you’re a really good singer.”

“Henmi. Do you mind? I’m busy right now.”

“Huh? You’re busy?” Yuka tilted her head, and her braided pigtails bounced.

Following Yuka’s gaze, Sanae remembered that she was in her lounge clothing. The word “busy” wasn’t all that convincing when she was dressed like this. Exactly what sort of business could she be occupied with when she was wearing a hoodie with a pocket on the stomach?

“Oh, wait…were you about to go have tea at this café?”

Once again, Sanae followed Yuka’s gaze. She noticed the glass door her hand had touched that moment was that of a restaurant…or rather, it felt more accurate to call it a café.

“Y-yeah, that’s it,” Sanae stuttered. “I was just thinking I’d have some tea. Anyway, I’ll be seeing you—”

“Let’s have tea together, then! I’m thirsty, too.”

“Um, wait…”

Yuka pushed her from behind, and then they were welcomed by the sound of a fat bell ringing as they stepped into the café. There was not a single customer inside. The owner, who was polishing drinking glasses at the counter, greeted them with a listless “Welcome” without even looking over at them.

“I wonder what I should get. Maybe I’ll have the deluxe parfait.” Yuka pulled her glasses out from their case and examined the menu with interest.

Sanae stared outside. The twins/dog ears/white swimsuit quartet were still standing outside the building, talking.

“Mokuou? What are you looking at?”

“Oh, no! Nothing! I’m not looking at anything!”

“What’s wrong? You’re suddenly yelling so loud.”

“Uh, well…you know, it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken with another person, since I quit the company…”

“Ahh, I’ve heard that. They say that it can lead to having trouble adjusting the tone of your voice.” Though Sanae had succeeded in turning Yuka’s attention away from the outside, Yuka was giving her this awful pitying expression.

Sanae clenched her fists underneath the table. Why did she have to suffer the humiliation of her pity? It was all the fault of her incompetent subordinates.

“Okay, I’ve made up my mind,” said Yuka. “I’ll have the deluxe parfait after all.”

“I’ll take the blend coffee.”

The owner repeated their orders in a dismal-sounding voice and then plodded into the kitchen. Whether this place was empty because the owner was so miserable, or the owner was feeling down because there were no customers coming, or it was simply an issue of the time of day—whatever it was, the environment here didn’t make Sanae want to stay long. And right now, there was a more pressing reason than shop atmosphere that made her want to leave.

“It really was sudden, huh. You quitting,” said Yuka.

“It was.” Sanae gave a quick, casual glance outside, making sure nobody would notice her look, and when she caught sight of the two angels flapping their wings and hovering in the air, she slammed her face into the table.

“What’s wrong, Mokuou?!”

“Oh, no! It’s nothing!”

“It can’t be nothing, if you’re hurting yourself like that!”

“Don’t worry about it. I just kind of slipped.”

“Does that happen from a minor slip?”

“It does if you have bad timing and bad luck.”

“Ohh, really…? That’s scary.”

Just what the heck were those idiots getting up to? Without Ruler, who was law and ethics both, Team Ruler was an unruly mob incapable of maintaining discipline. Though Ruler had always felt this was true, right now it was being made quite plain to her once again. Ruler had to force these useless magical girls into a semblance of order. And as quickly as possible.

To that end, first she had to shake off Yuka. With Yuka looking, she couldn’t transform or pull out her magical phone, or use it to contact the four idiots.

“Uh, I’m gonna go to the bathroom…” Sanae was about to stand, but then, when she looked at the front of the building opposite, the two angels were carrying Tama from either side and trying to fly, and she slammed her fist down on the table.

“Wh-what’s wrong?”

“Sorry, it’s nothing.”

“Huh? Didn’t you say you were going to the bathroom?”

“Uhh… Um, it’s just, that doll hanging in front of the bathroom—I thought it was sort of cute.”

“The one that looks like a cursed voodoo doll? Cute? Is that cute?”

This was bad. Leaving to go to the bathroom was bad. Right now, it seemed no one was asking questions about those angels in the sky, but if Sanae left her chair, odds were high that Yuka would look outside the café, and it would turn into a big scene.

Sanae had to settle herself right here and deal with the situation. Sipping at the mediocre blend coffee the café owner had brought over, she made a noncommittal noise in response to Yuka’s remark.

“Hmm…,” said Yuka, “I think this parfait is a bit of a letdown.”

