Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 14 - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

THOSE GATHERED

The island was blanketed in green. Aside from the rocky area of the cape that jutted out from the north end, the beach that stretched out a long ways on the south side, and the residence in the style of a stone castle situated right in the middle, it was mostly covered in vegetation. A man sighed as he peeled his eyes away from a tapestry depicting a bird’s-eye view of the whole island. He appeared to be somewhat over the hill of middle age, but he was plumper than one might expect of a middle-aged man. His belly was portly enough to slow him down a bit, for one thing, but he wasn’t sighing over his weight. This room was so messy, it made him want to cover his eyes.

He rolled up the sleeves of his robe and thrust his right hand outside the room, moving his thumb like he was rubbing his index finger between the second joint and the tip. With a weak snapping sound, the chair slid aside, the bed tilted over, and all the empty bottles, metal parts, and balled-up parchment piled atop them fell to the floor. The carpet balled up around it all and swept it into the garbage along with the dust. More dust still hung in the air, but the room was tidy enough.

The room was small: about ten feet to each side—practically a closet. The stone walls were bare and gray. The tapestry hanging there featured an illustration of the whole island. Large, heavily locked glass windows invited the light of the moon and stars into the room. The rough-hewn wooden table and chair were knotty, and atop them had been left a feather pen, stationery, inkwell, and blotting paper, plus herb-scented candles in a candelabra and other necessary writing tools.

The man nodded in satisfaction and inhaled a small breath. He smelled dust.

Standing by the window, he pulled out a key ring and used three keys to open up the lock, struggling with the rusty door. Grumbling to himself about how it needed oiling, he moved to the window and opened it with both hands. There was the forest below, with its green continuing to the edge of the island, and beyond that stretched only the endless dark-blue ocean until the horizon. The sound and smell of the tides breezed into the room, ridding it of the dusty odor, and now it smelled fully of the seashore. The scent of the night wind was even saltier, and it was cold on the skin. Though this island was hot in the afternoon, the evenings were shockingly frigid. The man held his rotund body and shivered a little, but he didn’t close the windows.

This room had once belonged to an eccentric researcher who must have thought the scent of the briny ocean, the splashing sound of the waves, the cold of the wind, and everything else were entirely unnecessary distractions. He had certainly seen this room, isolated by magic, as the most comfortable place to spend his time, with no need for meals, sleep, or relieving himself. Immersing himself in research and experiments had been his joy. Anyone who had known the man would agree to that with confidence and say that was exactly so.

The rotund man currently standing in the room was the nephew of that researcher. He was not a researcher himself. He neither immersed himself in independent research like his uncle, nor did he work a steady job. He was a self-styled high-class man of leisure, living his life seeking pleasure and good food. Not all mages were seekers of truth dedicating themselves body and soul to the development of magic. If you were to ask his uncle, who had been single-minded in his research, his nephew was an “ordinary lout who simply used the great works of our ancestors without attempting to move beyond them,” but the nephew in question had always declared with arrogant indifference that one who lived as a high-class man of leisure would always suffer harsh criticism.

This man was not a pragmatist, as mages were wont to be. The smallness of the room, the smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves, the cold of the wind, hunger, fatigue—all the unnecessary inconveniences his uncle had eliminated as unpleasant impurities, this man actually thought were elegant. It wasn’t bad at all to be forced into inconvenience. Starting a fire with a primitive incendiary device could be more fun than creating a flame with a single command word.

His uncle had said that being able to enjoy inconvenience was the arrogance of the upper classes—that those who were right in the middle of actual misfortune would prefer mages who prioritized efficiency, thereby directing the world toward a better future. There was some truth to that. But if this was arrogance, this man was fine with arrogance. The most important thing was how it felt to him. When it had been his uncle’s place, he’d been able to run things how he pleased. There was no need to stick to his uncle’s ways now that the man was gone.

Nevertheless, he had to fulfill the directions of his uncle’s will, at least. The man sat down in the chair and was about to pick up a pen when there was a knock on the door. He looked up. “Come in.”

The door opened with a creak. That would have to be oiled, too.

The magical girl he’d hired the other day bobbed her head in a bow. “The annex…wait, is that what you’d call an annex?”

“Yes, it’s an annex.”

“Right. I finished cleaning the annex.”

Between the woolen dress and woolen hat, her costume was fluffy all over. Long sleeves covered her whole arms, and the voluminous fur went over her wrists, too. She wore tights as well, making for a very modest outfit. The man had an almost superstitious bias that “magical girls generally wear revealing attire,” but he also thought that precisely because the majority of them were like that, there was a special value to a modestly dressed magical girl. There was something mysterious about it that was difficult to even verbalize—things like that were just for an aesthetic. Regardless, there was no need to put all that into words. It was a trivial matter that could be written off as “how it was to be a man of taste.”

“Thanks,” the man replied with a smile as he examined the girl. Her face was beautiful, of course. Her platinum-blond hair was cut short and even, with the unaffected sincerity of practically over fashion. In combination with the connoisseur point of modest dress, her evenly cut hair gave her a dignified air. That was also nice. This was a good kind of magical girl to have in your employ.

The sheep behind her went baaah, and she hastily attempted to restrain it as it struggled to escape. The combination of a beautiful girl and an adorable animal was very lovely indeed. He would forgive the animal smell and hoof marks on the carpet. There was nothing to be done about that.

The sheep bleated particularly loudly, shaking off the girl to race to the hallway. The motion flung the girl in a full somersault in the air. She tumbled down the stone corridor before smacking into the wall, and her shoddy attempt to catch herself caused her to crack the back of her head on the floor. The man lifted his large rear from the chair and extended his hand to the girl, who was lying on her back and trembling, with both hands against the back of her head.

“That was quite the ruckus. Are you all right?” the man asked.

The magical girl rose to her knees, then stood and waved her hands with a smile. “I’m okay… I’m actually really okay.” That sounded convincing enough, but her eyes were swimming.

“You don’t look very okay, though.”

“I like drawing, you know.”

“Mm-hmm. I hadn’t heard that.” When he looked to the hallway, there was a large crack there he didn’t think had been there before.

The girl’s head was swaying like a pendulum, but for some reason, her words came out steadily. “But, but—! I can’t make a living with just that, which is sad, you know?”

“Why are you telling me about this?”

“It’s fine, though. I’m not thinking of this as just a part-time job for my free time, I’m really not thinking that, okay, I will work really hard for this job, I’ll do my best… Urkkk, I’ll do my best.”

“Are you really all right? I know magical girls are resilient, but—”

“I’ll do my best, do my best, do it do it, do it Mary do it hard you can do it.” The girl bowed and closed the door. The sound of her footsteps grew distant.

He very much wanted her to do her best, but he didn’t get the sense that everything was okay with her. The man waffled a little but then decided to trust her. She did seem interesting in her own way, and she was rather charming, too. Besides, magical girls were a sturdy bunch.

