Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 17 - Chapter 5

Festival Day

As was indicated by its conventional, unimaginative name, N City’s Spring Festival was held every year in the spring. It was said to have originally been a festival to pray for a good harvest of that year’s grains, but then various other elements had been added in, and it wound up completely different from the original festival. The free hydrangea tea that was offered was thought to be a remnant of the Buddha’s birthday, the way everyone gathered in the center of the castle ruins was thought to originate in a feast to welcome a new castle lord after the battle of Sekigahara, and then there were the landmark three thousand Yoshino cherry trees, which had apparently been planted in commemoration of winning a war by Meiji period soldiers in their hometowns—and all of that was said to have become the present-day Spring Festival. The display of illuminated cherry blossom trees at night was thought to be one of the greatest in Japan in scale and beauty, and many connoisseurs would list it at the top of the hundred best nighttime cherry blossom spots.

N City was overflowing with tourists at this time of year. And it wasn’t just the tourists—the locals loved the Spring Festival, too. They would visit the festival venues with family, friends, or lovers. If you had no one to go with, you would come alone. Even those who normally were hard-pressed to keep up with their lives and had no interest in festivals and all that would wind up wandering in when it came time for the Spring Festival.

Even people whose days flew by like arrows, exhausted and out of breath just trying to support themselves with no time to spare, would notice it was that season again when they saw the traffic being blocked off, the signboards advertising it, the bulletin from the city hall, or the cherry blossoms budding open. When that happened, even those who avoided crowds, those who disliked noise, those with a hobby of tagging the wall of the city hall with graffiti, those who bragged at every opportunity about how they had kicked over the lectern at their ceremony of adulthood, those with the depressing urge to shoot up their workplace right away if they ever got a machine gun—they all wandered in, and they would either feel something powerful or leave without feeling particularly anything at all. It wasn’t like they harbored love of their hometown or a sense of belonging. They’d just sort of wind up joining in the festival.

There were a number of things in that year’s festival that were different from past years. The cherry blossoms were blooming a little early, and the cleaning of clogged fallen leaves from the central pond had dragged out, so right in the middle of the festival they were unable to use the pedal-boats. The person who’d just inherited the dango shop Mochiyasu was holding a raffle skewer dango campaign in celebration of its remodeling, causing a surprising response on various social media sites. And there was one more thing. Due to the influence of the (locally popular) mobile game Magical Girl Raising Project, the street stalls were lined with more goods related to magical girls than in previous years.

That last thing was pretty big—apparently, there were more than a few drunks at the standing-only bars and izakayas, who bemoaned that the festival was completely different from before and that it never used to be to be such a geeky kind of festival.

That year’s Cutie Healer cotton candy packages were the same as every other year. But they even had Cutie Healer series that were long over, plus magical girl characters from years gone by, like Magical Daisy, Hiyoko-chan, and Miko-chan, also occupying major places.

Even with the lottery prizes, magical girl items like magic batons, costumes, and plush mascot characters were prominent, and the yo-yo fishing and rubber ball fishing prizes had illustrations of magical girls on them. Cutie Altair was drawn on the takoyaki stand sign, biting into a big octopus, and the turtle-scooping sign had Miko-chan with a turtle shell on her back. This rather absurd use of magical girls brought snickers from those few citizens who had watched the shows in question.

  Souta Kishibe

After soccer practice, once it was dark, Souta went to the festival with a few of his friends, and there he ran into an incredible lucky find. But even saying that, it wasn’t as if he could leap on it immediately. Souta Kishibe was a middle school boy and soccer club member—his magical girl hobby was something he could never expose, a secret among secrets that he had to hold until he was deep in the grave. While praying that the thing he’d just found would not be discovered by some other hard-core fan with a good eye, he calmed his racing heart and walked on with his friends, and after doing one circle of the area at a quick pace, he lied and said he “suddenly remembered he had to do something” and left them to run off at full speed, then circled back to the shooting stand.

Quickly ducking behind a tree, he poked out just his head and looked at the shooting stand, checking the item he was after as he turned on his smartphone, compared it with the image that came up in the search, and ascertained that what he had found was the real thing. It was without question a commemorative plaque from the Cutie Healer World Premium film premiere. This fan item was made to commemorate the film’s release in North America, and hardly any were circulating in Japan. It was very rare for one to be on the market. Souta had searched the auctions almost every day back when they’d been made, but one had never come up.

The plaque had all the main characters, villains, and allies from the entire Cutie Healer series together in their signature poses. These were the profoundly memorable characters that Souta had always admired since he was little. The illustration felt both nostalgic and fresh—perhaps because the designs were modernized. It was just sitting there at the top of the display at the shooting booth, but it was actually giving Souta the feeling of being looked down on from above by a king on his throne. It had no nicks. It looked like there was no dirt. To think such a mint-condition item would be in a place like this…

Souta took some deep breaths, then dropped his phone in his pocket. Peeking his face out from behind the street stall, he checked around the area. Of course he didn’t want to be seen by his friends or teammates. But he couldn’t even let himself be seen by an acquaintance. A local festival with a large turnout meant he wouldn’t be able to go completely unseen, but he would risk exposing his magical-girl secret as little as possible.

Pulling out four one hundred yen coins from his wallet, he handed them to the bearded stall vendor.

He couldn’t get too worked up. He absolutely couldn’t let trembling hands make the gun shake and throw his aim off.

And he couldn’t show that he was worked up, either. He had to make it so that if someone from somewhere were to see Souta right now, they would not assume that this was a guy desperate to get some magical girl merch. He had to make it seem like he was trying to get something else the whole time, and since he didn’t manage that, he’d just knocked down the commemorative plaque by chance. He had to make sure to keep up the act even after he successfully won the item, making it seem like “It’s too bad I couldn’t get the item I wanted” and acting reluctant as he went home with the plaque.

He checked around, then leaned way forward. He set his left arm on the counter, coming forward farther even if it meant coming up off his toes. He extended his arms to the point where he was keenly aware of the joints of his shoulders and the tendons of his elbows and wrists, while meanwhile, he kept the gun sights blurred until the moment of the shoot. His goal would be completely transparent if he aimed for his goal in a straight line from the start.

