Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 17 - Chapter 11

Class 2-F’s Boxed Lunch Competition

  Thunder-General Adelheid

Magical girl class 2-F had an unusual number of events. In less than one month, they’d had a night march, a book report competition, a choir group singing contest, and a field trip, and if you added in all the various recreational events on top of that, it would be in the double digits.

This was Adelheid’s first time going to a real school, but even she could tell that this wasn’t normal. Whether all these events were for measuring the girls’ attitude, or they’d shoved all the school events into the first semester to create a sense of unity (since magical girls were very individualistic and tended to clash), or whether it was just because the management wanted to do it—it was not something for a mere student to know.

“C’mon, but it’s still strange,” said Adelheid.

“There was the field trip before the long weekend, too. And then Golden Week ends, and we have another field trip,” Lillian agreed.

“Right after Golden Week ends, immediately being, like, tomorrow is a field trip! What is up with that? Normally, isn’t a schedule a schedule because they decide it ahead of time? The hell’re they suddenly sticking a field trip in there?” Mephis grumbled.

“I think…we should just…give it our best effort,” said Kumi-Kumi.

The four members of Group Two in Class 2-F, the group leader Mephis Pheles at the head, with Kumi-Kumi, Classical Lillian, and Adelheid, were all squatting behind the old school building for a talk. It was about the field trip that their homeroom teacher Calkoro had announced.

“The only thing I can think of…is like…that it’s that this is different…from the previous field trip,” Kumi-Kumi said.

“A field trip is a field trip. What’s so different about it?” Mephis demanded.

“Last time, we climbed a nearby mountain, didn’t we?” Lillian pointed out. “Isn’t the next one at a zoo?”

“Yeah, now that ya mention it, that is a totally different kind o’ trip,” said Adelheid.

“Is that different enough to call it that?” Mephis snorted. “That ‘mountain’ we climbed was just a tiny mountain even a preschooler could get to the top of, and it was no contest of endurance or shit. It’s not much different from going to the zoo.”

“Well, whatever the case…we should give it…yeah…our best effort.”

“Hey! Kumi-Kumi!” Mephis furrowed her brow, and she turned to Kumi-Kumi, pigtails swinging as she pointed at her.

While Kumi-Kumi looked a little embarrassed, she was not upset, taking Mephis’s look with a “What?”

“You keep talking about giving it your best effort, but what’s the ‘best effort’ on a field trip?”

Kumi-Kumi’s gaze swam around, and Lillian tilted her head.

The ultimate goal for the magical girls of Class 2-F was success in life after graduation. Their school assessments were very important for that. Even if they couldn’t figure out what this field trip was about, it was taken for granted that they would give their best effort. They had to make clear what the intention was for this trip.

Adelheid folded her arms and looked up at the sky. An idea struck her. “How ’bout showin’ off our taste?”

“What kinda taste do we show off on a field trip?” Mephis shot back.

“They said we’re allowed to use three hundred yen for our snacks. There’s a pretty big individual difference in what sort of snacks we get, for that amount… In other words, ah think that’s somewhere you can see our taste.”

“Snack choice showing off your taste is just for elementary schoolers.”

Lillian and Kumi-Kumi both nodded at the same time, as if they weren’t usually total opposites.

Adelheid had never had a chance to go to a real school. So long as she could remember, she had been with the Archfiend Cram School, and it had been the most she could do just to keep up with her seniors, all a bunch of fearless fighters. Although the School did exercises and training, they had no field trips. Of course, they also didn’t provide a snack budget.

So having three hundred yen’s worth of snacks was incredibly exciting for Adelheid, but the other three, having gone to elementary schools in the normal world, were apparently long since tired of it.

This made her feel rather alienated, but she didn’t let it show on her face, keeping her arms folded as she drew in her chin. The other three had rejected her idea, but she thought she’d been on the right track. Food was indispensable for living creatures. Some in the Archfiend Cram School would look down on it, saying that magical girls didn’t need fancy food—but sometimes assuming it was just replenishment of nutrients would get you burned.

But middle school girls tended to want to overreach themselves. So maybe “snacks” was a little childish for them. If she were to fulfill the middle school girl urge to go further, then—Adelheid clapped her hands.

“Lunch boxes,” she said.

“…Lunch boxes?”

“If we make some cool lunch boxes, everyone’s gotta give us respect fer it. Like, not bad.”

“Hmph.” Mephis snorted. “Snacks and lunch boxes, it’s all the same thing.”

“Naw, that ain’t true. You were freaked out that one time before, weren’t ya, Mephis?”

