Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 3 - Chapter 11.1

MASTER SIDE #11

One block of the cube changed color. The game was over.

As if she’d been waiting for that, Show White opened her mouth. “Tell me one thing.” It was the first time she’d spoken since entering the room.

That proposal definitely moved her heart. The girl chuckled.

“I heard there was one magical girl who was unconnected to any of this.”

“Oh, that. Something Lazuline, was it? The real confusing one? I gueeess you could say she wasn’t involved. And well, I won’t deny that it was my mistake that inadvertently led to her participation. But she still received training from one of the children, you know? I guess we could call her semi-involved, eh? Well, she did do some pretty crazy fighting mid-game before she died, so I’d say no problem there. Ha-ha.” She laughed.

Snow White narrowed her eyes silently.

“So anyway. Who cares about that stuff? Join me, Snow White. Lots of Cranberry’s children are still out there. Let’s screen them, the two of us together. You and me are sure to do a good job. We’ll create a world that only has righteous magical girls.” The girl leaned forward on the desk and took Snow White’s hand. Snow White nodded silently, and the girl returned her nod with an enormous grin.

“I understand that Cranberry’s children are dangerous,” said Snow White.

“Yeah! Right? I thought you’d understand!”

“The magical girls chosen by the killing exams are selfish and egotistical. When things don’t go as they want, they try to solve things with violence. And in order to enact what they think is right, they’ll even oppose the Magical Kingdom’s orders…and I’m that way, too.”

“No way!” The girl squeezed Snow White’s hand tighter. “You’re different, Snow White! You didn’t kill anyone, and you got Cranberry! Without you, she might still be holding her battle royals!”

“I didn’t defeat Cranberry.”

“But it happened because you were there.” The girl was still grasping Snow White’s hand, and she shook it up and down. Both of their hands hit the desk, rattling the saucers and cups.

Snow White’s eyes rose to examine the girl. “But other than Cranberry…”

“Hmm?”

“There were examiners other than Cranberry holding killing exams. What about those children?”

“Of course, they get the same treatment as Cranberry’s children! The right kind of magical girl will be forgiven. I’ll never allow the wrong kind of magical girl to pass.”

“And if those children hold more battle royals?”

“I’d definitely never let that go. I won’t let any of those types call themselves magical girls. I’ll get rid of them. I won’t even need an exam to do that.”

Snow White tried to pull her hand away from the girl’s grasp. But the girl made no move to let go, so Snow White wrenched it away. “My magic…has changed quite a bit since I first acquired it.”

“Huh. So in other words, that means you’ve grown, huh?”

“It used to be that I could hear the thoughts of people in trouble. The fundamental nature of my magic still hasn’t changed, but now I can hear deep psychology, reflexive thought, and even things a person is not aware they’re thinking.”

“Oh yeah. I saw your fight with Flame-Flamey, and I could kinda tell.” No one attacks while consciously thinking, I’m about to sweep her legs out from under her, so I sure hope she doesn’t dodge. Snow White had attacked and defended as if she could read even Flame-Flamey’s reflexive actions.

“But I can’t read erased memories,” said Snow White. “Which is why I looked into this myself. Do you remember your teacher’s name?”

“Of course I remember! My master was a really amazing magical girl.” The girl raised her index finger and opened her mouth halfway as if she were about to say something, and then she stared into empty space. Dust danced in the air. She held that same pose for thirty seconds. “…Huh?”

Her master had been an outstanding and righteous magical girl. Cool, cute, and eloquent, she’d taught her what it meant to be a heroine. Her master would risk her own life for justice and shed tears for strangers. The girl admired her, and even now, aspired to be like her. But in spite of that, she couldn’t come up with her master’s name.

And not just her name. Her face was vague in her mind, too. She’d admired her master so much, so it was strange that they hadn’t continued together. Wouldn’t the natural choice be for her to try to team up with her master, rather than Snow White? Why had it never occurred to her to join with her own teacher?

The girl racked her brains, but the answers wouldn’t come. She just couldn’t think of her master’s name.

Snow White reached into the cloth pouch hanging from her belt and pulled out a stack of paper. It was about two hundred sheets total on A4-size paper, held together with a bulldog clip. It looked like some sort of document.

“Your master was Pythie. She was influenced by Cranberry, and she had the examinees under her purview kill each other. She was the first magical girl I caught. The documents here…these documents I just collected are a record all the things she did.”

“…Huh?” Pythie. Pythie. It sounded familiar. The girl put her hands to her temples and held her head. It ached. She threw her head back, her chair tipped over, and she hit the floor on her back. Her glasses fell off. The clatter of the chair leaning and hitting a monitor reverberated in the emptiness.

“You can do anything here, just like a god, right? You should try digging up your memories. You’ll be able to do that if you read these documents…I think.”

Her head hurt. Her head hurt. Like it was being squeezed in a vise. Noise crawled into the walls of the room, the furniture, and the air.

“The magical girls chosen by the killing exams are selfish and egotistical. When things don’t go as they want, they try to solve things with violence. And in order to enact what they think is right, they’ll even oppose the Magical Kingdom’s orders…”

No. No. There was no way. She just had to look at the documents, then. She just had to use her almighty powers to investigate and see if there were any mistakes in her memory, any falsifications. Her head hurt. Her head hurt. There was a pixel missing on the ceiling. And another on the floor. The missing pixels were spreading. She couldn’t maintain the form of this world.

Snow White stood, picked up the magical phone lying on the floor, and turned it on. “Now then, I’ll be asking you about the situation.”

“I’ll tell you everything I know, pon. But can I make one request, pon?”

“What?”

“I’d really like it if you changed the settings for my sentence endings, pon.”

“We can talk it over.”

The sound of Snow White’s footsteps echoed through the floor into the girl’s body. She heard the automatic doors opening, then closing. She had to call out to Snow White, but she couldn’t make a sound. Gaps were beginning to appear in every part of this patchwork realm. The girl’s soul screamed. The world was going into collapse. The ground at her feet crumbled away, and she fell into the abyss. She would never reach the bottom.