Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 4 - Chapter 10

Akane and the Happy Magical-Girl Family

This story is set quite a while before the game in Magical Girl Raising Project: Restart begins.

The family meeting that day was a mess.

Messy though it was, however, it wasn’t an argument. The table had been set with a hot plate and bubbling hot pot at dinner, and it was now entirely cold. One family member was resting her cheek on her hand as if she was bored, while another had her arms grumpily folded while she and the others prodded one another with issues they couldn’t find solutions to.

Nobody wanted to compromise, so they couldn’t solve the problem. And even knowing this, they still couldn’t bring themselves to make concessions.

The eldest girl in the Fuwa household was Aoi, thirty-one years old. She worked as a clerk at a law office in a neighboring city. She was good at being solicitous and managing paperwork. Some even said the practice would fall apart without her.

The second girl in the Fuwa household was Asagi, twenty-five years old. She was a domestic helper. She could do just about anything better than most people, and her hobby was earning difficult-to-obtain qualifications and licenses. Her current favorite book was the compendium of laws and statutes.

The third girl in the Fuwa household was Akane, seventeen years old. She attended a high school in the city and captained a veteran kendo club with a history of making it to nationals. She was a long-standing first on the list of second-year students you didn’t want to piss off.

The fourth girl in the Fuwa family was Ai, thirteen years old. She attended middle school in the city. She was the neighborhood mascot, known for her lovely face, adorable mannerisms, and charming behavior.

The head of the Fuwa household was their mother Ayako, fifty-two years old. She managed a construction company, having inherited it from her deceased husband. Her acumen was feared, and they said that when Ayako stepped into an auction, the atmosphere changed.

Akane was the only one facing forward, glaring hard at the tabletop. Aoi, Asagi, Ai, and Ayako were all looking off in different directions, refusing to meet her eyes. Nobody would give in.

Akane stood up and hit the table hard. “Eyes forward! Listen to me!”

This would cause a timid person to cringe and crumble, but the four didn’t even twitch. Still leaning on her hand, Asagi muttered, “I’m listening.”

“What? If you have something to say, Asagi, then say it loud and clear.”

“I think you’re probably right, Akane. But just because you’re right doesn’t mean we all have to do what you say, you know?”

Asagi was wearing her high school tracksuit like a slob, and Akane glared at her. “It’s not about doing what I say! I’m just telling you to stop doing something that isn’t right!” Her head whipped back and forth between the others, but none of them were looking at her. Even the middle-school-aged Ai had her feet up on the table, her attitude extremely insolent and insincere.

Akane smacked the table with her palm again.

“It’s just not okay to use your magical-girl powers for your own selfish ends!”

This had all begun about five months earlier, at the end of the previous year…back when Akane had first received her powers.

Akane Fuwa was aware that people saw her as a serious and straitlaced person. And it made it easier in many ways to keep the kendo club together when that was the general perception of her, so she didn’t correct them.

She didn’t even know herself whether she was actually serious or straitlaced. Maybe it was just that her life would fall apart if she weren’t, so she was pretending to act that way out of necessity.

All the other members of the Fuwa family were prone to being irresponsible. That was undoubtedly the case for the second-eldest, Asagi, who was completely lazy when it came to anything aside from her personal hobbies, and as well as for the eldest, Aoi, and their mother, Ayako. Those two would keep it together when they were outside the home, but once they were in the front door, they’d throw off their masks and decide that as long as they were having fun, anything goes. Akane couldn’t help feeling that even the youngest of the four sisters, Ai, had definitely inherited those tendencies. If Akane let her guard down, Ai would be reading manga magazines during mealtimes.

They had always been like this, even when their father had been alive. Then he had passed, and someone had to be the one to keep them in line, and the buck had been passed to Akane. She wasn’t doing it because she wanted to. She was doing it because she just had to. It seemed the other family members didn’t feel the same.

Akane had resigned herself to this: Well, there’s no way around it. It wasn’t as if being the responsible leader of the family was painful to her, and though she still wasn’t quite sure if this was who she really was at heart, it was fine. It was rough coming back exhausted from her club to take charge at home, but it was thanks to the money her mother and Aoi earned for them that she was able to spend all that time with her club in the first place.

And so it had been the end of the previous year when Akane was scouted as a magical girl.

Musician of the Forest, Cranberry had come to observe the national tournament in search of talent, and apparently Akane’s skills with the sword and the magical power hidden within her had caught her eye.

