Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 17 - Chapter 9

The Young Princess Nozomi Himeno

  Nozomi Himeno

The moment she saw the ad, she clenched a fist. Exhausted as Nozomi Himeno was from her ongoing worries, she had almost overlooked the page about the seminar, but it had a firm grasp on her heart now. Gripping the edges of the free bulletin the ad was printed in, she reread the text.

Communication skills and relationships. A heart that would never buckle, no matter what people said of you. A strong spirit.

For people insecure about their appearance: welcome.

Up until there, she could call it common stuff. But following that, in the section with personal experiences of people who had taken the seminar, they included a report from “Miss A, who had been worried about how old she looked compared to her real age.” Because she looked very young, she had struggled with building relationships and stuck out at work. But then, it said, she’d taken this seminar and gotten some communication skills, and it had solved everything. The message from the staff that “There are lots of people like Miss A” got Nozomi excited, making her cry out loud without even realizing it.

Her mother, making coffee in the kitchen, grew suspicious. “Did something happen?” she asked.

“It’s nothing,” Nozomi responded carelessly, silently apologizing to her mother: I know I got these looks from you, but I don’t really enjoy looking so young… I’m sorry, Mom.

Nozomi Himeno had gone through preschool, elementary school, middle school, and high school with no particular problems.

She hadn’t considered herself blessed in the slightest—or rather, she’d never even noticed it. She’d taken it all for granted, assuming that this was how life should be. She was lucky enough that the ground had never crumbled or broken underneath her, but she assumed things were just like this and continued to frolic around atop thin ice.

Perhaps because her father was so quiet and taciturn, her mother was very minutely attentive. The two of them were very different, but neither were the type to hurt someone with words. Having had parents like this since her birth, Nozomi was completely unaware that she was blessed in having such a family.

It wasn’t only her parents—she was also blessed in her friends. She had a lot of friends, both male and female, who would dote on her, who were willing to risk their lives to keep her from danger and treat her like the princess—hime—in her name. And since they were all at the same elementary, middle, and high schools, she’d spent twelve years surrounded by these classmates. Thinking about it now, she realized how her school environment had been as gentle as being wrapped up in soft cotton. She had laughed every day.

Some of the teachers at school had been strict or mean, but they had been kind enough on her to say things like, “If it seems like you can’t, Himeno, you don’t have to push yourself,” or “You’re the one person who shouldn’t be too reckless.”

She hadn’t thought they were being soft on her at the time, but thinking about it now that she was in college, it was fair to say she had been pretty spoiled. In a sense, she had been the school mascot, acknowledged by everyone around as “just what she was.” No one had ever questioned it—they simply said, “Nozomi is so tiny and cute,” and that was the end of it.

She’d been very happy through elementary, middle, and high school. After high school graduation, she had gone on to a local university, and there, for the first time, the inconveniences had begun. They made her realize exactly how blessed she had been.

People came from all over for college. Even if it was a local school, not a lot of her friends had come from her high school. In other words, those for whom the strange sight of Nozomi Himeno was a daily feature were in the minority. When she passed by, people would giggle and point at her in the cafeteria, and when it got to the point of people secretly whispering rumors about her, Nozomi was forced to realize that her looks drew attention, in the negative sense.

If anyone looked closely, they could tell she was different from an elementary schooler. She was more mature around the eyes, and the redness in her cheeks was fainter. But the world wasn’t going to observe her that closely. It was just she seems funny, so then let’s laugh at her, and that was it. Some were considerate enough to think that maybe that would hurt her or was improper, but the inconsiderate people stood out more. These people hurt Nozomi, then thought nothing of the fact that they’d done it.

And so Nozomi was exposed to the harshness of the world. But she did have friends who’d come to this university from the same high school. They would comfort her, telling her to not get hung up on it, and Nozomi would stop them when they tried to directly argue with people who laughed at her, and stop them when they were about to resort to more violent methods, and as this kept happening, she met the friends of her friends, and her group broadened, and at some point, Nozomi stopped getting giggled at. She figured this was partly because they’d simply gotten used to her or gotten sick of her.

