Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 15 - Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

THE DESIRE TO HELP AND PROTECT

  Dreamy Chelsea

The world changed. Even though the intensity and cold of the wind hitting her cheeks and forehead were the same, the southern trees she’d left behind, the gentle light that filtered through the trees, or the star decoration Chelsea stood on—it felt like everything had changed.

Chelsea felt terribly disturbed, but she still kept on her feet and didn’t fall from her star. Remembering that she held Pastel Mary in her arms, she looked at the girl to find her even more confused than she was. Mary was glancing around as though she was frightened and didn’t know what was going on. Seeing Mary like that just made Chelsea feel even more rattled—but not because she was at the mercy of girlish love like before. Remembering how aggressively she’d been gluing herself to Mary made it feel like fire would come out of her face from embarrassment. Next Ren-Ren’s face rose in her mind, and anger joined that embarrassment, and a surge of emotions that were difficult to express swirled around inside her in an ugly whirlpool.

Reaffirming that she’d been holding Mary in a bridal carry during the confusion added more embarrassment and anger, plus Chelsea’s own unique sense of failure—she was treating someone else like a princess! The whirlpool of feelings became so vicious that she nearly tossed Mary away, but then she thought, Wait, no, I can’t do that and grabbed her tighter, readjusting her grip. She just about let her feelings slip out as a yell, but that wouldn’t be very cute now, would it? She somehow held the storm back inside.

And so, caught in anguish like this, Chelsea wasn’t steering her star. Before she knew it, splintered tree bark was looming four inches in front of her nose. Chelsea tensed her toes over the remaining three and a half inches and then leaped right in a toe loop for a wafting jump off another tree to do a vertical spin, and then she figured that wasn’t playful enough and so added another turn and a half, following which she bounced off a branch for a half turn in the opposite direction and landed.

She made her star decoration fly another thirty feet before returning to her hand on a heart-shaped trajectory, with turns and sudden rotations added in, and despite feeling jittery about Pastel Mary, she set her down on the ground on her feet. Though Chelsea did her best to set her down as gently as possible, when Pastel Mary saw Chelsea, her whole body trembled, and she hugged herself with both arms and retreated—neither what Chelsea wanted nor expected.

“Why are you reacting like that?!” Chelsea cried.

Mary shrank away from Chelsea’s menacing look, frightened enough that you’d even feel bad for her, before looking around the area and muttering in trepidation, “I was worried you might glomp me again.”

“I won’t!” She grabbed Mary firmly by the shoulders. “I was being mind-controlled by nasty magic! You were being controlled, too!”

“But—”

“There’s no butts here, or behinds!”

“Chelsea, that’s such a dad joke. Only an old man would say that.”

“I’m not an old man!”

Still grabbing Mary’s shoulders, Chelsea shook her from side to side to keep her from talking. Since Chelsea couldn’t get any more agitated now, she calmed down a little and looked at what she was doing objectively. She was grabbing Pastel Mary’s shoulders and shaking her. Chelsea could feel the heat of her body through her thick clothing. Remembering how she’d single-mindedly clung to her in pursuit of that heat was just so embarrassing Chelsea couldn’t take it anymore, and she lost her cuteness and presence of mind and howled, “Nooo!”

Chelsea tossed Mary aside, holding her head in her hands as she watched Mary shriek and land in some bushes. No. She’d just lost herself for a moment. Well, that wasn’t quite it, either. This was Ren-Ren’s fault. Mary rose, groaning, with a hand on the back of her head. Raising her upper body out of the brush, she pointed at Chelsea. “I mean…”

“What?”

“Your face is red…”

Chelsea touched a hand to her cheek; it was warm. She closed her eyes. At this rate, she was really going to wind up hopeless. She had to think about something else. Anything else…, she pleaded internally, and Shepherdspie’s face rose in her mind. “Ahhh!” she yelped. It wasn’t a cute cry, but Chelsea couldn’t restrain it. When she realized that she’d been distracting herself with other things because she didn’t want to think about Shepherdspie, “Mr. Pie” spilled from her mouth.

Mary’s eyes widened, and immediately her whole face contorted. Seeing Pastel Mary’s reaction, Chelsea knew it hadn’t been an illusion or hallucination. Chelsea clenched her hands and opened them again. The feelings she’d been holding back by prioritizing her fake love, thinking, That was bad with Mr. Pie, but May-May is more important, broke through the dam to overflow. Though she’d only known him for a short time, the feelings were surging in strongly enough that she couldn’t hold them back—was that because she’d been holding them back so hard? Or was the strength of feelings not proportionate to time?

When she’d destroyed his room and his house, burning it up and bringing down the tower, and gotten his cookies stolen by a thief as well as probably failed at a whole bunch of other things, Shepherdspie had always looked troubled, and with each failure, she’d thought she was sure to be fired, but never was. Chelsea had been a shut-in for ten years, hardly having contact with anyone but her family, and so she’d felt anxious about relationships in a new workplace, and she’d been relieved to have such a good person as her employer.

The last thing to come to her mind was Shepherdspie’s exquisite and specially made cuisine. Oh yeah, he never taught me how to make that, she thought, and a single tear hit the hand touching her cheek.

Mary was looking down, her expression terribly sad. Chelsea clenched her teeth. If this were the world of a wholesome magical-girl anime, Shepherdspie wouldn’t have died.

She felt her body getting hotter. Her heart was hammering. As a magical girl, Chelsea felt a responsibility to be cute. But Shepherdspie had died. The goddess had killed him. The goddess was strong. She was stronger than Chelsea.

No!

Her breathing became ragged. Her body felt like it would be torn apart. This feeling like a dam had burst inside her wasn’t stopping. The cute Dreamy Chelsea and the Dreamy Chelsea who was thinking about Shepherdspie were standing there like two separate people. Mary was hanging her head and quietly muttering, “Mr. Shepherdspie,” and that remark came with a shock that shattered everything to gather Chelsea’s heart into one.

First, the grayfruit. Chelsea knew where Agri’s cohort was storing them. If the spell on her had come undone, that might be because something had happened to Ren-Ren, fighting against the goddess. Ren-Ren was a bad person, but Chelsea thought it was better for her to be alive than dead. But Chelsea would take the grayfruit. It was kind of like compensation money.

She would get a full supply of grayfruit to fight a war of attrition. If she made good use of the sheep as a diversion as well as the mobility of her star to fight while running away, then the enemy’s transformation should come undone first. Chelsea settled on her general plan. She would get back at her for Shepherdspie. She would have her revenge.

Pastel Mary lifted her chin. “Oh yeah…I forgot that I dropped the old mage.”

Chelsea let out a long breath and pursed her lips in the process to ensure she looked cute.

  Nephilia

Nephilia’s will to fight was quickly crushed. It broke with a light snap.

Dreamy Chelsea had zoomed through the sky, crossing over the rocky area to sweep Pastel Mary away. Nephilia didn’t have to mobilize her logical thinking to figure out what sort of creature would come lumbering behind her. It was the enemy who was chasing off Chelsea. And chasing off Chelsea was not so easily done.

