Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 13 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

RISE! BOW! BE SEATED!

  Kumi-Kumi

Adelheid returned from her jaunt off to Group One. She folded her arms, tilted her head, and shrugged as she said, “Looks like Group One don’t know nothin’, either, huh?” She came off less like “hammy foreigner” and more like “hillbilly.” Mephis swung her braid to and fro, clicking her tongue as she muttered, “Useless,” irritably. Adelheid had to have heard that, but she looked unperturbed, giving a snort in return.

Classical Lillian looked over at Mephis and then hesitantly glanced at Adelheid. Seeing that she didn’t seem angry, Lillian let out a sigh of relief and next looked over at Kumi-Kumi.

Lillian had the sickly pallor of a shut-in, her hair grown wild with not enough care, and the eyes of a stage-five clinger. To be blunt, her existence itself was obnoxious. Kumi-Kumi could safely say she’d never befriend someone like that if they’d been classmates at a normal school. However, since Kumi-Kumi considered herself to be the mediator of Group Two, she couldn’t brush this girl aside.

The trio of Kumi-Kumi, Mephis, and Lillian were members of the Elite Guard.

They did count as career magical girls, more or less, but the job was nothing more than a gravy train. They only had to show up at some ceremonies a few times a year. Just doing the job normally, you’d never advance. Kumi-Kumi didn’t say it out loud, but she hoped she could graduate without any issues and get promoted.

So though they weren’t close enough to say they were bonded by shared ambitions or anything, well, there was basically something you could call a relationship. But their connection with Adelheid was nothing more than a temporary system of cooperation. She was a member of the Department of Diplomacy, and who knew how long they could be on friendly terms with them. That wasn’t a crowd she wanted to anger.

Kumi-Kumi took a few breaths, organizing her thoughts as she looked at Adelheid. “Maybe it was…thoughtless, in the first place…to think she’d know…because she’s the student rep.”

“Yeah, but there ain’t no other gals who’d know anythin’.”

Mephis muttered, “She’s supposed to be the student rep! Ask this stuff!” and kicked the leg of the desk. When she’d first joined the class, she’d seemed pretty glad about being able to reunite with a fellow magical girl from her elementary school days, but now she wouldn’t talk to her—in fact, she’d get grumpy just from someone bringing up Tetty.

But from Kumi-Kumi’s perspective, that time she’d forgotten her lunch during the field trip in May, Tetty, Miss Ril, and Rappy had been the ones to go to all their classmates and gather a bit from each of their lunches for her, so she couldn’t think too badly of them. She understood that telling Mephis she didn’t think they were bad girls would make her mad, so she didn’t try to argue with her openly.

All that aside, Mephis was still too noisy. Kumi-Kumi turned to her. “Mephis…you should talk quieter.”

“Shut your piehole. Don’t order me around.” Mephis was easily angered all the time, but she was unusually on edge that day.

Mephis didn’t possess the qualities of an elite with great hopes for her future in the first place. Maybe she was suited to being a warrior, but she was not at all cut out to be a student. She’d get mad over every little thing and disturb the peace of the class.

Mephis’s temper had also been the reason playing cards had been banned, right around the time Kumi-Kumi had thought she might be finally getting the knack of Millionaire. Kumi-Kumi figured that if you were going to get angry over something like getting your joker followed up by a three of spades, then you shouldn’t be playing games at all. Mephis had grabbed Tetty by the lapels, and then when Rappy had tried to stop her, Mephis had kicked her down, too. She’d basically ended her association with her old friend herself.

Before Mephis had entered this school, she’d been an antisocial type, even out of magical-girl form. With her classic delinquent style of bleached hair and hardly any eyebrows, she’d started fights with anyone and everyone. It was not appropriate behavior for an Elite Guard who protected important people, but she was surprisingly capable of turning it off for work, so she’d somehow been managing without ever crossing the line where she’d be dismissed.

But she’d assumed that she had to dress properly to start at this school and had even pasted on hair growth serum on her eyebrows and fixed up her appearance. But then when she actually joined the class, there’d been people with dyed hair, people with updos, and even someone with a mohawk and tattoos. Mephis had snapped, like, “Why am I the only one who has to pretend to be a good girl?” and she’d been angry more often than not ever since.

Between Mephis and Lillian, Kumi-Kumi thought the two of them could make themselves slightly more socially acceptable. She wanted at least half of Group One to pretend to be good girls.

“Anyway, Group One was thinkin’ the same thing as us,” said Adelheid. “That numberwise, the transfer student’ll probably come join our crew. Well, this is gonna be a rough time, Ah reckon.”

“I know that without you spelling it out, shit-for-brains,” spat Mephis.

“Oh, and th’other thing. They knew she’s an ex-con, too.”