In the end, the fuss that couldn’t even really be called a fuss concluded without becoming a disaster, but the sequence of events affected Nozomi enough that remembering it made her sigh. Though it had not been all bad, and there had been some good, though little. It had given her an opportunity to consider.

She had friends at college. But what would happen when she got a job? She was almost a junior, when efforts to get employed would begin in earnest. This was not the distant future or far down the road.

If Nozomi left her parents’ home and moved out of the prefecture, would there be anyone there who would help her? She wouldn’t have her mother, father, friends, or even any acquaintances. She would be all alone. Just thinking about it felt bleak.

When she was in the bath, when she was on her way to school, and right before going to bed—she would find every spare minute she could to think about what she should do to get along in the world. She kept thinking through her first year, then her second year, and when she was about ready to give up, she remembered that there was a model case very close to her.

Her mother. She was already in her forties, but 95 percent of people meeting her for the first time thought she was Nozomi’s older sister. Of course, she must have suffered the same sorts of things as Nozomi, but she never let people sense that at all, always bright and cheery. She had a lot of friends, and her relationships with neighbors were deep and close. In other words, that had to mean she had great communication skills. She never fretted over Nozomi’s father, who would only ever answer “Yeah,” “uh-huh,” or “mm” when they talked to him. That was because of her strong spirit.

Unfortunately, while her mother’s looks were genetic, it seemed her personality was not. But communication skills and strength of spirit were things that you could acquire as an adult—so it had been said on the seminar outline. If she went to the seminar, then she could change. She could avoid worrying about people giggling at her or whispering things—in fact, she could even make friends with them. First and foremost came the seminar.

Writing down the date and the location it would be held, Nozomi returned to her daily life with both hope and unease in her heart.

Time passed, and it was the day of the seminar. It had said to please come in comfortable clothing possible to exercise in. Nozomi worried if something more formal would be better, but since the ad had said casual, she’d figured oh well, and got herself ready to be active in cotton pants and T-shirt.

She passed two stations in the train, then she walked the country road for about five minutes, checking the map on her phone on the way.

It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine. I’m sure it’ll go well. I’m sure, absolutely, I think…

With major hopes and slight anxiety making her heart pound as she walked, she arrived at her destination. Drawing in one big breath, she passed through the elementary school gates and stepped onto the sports field.

Then she staggered, automatically grabbing the monkey bars to support herself. Was it because of her expectations? The moment she entered the sports field, her heart stirred. It was hot—she felt as if something that she couldn’t put into words had pierced her heart.

Maybe in coming here, she’d finally understood how much hope she’d placed on this seminar. Releasing the monkey bars, she wiped off the red rust stuck to her palms and started walking to the gym. With each step forward she took, her sense of exultation grew, building up until she felt like she’d get heartburn.

She restrained her excitement, and with a controlled smile on her face, she took a peek through the entrance. Nozomi batted her eyes a few times and looked around repeatedly.

Th-this is…

The formal impression she’d gotten from the word “seminar” was shattered in one glance. For starters, it was loud. Noisy. Loud laughter echoed here and there, followed by the sound of running, the sound of a ball bouncing on the floor, and a deep voice yelling not to do anything dangerous. Small figures were playing around, filling the whole gymnasium. Some were playing tag on the stage, some were playing basketball, some were playing dodgeball, some were spreading out a meeting table in one corner to have a card game, and more were getting into competitive or co-op play in a handheld video game.

Nozomi couldn’t figure out how the “seminar” she’d envisioned was related to what she was seeing now. It just looked like kids were playing. Had she perhaps gotten the location wrong? She pulled out her phone to check it one more time—

“Hello,” came a voice from above.

That got her all flustered. Taking as much care as she could to keep her voice from squeaking or from showing her panic, she responded with a greeting of “Hello.”

The man in his sixties with a charming smile nodded a few times. “Is this your first time here?”