Having crossed blades with Dreamy Chelsea herself, Nephilia could say for certain that Chelsea was a monster. And that very monster was being forced to run. An unarmed human would see a grizzly bear, a tank, an aircraft carrier, and a space fortress all as opponents that couldn’t be beaten, but there were clear differences in level among these opponents. Within the Department of Diplomacy, or among the graduates of the Archfiend Cram School or the toughs of antiestablishment factions, there was a hierarchy with some stronger and others weaker. No matter how strong a magical girl you became, you’d know there was someone above you.

That was why Nephilia fled without hesitation. If this was someone Chelsea couldn’t beat, then Nephilia should never fight her. Nephilia always valued her own life.

“Is the one you dropped the golden ax? Or is it the silver ax?” a voice called from behind.

Nephilia turned back without slowing down. The goddess wasn’t moving from her position, just standing there and looking at her. She was just like the goddess who appeared to show a miracle to the poor woodcutter who had lost his ax. If you took the illustration Nephilia had once seen in a picture book and made it a little dirty, it would be exactly like this. The way she had an ax in each hand was just in the style of that picture book, too, but seeing it in reality was eye-openingly bizarre. Seeing her hold a heavy-looking ax with each of her cute, delicate, and slender arms was so unreal, it made Nephilia’s head spin.

When Nephilia ran a few steps, the goddess swung her ax. It wasn’t that Nephilia actually saw her do it. The moment Nephilia thought, Oh, I think she’s going to swing, she made a flying leap to the side. Right after that, there was an explosion. Shattered rocks flew everywhere, and earth and sheep fluttered down, and, pitifully enough, former sheep that had been shredded into meat and sinew also hit the ground as Nephilia rose from her knees.

You can do it. Don’t give in. Stand up, Nephilia, she encouraged herself as she kept her eyes on the goddess seen beyond the dust and smoke. Even if Nephilia had lost her will to fight, the enemy was still there. It didn’t seem like the goddess would let her get away because she didn’t want to fight.

“Is the one you dropped the golden ax?”

The wind blew through, and the cloud of dust wavered and thinned. When Nephilia got a little glimpse of the goddess’s face, she was looking off in the other direction. She wasn’t looking at Nephilia. That attack just now hadn’t been aimed at Nephilia, either, had it?

This is your chance, Nephilia, she told herself. Lowering her stance, she walked silently. Hidden in the dust cloud, she went a few steps to get away from the goddess, then stopped.

The goddess was sliding along in the opposite direction from Nephilia’s route of retreat. Her lower body was hidden by the cloud of dust, so that was part of it, but she moved so smoothly, it was like her feet didn’t exist. Did she not notice Nephilia, or was she ignoring her because she didn’t see her as a threat?

With the utmost care to even keep from making the cloud of dust waver, Nephilia breathed slowly out her nose. The goddess wasn’t looking at Nephilia, she wasn’t paying attention to her, or she hadn’t noticed her—that had to be because her target was someone else. And that someone else obviously wouldn’t be the sheep. Since Mary and Chelsea had fled before the enemy came, it could only be Ren-Ren, or Agri, or both.

That guess—and the probability that two nasty people were being targeted—made Nephilia feel grim. She had the feeling she’d realized something she should not have.

Nephilia rose and stuck up one knee. She sucked in a deep breath of air and swung her scythe high up above her head. Roughly estimating, she was over a hundred feet from the goddess. Nephilia didn’t even glance at the goddess, swinging down her scythe on the spot. This was just the scythe that was a part of her costume. She couldn’t attack from a hundred feet away. She knew that better than anyone else.

Through her work—or, more precisely, through using her work to look for nasty people, Nephilia had become acquainted with many magical girls. Many of them had been highly athletically competent, and such people always had a sharp nose for danger, for attacks—if Nephilia was a human, their sensitivity was like that of wild animals or greater. Nephilia had trained a little, and she’d hired a special coach to learn how to swing and handle a scythe. However, that was no more than moderate study as part of an ordinary lifestyle. Learning law documents had been the far greater priority, and the difference between her and magical girls who took for granted that they would hunt and be hunted and risk their lives—it was obviously the difference between human and lion.

If Nephilia rose and swung up her scythe, even from a little ways away, the lion—the goddess—would notice. If she noticed, then she would read Nephilia’s intentions. She would assume that Nephilia wasn’t raising her scythe in the air for no reason.

A magical girl with a very ghostly-looking aesthetic swinging up her special item—a very lethal-looking scythe—from a hundred feet away. The odds were high she was going to use magic. Having investigated the group kidnapping incident Keek had caused, Nephilia knew that one of the magical girls who had been made to participate in that death game, Akane, had been able to cut anything she could see, no matter how far away it was. You couldn’t ignore that there were people with magic like that. A beast would move without much consideration for the reasons why. Would the goddess dodge first, or would she attack? Judging from the way she handled things, from her trail of destruction, the odds of the latter were high. In other words, Nephilia could incite her to attack just by readying a swing of her scythe. Success was not guaranteed, though. She had maybe a 10 percent chance of success on this gamble. She couldn’t count on her reflexes, and neither did she possess any technique or training in reading ahead. The most Nephilia could do was incite action, timing it half at random. But even so, she had no choice but to do it. Nephilia swung her scythe down with all the strength in her body, and right before the tip touched the ground, she jumped to the side.

She was struck with an intense sound and impact, and her body was flung into the air. Not just her—rocks, dirt, grass, trees, everything was flying. She’d seen something similar a moment before.

Certain that she’d succeeded somewhat in what she had been trying to do, she mentally pumped a fist in her heart with a silent “Yesss.” She had lured the enemy with a pointless gesture, distracted her attention from Ren-Ren and Agri, and made her fire a shot. And having done that, Nephilia was still alive. In other words, she’d managed to control the enemy’s movement.

So for my next move, she thought at just about the same time that her right shoulder was slammed into rock.

An impact that rivaled the total two explosions knocked Nephilia out—and when she opened her eyes, the dust was clear. The earth, the trees, the stones, and Nephilia herself were not flying in the sky. The quiet was chill, the sun was strong enough that it was annoying, and white clouds were flowing by high up in the distant skies. She was confused for a while as to why the situation had changed in an instant, but then she quickly got it. It seemed she’d been knocked out for longer than she’d thought.

She tried to inhale and reflexively coughed at the pain in her chest, and that made her whole body writhe with pain, clenched fists trembling. The pain woke up her hazy brain. Nephilia brought her shaking hands up to her face and confirmed that she was still in magical-girl form. If she’d gone back to human form, she would have died. But even as a magical girl, she was in agony.

She moaned in pain, but she confirmed that she hadn’t lost herself and urged her protesting body onward. Moving and then stopping like a defective robot, she put her hands to her knees and then rolled to her side, and from there she sat up. She restrained the groan that was trying to free itself from the pit of her throat. Little stones that were stuck to her body pattered to roll off. She coughed a second time and spat out the saliva that was lingering in her mouth. It was cloudy with a thick redness.

She got to her knees and stood up. Looking back to where she’d just been, she understood the reason she had struggled to get up. The large boulder there was cracked and caved in, indented. It looked like Nephilia had hit the rock and made an indentation in it like she was being buried in it. She’d seen people getting beaten up like this in every kind of anime from slapstick to action, but she’d never thought to try it out herself.