“Fucking hell.” The foul language Mephis spewed when she was mad was kind of like a dog barking, so nobody paid it any mind. “It’s fucked up that the higher-ups haven’t told me anything. Shit.”

“Ah ain’t heard nothin’, neither.”

“I know. We already heard that. Asshat.”

No information had come to them from the Elite Guard about the transfer student aside from “She just got out of prison.” Adelheid’s Department of Diplomacy was also staying out of it, and she’d even told them she hadn’t been able to learn anything from making full use of the Archfiend Cram School’s information network.

“I’m asking why there’s no info about the transfer student, you piece of shit,” Mephis continued.

“Well, we were sayin’ it seems like she’d join up with us here in Group Two, numberwise. If there’s some kind o’ reason, she might join a different group.”

“Some kind of reason? Like what?”

“We have to think about that together,” said Lillian.

Kumi-Kumi folded her arms, Mephis clenched her fists, Adelheid looked up at the ceiling, and Lillian looked at the ground, and none of them spoke for a while, a wordless time passing them by. Eventually Adelheid nodded, Mephis snorted, Kumi-Kumi unfolded her arms, and Lillian let out a sigh.

“All right… Y’all don’t got no constructive ideas?” Adelheid asked.

“What?” Mephis snorted. “Your first suggestion is that we should offer some good ideas? Gimme a damn break.”

“Hey now, this ain’t the first suggestion; that’s just what we were all thinkin’. Y’all were thinkin’ like, ain’t there any good ideas, Ah’d like to know about the transfer student at least, right?”

“How about going to Group Three to ask if they know anything?” Lillian suggested.

“No way. They’ve never been useful at times like these before, shit.”

“’Cause you’re always startin’ fights with ’em, Mephis,” said Adelheid.

“What? You’re making it my fault?”

“Ah don’t start fights with mah friends.”

“Oh, no, um, sorry, ah, pardon me,” Lillian stuttered.

Even if they did shoot down Lillian’s idea, it wasn’t like Mephis or Adelheid were coming up with anything great, either, so in the end, the four of them just put their heads together to groan and go hmm, far from helping their situation.

Seeing the exchange between the other three, Kumi-Kumi thought things over—and then an idea came to her.

Mephis was the type to resort to violence before thinking things through. Adelheid was a graduate of the Archfiend Cram School—in other words, she was a specialist in fighting. Meanwhile, Lillian was preoccupied with what she should do to keep the others from getting mad at her. Furthermore, Kumi-Kumi herself required more time than most for coming up with plans. In other words, Group Two had no one to be their brains.

The Elite Guard did have members who were in charge of intellectual labor, who were good at things like devising training plans, accounting and receipts, managing personnel, and commanding units. But being restricted only to those whose human forms were middle school age, the only options were Mephis, Lillian, and Kumi-Kumi. The trio was made up of exactly one type of person: the brawns. When they got stuck, they couldn’t use their heads to get out of it.

Like for the book-report contest. Despite having all gotten together to discuss while writing them, to make sure there was as much variation between them as possible, their overall grades had fallen below even Group One, which had the Arlie and Dory sisters with their shaky language skills, into last place. And even when playing cards, Mephis had snapped over a move that hadn’t even been against the rules, and during their night march, only Group Two had read the map wrong and strayed off course. And Kumi-Kumi finally figured it out after listing out all of this, so she couldn’t laugh at the other members.

I see, so that’s what it is, Kumi-Kumi thought. However, she had enough discretion to know if she said it out loud, it would just make Mephis mad, so she stayed silent. They discussed things until the teacher arrived, and ultimately came to the conclusion: “We hope we get someone good.”

  Kana

Following Calkoro, Kana went through a door that had F written on the plaque.

The bustling sounds that had been audible from the hallway instantly stopped. This small classroom was filled right to left with magical girls—or rather, girls who were not transformed. Their gazes gathered on one point—Kana. There were fourteen students, and they all had to be magical girls. The large blackboard that looked like it had been shoved in there, the cheap-looking desks made of wood and pipe, and the similarly cheap chairs were not what Kana envisioned would be appropriate for magical girls. But just like the uniforms that Kana and all the others wore, perhaps that was what made it school-like.

“Ummm…this is Kana, the transfer student. Treat her well.”

For some reason, Calkoro’s introduction sounded hesitant, but Kana went along with it, voicing just a brief “hi” before going where the teacher directed to take a seat at the center rear. The class began, and though nobody was staring right at her, she could sense so keenly it was painful that their attention was on her. Her classmates didn’t look at her with the kindness to unconditionally welcome the newcomer, but neither were they coldly and unconditionally excluding her, either. It felt as if evaluating would be the most accurate, but she also got the feeling that wasn’t quite right. Complex emotions seemed to fill their eyes, and Kana was bad at intuiting complex emotions. They were called complicated because they were difficult to read.