Frankly, Akane didn’t really get the point. She didn’t have a firm grasp on the idea of magical girls in the first place.

“It’s not like being a mage?”

“It’s a little different from that.”

Akane’s knowledge of how the world worked was shattered once she saw physical abilities that far surpassed human limits and magic that ignored the laws of physics. Though she managed to grasp that these fantastical beings existed, she couldn’t quite get why you would call them “magical girls.” Were they called that because they were girls who used magic? Why was it only girls? Why did they have to be girls?

“There’s no need to think so deeply about it right now. You may come to know eventually, however.” Cranberry smiled. It felt like she was laughing at Akane for being overly serious, and Akane was a little offended.

“Just think of us as heroes who help people from the shadows,” said Cranberry.

“Yeah, yeah, they’re cool and beautiful! The ultimate heroines, pon,” Fav said, as if he was trying to get her excited about this, but his words went in one ear and out the other.

Akane recalled the final round of the singles section in the national tournament. If she’d had the power to stand her ground, if her strikes had been even sharper, if her footwork had been even faster, then she might have been the one to win that match. She could have made a triumphant return, championship pennant in hand.

When Cranberry invited her to become a magical girl, Akane gave a silent nod.

But when she actually became a magical girl, she dropped the idea of using her powers in a tournament. As she already knew, she was so much stronger than normal humans. If pretransformation Akane Fuwa were to fight the magical girl Akane, not even a hundred billion of them together would stand a chance of winning. The difference between the two was just that great. Fighting a human using these powers would be unfair and immature.

Ultimately, Akane decided to simply patrol the city, as Cranberry had instructed her to do. She was extremely cautious to avoid being seen as she went around resolving small problems, just as regular Akane did at home. It was a little sad but also rather funny that she was still doing the same things even as such an extraordinary creature.

She’d been worried she’d end up with a garish embarrassment of a costume like Cranberry’s, but those concerns vanished when she discovered her outfit was subdued, more-or-less traditional garb with a samurai motif. There were some decorative elements here and there, but to a tolerable degree. And on top of that, she was beautiful.

As Akane did her duties as a magical girl, she also polished her skills with magic and the sword. Her magic was a slice that could cut anything as long as it was within eyesight. It was a violent ability, but she could use it when someone was aiming at her from afar with a gun, for example. It would nullify the disadvantage of distance and allow her to slice her enemy’s weapon and disarm them. You could say that was a legitimate, peaceful application of her powers.

When using this magic, Akane had to swing her sword. Swinging it faster improved the magic’s strength and ease of use by a proportionate level.

There was a reason Akane wanted to strengthen her magical powers.

Cranberry had said that once they had enough magical girls, a selection exam would start, and only one would pass to be granted official status.

Part of what motivated her was that, if possible, she didn’t want to lose this newfound power she’d only just discovered. But more than that, Akane loved to compete. Of course she was competitive about kendo, but she also took the same attitude toward athletic festivals and choir competitions and dragged her classmates along with her. She knew people sometimes found this irritating, but something about competitions lit a fire in her.

What’s more, she would be competing with other magical girls who shared the same common-sense-defying powers. Just imagining it got her excited. Making herself even a little bit stronger for these as-yet-unseen rivals was only the polite thing to do. Of course, strength alone surely wouldn’t be enough to make her an official magical girl, but it was bound to help. These were her thoughts as she continued her magical training along with school, her club, family, and hero work. Even though she just practiced the same things she did at club and on her own, so much was different as a magical girl: the movements of her muscles, the speed of her thoughts, the weight she could bear, the keenness of her five senses, and everything else. The heft and feel of a real sword was completely different from that of a bamboo or wooden sword. She had to get used to each and every one of these things.

Each day was fulfilling as she sensed her own progress. But then suddenly, it all came to an end.

Magical-girl work was done at night. Akane could vanish into the darkness and act clandestinely, and she could also leave the house without her family discovering her. She would sneak out, do her business, and then sneak back home. With the physical capabilities of a magical girl, it was easy enough to go in and out of the window of her second-floor bedroom.

That day, Akane came in through the window as usual and was about to detransform when suddenly, her ears pricked up. She could hear voices. It was past three in the morning. Her whole family should have been asleep.

She focused her hearing. Yes, she could hear people talking. There was a young woman…a girlish voice. It wasn’t from a TV or radio. It was someone physically present. And what’s more, it was unfamiliar. It didn’t sound like any member of her family.