“Huh? When the hell was I freaked out?”

“Ya can’t tell us ya weren’t afraid of Lightning’s giant rice ball.”

Kumi-Kumi nodded heavily with a pained expression. “Ah…that.”

Lillian hung her head with a sigh. “That thing of Lightning’s, hmm.”

Seeing Princess Lightning reaching into her backpack to pull out a rice ball that was just as big, holding it in her arms as she scarfed it down, had left everyone dumbfounded. It went beyond contrasting with her abnormally beautiful looks or any issue of that dimension. The Arlie and Dory sisters had been frightened, Tetty had gasped, and even the other Group Three girls had visibly recoiled.

This was not while transformed into a magical girl. It was pre-transformation. Of course, she should have normal human digestive organs, but once she’d started, Lightning had kept up her pace as she kept eating, and before lunchtime was over, there hadn’t been even a shred of seaweed left of that giant rice ball.

Without question, Princess Lightning had been the center of attention right then. Even in their separate groups for lunch, everyone had been glancing over toward Group Three, and even the members of Group Three had seemed overwhelmed by the whole thing. For a magical girl to be mentally overwhelmed was, in other words, a loss. That moment, the magical girls of Class 2-F had all lost to Lightning.

Group Two had brought lunch boxes bought at the convenience store. Adelheid’s sandwich, Kumi-Kumi’s boxed lunch, Mephis’s fried chicken and fried rice, Lillian’s omelet rice—they’d all been ordinary. They were not at the level to compete. They’d all looked like they were paying for having looked down on lunch and thinking it didn’t matter—in other words, food was not to be taken so lightly.

Among her seniors in the Archfiend Cram School, there was one eccentric with pro-level cooking skills. Outside of class, she would hawk her wares, claiming she was polishing her skills. Even in class, she would start rattling off about the food she liked at the drop of a hat. This tended to make other students distance themselves from her, but thinking about it now, maybe the way she committed to her intentions, even if she stuck out from those around her, was how a magical girl should be.

Kumi-Kumi nodded heavily. “Lightning…had impact.”

Mephis huffed back at Kumi-Kumi indignantly. “I wasn’t freaked out, okay. Come on, just like a boxed lunch isn’t a big deal, really.”

“Oh-ho. So ya call that no big deal?” said Adelheid.

“What? It’s not a big deal. What’s even the point of freaking out about something like that?”

“In other words, you can come up with a lunch that packs even more punch, Mephis?” Adelheid gave Mephis a particularly nasty look.

Mephis started opening her mouth, closed it, groaned, and nodded hard. “Of course…I can do that!”

The nice thing about Mephis was that she was always up for a challenge.

Having gotten back at them a bit over getting her opinions about snacks and lunches rejected twice, Adelheid smiled. “Then ah’ll be lookin’ forward to the field trip tomorrow.”

“Hold on here,” said Mephis. “You guys do it, too. It’s not gonna be just me with this, okay.”

Kumi-Kumi looked at Mephis with surprise, then looked at Adelheid. Lillian gave Mephis an incredulous look, then shifted her eyes to Adelheid.

Adelheid swiftly averted her gaze from the both of them, dropping her eyes to the floor, before slowly and timidly looking up at Mephis. Perhaps because she’d gotten angry, her face was all red. “Hey, hey…hold on a second. How are we jumpin’ to this conclusion?”

“All of us are gonna make the best lunch boxes ever. Worst one gets punished, so be ready for it,” said Mephis

This talk about opposing Lightning had, at some point, turned into a competition among the group. The nice thing about Mephis was that she was always up for a challenge, but her one flaw was that she got out of control easily. And it was difficult to stop her when she was out of control—you’d only succeed one out of three times.

  Kumi-Kumi

To Kumi-Kumi, a meal meant store-bought food. If you were to ask her, what’s the trick to cooking? she would answer, to wait right up until it’s almost closing time, until they put on the discount sticker.

So there was no way someone like her would have any ideas for a boxed lunch. So she needed to rely on someone else—she got that much. But then who should she rely on? She was competing with her group, so a fellow member was out of the question. But she wasn’t close enough with any other classmates to be able to ask them for help. That meant asking a senior from the Elite Guard—but Kumi-Kumi couldn’t be said to be an eloquent speaker. So basically, rather than speaking with them about it directly, she should use Line or e-mail or something.

She considered relying on a senior who was an obliging type, the sort to look after others, but if she were to contact only those sorts of seniors, that might offend the people she didn’t contact. This thought led her to decide that she would send a group message to them all.