The curriculum was general education, just as she’d been told. Everyone diligently opened their textbooks, pencils racing across their notebooks. Kana had arrived empty-handed, no textbook, notebook, or pencil. Calkoro noticed this within thirty seconds of the class starting and instructed the student sitting beside Kana to show her the textbook, and the class resumed.

Bringing nothing with you to a place dedicated to study was far from how a student should be. You could say Yoshioka was responsible for not having given her anything, but Kana didn’t need to use magic to know that blaming others in this situation was not the way a student should be, either.

For now, she decided to thank the student beside her. Her hair was cut short and she had tanned skin. Her physique was on the smallish side but sturdily built overall, and though there was still a hint of childishness to her face, her features looked tough; you might say such features were appropriate for an elite educational institution. Kana lowered her voice and said to her, “Thanks… What’s your name?”

The words Kumiko Tateno, Kumi-Kumi rose in her mind, while after that, the girl herself answered in a quiet voice, “Kumi-Kumi… I don’t think…you need to thank me.”

Kana hadn’t been sure from her looks if she was boy or a girl, but her voice was very girlish. Mentally apologizing that she’d been unable to determine her gender and also that she’d unintentionally activated her magic, Kana followed along with the class in the relevant parts of the textbook. Since she couldn’t do anything about not having a notebook and pencil, she decided to remember to bring some next time. Call it a silver lining, perhaps, but since her memory had been erased, there was a fair amount of space for remembering new things.

The class was reading the textbook and writing on the blackboard, and it was cut off when the bell rang, ending in the middle of things. Calkoro left the classroom in haste, and they got a short break.

Just as Kana had anticipated, a crowd of people gathered around her. The students surrounded her and, after introducing themselves, began bombarding her with questions.

“Why’re you transformed?”

“A magical girl doesn’t need a reason to transform,” Kana answered.

They were all murmuring to one another, for some reason. They seemed impressed, although Kana didn’t understand why.

“It looks like your uniform’s torn!”

“I adjusted it to make it easier to move,” Kana replied.

“You have such pretty hair.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you forget your stuff? Like your textbook and notebook?”

“I’ll bring them tomorrow.”

“Kana…what sort of magic do you have?”

The murmuring lessened. The one to ask that last question had been a girl with long black hair who had introduced herself as Princess Lightning.

There was no way other magical girls wouldn’t be curious about her magic. After that question came up, the chattering ebbed, and everyone focused their attention on Kana, listening closely so they wouldn’t miss what she said.

Kana remained in her seat, looking back at Lightning’s face as she pondered whether it would be a problem to answer, or if Yoshioka would get angry at her later. She then nodded. “My magic is that I can know the answers to questions.”

After a silence of a little less than a second, the girls burst into whispering:

“What does that mean?”

“Sounds complicated.”

“That’s your magic?”

“She seems like a tomboy.”

A thin smile came to Lightning’s lips as she asked, “So what does that mean, in other words?”

“I ask someone a question.”

“Right.”

“Then the correct answer comes to my mind without having to wait for their response.”

“Ohhh, that’s what you mean.”

The commotion grew even louder. Lightning’s shapely eyebrows twitched up, and her thin smile broadened slightly. “So you can learn anything?”

“If the other person knows it.”

“For example, hmm…you could find out my birthday, couldn’t you? How about you try it out?”

Kana slowly shook her head. Lightning seemed confused. “What do you mean? You can learn anything, can’t you?”

“That’d be an invasion of privacy.”

“But I’m giving you permission to ask that question.”

“There’s a lot of reasons why I can’t ask.”

“Tell me.”

Kana spread the fingers of her right hand, folding down each finger, starting from her thumb, to count.

First, it was an invasion of privacy. And since the answer that rose in her mind was dependent on that person’s point of view, if the one she questioned believed a lie to be the truth, that would distort the answer. And the biggest reason was that she would uncover things she shouldn’t know. This was all just what Yoshioka had told her, but those reasons were enough to satisfy Kana, too.

When she said that those were the reasons that she’d forbidden herself from using her magic too much, Lightning nodded. “That’s quite reasonable.”

Kana felt the heat that had been starting to rise ebb away. The whispers died down, and Lightning lowered her head and turned around before taking her leave. Many of the girls scattered, leaving the crowd, talking to one another as they went.

The handful who remained explained to Kana about the school or talked to her about the class. She could understand from the reactions of these girls that this was out of kindness rather than that stingingly tense curiosity from before. The girls’ interest in Kana had faded. They probably assumed she didn’t want to show them her magic. Just like with the matter of the textbook, she couldn’t push the responsibility for that on another and say, “It was because Yoshioka said so.”