Not letting the feelings in his heart show on his face, he shifted and pointed the gun away an appropriate amount while still fixing his sights on a single point. The Dark Cute and Cutie Altair drawn on the acrylic plaque had their fingers lightly tangled together. There were no other fan items where these two were holding hands—and, of course, no official merch. This was unique, a super-valuable item that couldn’t be found elsewhere. If you were a Cutie Healer fan—no, if you were a magical girl fan—then this was a mouth-watering item that anyone would want. He shot it.

It was the best timing and hit in the best spot. He got a clean hit on the upper inch of the plaque, which was about twelve inches wide, on a spot that would definitely make it lose its balance. The cork bullet shot out from his gun, then made a light pop as it was knocked away, bouncing off to hit the pillar of the street stall, where it lost its momentum and fell to the ground.

Souta was dumbfounded, but he quickly pulled himself together. He loaded his next bullet and fired. A hit. The bullet was repelled, and the light-looking acrylic plaque didn’t move—it didn’t so much as twitch. Souta stopped trying to hide what he was doing. He gave everything he had, aimed for the plaque from the start, and fired, fired, fired. Every shot hit—and though he hit it on different spots, like the center, right side, or left side, the plaque didn’t budge by even a hair.

He handed four more one hundred yen coins to the stall vendor, then got change for a thousand yen bill, then change for a five hundred yen coin, and the next thousand yen bill he handed over, he added two hundred yen to it and didn’t get change for three rounds’ worth, accepting a total of nine cork bullets. But no matter how many he tried to strike in succession, the plaque never moved and wouldn’t fall over.

He was out of cork bullets again. Souta reached for his wallet to pay even more money, and then a thick hand lay over his, startling him. He looked up and saw the bearded stall vendor watching him with an apologetic expression.

“Leave it at that,” the vendor said. “That thing’s not worth getting so serious over.”

Souta realized something. The vendor’s expression and attitude, and the acrylic plaque being so unmoving, as if it were fixed there, were all telling. The shop vendor knew what the plaque was worth, too—and he was using it to bring in customers. Just like when a lottery booth had a brand-new game console as a prize, or when the water balloons with cash in them were displayed at the yo-yo scooping, he never intended to let them be taken.

Souta breathed a deep sigh and reflected upon the weight of the thing he had failed to acquire.

“Pardon me… Could I at least see it up close?” he asked.

“No photos or touching, so keep that in mind. Aw, I really am sorry.”

Souta was invited into the stall, and the commemorative plaque looked even more dazzling up close. Observing and enjoying how Dark Cutie looked a little bit shy, and how Cutie Orca and Cutie Penguin had swapped their poses, and more, Souta opened his eyes wide, set his brain free, and experienced it to the fullest, then bowed to the stall vendor and left.

He should have been so frustrated and sad over this disappointment, but he felt mysteriously refreshed.

  Nana Habutae

It was a target shooting stall. An oddly dandy sort of man with his hair combed back and a neat mustache decorating his upper lip was clapping his hands to attract customers. He seemed kind of fishy. He was the type that Nana didn’t really want to become acquainted with, and she normally would have declined involvement, even just as a customer going to a street vendor. She wasn’t all that hung up on something as childish as target shooting in the first place.

But she couldn’t look away from that street stall. Some invisible power, like a curse or a spell, was cast on her, and it was as if her eyes were nailed on one spot. Their lineup of miscellaneous and trashy items—a lighter with a garish design, a foreign-made rubber bottle, figures of very scantily clad anime characters, all sorts of candy, plushes of local mascots that seemed like not official merch based on their shoddy sewing—was lit up under the kind of lighting you’d expect. And then, sitting conspicuously as a prize item at the target shooting, was what was most likely the main draw.

It was wrapped in newspaper, with warm steam puffing off it. It was cooked just right, looking like the skin would come right off if you touched it, its golden insides peeking out from between the cracks where the skin peeled off. It made you hungry just from looking at it.

It was a baked sweet potato. She looked away, then back again, and even after closing her eyes for ten seconds and slowly opening her eyes, all that she could see was the baked potato.

It had happened when she was maybe ten years old, at most. She had run into a baked potato shop that had been struggling due to the owner’s age and on the verge of closing—so the people buying sweet potatoes there had been discussing. Between the smell and the way they looked, the sweet potatoes had really stirred up her appetite, but Nana hadn’t had enough money on hand to buy one, since she was only a little kid. She’d had no choice but to just look on enviously as a wizened old man had turned on the flames, and housewives and high school girls had gleefully picked out sweet potatoes. Nana had never encountered that baked potato stall since. He must have retired, exactly like she’d heard.

The baked potato that was displayed on the target shooting stall now looked just like the shining baked potatoes she had seen back then. The succulent sweet potato made her hungry simply looking at it. It would surely be delicious to eat. It couldn’t possibly taste anything but delicious.

The sound of her swallowing her drool rang through her body. She’d apparently done it unconsciously.

“What’s the matter?”

Shizuku was looking at Nana with a smile. That smile clouding with worry was…picturesque in its own way, but Nana didn’t want to see that right now. She wanted Shizuku to have a smile on during the festival.

Nana hid her anxiety with a smile. “No, there’s nothing the matter.”

“Are you cold, or something?”

“I’m all right. Since your hands are warm.”

“I’m glad.”

“Yes, indeed…oh, look at that branch over there. It’s blooming so beautifully.” Nana came to a stop and pointed at a branch where the flowers were in perfect bloom, but didn’t look up at it, eyes swiftly checking all around.

The passersby were looking at the shops, chatting pleasantly, eyes not stopping on the target shooting stall as they walked along. They weren’t reacting at all to the sight of this strange target shooting stall with a baked potato on display. They didn’t stop or tug on their companions’ sleeves or whisper something about the strange shop over there.

“Where? Which branch?” Shizuku asked Nana.

“Look, it’s right over there.”

Nana bought time to linger as she observed even more closely. The people weren’t looking, and the stall vendor wasn’t really showing it off, either. Despite having such a unique item there in the spot where it would stand out most, there was no poster for it. All that was written on the sign was “target shooting.” There were no further details. All the target shooting places she’d seen before had advertised some unique item to draw in customers. That’s what you would do, if you had any interest in making sales.

That sweet potato looked very good and was perfect as an item to draw in customers—

“I can’t tell,” said Shizuku. “Is it that branch over there?”

“No, no.”