One minute after sending, she got a response. Before she could check the first, there was another, and another, not stopping as they continued to swell in her message box.

Except for when there were ceremonies, the magical girls of the Elite Guard had nothing to do but training. If anything unusual happened, they would gleefully poke their noses in it. Maybe it was a poor move to have sent a group message, since she was worried about her relationships with them, but by the time Kumi-Kumi realized this, it was already a disaster.

She stood up, sending the sitting cushion she’d been using as her pillow flying. She couldn’t keep her seniors waiting. While running, she replied “I’m coming now,” then “Please wait a moment,” then “Thank you very much,” then “Please let me treat you later.”

Notepad in hand, she ran around from her seniors’ houses to the Elite Guard’s housing, and by the time she was done going around to all of them, the sun had set and she’d pushed a magical girl’s legs and endurance as far as they would go. Now hardly remembering anything she’d noted down and figuring she should read it over later, she fell into bed.

After undoing her transformation and napping a bit, she lay around a bit in bed in an attempt to consolidate all the information, and noticing her magical phone vibrating, she jumped up.

“Hey, nice to meet you.”

It was a magical girl. Not one Kumi-Kumi recognized, though. This girl had floor-length ombre hair, wore pajamas, and was holding a large pillow. She had a big, happy smile on her face.

Kumi-Kumi looked around. She was somewhere strange. It was like a kitchen, but the floor and tables were made of fluffy and white material, like clouds. They had everything anyone would need: some big tables, a gas stove and sink, cutting boards, a fridge, and a microwave—though it was all fluffy. With this, she wasn’t lacking in anything for making a boxed lunch.

“Um…yes, a boxed lunch.”

“I know, I know. You’re making a boxed lunch, right? Nemurin is here to save random magical girls in trouble, and we won’t let you down… Right, today I summoned some teachers.”

With a verbal fanfare of “ta-daaa!” the magical girl in pajamas pointed both her hands to the figures behind her. There were three magical girls.

The first one was in Western style, with a ten gallon hat and boots with spurs, and a costume as skimpy as a swimsuit on top. Unyielding in the face of that exposure was her large, jiggling chest.

The pajama magical girl gestured with her palm to the Western magical girl’s chest area—it was still jiggling. “First, the beautiful Calamity Mary.”

“I’m good at cooking. I was a housewife for a long time. Though my husband and daughter ran off on me.” She giggled after that self-deprecating comment.

Unsure if openly laughing was rude, Kumi-Kumi gave a little sycophantic titter.

“And the Ideal Sister Nana.”

“When it comes to eating, you can leave it to me.”

The magical girl in a nun uniform probably weighed over three digits, in kilograms. When one looked at her figure, her statement seemed like self-deprecation, but Kumi-Kumi gave a little sycophantic titter.

“And at last, the Ideal Weiss Winterprison!”

“Among knights of the Kingdom, newbies get cooking duty.” The magical girl in a long coat gave a breezy smile.

Kumi-Kumi didn’t know anything about kingdoms or knights, but at the very least there seemed to be no self-deprecation in her statement, so she gave an honest smile back.

“Umm…so…uhh…”

“You came here to make a boxed lunch, right? You can’t forget that. And that’s why…um…uhh…that’s why we came, but…”

The pajama magical girl folded her arms and groaned. It seemed the words weren’t coming out. The Western magical girl standing to her side—Calamity Mary—crouched down, bringing her lips close to the pajama magical girl’s ear to whisper, “You’re Nemurin, right? The cute magical girl who protects the peace of dreams.”

“Yep, yep. Nemurin’s come to save you. You need a boxed lunch, right?”

“A boxed lunch…ahh, yeah, I do.”

The pajama magical girl—Nemurin—nodded with a look of satisfaction, arms still folded. “It’s okay. Nemurin’s trick for winning cook-offs is perfect. Listen, if we’re talking cooking manga, Nemurin’s read fifty…no, a hundred…um, how many titles did I read, again? It was a while ago, so it’s kinda fuzzy.”

“If you count the one-shots and short serials, it should be over a hundred.”

“Thanks for the save, Mary. So yeah, Nemurin’s read over a hundred titles. Usually the competitor who comes in after wins, but it’s not like the first person to go never wins, so watch out for that.”

“So the combination of manga knowledge and practical cooking techniques will make it perfect, huh?”

“Just imagining the food that we’ll make is making me hungry,” said Ideal Nana.

“Oh no. Wouldn’t it be best to fuel ourselves first, Nana?” said Ideal Winterprison.