Well then, I’ll write the letters to the heirs while I enjoy the poor thing’s company, he thought as he adjusted his seat in his chair, faced the desk, and took up a pen. But before he could even put pen to paper, he noticed an issue. It was too difficult to do any writing with just the available moon and starlight. He wouldn’t have enough visibility. The man flicked his index finger, igniting a magical light in hand to drive away the dark. A burst of magical illumination was a mere trifle, but he had no other options right now. He’d have to wait a bit for an alternative. The silver candelabra he’d made detailed orders to a craftsman for would really set this scene. He wanted to arrange the property’s interior, exterior, and household items to his own tastes, bit by bit.

While occasionally furrowing his brow at the strange conditions the deceased had listed out—whatever did they have to have magical girls accompany them for?—the man’s pen scribbled along.

  Miss Marguerite

A few winters ago, when the cold winds had been raging, a magical girl named Annamarie had passed away. It had not been an honorable death on the job, and neither had it been an abrupt, accidental death. She had challenged the employee of another department to a duel and been roundly beaten. It was a fairly dishonorable death as a fighter, a professional, and as a magical girl. Her employer, the Inspection Department, had scrambled wildly to clean it up.

While Annamarie had been working as a trainee inspector, she’d been under the guidance of Miss Marguerite, her combat instructor. Plenty of magical girls had trained in karate, judo, kendo, and other martial arts as humans, but combat was neither for sport nor a duel when it came to the Inspection Department. And not just the athletes—even those who had killed before would sometimes think of magical-girl battles as an extension of lethal combat between humans and consequently get themselves hurt. Those like Marguerite, who could train others in the basics of magical-girl combat, were valued wherever they went, and in the Inspection Department, she had a particularly vital role.

Many students had passed before Marguerite. Some of them had come to be called aces, while others followed her recommendation to transfer to office work. Some had fought with villains and died on the job, while others had been dragged into political conflict and mysteriously disappeared. Annamarie, however, had been the only one foolish enough to attack a magical girl from another department, get beaten instead, and lose her life.

Marguerite had gone under only some mild inquiry, purely as a formality, and her responsibility had never been questioned. That was why she had voluntarily written her resignation letter. She was so desperate to get Annamarie out of her head, and if she continued as an instructor, she wouldn’t be able to avoid remembering her. Marguerite didn’t listen to the superiors or past students who begged her to change her mind, abandoning everything to her successor to quit the department.

She hadn’t done anything in particular since then, whittling down her savings to support her lifestyle.

Since quitting the Inspection Department, Marguerite had had more opportunities to eat out, but she’d stopped going to what you’d call high-class restaurants. There was no need to waste money on that if it wasn’t for a business dinner with someone important on the department’s dime. This particular occasion, however, might count as a business dinner with someone important, in a sense.

Marguerite looked out the window. The drizzle wet the gravel of the playground outside, the rain mild enough that it would be too much trouble to open an umbrella. Just looking made her depressed and fed up; her eyes returned to the room, to the girl there. Her apparent age was around fifteen. You couldn’t call that young or old for a magical girl. Her attire was simple: black hair with straight bangs and a plain, long gray skirt, but the white dress shirt she wore was one size too small, restraining breasts that looked like they were about to pop out, and the way she left it open to the second button had punch. Back when Marguerite had first met her at the Inspection Department, as well as when Marguerite had retired from her post and they had regretfully parted ways, she’d always worn shirts of the wrong size. She had rolled the sleeves of this one up to her elbows.

She was gathering up a few strips of beef with one chopstick to pluck it up and stick it in the egg. Stuffing the meat in her mouth with a hearty voracity that belied her sweet and delicate appearance, she chewed slowly, then swallowed.

Marguerite looked away again, eyes shifting to the sliding screen. It was illustrated with a number of variations on a rabbit and frog launching pro-wrestling moves at each other in the style of ukiyo-e. Businesses that could be used openly by magical girls often had strange accents like this.

Marguerite faced forward. The girl stuffing her face with sukiyaki was in front of her. Marguerite didn’t like to remember the past. It always came with pain. This girl had been under her in the Inspection Department, and just seeing her made Marguerite remember the past and brought a steady burning in her heart. Remembering things she didn’t want to remember was an unbearable suffering. Even if this girl had no ill will—even though Marguerite knew she wasn’t a bad person—that didn’t change how much the memories pained her.

“You’re not gonna have any meat? It’s so good, though,” the girl said.

“I’ll pass,” Marguerite replied.

Someone whose mere sight made her remember unpleasant things was right there. Not knowing where to direct her gaze, Marguerite looked down at the hat she’d laid in her lap. The peacock feather decoration and silk veil were too fancy for everyday wear, but they were appropriate for a magical girl. Shifting her gaze slightly over, the rapier she’d left to her right caught her eye. She never, ever left it out of her reach.

“The meat’s good, though. And soft,” the girl told her.

“So even an old woman can enjoy it?”

“No talking about age.”

“It’s already too late for you.”

“So you’re not having any meat?”

Right now, Marguerite didn’t have the appetite to put food in her mouth for pleasure. She nodded briefly and indicated her reservation with a raised palm as a way to prompt the girl to hurry up with her business.

The girl closed her eyes, nodded a few times, and blew out a breath in a deliberate fashion. “Ahhh, I’m only ever treated like I’m in the way, at home and at work. Even with you, when we haven’t seen each other in so long.”

“That’s really not true.”

“We were partners once. You could be a little more friendly, you know?”

What would she say if Marguerite was to reply that she thought coming all this way to see her fulfilled her obligation? “I’ve never been a friendly person.”

“I know, I know. Well, it’s fine. I don’t mind brusque types like you.”

“I get that often.”

“There you go, so shameless about it.”

“I get that often, too.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I want to ask you a favor. I’ll pay you for it, too. It’s the type of thing that normally you wouldn’t think is dangerous, but I can’t promise it’s completely safe. That means this job should be left to a veteran who won’t be careless or show weakness. Since, unfortunately, someone who’s just strong would underestimate the job and think like, Nothing’s gonna happen; this is boring.”

“I haven’t accepted this job.”

“So you’re planning to stay a hermit until you’re dead?”

“I’m thinking once my savings have run out, I’ll be forced to work because I want money.”

“The heck, that sounds like a motive for a crime!” The girl snorted and then, once she’d soaked it in plenty of egg, bolted down some shirataki. “I heard you’re still training to keep from getting rusty.”

“I don’t know who exactly gave you that idea, but even a hermit will get some minimal exercise.”

“Well, maybe a magical girl will do that much.”

“Yes, a magical girl will do that much.”

“And if you’re a magical girl, then of course you’ll be helping people, too.”

Marguerite’s arching eyebrows came together in a frown.

That didn’t seem to bother the girl, who cut her fried tofu into four equal cubes and proceeded to chew one quietly. “Come on, don’t be so suspicious. It’s not like I’m gonna ask you to terminate some criminals with extreme prejudice or resolve some dispute that can’t be made public or anything like that. I just want you to help out a poor boy who has no one else to turn to. See, this is getting magical-girl-like.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You sound eager now.”

“I’m not.”