She looked around. She was in a forest away from the rocky area. But even saying that, since the trees had been blasted away, the whole area wasn’t forest anymore. Nephilia couldn’t see the goddess. Ren-Ren and Agri were not there. She looked around a few times with her dizzy head and found her scythe lying on the ground. She thought, feeling haggard, that it was a good thing it was nearby, but worst case, she could have been stabbed by her own weapon. When she bent at the waist to pick it up, she felt a pain in her right shoulder like it was being twisted off, and she moaned in spite of herself. It made her want to cry, “It hurts, it hurts.”

Nephilia didn’t have enough experience with injury or medical knowledge to be able to judge if the bone was broken or if it was a torn muscle. Concluding that if she could move, then, well, things would work out somehow, she kicked the scythe up with her toe and grabbed it with her left hand. She thrust the scythe into the ground like a staff and dragged her leg along as she started heading into the forest. It was a struggle just being alive, but she had to do more than that.

Nephilia had only seen her briefly, but she had seen the enemy. She had been a magical girl with the motif of the goddess of the spring, right? The enemy’s behavior had been strange enough that it was hard to just accept it. Had there been any meaning to that question about a golden ax or whatever? Nephilia had just been passed out—why hadn’t the goddess finished her off?

The most unnatural thing of all was that she’d had no smell. In this case, “smell” didn’t mean a body odor or some added scent. It was the presence of intellect. Nephilia would never miss a nasty person. Whether the goddess was going on a rampage on Navi’s orders or her violence was at her own discretion or she was just abandoning herself to madness, it should come with some kind of smell. Was it possible that her violence was purely mechanical, with no feelings at all?

Even if that is possible…

The light filtering through the trees suddenly hit her face and made her scowl, and she sped up. Even if that was possible, Nephilia didn’t like it. She felt more connected to the hopeless pair she’d gone and risked her life to save. The problem was where they were and what they were doing right now. Agri was a miser, but she understood the worth of the law, contracts, and Nephilia. Ren-Ren had the air of a psychopath but was very fixated on her relationships. If neither of them had come to save her, then she could conclude that they were in trouble of their own. She had a bad feeling about it, but she forced herself to hope for the best anyway. If that wasn’t the case, then there would be no point in her having risked her life to save them. With the assumption that the two of them were safe, Nephilia scolded her aching body, I have to meet up with the two of them right away.

Her legs and arms wouldn’t quite move the way she wanted them to. Walking around in search of a miser and a psychopath when I’m this disabled, I’m a real piece of work, too, she thought with a smile at the corner of her lips.

  Ragi Zwe Nento

Ragi sat up in the dim forest, rubbing his back as he confirmed that there was nobody else around. The thin trees and brush that had been kicked up by the sheep and the reminders of violence like shattered rocks and trees that had been snapped by something far stronger than a herd of sheep created a new path that cut straight through the forest, going as far as the eye could see. Ragi pulled a grayfruit out of his sleeve, bit into it, and finished it in five seconds. He refused to waste even a drop of the fruit juice stuck to his fingers, carefully licking it off, then wiping his fingers with a paper napkin. Choosing to settle his confused mind as much as he could, he thought back memory by memory on how he’d gotten into this situation. Just as expected, if I do say so myself was the resulting impression, but he was still angry. He crumpled the napkin and tossed it to the ground, stomped on it, and kicked it away.

Pastel Mary had grabbed Ragi and fled, and then she’d run off without realizing she’d dropped the person she’d saved. It made him wonder if she might have planned to toss him in front of their pursuer as a sacrifice—but Mary wasn’t capable of thoughts that deep. But the conclusion that she didn’t seem to have any ill will toward him just irritated Ragi all the more. Not all acts done out of goodwill were necessarily good acts.

He watched the crumpled napkin as it rolled along a tree root until it stopped at a rock. Suppressing his irritation, he crouched down, picked up the napkin, and tossed it into the sleeve of his robe.

He should be thankful. If he had remained there, not being a magical girl, he wouldn’t have had any way to resist. Mary using what spare wits she did possess on the spur of the moment had enabled him to be here rubbing his back. He couldn’t do that if he were dead. Fortunately, it seemed he had no broken bones.

And yet…

He had been left behind. Chelsea, Mary, the sheep, and the magical girl with the axes who had been after them had gone off somewhere unknown to Ragi, and he also didn’t know what they were doing. His plan to manipulate Chelsea and Mary to try to escape the island had fallen apart.

Ragi looked around the area. He couldn’t find his staff. Putting a hand to his still-aching back, he looked. He parted the grass and kicked rocks away, looking for places where it could be hidden, but he couldn’t find it. His irritation built even further. His idea of using magical girls had been a mistake. Trying to use magical girls was no different from what that lot he’d cut off were doing. That which was magical girl was thoroughly incorrigible, and his idea that he would be able to control them had been nothing more than a mage’s arrogance.

This wasn’t just about Chelsea and Mary. There was also Clantail. If she’d just stayed back there, they could have worked together, but now he didn’t even know if she was safe. The very person he’d meant to hire as a guard was now becoming a source of worry.

He couldn’t find his staff. He’d be in trouble without that. Unlike the mental anguish from losing the hat that had been his favorite for many years, this was an actual problem. It was fair to say it was vital for Ragi’s plan to open a basic gate. Magic cast without a staff was greatly reduced in both scale and accuracy.

While searching, he considered other things. He’d only seen that magical girl who carried two big axes very briefly, but he could tell she was not one he knew. There weren’t that many magical girls who used an ax, and two axes meant even fewer. Just like magical girls with numbers in their names, there weren’t many, so they stood out. If they stood out, he wouldn’t forget them. In other words, he was certain there wasn’t a record of her in the list at the Management Department. But despite that, he also had the feeling he’d seen her before.

She wasn’t an acquaintance of his. He didn’t have many magical-girl acquaintances in the first place. She also wasn’t in the records he knew of from being the head of the Management Department. So where had he met her?

He couldn’t find his staff. His thoughts wouldn’t come together.

Irregularities were common in the field of magical girls, and some researchers even enjoyed generating “exceptions.” Periodically, people with outrageous ethics would show up and ignore the will and rights of the subject and toss in new tech almost for amusement, leading some to say that even distinctions like “first generation” and “second generation” meant nothing. Basically, it was a hodgepodge situation of complete chaos.

He still couldn’t find his staff anywhere.

That magical girl was clearly not an ordinary one. It was in the way she placed her gaze, unnatural for a living creature, and in the movement of her eyes. There was no hesitation or mercy in her acts of destruction, but it also didn’t seem she was running wild out of sadism or was drunk with a sense of omnipotence. She was just mechanically attacking those she judged to be enemies. And you could catch a sense of humor in that phrase she said that contrasted with her robotic attacks. The inscrutable question she asked before attacking didn’t seem to mesh with them at all.

Unable to find his staff, Ragi stopped and sat down on a broken rock.

It wasn’t that he’d gotten tired and didn’t want to move his legs anymore, or that he’d given up. An unsavory hypothesis had struck him. Even when he rubbed at it like stubborn red rust, it wouldn’t disappear.

There were plenty of fools who would try to satisfy their desire for achievement or their curiosity under the banner of progress or making great strides. That was how the Osk Faction was now. Even working what was out on the fringes for a researcher, in the Management Department, Ragi had heard plausible-sounding rumors that the present incarnation of Chêne Osk Baal Mel used a special magical girl as the base. And actually looking at the incarnation, anyone would agree that those weren’t just rumors.