The word “thief” passed through her mind.

She could hear the voice coming from the kitchen. It was no louder than a murmur, but you couldn’t fool a magical girl’s ears. Walking with her feet never leaving the ground, as she’d been trained in kendo, Akane maintained perfect silence as she slipped down the hallway and descended the stairs, step after step, making her way soundlessly along. The closer she got to the kitchen, the louder the voices got.

Someone was conversing with someone…two of them? Three? Four?

“At the next flower race…”

“Even if she did say that…”

“Cranberry will…”

Cranberry?

“…have to tell…but even if Akane…”

Orange light was seeping out from under the kitchen door. Akane closed the last distance in a burst of three steps and smacked open the door. Four girls were sitting around the table in a huddle. The faces that turned toward her in surprise were entirely unfamiliar to her. But she did understand that something was happening.

Not trying to hide her irritation, Akane glared at the startled quartet. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s not as if your sisters and I were trying to hide anything.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s not like we were trying to hide stuff. We just never found the right time.”

“It’s not like we were trying to shun you or anything.”

“We just figured you’d get mad if we told you, y’know?”

“Come on, Asagi, don’t say it like that.”

“Enough! Just be quiet a second.”

Akane scanned the four faces as they obediently closed their mouths. Between their frilly, fancy costumes, their flawless faces, and their well-proportioned figures, they were all unquestionably magical girls. Except for their conversation, which was par for the course for her normal old family. Akane felt she was going to lose her mind. Perhaps the madness had already begun. So was she the crazy one? Or was it her family? Or was it both?

“Could you just undo your transformations now? With you guys like this, I won’t know who’s who.” All of them, including Akane, detransformed. Now, finally, their dinner table was back to normal. “Huh? Mom? You were the one with the shortest skirt?”

“Come on. What’s the problem? I look young, anyway.”

“Wearing that getup, at your age…”

“I’m in my twenties, so I’m still okay, right?” Asagi interjected.

“No, you’re definitely out, too, Asagi. I’m in middle school, so it’s allowed for me, though,” Ai said.

“These days, you still count as a girl in your thirties, you know,” Aoi commented.

“I think it’s fine to be a girl, even in your fifties,” their mother added.

Akane wanted to hold her head in her hands.

She wasn’t the only one to get powers. The whole family—the eldest, Aoi; the second child, Asagi; the youngest, Ai; and their mother, Ayako—had all become magical girls. Akane looked completely different when she transformed, but if the whole family had turned into beautiful girls—the older three of whom who were definitely way too old for the title—the world must have gone mad.

Apparently, Cranberry had scouted them not long after Akane. They said that once Akane had caught Cranberry’s eye as a promising candidate and become a magical girl at her behest, Cranberry had gone to check on Akane’s family as an examiner, only to find out that all of them had the potential to be magical girls.

“The Musician seemed surprised, too. She said it’s common for magical potential to be genetic, but it’s rare for a whole family to have it.”

“So if it’s genetic, then doesn’t that mean you can take the credit for this, Mom?”

“Or grandma or great-grandma.”

Having become magical girls, the four said that while they’d been considering whether to tell Akane, they had been continuing their magical-girl activities.

“But this is convenient, eh? We don’t need to detransform,” Aoi said.

“You were gonna keep all this to yourself, Akane?! That’s not fair!” Ai complained.

“She’s always been like that,” Aoi said.

At this point, Akane wanted to hold her head in her hands, but this was when the real headache began.

Their mother, Ayako, said that young men would hit on her and fawn over her when she walked down the street at night. “Relax, I never crossed that line.”

The eldest, Aoi, said she’d joined up with some street musicians to sing and dance. “Back when I was in kindergarten, my dream was to become an idol, you know.”

The second-eldest, Asagi, said she’d been holed up at home studying to pass some test. “I love not having to sleep.”

The youngest, Ai, said she’d been going deep into the woods to fire powerful light beams all over the place and zap boulders and stuff. “Beams are awesome. I’ve heard it said that nobody who can shoot a beam out of their body can be a bad person, and it’s true, you know. You remember this, too, Akane. Beams are awesome.”

Akane’s head hurt. Her mother and Aoi were clearly both using their powers for ill. It sounded like Asagi wasn’t causing trouble for others but was basically just hogging her powers for herself. Ai was using the quiet forest for her own stress relief, destroying the environment. They were all up to no good.