“Oh?”

“I think the coffee jelly layer and the cornflakes layer are a little large. In the photo on the menu, the best layers, with ice cream and whipped cream and fruit, were bigger, but this is like two-thirds coffee jelly and cornflakes.”

“Isn’t that fine, as its own thing?”

“You don’t get it. I can tell you don’t get it. I can’t be satisfied with this. Okay, I’ve made up my mind. Pardon me! Add a triple berry pancake to my order, please.”

Sanae just about made a sound like a crushed frog. She was going to eat more than this? She was going to stay longer than this? Sanae wanted to wrap this up quickly and leave—how much did Yuka have to eat to satisfy herself? An adult woman eating all these sweets in the evening—wasn’t she worried about gaining weight?

“You were really good at cooking, too, huh, Mokuou?”

“Have you ever even seen me cook?”

“That one time we all went to that yakiniku place for the year-end party, you could accurately pinpoint when to cook the meat, right? And you were giving out such snappy instructions, I kind of had this sense of trust, like, If I stick with her, I’ll get to eat all the good meat.”

“Does that count as cooking?”

“Yakiniku is cooking! I got to eat some delicious meat because I was sitting with you, but over at the department head’s table, it was a disaster. The meat was all burnt up. And the others with him couldn’t complain, either, so they had no choice but to eat the burnt meat like it was good, and I felt bad, watching them. It was more like unpaid overtime than a year-end party for them. And speaking of overtime, I had overtime again today, but seeing me walking around at this hour, I suppose you could figure that out. It’s gotten super-busy since you left, but, well, there’s no point in me whining to you about it.”

Eating, talking, eating, talking, eating, talking, eating, talking. Yuka’s mouth just kept moving on and on. Whether she was eating or talking, it was fine as long as she was absorbed in it. Sanae had to get this over with fast so she could go chew out some idiots.

“I can’t fill the hole you left, anyway. There’s no way I could. The department head was sort of lamenting it, too, saying that the company’s lost the kind of worker you don’t get every day.”

Sanae had figured she’d just let her talk, but she was a bit curious about this topic. “…Really?”

“Really! Whenever he has the chance, he says he regrets your leaving.”

It wasn’t all that bad for the boss to regret a talented employee quitting because of their cold treatment. “Hmm…”

“You know, like there was that talent you showed off at the cherry blossom viewing party, right?”

“Hmm? Oh, did something like that happen?”

“You and me got partnered up, and we were told to give a little talent show. I was almost in tears, thinking, What do I do, what do I do? But you actually had something ready. I was so shocked, honestly, seeing you just bang out so many incredible impersonations.”

“Ahh, yeah, I guess I did do that. So what about it?”

“It was so amazing, you know, you came up with so many, but you made them quality, coming up with something funny for every single one. I burst out laughing as I was helping you change costumes. And then others who’d come for the blossoms started gathering, and people thought you were a professional entertainer and were laughing out loud as they tossed us money. The section chief said no one else has that kind of talent, that we’d lost a valuable worker.”

It had been a waste of time to ask seriously. Sanae leaned her face on her hand, turned to the window, and scowled. The girl in the white swimsuit was handing out snack packages to the twin angels and dog-eared girl—

“Looking at something, Mokuou?”

“Nope! Nothing!”

“You keep shouting all of a sudden.”

“Like I said, I have trouble adjusting my volume.”

“Is that what it is?”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“Doesn’t all that yelling make your throat hurt?”

“Yes, quite a bit.”

Sanae moistened her throat with her long since cooled coffee, and when she glanced outside, the magical girls had laid down a picnic blanket and were sitting in a circle on top of it and eating snacks.

“Gerf, gagh, koffkoffkoff—”

“H-hey, Mokuou! Hang in there! Here, have some water!”

“Ahh, thanks…koff.”

What were they doing? Where had they come from, where were they trying to go? How the hell did you wind up having snack time out on the street, exposing yourselves to regular people? As Sanae drank the water, she coughed a few more times, and Yuka circled over to come beside her, rubbing her back and wiping up the coffee Sanae had spewed on the table with a paper napkin.

“Are you feeling sick?” Yuka asked.

“Yeah… I might be coming down with something.”

“Should I call an ambulance?”

“No, it’s nothing that dramatic; it’s okay.”

“All right, then… Mokuou, just let me know if it gets to be too much.”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

“You know, you’ve helped me with so many things at work, I feel like I owe you. So I hope I could repay you, even a little. You can rely on me.”