“Hey.”

Kana looked up to see who had spoken to her. It was a girl with long black hair hanging freely over her costume like a veil. Yes, she was a magical girl. Half her face was hidden behind a white sheep mask, and bat-like wings grew from her back. There was murmuring around them. Those who’d left the crowd turned to look, too. Someone asked her, “What’re you doing?” Whether she’d heard that or not, this girl looked down on Kana, smiling like she was trying to provoke her.

Kana could tell this girl was trying to start something. But if a problem came up here and Kana was expelled, that would mean a U-turn back to prison. Keeping the volume and pitch of her voice the same as during the earlier questioning, Kana pushed back in her chair and faced the girl with her whole body. “What is it?”

“We heard you came here from the clink,” the girl replied.

“What’s a clink?”

“A prison, okay, a prison.”

The murmuring receded. Kumi-Kumi started reaching out from behind that girl but drew her hand back with a strained expression and put her hand to her forehead instead. Judging from her reaction, it seemed she’d known that Kana had come from the clink—from prison, rather. And the feeling in the air told her this was not the crowd’s first time hearing this.

Despite the whole prison having emptied out, ensuring the staff wasn’t around, information had been leaked anyway. But even if she did blame Yoshioka now, nobody would listen. She had to make her own decisions to get out of this.

Halna had forbidden Kana from telling anyone. However, judging from everyone’s reactions, she was certain they already knew.

Kana took a breath, putting a certain amount of weight in it, then nodded. “That’s right.” If everyone knew, then what point was there in lying now? Kana thought this was better than to be thought someone who couldn’t be trusted because she lied and tried to hide things. Well, that was about 60 percent of the reason, while the other 40 percent was because it was too much hassle at this point.

A girl—she had introduced herself as Tetty—timidly came forward and said, “Fuuko.”

“Don’t call me by my real name!”

“Ah, sorry… Listen, Mephis, we’re not supposed to be transformed right—”

“She was transformed first!” The magical girl—Mephis—kicked down a nearby chair, and the loud noise made Tetty jump and shrink away. It looked like she was trying to say something, but when her mouth opened, nothing came out.

Clicking her tongue at Tetty’s reaction, Mephis turned back to Kana again. “I just wanna talk on an equal basis, okay? That means I’ve gotta be transformed, too.”

The corners of her lips, painted with a rouge as red as blood, turned upward in a smile. Between the wings, her expression, and her attitude, she was the very picture of a demon that would appear in epic poetry or illustrated stories. “Stand up.”

Kana’s body moved before she gave it any thought.

Kana put her hands on her desk and pushed back her chair, and as she was about to stand up, Mephis’s feet moved. It seemed like she was trying to sweep her legs out from under her. Various methods of evasion rose in Kana’s mind—blocking with her shin, stopping it with the sole of her foot, somersaulting to avoid it—as her body was flung up in the air, spinning one and a half times, and right when she was about smack into the floor, she guarded her face with both hands, avoiding those strikes, at least. But a pressure on the back of her head pushed her down, and her forehead hit the floor.

The pressure on the back of her head immediately disappeared, and still lying on her front, Kana raised her face. Mephis was standing above her with an expression that went beyond challenging; it was scornful. Mephis was looking down on her. Belatedly, Kana realized that the pressure she felt on the back of her head was Mephis’s foot. Mephis was stepping on her. Kana imagined she was the perfect representation of humiliation right now. The murmuring of the classmates had faded out at some point. She felt their eyes on her only.

Kana didn’t know why this magical girl had become violent, but Mephis’s actions had embarrassed Kana. Her reputation hadn’t been great to begin with, and now it was even worse. Thinking this far, she judged that inaction was unacceptable. Whether she received a baptism of further violence or if being stepped on was the end of it, either way, the damage to Kana’s reputation had been done.

Kana judged her options. It wasn’t as if she needed a good reputation, but one that was too poor would be a hindrance to her activities. She had to do something to improve her standing.

She rolled over on the spot to her back so that she could move more freely and also see better. As Kana moved, Mephis raised up her foot, but Kana had expected that. The moment her heel came down, Kana stared up at her without a blink, stuck out her index finger, and pointed. “Only your underwear is white. You don’t think that color scheme is lacking in overall balance?”

Since the heel came down on her immediately after that, Kana never saw her reaction, but she felt as if a sort of upset was communicated through the sole of her shoe. You could say that Kana’s plan to make use of language for emotional damage rather than responding to violence with violence had basically been a success. Taking the heel with her sturdy forehead had also kept the physical damage to a minimum.

Satisfied by these results as she took that heel to the head over and over, Kana gave a little nod.