“No, no, let’s leave eating for later,” said Nemurin. “Cooking it comes first. You agree, don’t you, Kumi-Kumi?”

“Ahh…um…”

“Cooking is love. That’s our first basic presupposition—but not enough to win. You need ingredients.”

“We’re in a dream, so we can arrange for anything…or so Nemurin would like to say, but unfortunately, Nemurin’s power has declined. It’s so bad I even forget my own name sometimes. So I can’t get you anything.”

Nemurin’s shoulders slumped weakly, and Mary supported her. Nana and Winterprison gave her concerned looks from either side.

“But!” There was strength in Nemurin’s eyes. The cloud-like accessories that decorated her hair got similar expressions, all opening their mouths wide. “If Nemurin can’t make it herself, then she should just go borrow some! And so, beautiful Mary, please present everything we prepared!”

Mary squatted down and pulled out things from under the big table one after another to place them on top.

“I’ve gathered a chicken egg that a goose that lays golden eggs laid for some reason, soy sauce that with just one drop can give you the flavor of a fancy traditional restaurant right at home, salt produced near the former site of Sodom and Gomorrah, a ground beef and pork mixture made from a demonic fusion technique, rice from seed that was sprinkled over an old person’s grave, a lunch box that will go unscathed even if it gets hit by a nuke, a water bottle that was called the Holy Grail, and various other items with stories behind them.”

“Huh? What is this?” Kumi-Kumi stuttered.

“No need to worry. No matter how fishy it all seems, they all come with certificates of authenticity.”

“Even without a certificate of authenticity, if Sister Nana says so, then you can place full trust in it,” said Ideal Winterprison.

“Uhh…”

“All right, then, you get ready, too, Kumi-Kumi! Here’s Nemurin’s pajama-shaped apron!”

  Mephis Pheles

Only relevant personnel were allowed in the headquarters book depository. A common soldier of the Elite Guard was not important enough to be seen unconditionally as relevant personnel. She could get in by filing for permission and being escorted in, but even an optimistic estimate for getting permission would be three days, and depending on how busy the higher-ups were, it might take over a month.

The field trip was the next day. If she waited to get permission, she wouldn’t make it in time. But it was against Mephis Pheles’s principles to just obediently give in. So there was just one thing to do.

After checking that there was nobody by the entrance, she slipped in, closing the door without a sound. Everyone was aware of the lax security. Mephis wasn’t the only one who was sneaking in.

She tiptoed between shelves piled with objects of unknown use. Transformed into a magical girl, then she didn’t even need lighting. Passing soundlessly through the mountains of junk, she turned the knob of the door at the end. The book depository was ahead. Slowly turning the knob, she opened the door, and a voice came to her from behind.

“Is the ax you dropped a golden ax?”

She thought her heart would leap from her mouth, but fortunately, Mephis’s heart remained in her chest.

She’d sensed no presence. It was as if someone had suddenly seeped out into being. Farther to her right, in front of the mountain of junk, stood a magical girl. She turned her whole body around, and when Mephis readied herself for a fight, she pointed the blades of the large axes she carried in each hand at her.

“Or is it the silver ax?”

Mephis was still confused, but her body moved on its own. She leaped to the left to get away from the magical girl with the axes, knocking over the shelf that was on the way, heedless of it as she leaped further. The faint smile on the ax magical girl’s face crumpled, and with a panicked look, she caught the tipping shelf, slowly returning it to its original position so that nothing fell, then breathed a sigh.

“Th-th-that was close! Please don’t jump around in such a cramped space! If we break something and I wind up having to pay for it, I have hardly any savings.”

“What the fuck, who the hell’re you?!” Mephis cried.

“That’s a pretty awful thing to say… I mean, only relevant personnel are allowed in here.”

“I am relevant personnel, goddamn. Don’t you look down on the commando captain of the Elite Guard, Mephis Pheles.”

The title “commando captain” did not exist in the Elite Guard. But she should be allowed to call herself that to give herself a little boost, she figured. She had, in spite of herself, been “freaked out” by this magical girl, so she had to psych herself up to face this.

As the magical girl tilted her head, the blade of her ax tilted diagonally. “Huh? That’s strange. It should be forbidden even for the Elite Guard, though.”

“Who the hell are you, though? You’re not some thief who came in to steal shit, are you?”

“P-please don’t say that, I’m nothing so dangerous as a thief… Oh, I give up.”

