Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 3 - Chapter 9.1

MASTER SIDE #9

Once, there was a magical girl named Cranberry.

At her selection exam, when she was still very small, there had been an accident. One of the participants had lost control of her magic, and the examiner failed to stop it. It had killed the examiner and all the participants but Cranberry. They said the cause of the accident had been a flaw in the mascot Fav’s functions, which kept things in check.

They also said that afterward, Fav had taken Cranberry, still suffering from psychological wounds, and tempted her, driving her to violence.

This girl thought that was nonsense. They were just blaming it all on the mascot and cutting off nothing but the lizard’s tail, weren’t they?

The accident had been due to a deficiency in the system. Cranberry had become an examiner because they’d failed to take the proper precautions and their checks had been lenient, too. They were trying to create something noble: magical girls. But they were far too careless with the selection process, and that was precisely what caused this sort of thing.

As an examiner, Cranberry had acquired a position where she could select magical girls. Exams were held at her discretion, and the content of these tests had been secret. Cranberry had set the participants in her exams to killing one another, even participating personally to intensify the experience. Then, if a winner remained, she overwrote their memories with fake ones of having passed a regular magical-girl selection exam. Those battle royals had been extremely appalling, and it had not been uncommon for them to end with no victor at all. At the time, the people of the Magical Kingdom had praised Cranberry’s rigorous spirit for holding such demanding examinations and had not suspected her.

The roots of Cranberry’s crimes dug deep. She’d had many accomplices aside from her sidekick. This was the reason that her battle-royal selection exams had not been exposed until the one that would be her last, when the examinees had turned the tables on her, and Snow White had exposed her deeds. Until this scandal had come to light, she’d been hailed as a great magical girl. Some had even deified her.

No, even after her wicked deeds were exposed, some continued to worship her.

Even after Cranberry’s death, there had been two examiners who still believed in the insane logic Cranberry had espoused, that only the strong were worthy of becoming magical girls. They had been following in her footsteps until the magical girl in white, Snow White, had unmasked them. The two main reasons Snow White had come to be called the “magical-girl hunter” were that she had exposed that pair, and that she had called Cranberry to task for her crimes.

But the bespectacled girl believed Snow White was not being hard enough.

The examiners influenced by her evil deeds were not the only seeds Cranberry had sown. She had been a very active examiner over a long period of time. Because of her exams, the world was now awash with magical girls who were strong and nothing else, girls who had no qualms about kicking others down, who had won the role of magical girl by bloodying their hands, killers, ignorant of the value of life.

They should not have been chosen. Cranberry was the wrong examiner, and she’d chosen the wrong magical girls. No matter if you erased their memories, no matter how much work they did—at the core, they were not the right kind of magical girls.

That was why there was a need for reexamination. But the Magical Kingdom had just let them be. The higher-ups took the girls to be Cranberry’s victims. They hadn’t even returned their memories, much less questioned their sins. They’d merely let sleeping dogs lie so the problem wouldn’t grow any bigger.

It was bullshit. Just what did they think magical girls were?

Magical girls were kind. They understood the pain of strangers, and they could think with empathy. They were bold, but they would abhor the idea of killing one another. They were hardworking, smart and physically capable, filled with a sense of justice, and charming. A wise magical girl like that would be able to seek out the Evil King and defeat them.

For bringing up the Cranberry incident, turning her back on the will of the Magical Kingdom, and carrying out her own exam, this girl would be hated, shunned, and loathed. She was okay with that. It was enough for her if she could just pick out the righteous ones from among “Cranberry’s children”—though that would only happen if any of them were actually righteous at all. Most of them were not. They were all like Magical Daisy, cocky because she’d gotten an anime based on her life despite being ignorant of her own origins.

If they died, then that was as it should be. It would simply mean that they were the wrong sort of magical girl. The right kind would definitely survive—because the gods would choose them.