“Since you want to hear about it so badly, I’ll explain. A mage who’s not from the administration has apparently died in an accident during an experiment. So everyone related to this guy who got accidented is gonna be getting together to talk about the inheritance. One of these heirs is a kid—a distant relative. He originally lived an ordinary life away from magic and everything, so that makes it difficult to hire a magical girl to guard him, but he apparently can’t go without one.”

“You want me to be his bodyguard?”

“All the magical girls of the Schoolroom, myself included, are crazy busy right now. We’re all running around trying to manage training some unseasonal new hires. If I’m the only one taking time off work, I’ll get stabbed. For real.”

“The Schoolroom” was a nickname only used within the Inspection Department for the instruction team. Marguerite even wondered if there was some kind of reason to take on new people in the off-season. She laid her right hand over her lap. This wasn’t a matter she should be thinking about.

“…There have to be lots of people outside of the Schoolroom who would want to repay a debt to an old teacher,” said Marguerite.

“I don’t think I should be sending off magical girls in public office for private business,” the girl replied. “Plus, I feel bad standing by and letting capable personnel rot.”

“Do you know what the word ‘busybody’ means?”

“Oh yeah. Maybe you should actually meet him, to see what kind of boy he is.”

Marguerite had no time to voice her doubts. The girl cupped her right hand by her mouth and called out loudly toward the sliding screen, “You can come in!” As Marguerite turned around, the screen slid open.

She had sensed his presence and breathing behind the screen, so she’d known someone was there. A ten-year-old boy bowed his head energetically and cried out, “Nice to meet you!”

Formality demanded that Marguerite had to respond in kind, so she said, “Nice to meet you” as well, shooting the girl a mildly accusatory look.

The girl smiled completely shamelessly. “Hey, come join us for some sukiyaki.”

“Can I? Phew. I’ve been smelling it only the whoooole time, y’know. That was so mean, when I’m hungry, geez.” The boy shuffled over the tatami on his knees, eyes flicking to the girl’s plunging neckline, then to the sukiyaki, then to Marguerite.

“This is the lady who’s gonna be going with you,” said the girl.

“Whoa-hoa, cool. Is that sword real? You’re…a magical girl…right?” He stared at Marguerite’s sword before he opened his mouth wide and breathed an ohhhh.

“And you’re…?” Marguerite trailed off.

“Oh, I’m Touta. Touta Magaoka,” the boy answered, puffing out his chest, and then he immediately changed his stance to lean forward with enthusiasm. He grabbed a bowl, and with the large serving of rice that was offered to him in hand as well, he scarfed down the meat, green onions, and Chinese cabbage that were served to him. “So, like. You’re sorta like a hero who beats the bad guys. That’s so cool.”

“Well…”

“Yeah, yeah, this lady is really good at beating bad guys,” the girl told him.

“Wow, that’s so awesome!” Touta gushed. “So are rangers and riders and stuff real, too? Um, if you don’t mind telling me?”

Annamarie had been the most energetic magical girl. No matter what obstacles were in her way or what insurmountable walls she slammed into, she’d never lost natural enthusiasm. Once she had become a member of an investigation team in the Inspection Department, she began researching the incident caused by Cranberry, the Musician of the Forest. She discovered that the death of a friend of hers had been caused by Cranberry’s exam. After using the authority of Inspection to look up the magical girl who had murdered her friend in an exam, she’d challenged her to a fight and lost. The incident had been written off as an unjustified attempt at getting revenge for her friend, and Miss Marguerite had gotten sick of remembering it and so had left the department.

That individual had apparently been one of “Cranberry’s children,” having gone through one of her lethal exams, and she’d also been a part of the violent magical-girl group that was the Archfiend Cram School. Marguerite thought there had to be a way to fight her, but nobody was going to listen to her about that, and it wasn’t as if she wanted to tell anyone about it anyway. It was just that thinking about her foolish student made things unbearable.

The boy looked excited. He was grinning from ear to ear as he competed with the girl to scramble for meat. Thinking of the student she’d once had who had been just as energetic as an elementary school boy, Marguerite made a smile that didn’t go past her lips.

  Ragi Zwe Nento

Ragi had been shoved into the Magical Girl Management Department thanks to an incarnation of one of the Three Sages. Ragi had been against making a magical girl the incarnation and had even loudly criticized the idea.

A magical girl should only ever be an observer rather than in command. Diverting a craft designed purely with strength of the flesh and power of magic as opposed to another purpose was sheer blasphemy and faithlessness. What made a Sage a Sage was esteem for intellect and virtue over trivial attributes that could be expressed in numerical values.

The few comrades who had agreed with him had either given in to bribery or feared retribution; one by one, they were cut from the opposition. When Ragi had discovered that the friend who had sworn with him to fight this until the end had diverted information to the pro side, Ragi had quickly come to the realization he was helpless on his own, and so he had finally given in.

He was removed from the mainstream and distanced from research work. They started giving him a bureaucrat’s tasks rather than a researcher’s work, following which he received a notice of personnel change. “Your work was so good, we’ve decided to have you take the position officially,” they said, words kind enough on the surface so that he couldn’t refuse. This was how he had been driven into the do-nothing job of the head of the Magical Girl Management Department. The die had been cast.

This downward move was basically harassment. It wasn’t like Ragi hadn’t considered quitting. Even if getting a job with the Puk Faction was out of the question, he knew it would be possible to switch to the Caspar Faction and live more freely—or leave the service of the Magical Kingdom to retire. But both options were irritating in their own ways, essentially acknowledgments of his loss. Maybe it was a fact that he was a loser both objectively and subjectively, but admitting that was a separate issue.

Most of all, despite his fall from grace, Ragi still revered the Sage Chêne Osk Baal Mel. When he had seen Osk as a young mage, the Sage had been a majestic ball of light that warmed body and soul upon approach. And when the chief magician at the time had summoned Osk with her own flesh and blood as catalyst, she had become a Sage in the form of a peaceful, elegant elderly lady who gently guided lost mages and spoke of harmony with the world. But she had been unable to bear such a great and powerful spirit—when her body had faded, she had disintegrated along with it, still smiling.

It was nothing more than a sentimental memory, and that was what made it so irritating. A god who should have been the subject of reverence and awe was now made a toy to fools. Those people would say, “That’s not true at all; we’re endeavoring to have Master Osk manifest more powerfully,” but if you asked Ragi, that didn’t even fly as a pretense.

Loving and revering Osk, Ragi mourned the situation of the Sage while being enraged at his own. These negative feelings kept him from ever sitting still, and in his office at the Management Department, the fires of his anger burned constant as he worked on. He managed the physical register of names of the magical girls, which changed day by day, and when occasionally mages or magical girls visited, he would allow them to peruse it if they had official permission, and he would shoo them away if they didn’t. One magical girl coming around had basically been a thief looking to steal personal information. He had immediately reported her to Inspection, but they had never really cleared things up, telling him only that the incident “has been resolved.”

Even if that was true, weren’t rule breakers deserving of punishment? They said the thief, who was also known as the Magical-Girl Hunter, was still breaking rules to expose criminals. This fact made Ragi’s rage burn all the brighter.