They were designing a homunculus with magical-girl abilities and preprogrammed with the stamina to endure long hours of labor. The designers would be thinking they needed an incarnation that could withstand the presence of divinity—even just a slight fragment of it. If it was a magical girl based on a homunculus, then you would be able to tinker with it a lot at the pretransformation stage. If Ragi were there, he would yell at them that they were lacking in reverence toward a divine Sage, but his voice would never reach them when he yelled at them from so far away.

Research on homunculi was older and deeper than that on magical girls. If you could divert that vast accumulation of knowledge toward them… But just technical prowess and knowledge alone would never do it. The relevant documentation to peruse, the facilities to use, personnel to gather, magic gems—all of these would require the power of an organization.

Ragi recalled Navi Ru’s nasty smile and grimaced. If Sataborn was connected to the Lab, then it made sense that Navi Ru had been invited as an heir, even though he hadn’t stood out as a student of Sataborn’s. If they were cooperating with resources, technology, connections, or knowledge, then both Sataborn and the Osk Faction would benefit.

Sataborn had been an independent researcher—hadn’t he been aloof and loathing of authority? It wasn’t like Ragi had known him well enough to call him an acquaintance, but he could make some conjectures. He had not been fond of authority, nor had he despised it. Researchers tended to just see it as unimportant. If it was necessary for his research, he would work with authorities. That sounded very plausible.

But the thought that he might have figured out a sliver of the truth brought Ragi no happiness. If the magical girl on a rampage had been created by Sataborn and the Lab, this was not something to be glad about. A magical girl with axes had not been on the list of island security. In other words, this wasn’t a defense mechanism that was going out of control. Then it was natural to assume that this tragedy had been caused by research to kill a magical girl and a mage, which couldn’t be publicized, going out of control.

Ragi had been punted away from the mainstream, but he was still in the Osk Faction. He knew painfully and firsthand how the Osk Faction these days would manage such a situation. First, it would hush it up. Navi Ru in particular had a lot of experience in dirty missions like this, and he knew how it was done.

Ragi valued sticking to the rules. Even if there was a risk to his own life or something even more valuable, he thought adherence to the rules should be placed first. If a mage who wielded power over a certain level were to act as they pleased, that would pose a danger to the whole world. If everyone ignored the rules, then everything would fall apart. A mage could do everything: create order, protect it, and also destroy it and make a mess.

In order to keep the Osk Faction from hushing things up, first, he would capture the outlaw and, through the employee of the Inspection Department who was on this island, hand them straight over to the authorities, delivering this matter beyond the reach of the Osk Faction. Thinking to this point, Ragi shook his head. He clenched his fists tightly in his lap.

All this about incarnations and hushing things up was entirely based on Ragi’s speculation. Even if things were just as he supposed, they didn’t have the people, the tools, or the time to disable the magical girl created to be the incarnation, and because of the grayfruit, they even had a handicap on top of that. If things weren’t as he supposed, then he would be risking his life pointlessly, and if it was as he supposed, this would be far too difficult. Either way, prospects were poor.

I should prioritize escape, after all.

After all that, he came back to this conclusion. In the end, he had to find his staff—using the extremely primitive method of haphazardly examining the places it could have fallen. Ragi stood up and swept from his rear to his thighs. Scowling at the coldness of his rear, he swallowed a curse.

Ragi looked up. The light that filtered through the leaves was flickering. No—the foliage the light streamed through was wavering slightly. Before Ragi could brace himself, a loud sound rudely shook not just the branches and leaves but even the tree trunks and boulders, and a sheep barreled through, followed by two and then three more, and Ragi ran behind a tree to hide from the herd of sheep, looking up at the figure that appeared.

It was Dreamy Chelsea, standing just on her right toe on top of a little star decoration. A few seconds later, Pastel Mary appeared astride a big sheep.

“There he is! Chelsea found the old grampa!”

“Who are you calling an old grampa?!” he yelled at Chelsea, but his eyes and head were moving. He had the vague sense that something was off about the two magical girls. Chelsea was riding a star, and Mary had appeared riding a sheep. Before they’d gotten split up, Chelsea had been practically hanging off Mary, who had been cringing away.

“What a relief… I really am so relieved…,” Mary said.

“Yeah,” Chelsea agreed. “It wouldn’t have been strange for him to be hurt, or even dead.”

“Watch your tongue!” Ragi snapped at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I mean it wouldn’t have been strange for you to have passed away.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

Sheep were gathering around them. Ragi made himself small, but there still wasn’t enough space. Gradually, his space to move around was being robbed from him. And then the star lowered into that and Chelsea landed, meaning he was facing her from so close that it was even difficult to move. He cringed away as she blatantly huffed out through her nose into his face.

He was about to really yell and let her have it when a twisted stick was held out to him. It was his beloved staff. “Sorry, Grampa…Ragi. Here, we wound up taking this with us.”

Though Ragi indignantly snatched it away, he couldn’t deny his private relief. It had been Mary’s blunder that had separated him from his staff to begin with, so he judged that there was no need to thank her, but nevertheless the flames of his ire were quelled, and he calmed down somewhat. “…Why did you come back? To return my staff?”

“Well…um…” Mary hemmed and hawed.

“More than that, we didn’t want anyone…to die,” Chelsea told him.

Ragi looked back at the two magical girls. With her cheeks puffed up, it was quite difficult to call Chelsea sober-looking, but Pastel Mary’s expression was fairly tense. But above all, they had come back for Ragi. He’d thought they’d been under mind control and hadn’t had any consideration for him. They weren’t running wild now like they had been before. Ragi nodded. Wanting to keep any more people from dying was a value he could share.

Chelsea adopted a strange stance, putting together the backs of her hands to bring them over her head as she looked at Ragi. Next she looked at Mary and then hurriedly averted her eyes, and Mary also looked down awkwardly. Ragi didn’t have much of an eye for people, but even he could tell—their relationship was different from before.

Chelsea cleared her throat like she was trying to cover something, closed her eyes, and nodded. “Then we’ve made sure Grampa is safe, so let’s punish the bad guys.”

“Wait, no,” said Ragi. “First we must escape.”

“Chelsea and May-May were both controlled by someone called Ren-Ren.”

So the mind control had been undone after all. And they still retained their memories from when they had been controlled.

“Never mind that. But—”

“Besides…there’s Mr. Pie.” Chelsea brought the backs of her hands apart, then brought them in front of her face like she was drawing a circle and clapped them. The herd of sheep, which had been bleating and baaing the whole time, quieted down, Pastel Mary reflexively went on guard, and Ragi furrowed his brow in irritation.

“I absolutely won’t forgive her,” said Chelsea.

The herd of sheep pulled away from Chelsea, huddling close together and trembling. The sound of Pastel Mary swallowing rang through the quiet forest.

Ragi leaned on his staff and relaxed his brow. The way Chelsea moved her body and facial muscles, it was like she was trying to maintain her peculiar silliness. But her gaze was serious.

“Impossible,” Ragi said.

“It is not impossible,” Chelsea protested.