Nana was suddenly struck by doubt. The sweet potato appeared to have enticing steam rising from it. She could tell that it was freshly baked; if she stuffed it into her cheeks, taking care not to get burned from the heat, it would certainly be delicious.

But wasn’t that strange? Just how long could it remain freshly baked? A fair amount of time should have passed since she had first found that potato. But the steam rising from it had not faded at all.

The season was spring. It was cold enough out that you needed a coat to go out for a walk, and the air was dry enough that you needed to keep some moisturizer on you. At night, your breath would turn white, and if she hadn’t been holding hands with Shizuku, her fingers would go numb. In that kind of weather, just how long could a potato stay warm, puffing up white steam to draw people’s attention?

While pointing at the branch, Nana spent some time considering how suspicious it was that the baked potato retained its warmth, before reaching what she figured was the right conclusion. This was…a hallucination brought on by calorie restriction.

Nana had been on a diet for a few days now. She was going for both moderate exercise and calorie restriction in order to lose a little bit of weight. It was of the mild sort—stopping snacking, reducing the amount of white rice in her bowl, just things like that.

But it wasn’t as if this wasn’t difficult. In particular, coming to an event like a festival, where there were tasty things lined up all over the place—buttered potatoes, mitarashi dango, tri-color dango, takoyaki, candied apples, fish and chips, okonomiyaki, beef skewers, fried chicken, yakisoba, frankfurters, chocolate bananas, kebabs, obanyaki, fried chocolate sweets, ramen, french fries, and other various desires that excited her—having to walk right through the middle of that temptation was torture.

She had known before coming that this place would be bad for her mind and body, but imagining herself and Shizuku strolling together holding hands underneath the lit-up cherry blossom trees, she hadn’t been able to restrain herself. This was a once-in-a-year chance, the first since they had become lovers, and she absolutely didn’t want to let it slip through her fingers. She fought off her appetite all the time, on a regular basis. That would be no big deal—theoretically. Or so she had thought.

“Pardon me, it seems I was mistaken. Never mind the flowers—let’s move on.” Nana squeezed Shizuku’s hand and pulled. It was dangerous to stay here any longer.

“Come on, now, it’s dangerous to go too fast,” Shizuku said with a smile.

Nana gave her a distracted reply and hurried onward. She’d never imagined that she’d be so unable to restrain her desire for food that she would hallucinate. The baked potato had looked so good that if it hadn’t been a hallucination, she would have loved to get a hold of it no matter what to take a big bite. It had looked good enough to make her think that the baked potato from her childhood had come back.

With anxiety about her mental state for having such a vision, Nana pushed her way through the crowds at a trot.

  Ayana Sakanagi

“You want to do target shooting? Aren’t you still a little young for that, Ayana?”

She nodded to the question of if she wanted to do target shooting and shook her head at the question of whether she was too young, a gentle attempt to hold her back. Ayana’s mother knew she was stubborn at times like these, and she felt that a target shooting stall at night wasn’t bad enough that she would drag her away to stop her. She’d given Ayana the right on festival night to “get one thing you like per night.” But until now, she hadn’t exercised it even once.

“If you miss, you won’t get anything, you know? Are you all right with that?”

“Don’t you worry about that, ma’am. There’s a consolation prize if you miss everything,” the stall vendor interjected glibly.

Her mother gave a forced smile in response, then squatted down and met Ayana’s gaze at her level. “Are you really okay with that?”

Ayana nodded silently. All the stalls before had only ever had very ordinary things. There had been magical girl toys, and not just takoyaki and chocolate-covered bananas, but they had all been somewhat lacking, and she hadn’t encountered anything that struck her. It had been disappointing, but she hadn’t been upset. What Ayana wanted was princess-related goods. That wasn’t something you ran into so easily. But now she had found something.

“It doesn’t really seem like she could do it, though,” said her mother.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll get a step stool,” said the stall vendor.

“I’m so sorry.”

Ayana had three bullets. A princess would never be fine with missing the first two shots, and neither would one who served her. She would get it in one shot. Ayana raised the gun and shifted her gaze to the item she was after. Squinting one eye, she carefully fixed her aim, trying to lean forward as far as she could, but at this rate, it seemed like she would fall into the booth.

“Ma’am, hold her steady.”

“Sure, sure.”

Now she had a firm support. Feeling a sense of security in the warmth from her mother’s palm, she raised her gun once more. She was after just one thing. It was the crown displayed at the top of the shelf in the middle, right in the position worthy of being called the princess’s seat. When she was in preschool, she’d seen a princess of a foreign country in a parade for some sort of commemorative event. This looked exactly like the crown the princess had had on her head then. It had an octagonally cut purple gem that reflected the light. Was that particularly large one a diamond? The gorgeous crown had the power to convince Ayana that princesses weren’t just in stories—they were real. She’d admired princesses ever since then, as a clear goal—to serve a princess. No, if she had that crown, then maybe she should become a princess herself.

Ayana pointed her gun at the crown and carefully fixed her aim—then placed the gun to the side.

She looked at the crown. She had longed for it. She thought she still did now. A real princess had put that on her head to wave her hand from her seat on top of a car. Yes, it had been a real princess. It was no fake, nor a prop.

Ayana considered. That had been the first time she’d seen a real princess. But it wasn’t as if that had been the first and last time. Ayana served a princess right now, as a magical girl. Ruler was a real princess. And she didn’t have a crown on her head, but a little tiara. Even if it was small, it shone like the real thing. It sparkled in the dusty Ouketsuji temple. Seeing it made Swim Swim very happy and made her remember that she was serving a princess.

A crown. A tiara. Both were pretty. Which was more pretty? Ayana considered and couldn’t decide. What was it that she needed? If she could acquire a crown, then would she be able to become a princess? No, not at all. The path to being a princess was painful and steep. It wasn’t as if she could become one right away, just because she’d acquired one item. And besides, the more she looked at it, the more she thought back, Ruler’s tiara was better. Ruler was not just a princess. She was the number one princess. A princess and a magical girl.

Ayana blinked her eyes, took the gun in hand, and readied it. Breathing in and out two or three times settled her heart. She shot down a Cutie Healer phone case, a Star Queen mouse pad, and a Magical Daisy blanket one after another, and then a beat later, her mother and the stall vendor cried out in surprise.