  Tetty Goodgripp

The bell rang, the teacher came into the classroom, everyone returned to their own seats, and the class began as if nothing had happened. Second period that day was Japanese.

As the teacher was explaining the function of particles, Fujino was about to feel very anxious, but she didn’t have the time for that. She had to check Arlie’s and Dory’s workbooks. Since the condition for getting into this class was being a magical girl, their academic abilities as humans were all over the spectrum, but these two weren’t even at the level to be taking middle school classes in the first place, so they followed an independent-study curriculum, doing work directed at younger students. They’d arranged a system where Fujino, being the group’s leader, would check their work in class whenever she had the opportunity. Maybe this was just a result of the teacher’s lack of motivation, but Fujino wasn’t about to complain. Nothing good would come of being considered a problem child. She wanted the teacher to think of her as a good, hardworking student who would do as she was told.

It would surely feel great to do whatever she wanted, like what Mephis and the transfer student did. In that fight earlier, Mephis had used violence to knock the transfer student down, while the transfer student had committed to nonaggression but nevertheless had not bowed her head to Mephis. Even if they’d chosen different angles, they’d both shown their strength. You couldn’t even compare them to their student rep, who’d gotten flustered over a chair getting kicked and had failed to manage the situation.

Fujino finished checking Arlie’s and Dory’s exercise books, then sat back down and faced forward. Finally, she had the time to feel that crushing weight on her shoulders.

Back when Tetty Goodgripp had still been not even a newbie magical girl but a candidate about to take the magical-girl exam, her examiner had lectured her countless times, telling her, “Being a magical girl won’t make you any money. You just lose time. By the time you realize what your youth was worth, it’s already too late.” She’d even said, “Though ostensibly we say the most highly ambitious candidates will get official appointments, if anything, the people who are fine keeping it as a hobby are easier to appoint. Or people with rich families.”

Mephis Pheles, who had become a magical girl along with Tetty, had snapped back at that with “What a stupid thing to say.” While Tetty had consoled Mephis, in her mind, she’d been rebelling just as hard.

No matter how adults lecture you and tell you “Only a handful of people can be successful in this business; you should aim for something more stable,” there aren’t many good girls who will listen and go, “Oh, okay then.” There are more children who will aim to be that “handful” of voice actors, actors, comedians, professional athletes, professional shogi or go players, singers, or manga artists, joining the business while fantasizing about sharing a shining stage with the stars they admire.

And it had been the same for Fujino Tohyama, who at the time had been an elementary schoolgirl ignorant in the ways of the world. When she’d found out that magical girls were real and had transformed herself into the adorable magical girl Tetty Goodgripp, her vague anxieties about the future had instantly evaporated. Before, she’d half-jokingly said to her friends, “Maybe I’ll get reborn into another world by some kind of mistake,” but it had in fact come true basically just like that. So no wonder she’d made up her mind to live as a magical girl in the future. Lectures from adults went in one ear and out the other.

Though Tetty had acted quiet and obedient in front of the examiner, in her heart, her rebellious spirit had been going wild. If she was going to become a magical girl, then she would absolutely make her living on that alone. And then down the road, she’d aim to get an anime. Even if she wouldn’t go so far as to expect the coveted Sunday-morning slot, she would somehow wedge herself into the late-night five-minute slot and capture the hearts of subculture fans who liked easygoing daily life shows and make it a cult hit, and with the anime not having a huge budget to begin with anyway, it would even get a second season.

Keeping her thoughts to herself on how she was going to make it happen and how she’d show them, when she was officially appointed as a full-fledged magical girl, she’d been overflowing with the feeling that she could do anything. She’d even thought: Adults were easy, life didn’t have that much to throw at you, she was destined for this, and dreams and goals existed for the sake of being fulfilled.

And she had been made to feel this even more strongly because of the presence of Mephis, who’d passed along with her, despite how aggressive she’d been with the examiner. If she could pass, of course you’d get the mistaken idea that life was easy.

And then, after becoming a magical girl, Fujino had just watched the time go by. She hadn’t been able to gain anything in particular. She was never summoned by the Magical Kingdom, and the reports she wrote never even got a response. She asked the higher-ups if she could obscure her involvement with the Magical Kingdom while blogging or vlogging or something, but the only answer she got was “No.” When she asked if she could make use of her charming appearance as a waitress with big mittens to do something like act as regional mascot, she got the answer “No,” and even when she asked if she could serialize an original novel with herself as the protagonist as a complete fiction on a novel submission site, they said “No,” and that was the end of that.

The regional leader said nastily that if Tetty kept asking all these weird questions, it would hurt her own reputation as well, so that was the last time she offered a proposal.

