MASTER SIDE #7
The only sound was the regular click, click, click of the turning Rubik’s Cube and the hum of the active computers. The only moving things were the cube, transforming atop the girl’s fingertip, and the magical girls displayed on the monitors.
“I wonder if Snow White’s angry.” There was no one to reply to the girl’s remark. Heedless, she continued. “I thought we could be friends, though.”
The door creaked. When she glanced over to the entrance, she saw the door had been ajar, and a breeze had moved it. There were no guests here, so that hard hit before must have broken it. The girl sighed and snapped her fingers. The door, which had been swinging back and forth without closing entirely, now shut.
“While I’m at it…” She snapped her fingers again. Pixelated blocks swallowed up the door, gradually becoming finer and then disappearing. Once the cubes were gone, the door had transformed from one with a knob into an automatic sliding door made of clouded glass. All the while, the girl continued turning the cube on her fingertip, as the situation on the monitors changed moment by moment.
“They’ll get to the Evil King’s castle soon. Well, I think they miiight be surprised. One of them is up to some weird stuff, so maybe it’d be a good idea to keep her from doing that the next time she tries. It’s not like anything goes here, even if it’s not teeechnically against the rules. And then there’s the weather. A night with no stars and no moon, and a blue sky with just sun and no clouds aren’t great for a game that sells itself on realism, especially when they never change. I just lost interest in a lot of this stuff at some point, you know? But it sounds like some of the players reeeally aren’t into that. I do want to meet those sorts of expectations when I make the New Magical Girl Raising Project, y’know?”
The girl glanced over at the magical phone. The power was still off, and it didn’t react in the slightest.
“I really should do something about that sidekick. It’s a pain in the butt for a master to have to monitor the situation and do everything else themselves. Like, going on strike isn’t gonna get you aaanywhere. Just do your job already.”
The only thing Fal was doing was explaining the rules and other things within the game to the girls, perhaps wanting to help them out. She’d warned that if the girls got any hints or direct answers, she’d delete the whole game, players and all, so Fal wasn’t going to defy her. But despite the order not to tell them directly, the mascot could still provide leads that a sharp magical girl could pick up on, like that time with the event where the one with the fewest candy would lose. Fal had deliberately emphasized that “the player who holds the smallest amount of candy will die.”
Well, it’s fine if that’s all it is, I guess, the girl thought. She wasn’t about to challenge Fal over it. “Don’t tell them directly” meant that indirect means were not disallowed. So she would keep to what she’d said.
“Just read them the lines I’ve ordered you to read, though. No additions. If there’s any funny business, I’m deleting the whole game.” She’d give Fal a warning, at least. There was no reply, but the sidekick had to have heard her.
If Fal was going to be giving out clues, then it was a good thing she’d kept the truth about the Evil King to herself. If they got any hints about the Evil King, even in an indirect way, everything would be spoiled. The girl hated the Evil King, but even so, she’d gone to a lot of trouble to make this game.
Keeping secrets from her helper, to whom she would normally have to tell everything, did make this game more game-like, though. The fact that only the master knew about the Evil King was what made this into a real game. She wanted to take advantage of that the next time, too.
The girl pulled her finger away from the Rubik’s Cube. Even with its support gone, the cube kept clicking and shifting in midair.
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