“That’s amazing, Ayana. You have a talent for this.”

“That’s pretty good. You were like a Tohoku hunter with prey in front of them, or a sniper aiming for a target.”

Ayana didn’t look at the two as they praised her—her eyes were up on the crown. She had almost taken the wrong path. Ruler really is the princess, and the princess is Ruler, she pondered silently.

  Tsubame Murota

They’d had a real fight. Shouichi had insisted that a pregnant woman absolutely shouldn’t be going to a festival: “What if something happened in the crowds?”

Tsubame kept repeating the same lines over and over again like a child: “What’s the point of living if I can’t go to this once-a-year Spring Festival?” “I’m not even showing yet—before I know it, I’ll be too big to do stuff like this,” “You can protect me if something happens,” “I just want to go, I really want to go.” In the end, Shouichi gave in. When husband and wife clashed, the win rate was about forty-sixty in Shouichi’s favor, but Tsubame had pushed hard for this one.

“It’s okay for me to enjoy the crowds from time to time, right?” Tsubame said.

“Agh…you really do love festivals and things like that,” Shouichi replied. “But they have them every year.”

“Giving me that look again! C’mon, c’mon, it’s the big festival, so let’s have fun with it.”

Shouichi didn’t like noisy situations. Crowds weren’t his thing, and he was a disagreeable guy who wasn’t ashamed to say that the stalls and the people involved were all of the dubious sorts. But when he actually went out, he could enjoy himself decently enough. He looked at the cherry blossoms with kind eyes. And the way he nonchalantly helped Tsubame with steps, vehicles, crowds, and other various dangers was kind and made her happy. He’d be shy if she said this out loud, so she accepted his kindness silently. The two of them went down the cherry blossom–lined street, and right when they were just about at the west square, where most of the trees were, Shouichi stopped. Wondering what it was, she saw that he was looking intently at a street stall.

“What’s up? Did ya find something nice?” Tsubame asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Shouichi answered half-heartedly as he stared at the stall.

It looked like a target shooting stall. There were various prizes lined up on the usual three levels of shelving, where you won a prize by knocking it down with a cork gun. Shouichi hated gambling, even if it was just a little bit for fun. Normally, he would never even look at target shooting. So then was there a really attractive prize there? Tsubame looked over at the shelf with prizes lined up on it and groaned quietly.

Oh, that’s what he wants.

It had been when she had still been young, years ago, at the time when she’d been saying she wanted hers to be the fastest team in N City. There had been this anime that Tsubame had loved to watch. It had been about a little witch riding a broom that flew through the air, her even smaller familiar in tow, flying in a journey from town to town. The action astride a broomstick, and the sense of immediacy and speed the show had had was still much talked about. It was no overstatement to say that show was the reason Tsubame had first begun dreaming of speed.

Displayed on that spot, in a basket, was a plushie that looked just like the girl’s bat familiar, Cocker. It was an extremely accurate replica in a basket that looked like it was worth more than the plush itself, giving it a sense of respect to the original anime. It was all about the little things.

Shouichi had been with her ever since she was small. In other words, he knew about the anime Tsubame liked. That had to be why he was trying to get the plushie for her.

What a loving husband, she thought as she wiped the corners of her eyes with her wrist. Then she jabbed Shouichi’s side with her elbow. “Hey, Shou-Bro. Want that over there?”

“I told you not to call me that in public.”

“C’mon, do you want it or not?”

Shouichi’s eyes moved restlessly behind his glasses before he gave a little resigned nod. “If you have to ask, then…I…do want it.”

“Ohhh. Oh-ho-ho. So a big stuffy public servant wants a plushie, eh?”

“Huh? A plushie? Oh, right, there is a plushie. It’s one of the prizes. Of course it’s a plushie. It looked so realistic, I thought it was the real thing.”

“Ha-ha-ha! It’s cuter than the real thing.”

“You think it’s cute? Doesn’t it look more, like…tasty?”

“Huh? Tasty? …Have you eaten one before?”

After taking a breath, Shouichi nodded. “That thing looks exactly like what they had at this one restaurant back when I was in school. I ate those a lot.”

It took Tsubame a few seconds to understand what he was saying. She understood the meaning of his words, but couldn’t figure out what he was trying to express.

“Hold on a sec,” she said. “Huh? Whaddaya mean?”

“What? I mean just what I said.”

“Uh…huh? Hang on…you’re for real?”

“You know I went to college in S Prefecture, right? It’s a regional specialty there. You can fry them thin, but I like them grilled without seasoning. I hear you can’t really get ahold of them recently, and they’re often not on the menu at izakayas and small eateries,” Shouichi said with his usual super-serious expression as he gazed at the target shooting prizes. He didn’t seem to be joking.

The man who ran the stall was stroking his mustache with his right hand as he looked between the two of them, smiling brightly.

“Hey there, we have some nice items lined up,” he told them. “Come one, come all.”

Tsubame turned back, checking Shouichi over her shoulder. He had his hand on his chin in contemplation. It seemed he was considering whether he should play the shooting game. Tsubame shivered and drew her collar in. She didn’t want to see a plushie filled with memories and be reminded of a flavor.

Tsubame tugged at Shouichi’s sleeve. “Hey, let’s forget about it and go somewhere else. C’mon.”

“But…”

“Seriously. It’s just a plushie. It’s not like you can actually eat it.”

“Hmm… It honestly does look like a real bat, though. You’re sure it’s a plushie?”

“Of course I am.”

“But I can practically taste it…”

“Urk… TMI! Don’t make me imagine it!”

Any more of this would be dangerous. This was bad for the baby. Tsubame circled around to Shouichi’s other side and pushed him. He hesitated, but gradually moved away from the target shooting stall.

“Oh yeah, let’s buy some later at the supermarket,” Shouichi said.

“Huh…? You think…they sell it?”

“You should have some, too. They’re nutritious.”

“Uh, sorry, even if it is, I can’t…”

“I think practically everyone eats it.”

“No, they don’t. That’s really wild. Just what I’d expect from my husband.”

Recalling that Shouichi had enough nerve to propose marriage to her, her respect for her husband was renewed. At the same time, she was satisfied at having kept her childhood memories safe. While saying farewell in her heart to the bat plush, she pushed Shouichi’s back and left the street stall.