She scratched at her head, parting her golden hair, and when dust fell on her white toga, she patted it off as she brought her hand down. When she leaned her axes against the wall, the wall made a nasty creaking noise, so she panicked and picked them up, gathering the both of them to sandwich under her right armpit.

Mephis squinted at the magical girl. She had an abnormal presence. It even felt like an overwhelming power was overflowing from within her. But despite that, Mephis hadn’t noticed she was there. She had made herself completely undetectable, lurking there. Mephis could say for certain that if they fought, this ax lady would be stronger. But the way she moved was weirdly ordinary and human, and she acted and spoke so timidly, she seemed indifferent to strength.

Bringing her right hand to her mouth, the magical girl whispered, “Umm, please don’t tell anyone else? Some confiscated items that were entrusted to me for a bit were in storage here. And for some reason, they’re gone, and it seems quite likely they’ve been sold illicitly. Do you know of a soy sauce that can give you the flavor of a fancy traditional restaurant with just one drop, or a goose that lays golden eggs?”

“I don’t.”

“If you don’t, then that’s fine. But so I was told to keep watch, to keep any more things from disappearing. I can ask you to leave, I hope? Right? Please do, it’s really awful to have them get mad at me for being incompetent at my job.”

“I get your situation. But look, I want to go to the book depository over there. I don’t have any business in the warehouse, so I’d like to get past.”

“Huh…? But I can’t… The warehouse is on the way to the book depository, though.”

She was stubborn. But then if Mephis were to try to push her way through with force, there was a 99 percent chance she’d get beat, and even on that 1 percent chance she won, she’d just make the problem needlessly bigger. So then there was only one way to go—she had to win her over.

Mephis lowered her voice a notch and deliberately put in a sweet tone that she would normally never use. “Don’t be so inflexible, c’mon. You’re the watch for the warehouse, right? The book depository is something else.”

“Oh, but…hmm.”

There was a reason that Mephis, who hardly read any books besides manga, was visiting the book depository. Even if she were found going into a storage space where nobody was allowed as a general rule, with her magic, she could cover for herself. Even the magical girl in front of her, the mysterious person with the axes who she had no idea who she was, was groaning with an awkward look on her face. It was a matter of time before she gave in.

“Hey, pleeease? This isn’t just about me, okay? This is also for my buddies.”

“Ohhh. Your friends?” The magical girl clattered her axes and refolded her arms, drawing back her chin with a serious look on her face. “Just what sort of situation do you have going on?”

“I have to make a boxed lunch. And a really great one at that. So then I want a recipe, right? There might be that sort of thing in the book depository, right? So I wanna go to the book depository.”

“I see. If that’s what it is, then there’s no problem.”

In the darkness, the magical girl’s eyes flashed sharply. In a single movement, she re-hefted the axes she’d had under her arm. Before Mephis could even be surprised, the blade was in front of Mephis’s eyes. Since they’d been going down the route of resolving things with discussion, she’d dropped her fighting stance. But it was too late to grit her teeth over her own lack of wisdom. She didn’t have the time to ready herself, either. She literally had a blade at her throat.

But even with things at this stage, giving up was not Mephis’s way. If she was going to turn things around from here, then rather than the physical, she would use the mental—in other words, words. But before Mephis could open her mouth, the enemy spoke. The eerie, faint smile had returned to her expression.

“I know how to make a boxed lunch. I’ll teach you some cooking techniques for people who live alone.”

  Classical Lillian

Shutting herself in her room to search the Internet suited Lillian. Just imagining asking her seniors for help or sneaking into book repositories made her depressed. She would finish this alone, and nobody would get to complain. Nothing could be better.

Of course, she didn’t intend to do a lazy job. If she were to bring something from some random recipe search service and call it a day, she would almost certainly get last place, and Mephis would yell at her. Mephis was, despite it all, a nice person, so her punishment shouldn’t be anything too bad. But she didn’t want anyone getting mad at her.

Even if there was nothing to be gained, she should still work as hard as she could. It would be difficult even for Mephis, who was always up for a fight, to yell at someone who had worked as hard as they could.

Lillian was not going to do her best because she wanted to win, she was going to do her best because she didn’t want to get yelled at. But no matter what her motive was, it was still her best. She privately thought that was fine.

First, she used the Elite Guard pass to use the Magical Kingdom’s exclusive search engine, using some terms that seemed right. She added in whatever words struck her: boxed lunch, how to make, magical girl, delicious. Via trial and error, she aimed deeper, ever deeper, beyond the depths, as if diving into a bottomless sea.