“Ahh, yes…it is.”

“There’s nothing to be nervous about. If you join in and come have fun with everyone, you can make friends right away. We even have kids of relatives and friends of friends coming. We get such a big crowd, we wind up in the red every time. Though we do have some volunteer help.”

It didn’t seem as tough as he was describing—in fact, he was smiling happily as he gave Nozomi a little push in the back. Nozomi staggered forward. The high-pitched clamoring sounded even louder, enveloping her. It made her want to cover her ears. But she didn’t try to touch them, watching the small figures run around. They were all so focused. They didn’t even try to look at Nozomi. Neither did they point at her and giggle, or whisper to each other.

For some reason, she started feeling excited. It was just like when she’d walked onto the sports field. She started to not care at all whether or not this was really the right place. She felt so good, she could even laugh off how petty she had been with her little worries over silly things.

An adorable girl who looked like she had stepped out of an art nouveau portrait was running around on the inside of a dodgeball ring. The other kids were calling out to her, “Watch out, Nokko!” or “Dodge it, Nokko!” The ones holding the balls and the ones running were all smiling. It was as if all the fun they were having was being passed onto Nozomi as well. It was fun just watching—and not only that, the desire to join in was welling up from the depths of her heart and wouldn’t stop. A strong-looking girl who appeared to be middle school–age was acting as the ref, calling out “Nice defense,” and “Close, a little farther.” Nozomi experienced the illusion that her voice was directed at her.

I see. So that’s what this was.

Clothes that were easy to move around in. People who were insecure about the age they looked. Everyone here all looked like elementary schoolers, but they were not elementary school kids. Everyone said Nozomi looked like a little kid, but she wasn’t, either, so there was nothing strange about this. Looking closely, there were even boys with long sideburns that did kind of look like facial hair, and there were girls who had the clear indents of smile lines. They were all men and women of a decent age who worried about how they looked like children, or had worried about it, and this seminar had helped them get over it, and now they were being like kids again and playing with others with those same worries…

But as Nozomi thought about this, the urge to have fun and play continued to spread in her heart, not only expanding but deepening and intensifying, and she stopped caring about thinking anymore. Tossing her bag into a corner of the gymnasium, she leaped into the group of adults who looked entirely like children.

“Pass, pass!”

“Hey, over here, over here!”

She had been on the basketball team until middle school. Mainly because of her height, she’d never made it into the starting lineup, but because of that, she’d practiced plenty on drills and passing. She was proud that she’d been the best in her club in that area. And that day, she was no smaller than the rest of them. Showered with words of praise like “wow,” “so fast,” and “cool,” it struck her that she might not have been complimented this much in sports since elementary school. It made it even more fun.

“Draw! Main step!”

“Place it facedown on your main card and show your hand!”

The card game was Magical Battlers. It had been very popular when Nozomi was in elementary school—literally everyone had been playing it, to the point that even Nozomi, who had no particular interest in card games, had joined in a tournament. She started wondering if it had maintained popularity ever since, and then remembered that oh yeah, even if they looked like kids, they were not. Realizing that they were from the same generation brought a sense of affinity. She only vaguely remembered the rules, but she borrowed a deck, and through playing she gradually remembered, doing imitations of the characters she’d loved at the time as she slammed her cards on the table and made everyone watching burst into laughter. When Nozomi was in elementary school, both the teachers’ pets and the jocks had all had an imitation or two in their pockets, as a trademark routine. You’d make sure to practice it, then fire it off when you had the chance. She’d never thought this would be useful at her age. You never know what will be lucky in life. The boy who said, “That’s the rival character from the first generation, huh. I saw the reruns,” must have missed it when it first aired.

“Pass the ball! Don’t try to score alone!”

“Dodge it, Nokko!”