  Yuna Amasato

On the twelfth shot, the bullet that made it a thousand six hundred yen in cash was knocked away to roll on the ground. Now that things were at this point, Yuna looked back on what they’d just done. First, she and Mina had spent four hundred yen. They’d quarreled about who would shoot then, and because they’d been snatching the gun from each other while trying to fire, they’d failed to hit the target. Then, when they’d paid another four hundred yen, Mina had won at rock-paper-scissors and so had shot, and though she’d hit the target twice, it hadn’t fallen. Having been watching and doing nothing herself after paying four hundred yen, Yuna finally got her chance to hold the gun, and though she hit two out of three shots, she still failed to knock it down. Thinking enough of this, she’d slammed down four hundred yen, and Mina shot once while Yuna shot another, and despite both hitting it, the target had not budged.

“Mister, can we have a little time to strategize?” Yuna signaled a time-out with her hands.

“Yeah, so long as you’re coming back, take all the time you like.”

And so the twins left the stall and went to hide behind a tree. Though the Spring Festival was famous for its lights at night, there were still places where the light didn’t reach. In the darkness, the shadows lay thick over two identical faces as they leaned close to each other, and the twins exchanged a whispered conversation.

“Are you getting déjà vu? I feel like we’ve had a similar experience before,” Yuna said to Mina.

“This is just like that time when we kept on buying raffle tickets over and over to win a video game. We wound up stuck taking home a whole bunch of weird keychains and made Mom so mad.”

“If this is the same sort of thing…then that prize isn’t gonna fall over, is it?”

“This game might even be worse than mobile gacha games ’cause here you can win a real gift… Should we call it quits?”

“No way, we already paid sixteen hundred yen. You could have a tea party with that much money.”

“That’s just what I wanted to hear. I’m not giving up.”

“You got some kinda plan?”

“We have one more bullet left, right? If I transform into this bullet, and you fire me…”

“Ohhh! That sounds like it’d work! I knew you’d figure it out, sis! Magi-cool!”

Mina transformed into Minael, and then Minael turned into the cork bullet, and Yuna returned to the target shooting stall with the Minael cork bullet and the toy rifle.

“Hey, welcome back,” said the stall vendor. “…Huh? Weren’t there two of you who looked the same? Did one of you leave?”

“We fused,” said Yuna.

“Ah, yeah, I guess that happens sometimes.”

“Heh-heh. Now that we’re powered up, we’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Yuna shouldered the gun, more relaxed than ever before. There was no need for her to get tense. Her big sister would handle everything.

“Here we go,” she said quietly to the gun and pulled the trigger.

The high-speed cork bullet flew out way faster, tens of times faster than before, shooting straight into the target with more mass and energy than appearances would show—only to easily plink away and fall on the ground.

“…Huh?”

“Oh, too bad. Come try again later.”

With the candy he pressed into her palm in hand, Yuna wobbled back to their spot behind the tree.

Mina was already there, and Yuna grabbed her. “Hey, sis! The heck was that?!”

“I don’t get it… I just don’t get it,” said Mina. “It’s just, I dunno—I can’t hit it right.”

Seeing her sister so confused made Yuna release her grip. If she was going to come up with an excuse or something, she would have said something a little more plausible. Then had something she honestly “didn’t get” just happened? The two of them tilted their heads and looked at each other.

“Just what is going on here?” Mina wondered.

“Hmm…maybe…,” Yuna began.

“Maybe?”

“Your conscience got in the way, for using your magical girl power to try to steal the prize?”

“Ah, that could be it. ’Cause, y’know, we’re such good people.”

“You’re so magi-cool, sis.”

“Maybe it could also be that my pride as a magical girl wouldn’t allow it.”

“You’re so magi-cool, sis.”

“It is what it is… Guess we’re giving up on this one. But it’s frustrating, when this was a rare chance to get the nostalgic Magical Quest first run special bonus version. Hey, remember how you wanted that so bad that you spun around on the floor of the toy shop like you were breakdancing? But Mom still wouldn’t buy it for us.”

“Huh? What’re you talking about? That’s not what was up there. They had the Fantasy Snack senbei flavor that you loved back in elementary school. They stopped selling ’em because they were so unpopular.”

“Huh?”

“Huhhh?”

The twins argued as they walked along, but when they found a stall that said Direct Flight to the Amazon! Piranha Scooping! they put that on pause and rushed off together, laughing brightly to each other as they scooped for the dubious freshwater fish that they were calling piranhas.

  Tama Inubouzaki

Tama glanced up at the cherry blossom trees and their lights as she walked down the way. The beautiful pink seemed to go on forever. Despite feeling moved, Tama avoided looking closely at the trees, making a conscious effort to look away and pay attention as she walked. She had a tendency to zone out to begin with, and her mother had warned her that if she walked with her eyes up, she would definitely fall, bump into something, or get her wallet stolen. Just imagining those possible outcomes made her shiver. So Tama simply glanced at the cherry blossoms.

If there had been someone there to help the inattentive Tama, then she would have been able to examine the cherry blossoms more closely. She’d always attended the Spring Festival with her grandmother until last year. Everything then had been nice and fun—with pretty cherry blossoms, delicious dango, and her grandmother smiling happily. Seeing her grandmother like that, Tama had enjoyed herself, too.

Now her grandmother was in the hospital. She couldn’t come with Tama. That really made things a lot less nice and fun. Her mother and father were too busy to give Tama attention. And it had been years since her younger brother and sister had started going to the festival with their own friends. Tama had no friends who would go to the Spring Festival with her. Everyone Tama knew would either laugh at her, or find her a drag, or both. But then, someone she didn’t know might be a very bad person, and she didn’t want that, either. That was why she had to keep a watch on everything around her as she strolled along, and it made things a lot less fun.

But that didn’t mean that she shouldn’t go to the Spring Festival. She’d decided when her grandmother had gone to the hospital that she would go to the shrine at the far end of the festival grounds, throw in an offering, and wish for her grandma to feel better. And she’d gone and done that without any issue—but she didn’t quite want to go home yet. Tama loved cherry blossoms and festivals. Part of her did figure that it would have been safer to have gone during the day, instead of at night. But her grandmother loved cherry blossoms at night. Her parents were hard to please. “They’re just lit by artificial lights,” they said, “and it looks cheap.” But Tama still couldn’t bring herself to dislike the nighttime cherry blossoms her grandmother loved.