She was at a page about a magic that made delicious meals and about to click on the records of a certain incident when they demanded a password. Apparently, browsing was forbidden unless you were authorized personnel. Lillian folded her arms awhile and glared at the screen, then tried inputting the four-digit number said to be most often used as a password in the Magical Kingdom—they said it had been used by the First Mage.

An icon of a girl with glasses in a white coat changed to a smile. It seemed the password had worked. Thankful for the poor Internet literacy of the Magical Kingdom, Lillian moved onward.

The title read “boxed lunch”—it was a video. Figuring it had to be a recording of how to make a boxed lunch, she tried clicking it. But for some reason, what played was baseball practice.

A metal bat got the ball right in the center and sent it flying. The coach complained that “With you here, we’re gonna run outta balls,” and the teammates laughed. A boy with a physique like an adult’s or even bigger, but with a still-boyish face, was laughing along with them.

After practice, the boy ran to a nearby park, where a cute girl handed him a homemade boxed lunch. Then when he opened the lid, the video ended. Just what was this? She didn’t get it.

Lillian tried checking the other boxed lunch videos, too. It seemed like the girl making the boxed lunches had a crush on the baseball boy. The baseball boy was talented, with a guaranteed future as a pro. He had a lot of fans, so to stand out among them, she made lunches for him.

The video continued. It was revealed in succession that the girl was a magical girl, and that the boxed lunches were made with magic, making Lillian furrow her brow, smile, groan, and smile again, and then before she knew it, she was watching with sweat clenched in her fists over where this girl’s crush would go.

The final video ended with the girl kissing the boy’s cheek. There was nothing after that. This was way too half-baked to be an ending. Had it been canceled?

Lillian shook her head, and her hair followed a beat later. The clock on the desk said 3:50. After glancing at it, she went back and stared again. She had started searching in the evening and spent all that time without getting anything out of it, and then before she knew it, it was early morning of the day of the field trip—this was very bad. She wouldn’t even leave traces of having worked her very best. She was about to brush back her hair with her hands, wondering what to do, when her hand touched her cheek, and stopped there.

Her cheek was wet. She’d been crying and hadn’t known it.

She gritted her teeth at how petty she was for only ever worrying about people getting mad at her. That’s not how it should be, she scolded herself, then stood up. She would still make it in time. She had enough time to make a lunch. Even just half, one-third of what that girl had done would be enough—if she could put in her love for the person eating it, then surely it would be a wonderful lunch.

  Thunder-General Adelheid

On the bus, everyone sang magical girl medleys in karaoke, and aside from Princess Lightning, who was nodding off, they had a great time. After they got off, they laughed at the baby monkeys playing with each other, heckled the languid hyenas, and were soothed by the capybaras diving underwater, and when they looked at the clock, wondering what was next, it was just about noon. Time flew when you were having fun. That went all the more so when you weren’t in magical-girl form.

Everyone returned to the bus for the moment, and then with backpacks in hand, headed to the central park square.

It being a weekday, the square was fairly empty. They spread plastic sheets on the lawn, and now it was time for their lunch break. Groups One, Two, and Three each sat in circles a yard apart and chatted as they had their lunches.

Adelheid looked to Group One first. Tetty had a very normal middle schooler–looking boxed lunch, Miss Ril’s was also very normal, aside from having a larger amount, Rappy was using an expensive-looking multi-tiered lunch box, but the contents were nothing of note, and Arlie and Dory were eating bars.

As predicted, Group One was no problem. They hadn’t put anything in particular into their lunches.

Figuring the problem would be these guys, Adelheid moved just her eyes to Group Three. Diko and Ranyi had convenience store bread, Pshuke had a bunch of bananas, and Lightning—as before—had a giant rice ball.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Ranyi cried out in startlement and pointed at Sally’s lunch box. The others in the group stood around Sally and looked down at the boxed lunch. Drawn there using seaweed, minced meat, and pink fish floss were some characters—Cutie Pearl and Cutie Onyx, posing.

“Whoa…a character lunch!” said Pshuke.

“Amazing! That’s like professional!” cried Ranyi.

“Not bad work,” Diko agreed.

Arlie and Dory clapped their hands in glee, Miss Ril was impressed, and Rappy chittered loudly. Calkoro stuck her face in between the students, looking down at the boxed lunch, impressed. This may have been the first time Adelheid had seen the teacher being actually, sincerely impressed toward a student.

Indeed, it was well-made. Sally, scratching her head like she was shy, seemed somehow proud. With her chopsticks, she ate Pearl and Onyx—and then Ranyi cried out in shock again. From underneath Pearl and Onyx appeared more Cutie Healers. This time it was Vega and Altair.