In the dodgeball game, unfortunately, Nozomi wasn’t able to show off like she had in the previous two games. It was no fault of her own—“Nokko” was just too amazing. It was like she wasn’t human—even monkeys weren’t like that, the way she dodged the oncoming balls with such incredible gymnastics, relentlessly sending opponent team members to the outer ring with fastballs that the eye couldn’t catch. She’d be an athlete in the future—no, forget the future, she had to actually be over twenty years old, so she might be an athlete right now. Maybe she even made use of her beauty as an action actress, or a ballerina. Back in elementary school, she’d dreamed of being a ballerina because of a classical ballet manga that had been running at the time. Nozomi called out in her heart—let’s meet again after your debut, Nokko, then left the dodgeball area. She was too shy to actually call out to her, so she didn’t.

“Kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi!”

“You’re it!”

They weren’t playing regular tag, but a variation where being caught depended on how high up you were. The rules were simple, but you still had to run around a lot. You couldn’t even pretend it helped to have a limited area—you had to move around endlessly in the small area or you’d be quickly caught. They’d added some elements of cops and robbers to it, so once you were caught, you wouldn’t be freed until you were saved by your teammates. And that was boring. She just wanted to run. She didn’t know why, but the desire to run, the desire to have fun filled her heart to bursting, and she wound up feeling like she was ready to pop at any moment. So Nozomi ran. She fled. She leaped. She climbed. She wasn’t going to let herself get caught, and even if she was, that would be once she was the last one left, she figured as she ran all around. Women were running around with their skirts fluttering as if they didn’t care if you saw what was underneath, but they should really have been acting a little more cautious.

“All right, we’ve got juice!”

The adults who looked like nothing other than children burst into cheers. The man who had pushed Nozomi’s back—was he also suffering from a difference in his apparent age? So then he might actually be in his twenties or thirties—pushed a trolley with a big plastic box on it. Floating inside it was water, big chunks of ice, and most of all—canned juice that drew the eyes of those who looked.

The desire to drink, to moisten her throat, to feel refreshed rose up from within her chest and wouldn’t go away. Everyone dashed out at once to grab drinks, so some even fell and burst into tears. Nozomi helped up the people who fell and got those who cried to stop their tears, and all the while, the drinks vanished in the order of popularity. Pragmatically concluding that, well, they weren’t going to have any canned red bean soup, so she wouldn’t mind getting something that wasn’t quite what she wanted, she pulled her towel out of her tote bag and wiped off her sweat, then headed leisurely to the plastic box once there was nobody crowding around it anymore. It was just a few cans of juice left, and thinking something carbonated would be nice if possible, she scanned the box, but there was nothing of the sort. Figuring she’d give up on carbonation, she stuck a finger to her chin and twisted around. That was when a can of beer caught her eye, hidden below some ice. Looking over, the man who had brought the trolley, as well as a few of the other people who looked like adults she could see, were enjoying cans of beer, too. Nozomi’s throat was aching for it. It wasn’t like she loved alcohol all that much, but a beer after some exercise was something else. She loved barley tea, but she also loved barley-made booze. It would surely be delicious and feel good to gulp down a refreshing quarter of a can. And happily, it also had plenty of the carbonation that Nozomi was looking for.

She moved feverishly and without a thought, picking up the beer—not some dinky brand but a well-known domestic beer that was often advertised on TV. She got her nails under the tab and cracked it open, bringing her lips close to the liquid as it started overflowing. She gulped it down in one go, and someone shrieked.

  Nokko

The older girl who had been playing with them until just a few minutes ago was sitting on her knees, hunched over. The adults surrounding her looked troubled and sort of angry, and then on top of that, the children were all chattering loudly as they watched from a distance. The adults were passing around a driver’s license and looking at it as they whispered back and forth. They checked the driver’s license over and over, nodding with expressions like maybe this made sense to them and maybe it didn’t, before someone squatted down and held out the license to the lady. The lady accepted it in both hands like she was very sorry.

“Well, it seems real, so the alcohol should be fine.”

“Okay.”

“It’s our fault for letting you through without really checking, and also our fault for leaving the beer within reach.”

“Okay.”

“But look, can we really be expected to believe you thought this was a seminar?”