The rows of cherry blossom trees seemed like they would go on forever, but then they started coming more sporadically, telling her that the tress as well as the stall-lined way were soon coming to an end. Tama put a hand into her skirt pocket and jangled the change there. Her allowance for the Spring Festival from her mother was less than what her grandmother had used to give her. She wanted to make sure she didn’t regret how she spent it, if she could.

Turning back along the tree-lined way, with her attention more on the stalls around her than on the trees, she made her way along. Sniffing to try to find the exact right thing among the delicious smells that wafted around, she almost overlooked something that’d passed by in the corner of her eye. Her eyes jerked back for another look. Displayed in the highest spot of a target shooting stall, right in the middle, was a plastic spade.

It looked just like the one she had used in the sandbox in preschool. The color, shape, everything about it was similar. It was lit up so brightly, it looked dazzling. She was definitely not mistaking it because of the dark.

Back when she’d been going to the sandbox with that spade, every day had been fun. She hadn’t had people getting angry at her so much, and she’d had lots of friends who had treated her as equals. Even when she’d made mistakes, she’d been forgiven with a “What can you do?” and she’d been praised just for digging big holes. She’d even felt that so long as she had that, she could do anything.

Standing a little ways from the street stalls, she closely examined the spade. The more she looked at it, the more it resembled that same one. Her sister had taken the spade away to dig potatoes, and it had broken in the middle. Tama had cried for the whole day, but her trowel wasn’t coming back. Or so she had thought. But now it was right there. She clasped the change in her pocket. It was valuable wealth. She had never managed to win a prize from target shooting or ring-throwing before. But that was then. Today, it might go well. No, it should definitely go well today.

Even with the trowel, it wasn’t as if those fun times would come back. Tama understood that. But if she looked at it, she could remember her fun times. She knew it was very enjoyable to remember good times. Like in the game she was playing now, Magical Girl Raising Project, looking at the rare items she had acquired and remembering things was the next best thing to actually playing the game.

Fixing her gaze on the trowel, she clasped her change. She steeled herself and was about to take a step forward when she bumped into something and wound up on her bottom. Since all she’d been looking at was the trowel, she had neglected paying attention to her surroundings. Rubbing her bottom and holding a hand over her nose, she lifted her chin and looked up. There was a large shadow looking down at Tama, the lights that were pointed at the flowers at their back. Her vision gradually cleared, and the person looking down on her became visible. It was a high school boy who had to be two or three years older than she was. From the glob of whipped cream on his chest and the crushed crepe in his hand, she could tell what this was about.

“Hey! What’re you gonna do about this?” he barked at her.

And now Tama realized—she had bumped into him, and the whipped cream from the crepe had gotten all over his shirt. And even if he asked her what she was gonna do about it, there was nothing she could do. She didn’t know what she should do, either. And his face was scary. The boys in her class were scary, but he was even scarier. Though he couldn’t be more than three or four years older, he already looked like an adult.

He seemed angry: His eyebrows were raised, and his lips were pulled in a tight line. But Tama couldn’t do anything about that. Unable to apologize or make excuses, she dithered, and the high school boy grabbed her upper arm, clasping it hard. It hurt.

He made her get to her feet. She felt like she was going to fall. If Tama had been the magical girl from Magical Girl Raising Project, then surely she would be able to do something. But Tama was just Tama, and of course she was not a magical girl.

“Hey. You listening to me?”

Something popped up in front of Tama. The voice of the high school boy grew distant. When she lifted her head, she saw a person standing between her and the high school boy. Their long black hair reflected the lights that shone on the cherry blossoms. The high school boy threatened them, saying “Butt out! Mind your own business!” The person protecting Tama appeared to be a high school–aged girl—in fact, this girl wore a local school uniform, so she was definitely a high schooler. And she was tall, only a little bit shorter than the scary-looking high school boy.

The girl gave a sharp click of her tongue and squeezed the arm that had extended toward her, and the high school boy gave a little groan under his breath. The two of them continued to glare at each other until the high school boy swung his fist, and the girl’s leg moved from some angle that Tama couldn’t see. By the time Tama was thinking Ahh! the high school boy was falling forward into the girl’s arms as her uniform skirt fluttered back down into position.

The girl slung the heavy-looking high school boy over her shoulder like he was nothing, then went to place him sitting down against a tree and walked off in the opposite direction. With a thanks to the stall vendor who asked with concern if she was okay, Tama followed the high school girl and happened to look up. Entranced by the beautifully lit cherry blossoms, she caught her foot on a yakisoba stand’s cord, and she fell dramatically.

  Kano Sazanami

She hadn’t meant to bother sticking her nose into that quarrel. Kano thought of herself as generally cool-headed. She considered herself apathetic, too. She wasn’t so bad that she would mentally sneer at people who were really earnest about things, but she couldn’t bring herself to invest herself in something fervently.

But even so, sometimes she slipped and wound up getting physical. She hadn’t been able to leave that girl alone.

While walking, Kano clicked her tongue quietly. Cherry blossom petals fell on her head, and she immediately brushed them off.

That had been the wrong way to save her. She thought she’d decided once she started high school that she would avoid resolving things with violence as much as possible, but she’d been grabbing that guy’s arm before she knew it. And with Kano’s grip strength, that was violence. Plus, the nasty thing was that she was aware of what she was doing. As for what had happened after that, it had been nothing other than violence, no matter what angle she looked at it from. Just how far would the excuse that “When I saw them swing up their fist, my leg moved on its own and I kicked him in the jaw” go in court? She wasn’t about to find out.

She pushed her way through the crowds without looking at the cherry blossoms or the street stalls, trudging along as a thought struck her. Why did she ever come to this festival? There was nothing fun about coming to a place like this when she was tired after her part-time job. She wasn’t enjoying it with someone else. Seeing the cherry blossoms, she did think they were pretty, but she didn’t have to see those in person—she could see the same thing on TV or online. She didn’t even like crowds in the first place.

She’d heard the rumors that your feet would just take you to N City’s Spring Festival. But that nonsense didn’t even count as occult—it was just a tactic to get people to come. But somehow, Kano actually was here at the festival. And though she had been playing Magical Girl Raising Project a lot lately, for some reason, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to play it that day. Was this really an occult thing?