All she got out of it was mounting exhaustion. Practically every day she thought, If I just didn’t have school during the day, if I could just spend all my energy on magical-girl activities, but even so, she couldn’t abandon her lifestyle.

Fujino’s mother had a weak constitution, but she’d force herself on and on if nobody stopped her. When Fujino was in fourth grade, her mother had divorced her father for cheating, so Fujino had changed schools, parting ways with Mephis. After that, Fujino’s mother had struggled financially while she raised her daughter through elementary and middle school. She had cared for Fujino as a person.

Whatever Fujino did, whether she was going to school as an ordinary girl or working as a magical girl, what the examiner said came back to her mind. That the type of person who kept it to a hobby or had a rich family was most suited to be a magical girl. Even taken naively, Fujino did not fit those criteria.

One day, when a petty argument had turned into her yelling at her mother, she had realized that it couldn’t go on like this. Four years had passed since she’d first become a magical girl. The examiner had been right to warn her of lost time, that her youth was valuable. Fujino was under such extreme stress that she wound up having arguments about trivial things.

While Fujino’s limits loomed right in front of her, her mother had gone over the edge. One day, she swayed and collapsed to the ground, was taken to the hospital, then passed away there. Fujino vaguely remembered listening, dumbfounded, to the doctor’s explanation that her heart had been weakened to exhaustion. Fujino regretted that her biggest final memory had been yelling at her mother, but she wasn’t getting that time back. She should have at least made a verbal apology instead of silently letting things slide back to normal—the regrets piled on, but lost time could never be regained. There was no going back. Only forward.

This magical-girl class was her last great hope. When the Magical Kingdom had contacted her, she’d cried, thinking finally her dreams had become a reality. But this was merely a bud on the branch and not fruit yet. Still, it was way better than aimlessly working as a magical girl. She was sick of spending every day idling her time away.

Fujino was exempted from tuition, and even her living costs were guaranteed. If she was able to graduate without any issues, then it was clear to anyone who read those articles on “the graduates of elite education with flourishing careers in the other world” that she would be promised an assignment to a department. The proud expressions of the magical-girl students from the previous classes who’d made remarks at the entrance ceremony, and how they’d spoken of what they did in their careers now—with no small amount of boasting—had heated up Tetty’s heart.

Those people were ultimately graduates of the test phase, while Tetty’s class would be the first to graduate from the official operation. If even half of the exaggerated things they said, like “established with the dignity of these authorities,” were true, then there was no way she’d be treated badly. This was the professional magical girl she’d dreamed of being.

She didn’t want anyone getting in her way. She would obey the teacher, bow her head to anyone, avoid problems, and bring about harmony in the class. Kicking someone because they pissed her off would only hurt herself in the long run. The time after graduation was far longer, so while she was a student, she would suck it up.

Fujino looked up. There was a tug at her arm. Dory was pulling on her right sleeve. When she turned around, Arlie was looking at her, too. Their two identical faces seemed to ask her, “What’s wrong?” Fujino smiled to put them at ease, then picked up her exercise book.

She allowed herself to be subsumed by her anxiety for only a brief period. There was lots of work for the student rep, after all.

  Blade Brenda

She was at a small shrine on top of a mountain, one you had to race up countless steps to reach. On the old and worn shrine, the cracked stone paving, and the handrailing that went around the shrine grounds, all over there were the signs of repairs. It looked like it had been fixed up fairly recently.

Blade Brenda and Cannon Catherine were standing next to each other, their hands stiff and straight at their sides as they waited at full attention for directions. The magical girl in white who stood three steps away—Snow White—gave them orders: “You don’t have to be so formal.” The magical girl in blue, Princess Deluge, stood behind her, arms folded. Snow White didn’t say anything particularly good or bad, so they ought to listen to her.

The pair immediately obeyed. Brenda sat down and crossed her legs, swaying right to left, while Catherine placed her cannon on the ground and laid her head on it like a pillow.

Seeing the two of them like that, Snow White waited a moment, then ordered, “Maybe a little more dignified,” and so the pair lined up in a manner that was not too formal but also not too relaxed. “All right then, now we’ll start cleaning.”

The pair tilted their heads. With her right hand, Snow White held out a bucket by its handle toward them, and Brenda took it. Inside were sponges, brushes, and plastic containers. “I went to get some magic sponges. There are enough for everyone, so don’t worry.”

Catherine got a bucket, too. The pair tilted their heads in the opposite direction from before.

“We’re cleaning the shrine, but not just the shrine,” Snow White explained. “We’ll also be cleaning all of the town that can be seen from here.”

Following after Snow White, the pair came up to the railing and looked down below. It was still daytime, so the sun was shining, and there were a lot of people. It was loud and bustling.