If you want to pay me back so badly, then finish those pancakes already, Sanae thought, but she couldn’t say that out loud.

“You handled regular work so quickly, and you helped me that time with your hidden talent, and when we made the pop-up signs for the counter, you drew the illustrations, right? They were professional level.”

“A professional’s would’ve been better.”

“Not at all. You just dashed them off so quick, but they were so good. I can’t do anything like that…not with work, or entertaining guests, or illustration. And then there was that time at the company bowling tournament when you hit nearly two hundred all by yourself, and they said the girls’ team didn’t even need a handicap, and then, and at the sports event, you got first in every event you participated in, and in the bread-eating competition, you set a record.”

“I think the office had too many recreational events.”

“The manager liked them… But anyway, Mokuou, there was this rumor about you—that you were this wild and super-elite employee from Tokyo who had punched her boss and got transferred over here as punishment.”

“I didn’t punch him, though.”

“And then when you actually arrived, you were even more amazing than the rumors said.”

Put another way, there had been no opportunities for her to show off her abilities other than recreational events. Remembering the times before she’d become a magical girl, they were all so depressing, and nothing about them had been enjoyable. No matter how Yuka talked about it like it had been fun, the memories had no luster to Sanae.

Only somewhat paying attention to Yuka, Sanae thought back on her time at the company and breathed a little sigh. If not for having been saved by being a magical girl, she would have just rotted away. Or no—maybe she would have wound up brined in her own saltiness, not even able to rot, being a mildly popular employee at a rural office who only got to shine during recreational events—Sanae sipped at the remainder of her coffee and glanced outside. The twin angels were trying to grab at each other, while Tama and Swim Swim held their arms behind their backs to stop them.

“Those dumb…” Sanae suddenly stood.

Yuka looked at her with confusion. “What is it, Mokuou?”

“Uh, those…dumb…uhh, dumbfounding pains in my stomach… Yeah, it really hurts.”

“Huh? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine once I go home and warm up my stomach… I think…I think it’ll be okay. Uh, sorry. I’ll leave the money for the coffee here. I need to leave now.”

“Oh, hold on a second. Tell me your number.”

“Ah, um, sorry, I don’t have my phone on me right now.”

“Then I’ll jot down my number on a napkin for you.”

“No, you don’t have to—”

“Hold on, it’ll just take a second. Please?”

When Yuka was begging with those teary eyes, it was hard to abandon her.

But if Ruler didn’t contact her team right away and stop the angels, this was sure to head for disaster. As far as Ruler knew, the two of them had never had a single fight, so then why today, of all days, here, of all places, were they starting a fight and grabbing at each other?

Sanae glanced outside to check. The twin angels were grappling, beating their wings as they spiraled upward until they disappeared from sight. Tama looked up in a daze, while Swim Swim gave a big yawn.

This was already out of control, wasn’t it? Sanae wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. In order to take care of that problem, first she would resolve this one. Looking over at Yuka to see if she was done writing down her number, she saw Yuka was also staring out the window. Sanae was hit with the feeling of Ahh, it’s over, as if the ground were crumbling under her feet, and she sank down onto the sofa.

Yuka nodded a few times. “That Magical Girl Raising Project thing—I hear it’s really popular right now.”

“Oh…yeah.”

“Cosplay these days is amazing, huh?”

“Yeah, cosplay is… Huh?”

“Hey, check this out.” Yuka drew out of her bag the same thing the high school girl earlier had been holding: the thin local magazine. “A Smash Hit! What Is Magical Girl Raising Project?” decorated the cover in a dramatic font, and, flipping through, Sanae saw the pages featured black-and-white screen caps of the game along with subheadings in bold like, “Girls in cosplay appearing all over N City,” and “Experts worry that it may become a societal problem,” and “Urgent interview with Miss A, hospitalized after falling into a ditch while playing the cell phone game.”

The twin angels descended until they were skimming along the ground and, tangled together, rose up once more.

“They call them drones, right? I like that sort of thing. I want one, too,” Yuka gushed enviously. The passersby pointed their phones at the fighting twins, then continued on past them as if it were nothing. They didn’t even stop.

Sanae blinked a few times, then sank deep into the sofa. “Henmi.”

“What?”

“The people in this town are crazy.”

“Oh? You think? I’ve never really felt that way, myself.”