A woman in a sports jersey being dragged by two people who seemed like her parents passed by. She heard a voice saying, “But I hate crowds.” It seemed that Kano wasn’t the only one to have come even though she didn’t like crowds, but they were being dragged here, so that wasn’t really comparable.

Besides, she had her parents. Kano had no parents. She had no one.

Kano hurried up. She really shouldn’t have come. There had been no need to save that girl just now, either. Even if Kano hadn’t done anything, the man from the nearby stall—the kind-looking target shooting vendor—would have helped her out. Kano had gone too far and brought about unnecessary ill feelings—she couldn’t have been more wrong, calling herself cool-headed.

She shouldn’t have come. Nothing but negative feelings filled her head. Nothing good had come of coming. She practically fled, walking away. There wasn’t anything she wanted, and nothing she wanted to do—she lifted her gaze. After having looked only at the ground, now she was met with the sight of happy people.

It wasn’t that there was nothing she wanted. Yeah. She remembered. At the target shooting before, she’d stopped because there had been something she wanted. Kano relaxed her pace just a bit until she was at the same speed as everyone else.

What should she do? Should she go back to where she’d been just now? Even if it hadn’t caused a commotion, she couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t a very wise choice to return to the scene of violence she’d caused. But she wanted that thing she’d just seen.

Kano pondered for a while before reaching a conclusion. She circled around behind the stall-lined path, hid behind a tree, then stripped off her parka and turned it inside out. This parka was reversible—two different colors. She hid her hair and face by pulling the hood over her head. This should basically be okay. Erasing the words a criminal returning to the scene of a crime from her head, Kano did a 180 degree turn and headed for the stall where she’d started that fight before.

There were no police there, nor any crowd of people, either. The high school boy was leaning against a cherry blossom tree, still unconscious. He was out like a light, so it should be a little while until he woke up. She would finish this before he woke up, and then she’d actually go home.

“I’d like one go,” she told the stall vendor.

“Roger that.”

The man at the stall handed her a toy gun and the cork bullets. Kano stuck a cork bullet down the barrel and raised it. She was aiming for just one item: The Eight Transformations of Girl Ninja Machika DVD box set in the middle of the top shelf.

It was a ninja story, unusual for a girl’s anime that ran on Sunday mornings. The activities of the bungling Machika as she went to a ninja school had been a big hit among girls at the time. Back then, ninjas, angels, and fairies had been the same thing to Kano. She’d enjoyed the elementary school girls’ prime-time block of Machika and Daisy.

Unlike more recent anime, which ended in just one or two cours, Girl Ninja Machika had spanned a hundred and twenty episodes. The DVD box set contained the entire series; it was large and thick and intimidating to look at.

Kano glared at the box set, but her expression relaxed for a moment. Back in the days when she’d watched that show with a smile, she felt like she had never glared at people or things like that. She only vaguely remembered her father, but she remembered imitating Machika with a toy katana, and then him acting out realistic death throes that made her freak out and run off. Though she only recalled her father hazily, it was all the weird stuff that she remembered.

Kano let out a little breath, then tightened up her expression once more. She wasn’t so well-off that she would pay money to indulge in memories. She needed money, and if she carved out more to spend, she’d be left with hardly any cash to use on her hobbies. But she did want it, if she could get it. And if she could win it in target shooting, nothing would make her happier. She’d give it all she had.

She aimed her shot. Her hood was in the way, so she took off her parka, wrapped it around her waist, and pushed back her hair. Machika was a useless ninja who did nothing but screw up and was bad at throwing shuriken, too. She was different from Kano, who had never failed to get top grades in gym class. She was too old to be projecting herself onto anime characters anyway. Coolly fixing her aim, she pulled the trigger.

The cork was repelled with a plink. The second and third shots were repelled in the same way.

Kano clasped the gun tightly and lay herself facedown at the stall. There was no way a cork bullet would work on a big, heavy DVD box. Why hadn’t she realized that before firing?

“Aw, that’s too bad. Here’s your consolation prize.”

Four hundred yen for a candy. That wasn’t worth it. When she sighed and turned around, she met the gaze of the high school boy as he was trying to stand up. Before Kano could say anything, he stood up, gave her a frightened look, then speed-walked off. Kano sighed again. She was just glad it hadn’t turned into an issue.

She hadn’t gotten anything. She had lost something. Four hundred yen. She should look at this positively and be glad this was the worst she’d gotten hurt. Time to go straight home. She was about to take a step when she started kicking something and hastily stopped her leg.

It was a girl of about middle school age. She had both hands on her knees, her shoulders heaving. Kano thought she’d seen her somewhere—then it struck her. It was the girl she’d just saved.

“Um…thank you so much for before! You were…um, r-really cool,” was all the girl said before dashing off.

Kano watched her grow distant and casually touched her cheek. It was warm, even though she hadn’t been running.

  Naoko Yamamoto

It had been a while since she’d been out walking for this long without transforming into Calamity Mary. It wasn’t like it was fun, but neither was it painful and sad. It just made her get more drunk. That was all.

Her gaze happened to land on a target shooting booth lined with old-looking prizes. The prize in the most eye-catching spot was particularly old—something that kids these days would never be glad to get. Only hard-core fans would be happy to get a transformation set for a magical-girl anime that had run over a dozen years ago. Kids now would be into Cutie Healer or Magical Daisy or whatnot.

Naoko tilted her can and poured her beer to the back of her throat. Right now, she was a high-earner. She didn’t have to drink cheap alcohol that made her feel sick anymore. This wasn’t some cheapo beer—she had enough disposable income to go for actual beer, the expensive imported stuff, and to drink it without flinching. She was shameless enough not to be bothered by the eyes of others and had the serenity to ignore anything wrong with her health.

Eyes fixed on the Rikkabelle transformation set that sat in the middle of the crowd of prizes, Naoko tilted back her can once more, but all that came out was droplets. She crushed the aluminum can in her fist and tossed it into a wastebasket, then cracked open a bottle of whiskey. That was just beer, after all—something to drink in between other, harder stuff, to get drunk faster. With the amber liquid dripping from the corner of her mouth, she gulped. It didn’t even taste good to her anymore.