The physical names register had become more detailed than ever before after inheriting a vast amount of data, which he was told had been generated by the IT Department. It even kept record of a magical girl’s special magic and an evaluation of her abilities. There were any number of ways for those with the inclination to abuse this information. Ragi could come up with ten or twenty in just a moment’s consideration. Such information shouldn’t even be used freely, let alone be stolen.

As a result, he upped the security in his office at the Management Department. He made it resistant to every kind of magic: teleportation, mind-reading, mind-control, scrying, informational analysis, bending of space, causal manipulation, concept alteration, dimensional leaps, limited-area control—and he drove away every single one of the ill-advised fools who showed up one after another. Since the theft by that Magical-Girl Hunter, he hadn’t let even a single piece of information leak. His primary motivation was anger, and so long as he was head of the Magical Girl Management Division, that continued to well up indefinitely.

And so Ragi spent every day in his office at the Management Department, now made an independent space cut away to become an isolated island, surrounded by magical sigils floating in the air as he attempted to make it an indomitable fortress of invincible, absolute defense, continually polishing its security day and night until, one day, a letter came.

In a space with no up or down, surrounded by five formations of magical figures, Ragi picked up a white envelope. It had far too strong an air of “this world” for something used by mages. “What is this?” he demanded.

“I’m told…it’s an invitation.” The one to have brought this letter was, annoyingly enough, a magical girl. Her warm and fluffy-looking costume got on his nerves for some reason. In his head, he nicknamed her Sheep.

Responding with a snort, Ragi picked up the white, wax-sealed envelope.

Just by touching it, the information flowed into him. Ragi scowled. Scowling made him feel his deep wrinkles, which made his whole body tense up. He forced his stiff expression back to normal. Even just changing his expression was a struggle, compared to when he was young, but he didn’t feel like doing something about it with magic.

The one to send this letter—Lyr Cuem Sataborn—was a mage who had lived for his hobbies. At the drop of a hat, he would be neck-deep in nothing but hobby experiments. Experiments upon experiments before all else. They were his number one priority, to the exasperation of everyone around him. He had no family, either. Avoiding association with people of character, among other things, had put him in a similar situation to Ragi, but since Sataborn had inherited family wealth, his fortune had gained him the right to deepen his research as he pleased and do what he wanted, living freely and at his whims without being tied down to organizations and factions like Ragi. Trace his family tree, and it went a ways back, and this meant his family had status. His family was associated with the Osk Faction, formally speaking, but Ragi had never heard of Sataborn working with them for anything. Sataborn’s irresponsible lifestyle with no obligations did irritate him, but Ragi also envied him. Though that envy was directly linked to that irritation.

“So he died… I see,” Ragi muttered.

It was apparently true that he had died during an accident. Ragi closed his eyes and prayed for Sataborn’s peace in the afterlife.

“But why would he leave anything to me?” Ragi wondered.

“I-I’m sorry,” Sheep stuttered. “All I’ve been told is what was in the will…”

Had Sataborn felt sympathy for Ragi, thinking of him as a fellow outsider? It was hard to believe that Sataborn had privately respected him, but was there absolutely no possibility? All Ragi could say was that he didn’t understand the mind of that eccentric researcher.

“But this is inscrutable,” Ragi said.

“Um, yes?” Sheep answered timidly.

“Why is one of the listed conditions that I bring magical girls?”

“Well, um… I haven’t been told the reason for that, either, so… I wonder. Maybe to attend to your personal needs or as a bodyguard…I suppose?”

Ragi scowled again, then tried to relax his expression once more, but it froze up in a slightly disgruntled look. “Wouldn’t a homunculus or golem be enough?”

“There are a number of other heirs, and they’re apparently going to be bringing magical girls with them… I really don’t know about just one person not having them…”

What if only Ragi, who had a tenuous connection to the deceased, had homunculi accompanying him, while the other heirs brought magical girls? Imagining that, it did seem uncomfortable. Ragi struck the floor with his staff, and the cringing sheep girl trembled, gripping the fluffy cuffs of her sleeves.

Before she could say anything, Ragi ground his teeth. This was so vexing—enraging. “Just what do they think magical girls are? Items of personal status or accessories? Nonsense—what absolute nonsense for Sataborn to demand…”

Ragi thought it over despite his anger at the situation. He could procure some basic organic bodies. If you added only so much sense and comprehensiveness to remain short of generating an ego, wouldn’t you be able to create something that looked sort of close enough? And then if he declared it a magical girl, and he could somehow squeak by…

“Um, you probably shouldn’t do anything too strange…,” Sheep said.

“What in the blazes?!” Ragi cried. “You scoundrel! Did you just read my mind?! Unbelievable. I need more security.”

“No, I didn’t read your mind… You were talking out loud.”

His teeth grated audibly. It seemed he had to bring one, no matter what.

“I’d be too scared to read your mind now anyway…,” Sheep muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, um, I overheard things about that.”

“Tell me what.”

The sheep scrunched up her face like it was terribly difficult to say, then looked up, then to the side. It looked like she was searching for someone to save her, but there was nobody here but Ragi, and the sheep, and the magical figures. “Um… They’re saying the Magical Girl Management Department is hot right now.”

“Hot? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They’re saying trying to steal trivial information from the Magical Girl Management Department has become a fad with magical girls who are good at these things… It’s a competition called ‘extreme information theft,’ and people are even more excited about it because Magical-Girl Hunter has been the only one to ever succeed…”

Ragi’s temperature above the neck shot up, making the sheep girl’s face twist up into an even more pathetic display, following which she leaped out of the space a split second before Ragi could yell at her. On her way out, she struck her forehead on part of the barrier and went head over heels, hitting the back of her head, writhing in pain as she crawled the rest of the way.

What an incorrigible lot were these creatures known as magical girls. After chasing out the sheep, Ragi activated a searching spell. He was no longer thinking it absurd to bring a magical girl for private business, but it was still out of the question to misuse his authority as department head to order one to accompany him. So that meant hiring a freelancer, but Ragi had no such connections. There had been just one freelancer with a debt to him—her name had been Tot Pop—but she’d apparently joined an antiestablishment faction and had caused a prison break incident, during which she had died.

Ragi’s thoughts began to get off track, wondering why she would do something foolish like that, and he cleared his throat loudly.

So then some other magical girl he knew personally. Not long ago, that number had been zero, but during the incident the other day at an event called “The Great Magical Girl Athletic Meet: Beef Broth–Flavored Rice Balls Included,” he had become acquainted with a few. Of course, they were neither friends nor associates, and it would even be presumptuous to call them acquaintances, but it would be better than making a request of someone he didn’t know at all.

Minus fifteen seconds later, which he could sense accurately via magical means, he discovered where all those magical girls were right now via the search spell. One of them was looking for a partner to compete in a ramen tag battle. Another was riding a lawn mower on a journey through a parallel world. And the others also seemed busy with jobs or missions and such, but the last one had no particular business, and her schedule was open. Thinking back, she spoke less and was more composed than other magical girls, and there wasn’t much about her that could be annoying. It was fair to say she would be permissible to accompany him.