“That is not a magical girl. It’s a weapon in the body of a magical girl that some foolish mages got together to create… It’s like a demigod created to fight and win.” Ragi could only guess about the creation of this magical girl, but he didn’t have to tell them that. As a threat to keep her from fighting, it was best if it was easy to understand.

“I don’t care.” But Chelsea still wouldn’t understand, shaking her head.

“Do you think you can win in a fight against something you do not know? How arrogant can you be?” Privately, he could understand how Chelsea felt, but he couldn’t say, “Let’s combine our powers to defeat her.” He knitted his eyebrows together. “No more foolishness,” he seemed to be saying.

Ragi turned toward Mary. “What about you, Pastel Mary? You can’t say you’ll fight it.”

She stared at her feet, neither confirming nor denying Ragi’s accusation. If you were just looking at her slight trembling, it wouldn’t seem like she was headed out to battle. But from her small hands, clenched until the ends of her fingers were red, he got a glimpse of something like determination she wouldn’t put into words.

Ragi frowned beneath his beard. “Out of the question. Do you think you’ll be able to win such an unwinnable battle?”

“It might be difficult…but there are other strong magical girls. Like the cookie thief,” said Chelsea.

“Who’s that?”

“And Marguerite. Honestly, she’s real dangerous. Chelsea thought she was gonna die.”

“I don’t care in the slightest.”

“And as for other strong ones…what about your magical girl, Grampa?”

“Clantail is strong.”

“All right!”

“No, don’t do it. What does it matter if they’re strong? Abandon this thoughtless idea that you can win if you gather strong magical girls. It will only lead to more deaths.”

“Umm.” Mary timidly raised her right hand. “We have lots of grayfruit. So if we eat lots and fight…”

“That’s right!” Chelsea agreed. “Yeah, we have grayfruit. We gathered a whole bunch.”

“That’s not good at all. You mustn’t. Consuming grayfruit will only hasten your own demise.”

“What do you mean?”

“This plant’s nature is most likely to absorb and store up magic power on the island in order to bear fruit. The more grayfruit are eaten, the more your power is sucked away, making you have to consume even more grayfruit.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Listen, the grayfruit absorb magic power from their surroundings in order to bear fruit, and the power accumulates there. The fruit are the gathered consolidation of magic power. Do you understand this much?”

“Basically.”

“The magic power they absorb from their surroundings includes the power of mages and magical girls—that’s why the mages collapsed and the magical girls’ transformations came undone.”

“Ahhh, that’s what it was! So it was because of that!”

“After that, we harvested a large volume of grayfruit, but the pace of fruit consumption—in other words the pace at which our magic powers were consumed—also went up. Of course it did—since the trees were trying to compensate for the amount they’d lost in the fruit.”

“So it got sucked away since the fruit was gone, and ’cause it got sucked away from us, we ate some fruit… That’s a loop.”

“Exactly. That’s why I’m telling you not to consume fruit pointlessly.”

“So then shouldn’t we just not waste them?” asked Mary.

“Yeah!” Chelsea said. “Yeah, we should just gather them up to use for the final battle.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!”

He could feel his blood rushing through his veins. Even though he understood logically that he shouldn’t allow himself to go red, the blood was rushing to his head anyway. Chelsea’s understanding of the situation was so low it was on the floor, and Mary wasn’t any better. If they were going to be like this, maybe it would have been easier to manipulate them if they were still being mind-controlled. He’d thought it so many times before, but now he felt it even more deeply: Magical girls were incorrigible.

“I won’t forgive her. I’ll never, ever, ever forgive her!” Chelsea wailed.

“What does you forgiving anything matter?! There are other things we have to do!” Ragi roared back.

“No! For Mr. Pie! I’m not! Forgiving her!” It seemed Chelsea had blood rushing to her head as badly as Ragi, or even worse. She was yelling and wailing and swinging her arms around, clenching her teeth as she declared her absolute unbending assertion.

Having someone in front of them raging in anger would actually make many people feel calmer, but this did not work on Ragi. “Enough of your nonsense!”

“This isn’t nonsense!”

“Why do you want to fight so badly?! Magical girls weren’t created just to fight!”

Chelsea’s eyes opened wide, her whole face reddened and contorted, and she bared her teeth. Then she turned her face to the sky and yelled out so loud Ragi wanted to plug his ears, and then she lifted her right foot, pausing a moment before stomping on the ground. The sheep all around, Pastel Mary, Ragi, little stones, and even boulders rose in the air to land with a slam. The sheep ran about in confusion, Pastel Mary fell over, the little stones bounced, and Ragi supported his body with his staff. Chelsea’s face was still pointing to the heavens. He couldn’t see her expression. When he’d sensed violence, he’d brought his staff close to his body. Maybe it had been reckless to get into a shouting match against a dim-witted magical girl out where he had no defenses. But even being aware of his tendency to be reckless when the blood got to his head, he couldn’t stop himself. In the sense of being hard to control, Ragi wasn’t much different from magical girls.

“Fine.” Her voice sounded painfully hoarse, the word pronounced sharply and cut off at the end—like she was wringing out a drop of blood with it.

Ragi narrowed his right eye at her remark. Understanding her meaning, he slowly widened his right eye, looking back at Chelsea’s face, which was gradually lowering its angle. Her expression remained angry. Her face was pale. Chelsea lifted the foot she’d stomped, scattering pebbles, and he saw there was a deep imprint in the earth.

Chelsea walked a few times over the imprint to even out the earth and turned back to Ragi. “Let’s go.”

He had no idea what had tugged on Chelsea’s heartstrings and in what manner. His opinion that she was an incomprehensible magical girl was unchanged. But even so, he had to cooperate.

Ragi got onto Chelsea’s back, a crestfallen Mary got astride a sheep, and Chelsea flew off, riding her star, leading the herd of sheep.

  Navi Ru

When Navi stroked his chin, he felt one hair from his beard that was longer and thicker. He’d never been the type to try to dress up nice to play the game, nor did he think he was capable of that sort of thing, but the single long strand felt wrong. He gave it a sharp pluck. When he brought it in front of his eyes, it was thick, after all. He blew it away with a sigh. Even if he didn’t fixate on his appearance, it was best to avoid things that bothered him.

Clarissa had told him, “Wouldn’t you seem a bit less dubious and suspicious if you took a little more care in your grooming?” But she was the only one who would say something like that. No matter how he tried to disregard how others found his appearance, nobody who knew about Navi’s career history would trust him. His former superior had once lectured him with a measure of contempt, “Only a third-rate spy becomes famous from their deeds. A first-rate spy, an operative, would keep his past hidden and get the job done without anyone getting suspicious.” But isn’t it way more amazing when people are suspicious, think you’re fishy, and assume you could betray them at any time, and you finish the job anyway? Navi had thought, but he’d never said that out loud, dropping the matter with a smile.

Navi tried to look up at the sky, squinting at the bright light as he shaded his eyes with one hand. He figured it wasn’t yet noon, but it was past what you’d call early morning. Perhaps because he didn’t keep a regular sleep schedule to begin with, he just never managed to get an internal sense of time. All he could trust was the level of his hunger.