“So Galaxy next, or what?” Mephis asked.

“What about…Dark Cutie?” Kumi-Kumi wondered.

“Man, this must have taken time,” Adelheid said.

The Cutie Healer character lunch box with double-level illustrations got the audience all in a tizzy. It’s gonna be hard to beat that, Adelheid thought, but she immediately shook her head. This was about whether she would win or lose among her own group. There was no need to pay attention to Sally. Mephis was probably thinking something similar, as she turned around with a serious look on her face. Adelheid followed her, the members of Group Two returning to their original spot.

“Okay, then I’ll start,” said Mephis.

Her lunch was divided into three levels: One was fruit, one was sides, with mainly meatballs, and one was packed with white rice with furikake on top.

“…Ain’t that normal?” said Adelheid.

“Naw. This ain’t normal. It’s the real shit. I cooked it with these two crazy huge giant axes. It was wild. The hell was that even, some circus act?”

“I…don’t know…what you mean…,” said Kumi-Kumi.

“Even if the way ya cooked it ain’t normal, if yer servin’ it as a boxed lunch, the one eatin’ it ain’t gonna know.”

“The hell, all you guys whining about it. Then what’d you bring, Adelheid?”

Adelheid pulled out a magic bottle filled with hot water and a cup of instant ramen.

Mephis pounded her right fist against the picnic sheet. It made a weak smacking sound. “Bullshit, Adelheid! You complain about my lunch, and you brought cup noodles?!”

“That ain’t what this is! This is the Twin Dragon’s Original Brand Super-Delicious stuff!”

“Flaking out and going for a joke lunch like that is so fucking unfunny! Your joke bombed, man!”

“Don’t ya call this a joke that bombed! Ah’m takin’ this seriously!”

Adelheid had gone searching to find who was a great cook among the Archfiend Cram School graduates, and as a result, she had come to a single magical girl. Even as others gave her the cold shoulder—she put people off with her over-enthusiasm—she continued to have a widely acknowledged passion for eating.

So there was no doubting her there—but her specialty was ramen. For bringing in ramen as lunch, instant was the best way. Her senior, the skilled cook, had offered from the kindness of her heart, “How about I put out a stall?” Of course, Adelheid had refused. And so Adelheid had shouldered this hardship so that she could refuse without causing offense. She didn’t want to believe it was for nothing.

“So then Adelheid is provisional last place,” said Mephis.

“Don’t ya go assumin’! At least make the judgment after ya eat it!”

“I feel like we’d know even without trying. Oh well, so then what about you, Lillian?”

They looked toward her to see she was cradling her lunch in her arms and bolting down her lunch. Her eyes were glassy.

“Hey, hold on. Why are you already starting to eat?” demanded Mephis.

“What sort of lunch did ya make, Lillian? Show us.”

Lillian flatly shook her head. She wouldn’t even let go of the box. “No. This lunch isn’t for anyone. It’s mine. I have to eat it. For her—for her feelings, I can’t let anyone take it, I can’t!” she declared forcefully, as if her normal timidness were a lie. There were deep circles under her eyes, her long, black, and under-brushed hair was disheveled, her skin was sickly pale, and her eyes were glassy—teary, even. She was just like a character out of a horror movie.

Adelheid quietly averted her eyes and whispered to Mephis, “It seems best not to bother her too much…”

“How did she get like this…?”

“She said she was searchin’ for a recipe online… She probably encountered the darkness of the Internet…”

“Scary… What the hell…?”

“Ah think she’ll be back to the normal Lillian after a few days, so just stay patient until then…”

So finally, Kumi-Kumi, they all thought as they looked over at her to see her fishing through her backpack, pale-faced.

“…What’s wrong?” said Adelheid.

“…I can’t find it. I thought…I made…a lunch…and brought it…but…”

“What? What the hell, at an important time like this?” said Mephis.

“Well, but, I know I brought it…or, I think I did…maybe…it was a dream…”

“C’mon, makin’ lunch in yer dreams isn’t gonna do ya any good.”

Mephis and Adelheid helped her, and they turned her backpack upside down and took everything out, but there was no boxed lunch. Kumi-Kumi’s shoulders drooped as she sighed in sorrow. Adelheid was about to say something to her, but noticing the shadow falling over her, she lifted her head.