“There are various spots around town that have graffiti. You’ll clean it off, and if there are any people trying to do more, then you make sure to convince them to never do it again, and clean up the town. That’s the job we have to do.”

“The real big job will be a little down the line, so right now, let’s do what we can,” added Princess Deluge.

Brenda and Catherine both turned around to Snow White. Because she was backlit by the sun, they had a hard time seeing the expression on her face.

“You two, and Arlie and Deluge and I, are all magical girls,” said Snow White. “Helping people in trouble is one of a magical girl’s most important jobs.”

Brenda had never thought of herself as a magical girl. And she was sure Arlie and Catherine never had, either. Snow White, Pfle, Uluru, Patricia, Marika Fukuroi, and Shadow Gale were different from Brenda’s group.

She looked over at Deluge, wondering if she’d add anything further, but she remained silent with her arms folded. She seemed like she was worried about something—and also as if she were waiting for their reaction.

Brenda and Catherine faced each other, clonked their heads together, and had a whispered discussion before coming to a conclusion. Turning back to Snow White again, lined up side by side, they nodded.

“Good. Then it’s settled,” said Snow White. “So we’ll start here with the shrine.”

Catherine circled around to the back, Brenda polished the flagstones, and Snow White and Deluge went into the shrine. They could hear the squeaking sounds of polishing, the wind blowing through, the leaves swishing, the charming cries of birds, and Snow White’s and Deluge’s voices talking.

“Apparently the transfer student who Frederica sent to the school really is a former prisoner,” said Snow White.

“Yeah. Mana was real mad,” Deluge replied.

“Well…I am, too. Um, this isn’t something only Mana would be angry about.”

“True.”

“I think Frederica is plotting something… What do you think it is?”

“I feel like she’s deliberately not hiding the information. Almost like…she’s showing it off.”

“I did hear that she had the whole prison emptied out to release the prisoner.”

“But that’s part of how the information got out, right?” Deluge pointed out. “I think if she were seriously trying to hide it, she could have sent in someone with an entirely different history and everything, saying ‘This is who she is.’ But she didn’t do that. She brought out this prisoner, and that was leaked before she transferred into the school, and Arlie and her classmates were talking about it, too, right?”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“Huh.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Um…is Arlie doing well at school?” Deluge asked.

“She says there’s someone helping her out and that she already made some friends. Studying is hard, but learning things one by one feels worthwhile, and she’s actually having a good time. But she did say there’s this one awful person there named Dory.”

“You can’t get along with everyone, after all.”

“Yes…that’s true.”

“Uh-huh…”

Deluge had used the documents Pfle had left behind to get in contact with Snow White, and so the two magical girls had joined forces, but things between them were still a little awkward. When Brenda had been with Puk Puck, Snow White had been very reliable. When Brenda had said, “I’m counting on you like before,” Snow White had looked sad, but she still really was reliable.

If Snow White and Deluge were getting along, then Brenda was happy, and Arlie and Catherine were glad, too.

Those two were working together to search for Ripple and beat Frederica. Brenda didn’t really get what they were trying to do, but she thought it was very good that they could work hard together.

  Calkoro

Unlike the general education classes, the classes on magical girls and the Magical Kingdom were conducted with teacher and students transformed into magical girls. Seeing elite magical girls who bore the expectations of every faction all lined up together was a grand sight that put pressure on their new teacher, but after a month of it plus a long weekend, Calkoro had gotten somewhat used to it. She couldn’t be longing to go back to holidays forever.

“The crimes of the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, can’t be purely chalked up to her unique character…”

Calkoro had gotten used to it, yes, but she was still tense about teaching classes.

The students would never notice their teacher’s anxieties.

“Giving rise to copycat criminals like Lake of Fire Flame Flamey…”

Some of them were rude, not focusing on the class, spinning pencils or looking out the windows. Mephis Pheles kept taking off and putting on her costume-accessory sheep mask. Rappy Taype made no attempt to hide her dour expression, occasionally even sighing. It was such a contrast from her usual cheer that it was annoying—in other words, the class was just that boring.

“And Flamey’s offshoots, such as Killer Sawblade Saw Fran and Iron Wall Lili-Luluu…”

And then there was Kana. She was the only one not opening up a notebook or picking up a pen, but neither did she look away or fiddle with her hands, staring fixedly at the blackboard.

Calkoro was from an aristocratic family, albeit a lower-ranked one, and she had no trouble with studying at a desk or sedentary work. And since this class was on magical-girl criminals, which was in her field, she’d managed to teach it with middling interest. At least, until about halfway through April.