He snorted. When he looked toward the entrance, Tepsekemei was biting into a brown object. She was fluttering there in the wind as she assaulted a piece of bread as big as her head. There was even a nice addition of butter on it. It hadn’t been spread on—it was sitting on the bread as a lump. That much had to be unhealthy. But right now, his body wanted that sort of badness. He wanted fatty acids, cholesterol, and salt. Navi touched his right hand to his stomach. He was holding an empty stomach. That was unquestionably the case, without any need to reconfirm it. Right on time, his stomach rumbled sadly.

“Heyyy!” Navi called.

The tiny magical girl did not stop, crunching along and scattering crumbs as she bit into the bread. From how the butter was not at all melted, you could tell how cold the bread was. On top of that, it even looked hard. If you saw it on a normal day, you would just say, “That looks like it tastes bad,” but right now it looked like a feast.

“Hold on there a moment,” said Navi.

“Mei won’t wait.”

“Hold up. Stop eating and listen.”

“Mei won’t stop.”

“Hold on—okay, okay, I’ll give you something good, so stop.”

An expressionless Tepsekemei turned just her face toward Navi. She showed no sense of superiority or joy in eating. She was even hiding the fear and cautiousness she had to feel from having had her part erased by Francesca. Or had she never felt such things from the start?

Amazing. Navi was deeply impressed.

He rolled one grayfruit out from his sleeve into his palm to hold out to Tepsekemei. “Look here.”

Navi planned to offer the fruit for the bread, but before he knew it, Tepsekemei had bitten into the grayfruit. She’d swapped the bread into her left hand. Navi looked at his own right hand and confirmed that he was holding nothing, then looked at Tepsekemei. The little magical girl bobbed in the air as she finished eating the grayfruit before opening her mouth wide to go at the bread again, showing her rows of teeth.

“Wait!” Navi yelled. “Hey, you little twerp! You took the fruit, so give me the bread!”

“Mei didn’t hear that.”

“What?”

“Mei heard, ‘If you wait a bit, I will give you something good.’ Mei waited a bit and got something good.”

“That’s too mean. Just cruel.”

“If you eat too much of the congee with sweet potato you were longing for, you’ll hate it. So you should watch Mei eat.”

“Goddamn, you little twerp… Aren’t you a magical girl?”

“Mei is a magical girl.”

“Then you don’t need to eat.”

“Mei eats.”

“If you’re a magical girl, then help people in trouble. That’s supposed to be your job.”

“Mei is saving Mei, who’s in trouble.”

It was less that he wasn’t getting through to her and more that he was getting tricked and teased. She strangely exuded that aura, despite being completely expressionless. Or rather, Tepsekemei’s personality came through when you talked to her. Damn it, he thought over and over again. Maybe her lack of expression was not a wall or shield to hide herself, but part of her inborn nature.

Navi pointed his spread palms at her in a clownish gesture, nodding a bunch. “Fine, fine. You win. Let’s make a deal. An exchange of grayfruit for bread.”

Tepsekemei thrust her right hand in front of her sharply and stuck up her thumb, index, and ring fingers. “Mei wants this much.”

“You stick your fingers up in a weird way. One, two…three? Wait, you want three?!”

“Mei will give the same amount.”

“A trade of three on three, huh?”

“Mei needs enough for the flock. Mei wants one each for Mei, Weddin, and Funny Trick.”

“By flock, you mean your friends?”

“Family.”

“‘Family,’ huh…? Then there’s no helping that.”

“No helping that.”

“Give me some of the butter, too. If you can promise me that.”

“Mei will endeavor to.”

“Let’s not make promises you can’t keep.”

“Mei will make the utmost effort.”

“That’s the same thing.”

The two of them exchanged three fruits for three pieces of bread plus a two-inch-square butter lump wrapped in silver paper that Mei handed over to Navi. Finally, Navi had obtained some sustenance. The hard, cold bread and the butter that was just as cold were truly delicious. The flavor and nutrients spread from atop his tongue all around his body. It’s difficult for an adult man to live on just fruit. He glanced from the corner of his eye to Tepsekemei, who ate half of a grayfruit and tucked the rest into her pocket, and saw again that she was expressionless.

“Hey—so is your family those two companions of yours?” Navi asked.

“7753 is Weddin, and Mana is Funny Trick.”

It seemed she’d created her own little world. She was expressionless, but it came across through all their conversations that she didn’t restrain her idiosyncrasies. She had little fear, even though her part had been killed by Francesca. Maybe she’s one of those, he thought silently. When a creature that was not a human transformed into a magical girl, their lack of experience in making use of language and their inhuman mentality would often make them exhibit behavior that was difficult for others to understand.

Each and every day, a variety of magical girls were invited to the Lab, which Navi worked for. Methods like human trafficking and kidnapping were absolutely taken for granted; the Lab found aristocrats who’d fallen into dire straits and held their children hostage. There were battle enthusiasts who’d been tricked by canvassing that was essentially fraud, whereby they were told they would become strong magical girls, and members of the faction who had been dealt an execution sentence under the pretense of punishment for some error. Magical girls who had transformed from animals were particularly favored. No matter how you treated them, they had no family to complain to, the authorities wouldn’t make a fuss about it, and no trouble came of it down the line. It was also thought that lots of them had powerful magic, since it was rooted in their instincts.

It seemed like this Tepsekemei also had powerful magic. From what Mana had said and the way Tepsekemei herself spoke, it didn’t seem like her part had been killed without her knowing what was going on, so she had to have faced Francesca and done something before the part had been killed. Even if knowing about Maiya’s murder had made her wary beforehand, she’d still pulled off something that even a hundred normal magical girls wouldn’t be able to do.

As he was thinking, she suddenly launched a question at him. “What about your family, Navi?”

“I’ve got one,” he answered impulsively.

It wasn’t Navi’s style to blabber honestly like an idiot about his family, even on impulse. Restraining the urge to click his tongue or grimace, he put on a smile like it was nothing. “Just one person.”

“Clarissa?”

“She’s less family and more like a relative. She’s my little sister’s daughter—my niece.”

“‘Mei niece’?” said Mei.

“What? I didn’t say anything strange.”

“Mei…”

Mei was looking off into the distance to who knew where. This sort of incomprehensible behavior was another characteristic of magical girls who were transformed from animals.

Navi wolfed down half the bread, continuing to watch Tepsekemei. Maybe they’d be pleased if he took her to the Lab, but the risks were higher than the potential benefit.

Then Tepsekemei suddenly narrowed her eyes, their outer corners rising. She slipped to the side and took up position in front of Navi, spreading her hands and bringing them forward. Was she going on guard?

“Coming. Hide.”

“Nah, this one is…” He looked through Tepsekemei’s half-translucent body and toward the forest.

A magical girl leaped out from between the trees up in front of Tepsekemei, scattering leaves as she moved with the nimbleness of a cat. Her big animal ears twitched, and her long tail smacked the earth. “Heya, heya. I came up here to report to ya. You’ve got something that looks good there.”

“I ain’t giving it to ya. Your name just came up, Clarissa.”

“Huh? What? Were you making nasty remarks about li’l ol’ me?”

Telling Tepsekemei that they had to have a private talk, Navi prodded Clarissa’s back to draw her away from the entranceway, walking about twenty steps before coming to a stop. Walking over here where Tepsekemei couldn’t see was really suspicious. It was not something you’d do if you were worried about being attacked—even though his guard, Clarissa, was there. When he turned back, Tepsekemei was looking toward the forest. But even if she looked like she’d been reduced to a third of her usual size, Navi understood that he couldn’t be careless around her.