“Why are you doing this? Didn’t Cranberry tell us that magical girls are supposed to help people?”

“But, well, only one of us can become a magical girl, right?” Ai pointed out.

“And aside from the one person who passes the exam, we’ll all have our memories wiped, too, right?” said Asagi.

“So it would be a waste not to do the things we want to do before our memories get erased,” said their mother.

“It would!” Aoi agreed.

Now that things had come to this, Akane was helpless. She could yell and curse, but none of the others would concede or bend. They’d just keep doing whatever they wanted. The emergency family meeting that day ended without any resolution.

Akane understood there was a balance of power within the family. When she wanted to make someone listen to her, she just had to find one other family member (or members, depending on the situation) to convince that person or negotiate with her. But now it was four against one. No matter how she tried to convince them to bring their unbridled antics to a halt, they were unlikely to comply.

Could she threaten them by boycotting house chores? She got the feeling that if it was magical-girl stuff versus chores, they’d choose the magical-girl stuff. And since every member of their family could pull off anything if she put her mind to it, Akane figured they’d just get the chores done perfectly anyway, Akane would be the only one suffering, and that would be that.

She thought about reporting it to Cranberry, but that would be like snitching on her own family, and that pricked her conscience. But still, so did doing nothing.

At the very least, once the exam was over, these irresponsible magical girls would obviously not be the ones appointed, so their greedy magical-girl lifestyles would end then. But Akane didn’t know when the selection exam was starting. If they got up to something even more outrageous before then, Akane might not be able to patch it up.

How can they be magical girls when they act like that? Akane wondered, but she didn’t know any more about the topic than they did. Was she getting the wrong idea, up here on her high horse as an ignorant person herself?

As Akane wore herself out worrying over these things, five days passed. Perhaps she wasn’t straitlaced but simply indecisive. She failed to come to any conclusions and was ready just to wait it out, hoping the exam would begin soon when—

“Captain!”

Startled by the sharp yell, Akane’s head jerked up. One of her club members, a first year, was bent over, looking down at Akane.

“What’s wrong? You’re zoning out.”

“Oh…it’s nothing, really.”

The sound of smacking shinai and attack yells resounded through the dojo. Though it was Sunday, a high proportion of members were present. Was this the fruit of her leadership? Or were they just afraid of her?

It was embarrassing that Akane was the only one taking a break to think about things when the rest of the club was so into their training. Flustered, she took a towel and rubbed her face vigorously to hide her reddening cheeks.

“Oh, I know. Were you thinking about the flower race today? It’s gotten nice and sunny, huh?”

“The flower race? Oh, so that was today, huh?”

“I heard the track club’s taking a break from practice, and they’re all going. None of the kendo club members are flaky like that, though.”

Akane casually nodded back at the proud-looking first year and slung her hand towel over her shoulder.

Every year, during flower festival season, the nearby women’s temple held an event called the “flower race.” They’d hijacked a tradition of young nuns traveling the dangerous, difficult path from a distant head temple to deliver talismans of gratitude and turned it into an event where women would deliver paper talismans from the temple’s gate to its main building.

You would pay a participation fee to receive a talisman and deliver it to the main temple. In theory, it was a sedate little walk, but rumor had it that whoever delivered their talisman first would have their wish granted, so the event had come to attract athletic women who prided themselves on their strong legs. Participants would gather from both the local area and from outside the prefecture. These days it was a major affair, with people jostling against one another and local police and security on the scene, too.

Oh yeah, now that she mentions it, I just realized I wasn’t hearing the track club yelling over on the field. I’m impressed they’re heading out to such a crowded event, thought Akane, disinterested.

And then suddenly, the thought hit her. Wait… I’ve heard the term “flower race” somewhere recently. Wasn’t it when…?

“Ahh!” Automatically, she stood up.

That was it. In the kitchen, her mother and sisters had been talking about something. She could swear the words “flower race” had been a part of the murmuring she’d overheard.

Akane had forbidden herself from using her magical-girl powers against normal people. But had those four made the same vow?

“If we turned into magical girls and participated in the flower competition, we’d make an easy win, don’t you think?” she could imagine Aoi saying.

“Oh! That’s a good idea!” Asagi would agree.

“Ai’s gonna do it, too!”

And their mother would be like, “I’ve always wanted to run at the head of the flower race just once, too.”

Akane had a feeling they’d be just that casual about joining the event.