Ragi used a search spell to derive the contact information of the magical girl Clantail. He did sort of see this as an abuse of his position, but he shoved that thought into the corner of his brain, telling himself it was a trivial concern.

  Dreamy Chelsea

Just like many other magical girls, Chie Yumeno—Dreamy Chelsea—was a fan of magical-girl anime. Chie’s mother, Fuchiko, who said she’d been a magical girl before her marriage, had initially been charmed to see her daughter watching magical-girl anime. But before long, Chie’s enthusiasm had exceeded what Fuchiko deemed acceptable as a parent. Chie watched magical-girl anime until her eyes became bloodshot; she refused to leave the TV, devouring VHS tapes until she wore them out, until her mother had scolded her—“Enough of this!”—and pulled her away.

That wasn’t enough to stop Chie, who would get up in the middle of the night and wrap a blanket around the TV so she could watch without letting the light escape. When Fuchiko discovered her like this, she was more impressed than she was exasperated.

Such intense concentration had to be a talent. They said that those with the potential to be magical girls would occasionally manifest it in strange ways as humans, sometimes as incredible athleticism, memory, unusual appearance, or life spans so long they neared the limits of living creatures.

Fuchiko wasn’t a career magical girl, but whenever she had the spare time between house chores and child-rearing—and when she didn’t have the time, she would use her magical-girl abilities to make some—she would participate in magical-girl clubs and events, so she had a wide circle of friends. That was how she got a magical-girl scout she knew to check out her daughter and got the stamp of approval. “Your daughter has the aptitude to be a wonderful magical girl,” she said, and Fuchiko felt quite keenly that you couldn’t fight blood.

That was how Chie Yumeno became the magical girl Dreamy Chelsea. Enveloped by the joy that a world of dreams and magic was actually real, she took her first step down the path of the magical girl.

And then the seasons changed, and the days flowed by…

“Look. You really need to cut this out.”

“Mom…are you mad?”

“Of course I’m mad! How dare you tell me you don’t want to get a job!”

“I mean…it’s weird for a magical girl to get a job.”

“It’s not weird at all. All the characters from the anime you like have jobs. Like Cutie Healer and Star Queen. All those people are getting paid. I’ve even heard that Magical Daisy was going to college while also working part-time to support herself.”

Chie rose up and faced her mother and puffed her cheeks out big and round. “I’ve told you over and over those aren’t the ones I like! Those ones are all like…the kind who fight and stuff! That’s no different from shounen manga or mecha anime! I like magical girls! Stories about cute girls helping people in trouble!”

Chie wouldn’t say it had been better back in the day. That was because the magical girls Chie had loved since she was young were the old retro ones, the ones from the bygone days of the Showa-era ’80s and earlier. However, like how the falling snow must always go away someday, that era was long gone. If not for reruns or video rentals, she never would have been able to see them at all.

But now was even worse. The magical girls Chie loved had gone even further away. No matter how much those “people who were more or less categorized as magical girls” raged about it, if you asked Chie, they weren’t the real deal.

“My ambition is to be the kind of magical girl I love. Ever since I first became a magical girl, I’ve been helping people every day, and I’m not going to stop. If I get a job, it’ll get in the way of magical-girl activities.” With that impassioned speech, she clenched a fist, feeling the firm and strong will inside her that would never bend.

However, the look on her mother’s face immediately struck her with the foreknowledge of her own bending. Chie shuffled back on her bottom, but the wall and windows were right behind her, and there was nowhere to run. Her mother, her face twisted in unbearable anger, stepped up to Chie and looked down on her. When she transformed, she looked like a charming little devil who delighted the eyes of those who saw her. But right now, she looked like a big devil.

Chie straightened her posture, shifting into a proper kneeling position. She placed her hands on her knees and stared straight ahead. “Um.”

“How old are you this year?” her mother demanded.

“That has nothing to do with th—”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty…four.”

“Would you like to know what the neighbors are saying about Chie from the Yumeno household?”

“No…”

“Get changed right now and go to the employment center.”

“Yes…”

“It’ll be fine. You’ll manage it somehow—and enjoy yourself, too. That’s how you always are.”

“You’re just saying that…”

“What was that?”

“Nothing…”

Chie didn’t want to get a job. She thought a magical girl should only ever do magical-girl activities. If she wanted to make money, she would have to get a job, and if she got a job, that would mean responsibilities. She would start prioritizing her work responsibilities over her magical-girl activities, which didn’t produce income, and her identity as a magical girl would fade.

With her desire to make being a magical girl her number one commitment, Chie had used every trick in the book to somehow get this far, but her mother’s patience was reaching its limits.

She couldn’t buy any more time. If she went any further, her mother would resort to force. Her mother knew a lot of people from being in the magical-girl clubs. Some kind of anachronistic route like being sent to a tuna fishery, a crab factory boat through some shady day-labor recruiter, gold panning, a labor camp, or a silk mill in the middle of nowhere might actually be real. She could even envision being introduced to some old man in his fifties with a child who was Chie’s age and being told, “Starting today, this man is your husband.”

There was no way out. Dragging her heavy legs, Chie headed for the employment center. She wanted to stop by a convenience store. Even a bookstore would do. She wanted to stand there and read. She wanted to kill some time. But there was nowhere to run. In the space between graduating from university until now, she had lost her avenues of escape.

The door of the employment center was too heavy for a thirty-year-old woman who didn’t get enough exercise. While she was dragging her heels around the entrance, a middle-aged man in a suit opened the door for her. Giving him a smile like, “Ahhh, both of us have it rough, huh?” she went inside and followed the directions she got at the front desk to fill out some registration card. As expected, she left a lot blank. Saying, “It’s so tough when there’s a lot of blank spots, huh,” she turned her self-deprecation to humor in a chat with the lady at the reception desk, who recommended that for people like her, there was a “support program for gaining skills useful for employment,” and so she decided to participate.

In what looked like a meeting room, together with a young person of university age, a housewife-looking middle-aged woman, a homeless-looking man with a big backpack, and various others, Chie listened to a sort of lecture. The bearded man sitting next to her complimented her interesting clothes—Miko-chan T-shirt with a four-kanji word that was written wrong, like the kind a foreigner would wear—and she got some cookies. A bunch of the others were pulling out notebooks and writing things down, which made her panic, so she went back to the reception to borrow a notepad and ballpoint pen from the lady there. It was something like this back in college, right? she thought as she jotted down whatever seemed important. Apparently, it was a good idea to get your bookkeeping qualification, just in case.

Talking with the older man about how “there’s actually a lot that goes into a job search, huh,” figuring next they’d search on the computer, they got the lady at the reception desk to teach the two of them. The older man was struggling, but it wasn’t difficult for Chie. At home, she was either on the computer, in magical-girl form and using her magic to play, watching anime, eating or sleeping, or reading manga. She was already a computer veteran with more than twenty-five years of experience—a computer guru, basically. Once she discovered how to turn on a new machine, she could do anything with it.