Navi activated his stone so the sound wouldn’t get out and covered his mouth with one sleeve. “I doubt there’ll be a problem, but hide your mouth, just in case.”

“That thing can read lips at this distance?” Clarissa moved just her eyes to point toward Tepsekemei. “She doesn’t come off as that sharp, does she?”

“She was apparently fighting pretty decently against Francesca. One part from her.”

Clarissa’s face contorted like she was sincerely repulsed, and her ears hung weakly. “For real? Clantail was crazy strong, too. Strong enough that I kinda can’t beat her.”

“The hell are you doing?”

“It just wound up that way, okay? It wasn’t so bad, Clarissa can make excuses for it later. Also, there’s some other strong ones, too. Two or three probably got away from Francesca.”

“Hey, hey, hey.”

This was not an ordinary situation. Never mind what was inside Francesca—the container couldn’t be managed by any random magical girl. She was the best of all technology coalesced, a magical girl to surpass magical girls. That they had gotten away meant that she hadn’t been able to win. There were magical girls on this small island, multiple magical girls even Francesca had not been able to beat.

“Whoa.” His astonishment was sincere and brief. There was no need to play with words.

The lives of many mages and magical girls had been spent in order to create the single magical girl called Francisca Francesca. Though Francesca had not been completed in the end, it was still possible that she could become a vessel for the soul of one of the Three Sages in the future. Navi had assumed there couldn’t possibly be more than one idiot who would bring an incredibly strong magical girl to a discussion about deciding the allotment of the inheritance, and he’d underestimated the magical girls, assuming Maiya would be far stronger than any of the others. But the world was large, and there were a lot of them. He could be arrogant and say he’d seen hundreds, thousands of magical girls in the Lab, but here they were.

“More importantly, Clarissa’s got news. The old man ran away.”

“If he ran away, then chase after him and catch him.”

“He threw away eeeeverything Clarissa bit. It seems like he noticed.”

Not everything would go well in life. Hard-core types, Ragi in particular, could sometimes mobilize their experience and knowledge to pull off things the young couldn’t. Not to say that Navi had been taking him lightly and assuming he could toy with him easily, but still, it posed a problem to not know where he was. If Ragi ran into Francesca, then he would die. No matter how talented a mage he was, if he happened to bump into a magical girl who killed any passersby, he wouldn’t stand a chance—and that went double for a custom-made one that could become a vessel for the incarnation. Even a magical girl who ran into her would die—or so he had thought, but Clarissa here was saying there were in fact on this island some magical girls who had escaped her. What with losing his magic power and passing out and the magical-girl transformations being forcibly undone, there had been too many unprecedented and unexpected situations.

The world was big. Navi was often entrusted with outside jobs for the Lab, and he didn’t think of himself as naive in the ways of the world, but this situation was difficult, even in terms of his profession of dealing with magical girls.

“Change of plans,” Navi said. “Since we’ve run into the unexpected, it’d be perfect to hold back a little. I think we’ve managed to put the old man and Yol in our debt, and Maiya’s gone. I’ve hidden the goods, too. Now we’re just waiting for Rareko.”

Mana had noticed something. She’d also surpassed Navi’s expectations—she was a good inspector. But she hadn’t tried to hide that she’d noticed something. In that area, she was still young. He should be grateful for her youth. He could resign himself to getting tied up as a petty villain who’d tried to swipe part of the inheritance like a thief during a fire.

“If the other magical girls say they’re gonna beat Francesca, then you work with them. If Francesca’s gone, that means the old man’s safe. At the very least, while they’re fighting, Francesca will be too busy to get the old man mixed up in anything.”

“Yeah, yeah… Wait. Huh?”

“What’s wrong?”

The tip of Clarissa’s right ear moved twice, and then she slowly lowered the ear and stuck it up straight again. Her expression grew grimmer as it twitched around. “Touta’s on the move.”

“Now the kid’s causing trouble for us, damn.”

“He’s going fast. A little too fast, whoa. That’s not human. That’s magical-girl speed.”

“Rareko?”

“Probably… The way he’s moving, it’s not like Francesca caught him, or he got cut to pieces and just his clothes are caught on something, so relax.”

“I can’t relax. Why is Rareko moving around now when we went to the trouble of securing her safety? Now that she’s left her cave, what if she gets attacked by Francesca?”

“Clarissa doubts Rareko knows how Francesca works, either.”

“Go pop over to Rareko and poke ’er.”

“Roger.”

Not bad, old man, Navi thought, impressed that Ragi was causing surprises. But Rareko causing surprises just made him think, Give me a break. Navi didn’t want someone he saw as an ally stirring things up by acting on her own. Nobody would like something like that. This was Rareko, so she was probably pulling this unasked-for move out of fear, or thinking that she was being useful.

When Clarissa was about to race off, Navi raised his right arm to call out, “Hold on.” Yol and Rareko rose in his mind, and, finally, he thought of Touta. It looked like he and Yol were friendly. It wasn’t bad for boys and girls to have the tie of common interests. If they could safely escape from this island, they’d probably get even closer. Navi imagined the heartwarming scene of a boy and girl smiling together before he dropped his fantasizing and looked at Tepsekemei. Her eyes were on the forest.

“It’s best if Touta’s gone, if possible,” Navi said.

“Yep, yep. Clarissa’ll tell Rareko if I can.”

  Miss Marguerite

Agony rose from where there had been nothing. Agony brought with it cold and pain. She noticed that she couldn’t move right, and she remembered that she was herself. Her chest and throat twisted and spasmed in succession, and though she made to moan, her voice wouldn’t come out. She focused her feelings in her throat to get her voice out, pouring all the strength of her body into it, and then the air went through with a pop like some kind of stopper had come out. She coughed hard, and a lump of pain leaped out from the back of her throat, from inside her mouth. Her back bent and her body rounded, and she lay on her side to spit up something pulpy from her stomach. It was half-liquid and had the sickly sweet smell of fruit, which became the linchpin that hammered into her vague memories. It was grayfruit. The smell of mud and stomach acid mingled, making a stench she’d never experienced before that spread around her mouth.

She tried to open her eyes, but they wouldn’t part. She patted her face with her right hand and realized mud had dried to harden in her eyelashes, and she rubbed her face to break off the mud. She was surprised by how cold her hands were, as well as how cold her face was.

When she opened her eyelids, next she was dazzled by the bright light. Every motion came with some awful pain. She coughed over and over, gradually pushing open her eyes and putting up with the light, and when she focused, she found the severe face of a girl looking down on her. Then the corners of the girl’s mouth gradually relaxed, her mouth opened slightly, and she let out a breath. The two gazed at each other for a while, and then Marguerite remembered this girl was Clantail’s human form.

Marguerite made her stiff body obey her, using her elbows to raise her upper body from her position on her back. The girl immediately came in to support her from the side, and by half leaning on her, Marguerite somehow got herself up. Instead of feeling thankful or apologetic, she felt disgusted by how the girl’s body was so much warmer than her own. How had she wound up like this? She traced back in her memory. She remembered dying, or rather being in a situation where she could easily have died, but now she was able to move around decently.