“She also had many subordinates, most notably a magical girl named Melville…”

The incident caused by the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, was said to have really shaken up the Magical Kingdom. Many mages and magical girls had been demoted or dismissed, and suspicious deaths of related parties had come one after another, written off as accidents or suicides. Such a major event had been an opportunity for the magical-girl system to be reformed, so Calkoro could understand the logic in thinking elite magical girls would have to learn about it.

But still, the lessons she’d been told to teach were still too lopsided toward the Cranberry incident.

“Many of the victims became aggressors. One of them was called Calamity Mary…”

There were plenty of other deeply interesting examples of magical-girl crime. More than its academic relevance, the issue with the Cranberry incident was that it had been a string of victories for Cranberry up until the final incident, so she was basically telling a story with a bad ending every day. There were so many other countless crimes with high entertainment value that would get your heart pounding just from looking into them. All Cranberry all the time stressed her out.

And so Calkoro had lost her interest in the class. But it seemed that had shown in her attitude, as Halna had given her the sort of reprimand that would make her sick to her stomach, and ever since, she’d faced this class with a sense of anxiety. Whatever it was, be it through listening devices or secret cameras, it seemed Halna was watching. So then she wasn’t allowed to slack off.

“What do you think should have been done to keep a tragic event like this from happening? I will now be handing out papers, so everyone please write down your thoughts by the time the bell rings.”

After class was done, Calkoro retrieved the papers she’d had the students write and returned to the individual room they were calling the teacher’s office. Pulling the wheeled chair back from her steel desk, she turned it around and sat down. All right, she thought, fanning out her papers.

While they might all be called elite top students, there was a lot of variation here. That was exactly why Calkoro made use of opportunities like this to get a grasp on their personality tendencies. That was also why she held little events periodically, even if it was a bit of a hassle.

For example, a single book report could give you a glimpse of their almost garish rainbow of individual characteristics. Lillian, who usually avoided drawing attention to herself, had been unfortunately conspicuous in referencing a love affair between men that didn’t seem like it had been depicted, Mephis had gone so far as to quote statements from the author’s social media to bash the book, Kumi-Kumi had reverse-calculated the author’s income based off the number of copies published and most common royalty rates and had finished the essay off with the final line, “I’m very envious,” and Adelheid had submitted a paper fully intended to be funny, like a script for a comic sketch, but despite her efforts, Calkoro had not laughed at all. Though the sort of book reports that would give you a headache just by reading them should not have been common, she was getting them in continuous succession.

Sure enough, the opinions of the students varied here as well.

Diko Narakunoin was the one pointing out most strongly, in an almost accusatory tone, the faults of the management system. Normally she wouldn’t offer her opinions, but she would use surprisingly aggressive language at times like these. At first glance, her fashion sense had caused Calkoro despair, but it was fair to say she was one of the better students in the class.

Tetty Goodgripp had made full use of bureaucratic jargon to write an unreasonably obtuse paper. It was like an office report. Maybe she was used to writing documents like that. Even for the book report, rather than picking a book she liked, it felt like she’d picked something everyone else would be fine with, and the content was safe the whole way through. Trying to make something so faultlessly inoffensive that it wound up failing in that goal reminded her so much of herself; it was painful.

The careless and militant submission that featured only the single remark of One of the examinees should have beaten Cranberry was from Mephis Pheles. It even seemed as if she was looking for an opportunity to start a fight.

When Calkoro read Arlie’s paper, which had Do my best in wobbly chicken scratch, she snorted, and seeing Dory’s paper, which read, I’d try real hard, she tossed it on the desk and sighed.

The level of these magical girls was so low. She had to pretend like she was motivated for Halna—why was it that even that felt too hard?

She bemoaned her wretched lot for a while, and then with an okay, next, she picked up a paper with nothing written on it. She turned it over, held it up to the light, squinted, and scrutinized it, but there wasn’t a single thing written on it.

Was there an extra sheet mixed in there? Calkoro wondered, but for some reason, this bothered her. She tapped the rest of the stack of papers together on the table to line them up, then flipped through the upper corners with her thumb to check the names, doing a U-turn to check them again. There was one girl from the class whose name she didn’t see: Kana.

Calkoro laid the stack of papers down on her desk and leaned into the backrest of her chair. The cheap rolling chair made a grating creak when it took her weight, but she didn’t get up. She just stretched and looked up at the ceiling. The inside of the fluorescent light covers was filled with dust. There were even dead winged insects in there, wherever they’d come in from.

Calkoro didn’t want to get involved with Kana. But now, suddenly, she was forced to think about her.

Submitting a blank sheet without even writing your name—what was the meaning of that? Kana being like she was, Calkoro couldn’t see it as simple rebellion against the teacher or slacking.

For the sake of getting through her time as a teacher peacefully, with no major screwups, maybe she needed to probe a little more into what Kana was thinking.