Salary, sponsors, conditions, people who could use key macros, people who could program, people who had driver’s licenses—there was a lot of information, but nothing seemed like what she was looking for. It wasn’t like she really had any qualifications or experience she could brag about, so compromise would of course be necessary. The easiest thing would be to search for the best conditions possible of those who seemed like they might hire her, but that also kind of gave her the feeling she’d get caught in something exploitative or nasty. Chie was definitively lacking in social experience, after all. Looking beside her, she saw the old man had apparently figured things out and was repeating, “I see, I see,” while double-clicking. Great.

Her eyes happened to drop to her right hand, on the mouse. Her dark-pink nails reflected the fluorescent lights. She exhaled through her nose, then scrolled downward. Zoning out, staring at the screen, she thought about what she would do after this. She’d stop by the convenience store to check out the new snacks and ice cream on sale. Her mother wouldn’t complain about her dillydallying around on the way home if Chie claimed she was rewarding herself. But if she was going to make that argument, she’d need to come up with some results. Had it been three days ago when her mother had mentioned that she was looking quite plump? She could make up some sloppy lie, but her mother would see through it. When her mother got serious, she was relentless in checking every detail of the story. It was probably pointless to try.

Thinking about her mother only made Chie depressed. She’d think about something else. Oh yeah, if she was going to check out the snacks, then she wanted to stand at the store and read manga magazines, too. Would that manga that was often on hiatus be in it or not? If it was, that would give her the energy to live on. While giving deep consideration to these matters, she scrolled along until, eventually, her fingers on the mouse stopped.

Chie slightly narrowed her right eye. There was some orange text in large font that looked blatantly abnormal. Even more abnormal about it was the term “magical girl.”

She scrolled down. More appeared.

Recruiting magical girls.

Only those with magical-girl abilities are able to see this text.

Oh…what’s this here?

Chie touched her index finger to her right eyelid and pushed open the eye she’d narrowed. “Hey, mister.”

“Hmm? What is it?” the man beside her replied.

“Can you see if there’s something written here?”

“Hmm… Doesn’t look like there’s anything.”

“Really?”

“I just got my glasses prescription renewed, so I can see even tiny print.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks.”

This was the real thing. They were recruiting magical girls.

Chie’s mother had told her that the gate to being a career magical girl was a narrow one, opened only to a select few who were bursting with talent, and it led you down a thorny path. Chie considered her mother to be an excellent magical girl, but even she hadn’t become a career magical girl and had started a family instead.

As to whether Dreamy Chelsea was overflowing with talent—being a magical girl for nearly thirty years would make you understand that, whether you liked it or not. Chie wasn’t about to abandon her conviction that a magical girl’s job was not done with strength or speed or laser weapons, but even outside of those areas, she didn’t seem any better than other magical girls. The only person she had to compare herself with was her mother, who had given up on being a career magical girl, but Chelsea wasn’t even as good as she was—not in experience, in her eye for people, in consideration, in strength of heart, or cooking skill.

But it wasn’t like she was worse in every single way. There was her magic. It should also be fair to consider that a magical girl should just succeed using her magic.

Through her magic, Chelsea could control the stars. That sounded like she could control heavenly bodies, but of course that was impossible. When she explained that she could play by making little star-shaped objects fly around, most people would put on vague smiles, and depending on the person, they might even say something encouraging.

But it was no reason for pity. Chelsea saw it as very charming and appropriate magic for a magical girl, a gem she was quite satisfied with. She would use her stars to knock pebbles into the air, making those pebbles hit distant targets over and over, like how you’d bounce a tennis ball against the wall. The more times she did it, the higher the points. She’d been playing this “star-shoot game” since she was little, and even now she sometimes set new high-score records. If this had been a professional sport, she could have made a living on it, but unfortunately, Chelsea was the only player.

The sort of magical girl Chelsea imagined needed a magical girl–ish magic and then one more thing: luck. The luck to find magical-girl work appropriate for herself right when it counted was just what a magical girl needed. Chie lifted her finger from the scroll button on the mouse. She ran her eyes over a new line once, then did it again, then one more time.

Beginners welcome. Recruiting those who can transform into magical girls. Seeking a kind and genuine magical girl. Magical abilities or athleticism not questioned. Cleaning, cooking, and other skills are preferred. Illegal or legally evasive activity strictly forbidden. Cheerful, at-home workplace.

Chie grinned out of one side of her mouth. The world wasn’t all bad.

The man beside her was startled by a strange sound coming from his computer and loudly called out to the staff.

  Love Me Ren-Ren

There’s no end to the number of unfortunate people who won’t realize that they are unfortunate. That was what Rei’s examiner had told her. Mentally, Rei had resisted that idea, but she hadn’t put it into words.

Rei Koimizu didn’t consider herself unfortunate. In preschool and then school, hearing about her friends’ families or even seeing her friends’ mothers—they always seemed kind—when she went over to play, she never thought they were better than her mom. She only thought they were different from her mom. It wasn’t even that she felt her mother was irreplaceable or more important to her than anyone else. Her mother was her mother, nothing more and nothing less. The fact of her mother being her mother was, on its own, very important to Rei.

Around the time she entered preschool—no, even before that, when Rei was just born—she must have had a father, but she remembered him only vaguely. She thought she could remember things like his back being broad or him having a loud laugh, but maybe those things might actually be an impression of him that had come later, around the time she’d learned about him.

In other words, she didn’t remember her father. In Rei’s memory, there was only her mother.

She would carry a stool with her to the sink and put her body weight into the knife to cut the vegetables. Busily moving her little fingers and nails, she would rinse the rice, and she also regularly cleaned out the pot of the rice cooker. She didn’t think of it as a hassle or unnecessary toil. Her mother would come back late at night and then go to work when Rei was away from the house. Rei saw her mother only a few times a month, but every time she did, her mother would be drowsily looking down at the floor. Rei thought she must actually be sleepy. There was no way she wouldn’t be tired.

Rei would clean the toilet and sweep the hallway, tidying things as best she could. She didn’t make the sweet kind of curry—she used the medium spice that her mother preferred, although Rei herself tolerated a little bit of spice. She ran the washing machine every day so the laundry wouldn’t pile up, and she always used the leftover hot water from the bath for it.

Rei found this to be a worthwhile lifestyle, but her mother didn’t see it that way. She learned as such when she got a phone call from her mother, saying, “I’m not coming back anymore.” The words hit her hard.

It was sad, and it was painful. For the first time, Rei was aware of how important her mother was to her. She had taken her mother’s presence for granted—eating, sleeping, watching TV, occasionally telling jokes and smiling at her, but now she was gone.

She had a dim sense of why her mother wasn’t coming back anymore, and that was what made her sad. Her mother was different from Rei. She wanted her own time. There were lots of things she wanted to do. There was also someone she’d fallen in love with. She must have thought that if Rei wasn’t there, she might be able to get all those things she couldn’t get. Rei didn’t know if that was true, but ever since her mother had told her good-bye, she’d stopped coming home.