The magical-girl anime Rikkabelle, which had been broadcast when Naoko was young, had introduced a variety of experimental elements to differentiate it from the magical girls that had come before. Of those, what had really enchanted Naoko the most had been Rikkabelle’s personality.

In human form, she wore short-shorts, long T-shirts, and jumpers—as you could tell from this plain clothing, Rikkabelle liked to be active. Or more like, her body would get going before her brain did. Maybe they’d wanted to give the impression that she was boyish or sporty, but what viewers had gotten was that she was “rough,” “wild,” and “violent,” and she’d been made a scapegoat by PTAs more than once or twice.

But Naoko had liked that. Rikkabelle had gotten herself out of situations by means of direct violence—something prior magical girls, with their fixation on flowers, friendship, kindness, love, and other boring empty catchphrases had lacked. Sick of crushing reality, Naoko had been attracted to that clear-cut, stress-free method of resolution, and once Rikkabelle was getting trashed by society, she’d started watching it on TV in secret, hiding it from her parents.

A few years back, she’d showed her own daughter the Rikkabelle DVDs. It had only been because that was the only kids’ anime she could recall. Since becoming a magical girl, Naoko had learned more about it, but at the time, Naoko hadn’t even known of the existence of Star Queen, Cutie Healer, or Magical Daisy. Thinking about what a kid would like or what was popular or whatever had been too much trouble. So she’d shoved those borrowed DVDs at her brat, thinking to save herself some hassle, and figured she’d punish her if she complained, but she’d been okay with it, surprisingly. Her daughter had kept herself from crying out in enjoyment of Rikkabelle’s adventures, but she hadn’t been able to hide her excitement. Naoko remembered snorting over that.

She had started clamming up since she’d get hit if she made too much noise. Naoko wouldn’t really call this DVD set full of memories or anything, but she was remembering it, for some reason—even though it wasn’t fun, and it didn’t give her pleasure.

Naoko tilted back the bottle of whiskey. She’d meant to drink it while enjoying the flowers, but she’d hardly looked at the flowers at all. Now all she was looking at were the target shooting prizes and the scenes of the past. Wiping the whiskey that dripped from her mouth with her right index finger, she locked eyes with the mustached stall vendor. He had a sort of frightened, polite smile on his face. Maybe a middle-aged woman continuing to drink booze in front of his tall was scary, in a way. It was rather fresh to have someone scared of her, even when she wasn’t transformed into Calamity Mary.

“I’ll do it.”

“All right, that’ll be four hundred yen.”

She stuck the cork into the gun and raised it. The barrel wavered. It was different from when she was Calamity Mary.

Naoko looked at the package of the transformation set. A happy girl was wearing the Rikkabelle costume. It had to be an old toy, but it was strangely not faded, like a new item. Even though the picture looked nothing like her, Naoko saw her daughter in it. Her gun barrel stopped trembling, and she fixed it precisely on the target. She fired the first shot. It was a clean hit, but it bounced away. She fired the second shot. This also hit the target, only to bounce away. The third cork similarly bounced off the box to fall on the floor. “Aw, that’s too bad,” the mustached vendor said with a forced smile as he hastily picked it up. He shoved the candy consolation prize at Naoko, and that was it.

This was not an unforeseen conclusion for Naoko. She had lived nearly forty years. She was aware, at least, that festival hawkers weren’t doing aboveboard and honest business. Any of the stalls would have junk food filled with lots of preservatives that were bad for your health, raffles that had no winning tickets, shape-cutting games with shapes that would break right away, chicks dyed different colors that were all sickly, and things of that nature, and Naoko wasn’t about to complain about those now. A major prize to draw customers at a target shooting booth not budging when the cork hit it, she’d seen plenty of times before.

She could bring up the name of the Tetsuwa-kai. If she showed off the metal badge with their yakuza coat of arms that she’d stolen for fun, the vendor would surely tremble in fear and offer her a special deal. She could transform into Calamity Mary and break one of the pillars of the stall with a kick, and he would run off with a shriek, leaving his prizes behind. If he still resisted, then she could punch or kick him, using whatever means she could to get what she wanted. Normally, she would have done as much without hesitation. She wouldn’t even have tried to pay money and try it fair and square in the first place—she would have started with either sudden violence or threats.

But this was the one day she hadn’t felt like that. Naoko accepted the candy and tossed it in her mouth. It was sickly sweet. She’d thought the same thing a long time ago, sucking on a candy that tasted just like this. She even recalled seeing her daughter seem to enjoy them so much and being impressed that she would suck on such a disgustingly sweet thing like it was good. No—this was less of a recollection; it had simply come to mind.

Naoko turned her back on the target shooting. Some kid might pester their parents for that transformation set. And no matter how many shots they fired, they wouldn’t knock down the transformation set for them, and the kid would definitely throw a fit about how they wanted it. Parents these days were soft, so they might negotiate with the stall vendor. “I’ll pay you such and such an amount, so couldn’t you give that to us?” and the vendor would smirk with a “Very well” and accept the deal. The child would be innocently pleased to get the transformation set, while the not-so-innocent stall vendor watched them go, and the kid went home with a big smile on her face. Once she was at home, she’d transform into Rikkabelle. A fun family, a happy family—thinking this far, Naoko became aware she was drunk, and tipped her bottle back again.

  Makoto Andou

“Ooh, looks like you’ve made quite a lot of money, mister. I hear those hundred yen coins jingling.”

“It’s a big event that happens only once a year, so I gotta make a profit. And since you helped me out this time, Makoto…”

“I did?”

“Everyone was after that thing—men, women, people of all ages. I had my doubts when you said that it would look like whatever each customer wanted, but it was true.”

“Well, yeah, that’s how incredible it is.”

“Some people saw food, one saw a doll… Only thing this old man saw was a prop gun, though.”

“That is exactly what it is.”

“Hmm? How come your voice changed just now?”

“Whoops. Sorry, it’s a little tic of mine…”

“What kind of tic is that?”

“Anyway, let’s celebrate. You already paid for your booth, right?”

“You’re a bit young to be talking about stuff like that. The payment’s basically a donation.”

“Doesn’t matter either way. C’mon, let’s get going.”

“Good grief, you’re always champing at the bit… That reminds me, what did the prize item look like to you, Makoto?”

“That is a secret.”

Makoto put a finger to her lips and flashed a crooked smile.