“What—?” Though it was her own voice, it sounded awful. And she was coughing.

The hand that rubbed her back was warm. Accepting the plastic bottle that was held out to her, Marguerite rinsed out her mouth and then spat to the side. She coughed for a while more, then drew in a breath through her mouth and exhaled. She drank another mouthful of water, and this time swallowed without rinsing. When she felt like she could manage to get her voice out, she tried speaking again. “What…happened to me?”

“I found tracks…and followed them into the mud…and then…”

Marguerite started to grimace, but held it back. That explanation was shockingly incompetent. But it would feel bad to make a face at the one who had just saved her life, so she covered it by coughing, even though she could breathe. The girl stroked her back with care, which just made her feel worse.

Thinking she should just start by explaining, Marguerite told her, “I was being chased by the magical girl who killed Maiya, and on the way, the effects of the fruit ran out and I sank into the mud. It was a magical girl carrying two axes…a magical girl like the goddess of the spring in the fairy tale. She asked me if I’d dropped the golden ax or the silver one, but it probably didn’t mean anything, and she was just repeating it. I think her magic is to transform her axes. She made them explode and turn into magnets to pull iron toward her and things like that…and she probably also has exceptional physical abilities.”

The girl’s expression was serious as she listened, but she didn’t say a word. Marguerite looked at the girl’s face, and she realized why she hadn’t recognized right away that it was Clantail. Marguerite thought she’d been wearing glasses before, but they were gone now. Her face seemed different.

“Tepsekemei was also with me, but she was probably killed,” Marguerite added.

The girl’s face darkened—or contorted, rather. She clenched her teeth. It wasn’t fear or sadness she was smothering, but anger. The words “Cranberry’s children” rose in Marguerite’s mind.

“What about you?” Marguerite asked.

“I was attacked by Clarissa.”

This time, Marguerite didn’t restrain her scowl as she looked back at the girl. The girl didn’t say anything after that, looking back at her. She still seemed angry. Marguerite thought that getting attacked by Clarissa was way worse than getting attacked by the one who had killed Maiya, who was a clear enemy, but the girl didn’t add any information, reporting only that she had been attacked before falling silent.

Marguerite was forced to prompt her, “Why did Clarissa do that?”

“In retrospect…I think maybe it was just bad timing.”

“Bad timing?”

“As we were talking, a broken-off tree flew at us, and Clarissa dodged toward me, and that was so sudden, I went on guard, and Clarissa reacted to that by attacking, and then we just slid into a fight…” She was doing her best to explain in her clumsy way, but it really was lacking.

“You were talking? What about?”

“She had Ragi’s hat… She tried to hide it, so I asked her why.”

Marguerite basically understood the flow of events: Clantail had spoken to Clarissa, since she’d been suspicious that Clarissa had done something to Ragi, and in the middle of that discussion, a tree had flown at them, which Clarissa had dodged, and that had brought the two close together, forcing them into a fight. If Clarissa had harmed Ragi in some way, his trying to steal grayfruit or something sounded like a plausible reason for that.

But Marguerite was more bothered by Clantail’s behavior than her explanation. When Ragi’s name had come up, the outer corners of her eyes had risen, her gaze wavering around slightly as her right hand trembled. Signs of tension appeared all over, and she was trying to hide it. Marguerite had thought Clantail loyal enough to Ragi to run into the forest alone for him, but this was not a reaction of concern.

“Also, Nephilia was selling grayfruit,” Clantail said.

Someone who wanted to make money would even make danger to life material for business—even if their own life was included. Marguerite wouldn’t deny that there was a possibility that Nephilia’s very dubious behavior had been of her own accord, but it was reasonable to assume Agri was making her behave as she had.

“I bought some,” Clantail continued.

Marguerite hated the idea of giving up money to a miser, but you couldn’t accomplish a goal without some sacrifices. And nothing was more vital on this island than the grayfruit.

Marguerite was suddenly struck with doubt. She raised her palm to look at it. Her hand was covered in mud. It was a human hand. It was not the hand of a magical girl, unbefitting of mud. The one before her who was haltingly and clumsily explaining to her was also a human girl. Her school uniform was torn in places and even splashed with reddish stains.

“…Where are the grayfruit?” Marguerite asked her.

“I used up all the fruit I bought.”

The dry mud cracked audibly over Marguerite’s face, and she was aware of the stiffness of her own expression. “There aren’t any left?”

The girl started opening her mouth, then closed it, expelling a breath. Her lips were in a slightly twisted shape. She closed her eyes once more, and when she opened them again, her expression was apologetic. “When I dug you up from the mud, you’d stopped breathing, so.”

“Ahhh.”

As usual, the girl wasn’t explaining enough, but from her face, Marguerite got what she was stabbing at. The girl had used up all the grayfruit when she’d dug up Marguerite and revived her.

“After removing all the mud and water with a water pipe, I sent the grayfruit directly into your body… I figured it would be easier to revive you if you were in magical-girl form…since you’d have more vitality, that sort of thing. You were in magical-girl form but wouldn’t quite wake up, and then your transformation would come undone right away, so I added more, and the amount of grayfruit decreased rapidly.”

It seemed like it would be best not to ask what organ from what animal had made that water pipe. Regardless, Marguerite had felt an intense pain in her chest and throat—they still hurt—and now she knew some of why.

If it was as the girl said, then she had used up an exorbitant amount of vital grayfruit on someone half-dead who she hadn’t even known could be saved—should Marguerite call her foolish for having used them all up? Or should she be thankful that this girl had disregarded all else to save a life? Whichever it was, since she had been saved, she should express gratitude. Marguerite put her knees together to kneel formally. Laying her hands on her knees, she bowed her head deeply and said, “Thank you.” When she looked up exactly five seconds later, the girl was in the same position, bowing her head back.

While Marguerite was going through the motions of gratitude, her eyes were cold as she gazed at the top of the girl’s head and her two hanging pigtails. Marguerite and Clantail had only just met. And Clantail was saying that she’d been attacked by Clarissa, with whom she had a similar relationship. Using up all her grayfruit to save Marguerite meant she was very much indeed overflowing with the spirit of self-sacrifice, totally disregarding her own needs. Would you do that much for someone just because you knew her face and name, in a situation where you didn’t know who was enemy and who was friend?

Now that she thought about it, Clantail hadn’t seemed very concerned for her own safety when she had gone into the forest for Ragi. But what didn’t make sense was how tense she’d seemed when she’d brought up Ragi. Why was she hiding that? She was being oddly quiet.

Magical girls would sometimes sacrifice themselves to save others. But hadn’t Clantail sacrificed others for her own sake? The term “Cranberry’s children” rose in Marguerite’s mind again, and this time it stuck around. She asked herself if these negative feelings that had been there from the start had turned to visible antipathy toward Clantail, but she got no answers.

Five seconds after her, the girl lifted her head, and however she interpreted the eyes fixed on her, she didn’t say anything, just looking back. Compared to before, there was a harshness so minute that Marguerite couldn’t even be sure of it. It would be more accurate to call it caution. Realizing her own feelings for Clantail were coming back to her, Marguerite wiped off the mud on her forehead with her palm, disgusted with her own lack of experience.