Rei was in elementary school. She’d known this sort of thing happened all over the world. She was so, so sad; the tears just kept coming, but she never considered searching for her mother or attempting to make her come back. No—maybe she had thought about it, but she bit her lip and stopped herself. She didn’t want to hold her mother back. If she did something like that, people would learn that her mother had left, which would only result in problems for the woman.

But that didn’t happen.

Rei was scouted by a certain examiner, and she became the magical girl Love Me Ren-Ren. She’d known you could make a living by getting someone to hire you for money, and she also managed to find someone to play the role of her guardian. Her days became even more incredibly busy than before, but Rei continued to pay rent at her apartment and go to school, and she didn’t shirk in cleaning or laundry, either. She kept everything her mother had left behind untouched, but she also took care of everything so her things wouldn’t get too dusty. That way her mother could come back at any time, and they could immediately go back to their old lives.

The examiner who helped Ren-Ren out with things pointed to her and said, “You’re an interesting person. Look for someplace where that appeal…your character can be put to good use. I pray that will be the stage that I wish for.”

Love Me Ren-Ren would summon love with her bow and arrow. With her arrow, she could firmly retie unraveling bonds.

Love Me Ren-Ren cherished the connections between people. Rei had decided she would. Rei existed, Love Me Ren-Ren existed, because her father had loved her mother, and her mother had loved her father. If something came about because of Love Me Ren-Ren, that had to be something wonderful. She made more smiles and lessened the number of crying faces. Love and bonds were the most important things to that end.

So Ren-Ren started taking jobs that involved bonds between people: She restored families that had been falling apart due to affairs, renewed relationships between siblings who had been in an inheritance squabble, and reconciled couples who wanted to make up but couldn’t bring themselves to take that first step. Occasionally she would even discard her own position or benefit in the pursuit, and her reputation for earnestness spread until she was well-known. Now she was what her examiner had called a “fortunate freelancer,” and work came to her even if she didn’t advertise herself.

It was rare that a client brought Ren-Ren to their house. Those who hired Ren-Ren, regardless of their level of wealth or status, all wanted to keep their privacy. In that sense, this client could even be described as quite open, but Ren-Ren wasn’t childish enough to be glad about that.

A mage was going somewhere to inherit wealth and required magical-girl accompaniment for it. That was all it was, but Ren-Ren was being shown into her house, and the economic situation she could infer from that dwelling was not great. Those facts put together a convincing story in her head.

The house had been built more than thirty years ago. The whole building was tilting just enough for her to barely sense as a magical girl, though she wouldn’t have noticed as a human. The wallpaper was faded. It had probably been a darker yellow to begin with and was now a paler cream. Something like black soot had accumulated in the bottom of the round fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling. It resembled the apartment where Rei had lived up until it had been demolished.

But just because it resembled the familiar home she’d lived in for so many years, that didn’t mean it was comfortable in the same way. The kitchen floor was slightly sticky, and the dining table legs were too high.

The magical girl sitting on the other side of the table set the teacup in her hands down on the table—there was no saucer—as she muttered something. Her diction was so unclear, Ren-Ren wasn’t sure if it was Japanese or a spell. Either way, it was so quiet and indistinct, and Ren-Ren was completely unable to pick up what she said.

“Um…did you say something?” Ren-Ren asked.

Eyes still lowered, the magical girl muttered some more. Ren-Ren still couldn’t parse what she said. Her costume was mostly black, and she had a melancholy air to her, with dull eyes and a vacant expression that seemed to reject further intrusion.

Ren-Ren had been working many years as a freelancer, but her work tended to be of a certain type. She only ever took on work related to human bonds and social relationships, and having done well at that, now she only ever got that type of work coming to her. This work was also not the sort that needed to be handled by more than one magical girl. So she’d only ever gotten more opportunities to work solo, and it had been a long time since she’d been involved with another magical girl. She wasn’t sure whether she could work well with others.

Ren-Ren smiled awkwardly back at her, and the magical girl known as Nephilia went ksh-sh-sh through her teeth—that was probably laughter.

“L-L-Love Me…Ren-Ren…huh…” Though it came out in hesitant stutters, it wasn’t like Ren-Ren couldn’t barely pick it out.

“Ren-Ren is fine, Nephilia,” Ren-Ren told her.

“Nephi…”

The magical girl called Nephilia looked like a shinigami carrying a very frightening giant scythe. Ren-Ren knew scythes were originally farmer’s tools, but this big weapon with the unconcealed dull gleam of metal was still very impactful to her. But Nephilia’s attitude didn’t really highlight that—she actually had an air of gloom that was far from violence.

“By the way, both of you.”

The two magical girls tore their gazes away from each other, Nephilia looking to the right and Ren-Ren left to look toward the voice.

“If you’re gonna talk, then include me,” said a woman in her mid-twenties. Her chestnut-colored hair rested at her shoulders. She didn’t wear much makeup overall, with only her lipstick in dark red. Since she was slouching, Ren-Ren couldn’t see below her chest, but still, you could tell she would be bending her knees quite a bit to fold her legs in her chair. The left strap of her camisole lay over her collarbone, while the right strap was coming off her shoulder, and Ren-Ren felt like this asymmetry almost symbolized her character.

Nephilia nodded silently, blank-faced, head hanging as she looked up at the woman. “B-bad…at talking…”

“Ahhh, you’re bad at talking. There’s no helping that,” the woman replied.

“In…heritance…law…office…”

“I see. You’re saying you’re not good at talking because you’ve hardly done anything besides your specialized work.”

With upturned eyes, Nephilia did that same snicker through her teeth. She seemed to be agreeing.

Ren-Ren made a particularly soft expression. “Yes, yes.” She nodded. “It’s the same with me. I’ve only ever done work relating to family issues. So I haven’t worked very much with other magical girls.”

Nephilia put a hand to her forehead and then gave a toothy grin. “Nervous…here…together…”

“I’m nervous, too. Since this is gonna be nasty stuff,” the client said.

Nephilia raised one eyebrow. “Oh…?”

“Well, I mean. When the daughter of the mistress gets a message from a deadbeat to shamelessly barge into the event just to get an inheritance, it’s gonna be nasty and a lot of trouble, am I right?” Given her appearance, at a glance it seemed like she was speaking very casually. But her fingers on the teacup handle were gripping tight, and the ends of her nails had gone white.

Emphasizing lightness in her manner, Ren-Ren put the words together. “Our business is in resolving hassles like that, Miss Agrielreymwaed Quarky.”

“Agri is fine. It’s way too long otherwise… Actually, I’m impressed you remembered it all.” The two of them laughed together, and then Nephy followed up with that snicker of hers.

“A…Ag…,” Nephilia stuttered.

“Oh, Ag is okay, too, but I’m used to be calling Agri, if you don’t mind.”

“Ri…”

“Ohhh, sorry. You were still in the middle of saying it, huh.” Agri and Nephilia laughed, and this time, Ren-Ren was the one to follow.

Agri stood up and said she was going to the bathroom; Ren-Ren breathed a little sigh. Nephilia moved just her eyes to look at Ren-Ren, who pretended not to notice, picking up her teacup to moisten the inside of her mouth.