Lightning was staring down at Group Two’s kerfuffle. She was holding the rice ball, now about two-thirds smaller, mouth munching along. She was wearing a large hat with a wide brim, a so-called actress hat—though it was normally a hat for rather older women, it suited her so well, you wouldn’t think she was a middle schooler. The uniform she normally wore actually stood out more.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Aw, it’s nothing much,” said Mephis. “And hey, why’re you over here?”

“That doesn’t matter. More importantly, you forgot your lunch, didn’t you? How awful!”

This may have been the first time she had ever heard Lightning cry out loud—it made the other students react as well, and they all came gathering round. Miss Ril consoled Kumi-Kumi, and Tetty took the lead to propose that they gather some side dishes, a bit from everyone, and by everyone offering their small amount, a heaping stack of sides was piled in front of Kumi-Kumi. The biggest of these was one-quarter of Lightning’s rice ball—and looking at her, she seemed as glad as if it were herself, saying with a smile, “It’s tough, not having lunch.”

  Ranyi

Everyone sat in the same seats on the way back as they had there—in other words, Lightning sat beside Ranyi. She seemed horribly exhausted. As soon as she sat down in her seat, she blew a deep sigh, stroking her long eyelashes with elegant gestures. Her exhaustion didn’t mar her beauty. But she seemed like she would fall asleep at any moment.

There was something Ranyi wanted to ask before she fell asleep. Ranyi asked quietly, “Kumi-Kumi forgot her lunch, huh?”

“Yes, so I heard.” The tone of Lightning’s voice was strongly emphasizing that she wanted to sleep more than talk.

But Ranyi continued, “Lightning, you gave her about a quarter of your rice ball, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You don’t think you gave her too much? You’re tired now because you’re hungry, aren’t you?”

Lightning was a glutton. During the field trip, she had been devouring that giant rice ball, and if extras came up during lunch, then she would raise her hand, no matter what it was. She wasn’t kind or considerate enough to think about restraining her appetite just because a classmate was in trouble. Her obsession with eating was to be feared.

And that was the person who had offered one-fourth of her rice ball. The recipient, Kumi-Kumi, seemed to have gotten more than she could handle, too. There was just too much. Even though the concept of putting together a lunch had been to get a little from everyone to put together one person’s worth, Lightning alone had offered her more than a full serving.

It wasn’t like she’d had no appetite. She still seemed sleepy, and even on the bus there, she had been muttering in her sleep as she napped. Saying, “I can’t…get the dream lunch out of the dream…oh no…” It had seemed like she was worrying about her lunch even in her dreams, so Ranyi remembered it well.

Being someone like that, there was no way Lightning would share one-quarter of her rice ball.

“Why so much…?”

Lightning waved her right hand languidly. Her eyes were already closed.

There was no response. Lightning had fallen into the world of sleep.

  Nemurin

The magical girls sat all around a circular table, beginning the day’s review session.

“Okay, so then this will be the review meeting,” said Nemurin. “Pretty Miss Mary, do you have something?”

“I think it was bad to forget the major premise that things in a dream can’t be taken out of the dream.”

“True, true. Well then, Ideal Sister Nana?”

“It was sad what happened, but I think it was good that we were able to work things out.”

“Mm-hmm. It felt like destiny that one of Kumi-Kumi’s classmates was napping. Thanks to that, we were able to tell her in a dream that ‘Kumi-Kumi forgot her lunch, so help her out!’ And you could feel the power of friendship in solving it by gathering side dishes.”

“Yes, it was a beautiful friendship,” said Ideal Nana.

“Well then, next, Ideal Winterprison.”

“About that classmate…is this quite all right?”

Nemurin, Mary, and Sister Nana all looked over at the girl sitting beside Winterprison. She was a human girl with a face so perfect, it was like she was a magical girl. Her cheeks, smooth like white porcelain, were puffed up large as she bolted down Kumi-Kumi’s dream lunch.

Kumi-Kumi would not necessarily be able to come to this world again. So the odds were high that this lunch would go to waste. But then how had this classmate managed to come here like she’d been aiming for it anyway? Had she aimed for it? Wasn’t it too good to be a coincidence? Seeing how she was eating Kumi-Kumi’s lunch like it was obvious she should, Nemurin could only assume that she’d meant to do it from the start.

Nemurin shook her head, along with her antennae, Mary shook her head, and Sister Nana gave a spellbound smile to see Winterprison and the mysterious pretty girl side by side.

The girl noticed that she was being watched and tried to say something, but since her mouth was full of food, she couldn’t talk. After making a gesture like she was using a pottery wheel, she stuck up her right thumb and thrust it forward, then went for the lunch again.