“Yeah…sorry.”

“Just now I tried calling the city hall, and they said the place where they’re doing that seminar, whatever it was called, is Tanonaka City Municipal Gymnasium. This is the Tanonaka Elementary School Gymnasium.”

“Ahh, yes, I made a mistake.”

“Even if you did make a mistake, you could tell it’s not right when you came in. This clearly doesn’t look like we’re having a seminar. It can’t look like anything other than a tri-city community fun day.”

“It’s like, um…I felt excited in a way I can’t really explain…like there was something tugging at my heart…like I stopped understanding things I would normally get…”

Nokko clenched the breast of her clothing. She’d rip it off if she put her actual magical-girl strength into it, so she kept her grip loose. No—she didn’t have to be in magical-girl form. It was because she was transformed that things had wound up like this. She’d gotten worked up from dodgeball and gotten slack about controlling her magic, letting her excitement leak out all over and influence the people around her.

Once, an acquaintance of her father’s had invited him out fishing, saying “Mountain stream fishing is fun at this time of year,” and so the whole family had gone out to the country. There, they’d run into an unexpected event, and Nokko had made a selfish decision. It’s nothing but big kids, she’d thought. But if I turn into a magical girl and join in, they won’t treat me as useless. Her luck had run out there. She’d had fun at the event while transformed into Nokko and gotten excited, and that had stirred up the heart of an adult woman who’d accidentally gotten mixed up with them, resulting in this nonsense situation. And now the woman was being put in this completely uncomfortable spot, and it was basically Nokko’s fault.

“…Do you have some kind of mental health problem?”

“I don’t think so…”

Nokko wondered what she should do, but couldn’t find an answer. She couldn’t admit her fault openly, and she couldn’t think of any way to help the adults. The college student who really looked like a kid hung her head dejectedly, and seeing that made Nokko feel so bad, she wanted to disappear. Even though Nokko was the one who should be blamed, she couldn’t even find a way to help.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! She squeezed her eyes tight and wholeheartedly apologized, and the apology she couldn’t say out loud was interrupted by the sound of something hitting the floor. When she snapped her eyes open, there was someone on the ground on the floor, facedown with a sketchbook in both hands. It was the girl in middle or high school who had been acting as the ref for dodgeball.

The adults and the chattering kids all fell silent. Not knowing what was going on, they were confused.

“I’m so sorry…!”

All the adults, the kids, the one they were angry at, and the people getting angry could do was look uncomprehending. The apologizing girl shrank, kneeling on the floor, as she just repeated her apology.

“I’m sorry… I really am…”

“What is it, Miss Satou?”

“I want to apologize… I just want to apologize.”

“Oh, no, why would you apologize? We’re so grateful you would help out for no pay at all.”

“That’s not it… I…have an ulterior motive…ahh… I’m sorry…!”

“It’s actually me who should be feeling sorry.”

“No…I should apologize. I feel like I went a little too far…”

“If you’re going to be like that, then I just came here for the beer.”

“That’s better than me. I wanted to lie around at home, but my mom kicked me out, and I was forced to come here…”

“No…I’m the most sinful here…”

No matter what the adults said to her, Satou refused to lift her head, and gradually the adults also started apologizing. At some point, the kids got caught up in it, and the whole crowd broke into a competition of apologies: “Forgive me,” “I’m sorry,” “It’s my fault,” “I’m the one who ate my little brother’s snack.” As some kids were bursting into tears, the source of the contagion spreading the guilt to everyone—Nokko—approached from behind the college-aged girl who looked like a child and was insisting louder than anyone else.

“This is your chance,” Nokko whispered. “Let’s run.”

The girl turned around to her in surprise. Nokko nodded at her and thought hard, We have to run, meddling with her mind. Before long, the girl was nodding back firmly, hugging her bag to her chest and rushing out to the exit.

“Please don’t get discouraged!” Nokko yelled as she watched the girl go. She didn’t know how useful it would be, but she begged deep down: Don’t give in to anyone! Be strong!