“So your specialty is inheritance and estates, Nephy?” Ren-Ren asked.

“H-hate…dead people…bodies…”

“I…don’t really like them, either.”

“Bad…at fighting…”

“I doubt there will be any fights. I would be uncomfortable with that, too.” With a wry smile, Ren-Ren moved to pick up her teacup again, but it was already empty.

Nephilia lowered her voice even quieter, cupping her right hand around her mouth as she said, “Think…of…boss…?”

Ren-Ren’s face tensed into a serious expression. “I…would like to help Agri as much as possible.”

“If…money…work…?”

Ren-Ren folded her fingers over the table. She wondered how much she should say. She realized if she spoke honestly, she would ultimately be laughed at, but she was going to do so anyway.

“Agri feels negatively about her deceased father,” she said with a knowing nod. “I don’t know very much about the circumstances of mages, but it seems something like what we would call the daughter of a mistress.”

“U-uh.”

“I…want to help Agri come to love her father, even a little bit.”

Nephilia’s eyebrows knitted together, then jerked upward, then slowly returned to their original position. “Huh…”

“Isn’t it sad for a daughter to hate her father?”

After about three seconds of silence, Nephilia’s shoulders trembled, her voice smothered. She wasn’t crying. She was holding her stomach and laughing like it was absolutely hilarious.

Ren-Ren wasn’t offended. She was always laughed at when she talked about this sort of thing. Nonetheless, she didn’t want to be misunderstood. “I’m not lying, Nephy.”

“I—I under… Not…lie…” Nephy stopped laughing, then leaned over the table, lifting her chin to fix her gaze on Ren-Ren. Her eyes weren’t vacant and half-lidded but properly open.

Ren-Ren felt overwhelmed, but she didn’t let that show on her face, looking back at the other girl. “Is that…funny?”

“N-no…sorr…”

“It’s not really something to apologize for… I’m used to being laughed at.”

“Cool… Ego… Magical…girl…like…”

Ren-Ren wasn’t sure if that was a compliment but responded with an expression that could be taken as a smile.

Nephilia slid out one hand to lay it over Ren-Ren’s. Her hand was cold. “Straightforward…nasty… I like…” She smirked.

Maybe she wasn’t complimenting Ren-Ren after all.

  7753

When Mana told her about the invitation, even 7753, who could confidently say she wasn’t good at picking up on hints, understood what she wanted. It wasn’t that 7753 had gotten quicker on the uptake but that Mana was very easy to understand. Mana had no magical girls she could look to for private favors, but she was also too embarrassed to say “I have no one else” and directly ask 7753 to accompany her to the island. She didn’t want to complain that she was lost with nowhere to turn to gain 7753’s sympathy, but she wanted her to come.

7753 could understand painfully well that Mana was in trouble, and she did want to help her. There had once been a magical girl Mana could have asked for help. Whenever 7753 remembered that magical girl, Hana Gekokujou, she was assaulted by a feeling that made her want to scratch at her chest. And Hana had been like a sister to Mana, so it had to be worse for her. Thinking about this made 7753 want to help her out, if there was anything minor, even the smallest thing that was in her power.

But 7753 had work. She made an attempt nevertheless and wrote out a request for leave, and to her shock, her schedule opened up. The magical girl whom 7753 had been looking after, Princess Deluge, was transferred to “where she should be,” with hardly any time to say good-bye.

And now 7753 had come to this island.

It was hot. The beach sizzled under the blazing sun, and the large rocks in the sand would make it impossible to walk barefoot in human form. 7753 was a magical girl, so she could handle that discomfort in that form, but she wouldn’t have chosen to do it. The most she did was get as close as she could to the water’s edge while staying out of the spray as she gazed into the horizon. She would look bad in front of Tepsekemei if she got carried away. Even if Tepsekemei wouldn’t remember that she’d been brought with the promise that she couldn’t be too loud, break anything, or do anything dangerous, 7753 would remember.

As for said Tepsekemei, she was high in the sky, blowing in the wind. When Mana warned her that if she went too high up, she might hit a barrier, she replied, “I already did that”—was that a good sign or not?

“Tepsekemei looks like she’s having fun.” 7753 turned around to see Mana gazing up at the sky with a tired expression. She held down her flapping cape with her right hand and her hat with her left, against the wind. That, with her outfit like a magical school uniform, made her look very put together but also not very cool.

“It sure is hot,” 7753 commented.

“It really is,” Mana agreed.

“Um…then why not at least take off the cape?”

“I’m going to dress formally when knocking at their door, at least.” Letting out a heavy phew, Mana rested her hands on her knees to support herself. “Just so you know, I’m not being slow because I’m too hot.”

“Huh? Really?”

“The gate to get here was handmade by some amateur. Of course using something like that will make me nauseous.”

7753—and probably Tepsekemei, too—didn’t get sick and had only thought, Being able to teleport with just a device like this is so amazing. It would make her feel guilty to seem unaffected, though, so 7753 pasted on a grimace.

“What about you?” Mana asked.

“I’m not so bad. I’m not the type to get carsick in the first place.”

“No, I mean the heat.”

“Oh, that.” 7753’s costume, with the motif of a boy’s school gakuran, looked like it would be stiflingly hot. It wasn’t suited to a very plainly southern island like this, but cold-weather gear and underwear were all the same for a magical girl. The air was drier than Japan, so in terms of humidity, you could even call it comfortable. “We’ll have no problem. Tepsekemei spent the whole winter in that getup, after all. And that’s despite originally being a creature who can’t live in the cold.”

“I envy that… Magical girls are so tough…,” Mana muttered, maybe like a compliment or maybe an insult for their lack of sensitivity, and then tottered away from the ebbing and crashing waves.

“We’re going, Tepsekemei,” 7753 called out loud to the sky, and then she trotted off.

7753 tried to take Mana’s arm, but Mana swept her off, saying, “Don’t treat me like an invalid.” Left without a choice, 7753 walked half a step behind, ready to support her at any time if she fell.

“Weddin,” a voice called to her from behind.

7753 corrected her without turning back. “I’m not Weddin, but what is it?”

Tepsekemei didn’t reply, and when 7753 glanced back, Tepsekemei was looking around with a somehow confused expression.

“What is it?” 7753 repeated.

“I don’t know.” That was vague for Tepsekemei. Floating in the air, her expression was serious.

7753 was aware she wasn’t the type to think, I’ve got to stay sharp, but with the other two like this, maybe she really did have to pull herself together.

There would be a whole bunch of formidable characters like mages and magical girls on this island. More frightening for the newly arrived trio was that they had no idea what kind of people they could expect to run into. 7753 had seen a lot of magical girls and a comparatively smaller selection of mages, and she knew a lot of them were good people. However, she also knew the bad ones were nasty enough that it could lead straight to a threat to your life.

Now, when Mana lost her temper or when Tepsekemei innocently did something rude, 7753 would have to be the one to cover for them.

So for now, to avoid being rude, she removed her goggles and let them hang from her neck.