She imagined the voices of various flower-race competitors:

“I’m gunning for first in the flower race to cheer up my sick mom.”

“I’ve trained all year for today. This time, I’ll win first place.”

“I’ve come all the way from Tokyo! This is my first time in the race, but I’m gonna do my best!”

Or so the participants would say, and then they would transform into magical girls and trample all over their feelings. Who was “they”? Akane’s family!

Akane had to stop them. She was the only one who could. The clock in the dojo read five minutes to eleven. If she remembered right, the flower competition started at eleven sharp. Even if she started running now, she probably wouldn’t make it.

But!

“I’m going to go get some air. You handle the rest.”

Akane left behind her startled club members and ran. Her gear and hakama were in the way, so as soon as she left the dojo, she transformed into her magical-girl form and raced up the stairs as fast as the wind, slicing the door lock in two with a single swipe to come out onto the roof. The direction was north-northwest. Tall buildings were in the way, preventing her from seeing the temple gates.

It was the middle of the day, and the chances that someone would see her were high. She might well be infringing upon what Cranberry had told her was the law of magical girls: Avoid attention as much as possible. But she didn’t have the time to worry about that now. If she wanted to avoid being seen, she’d just have to move so fast no human would notice her.

Running, Akane lifted the hem of her hakama and leaped.

People saw her as the straitlaced type, but she wasn’t actually, Akane thought. The only reason she was club captain was because she had a knack for bossing others around, and she just acted the way she did with her family because everything would fall apart if someone didn’t take things seriously.

She was quick to get fired up about things. She was competitive. If she’d grown up in a different situation, she might have turned into a mad gambler.

No, she was not straitlaced. But still, there was one thing she couldn’t surrender: her sense of responsibility. Maintaining this sense was what allowed her to be who she was. It was precisely because she loved kendo that she felt responsible toward it. And being a magical girl…she couldn’t yet say she loved that, but she did love her family. They might cause her trouble, but she would never hate them for it. And it was her love for them that made her feel responsible for them.

Akane raced up the wall of a high-rise building to the roof. She’d come about two and a half miles from her school to this building, and from this building to the temple gates was about two more miles. But even from this distance, with her magical-girl eyes, she could pick out the people there.

There was a crowd. Big cameras that probably belonged to the media were present, too.

She could predict what they would do. They’d avoid drawing attention to themselves before the race started. Springing from the very back up to the front would be the most appealing option, and with the physical capabilities of magical girls, it would be possible.

The position of the cameras was important, too. Where would they look the best when they burst ahead of the pack?

Found them!

Away from the crowds, in the shadow of a pine tree. The pine needles were getting in the way, but that fancy, frilly sleeve was the very one Akane had seen the other day. It was mixed up in a group of other eccentric costumes. Her older sister was there, among the cosplay runners that joined the race every year. To her right was their mother, and then her other older sister, and then her little sister. She’d pinned down their positions. This contest would be over in a second.

With her right hand, Akane slid her blade past the catch at the mouth of the sheath, slowly drawing it. The fingertips of her left hand drew her wakizashi, too. She’d never tested a two-sword style in kendo practice. And she’d be sure to stop any club member who tried it.

But as a magical girl…

Her bangs swayed. She blew them away from her face. Swinging her wakizashi, she cut the pine needles. And then, before anyone could notice the scatter of pine needles fluttering down, with her right arm, she swung her katana.

Magical-girl powers were not for hurting people. Of course, they weren’t for hurting her family, either. What Akane aimed for was the paper talismans the four of them held. Without those, they couldn’t win any rank in the race. She sliced right, left, right, aiming for the talismans only. I’ll go pay my respects at the temple and bring an offering, so please give me no divine retribution for this.

A heartbeat, and then her bangs dropped again. At the temple, about two miles away, the talismans the four held scattered into bits and pieces, fluttering to the ground, which was still patchy with lingering snow. She couldn’t hear their voices, but she could see they were yelling and wailing. Eventually, their mother looked toward her and pointed, and all four of them looked up at Akane with expressions that said, “She got us!”

Akane lifted her sword to study her face reflected in the blade. Under the beautiful, clear-blue sky, the look on her face said, “Gotcha!” When had she last worn an expression like this? Not since Halloween last year? Maybe April Fool’s. She’d always been the one getting got, so she hadn’t felt this great in a long time.

She sheathed her katana and wakizashi with a click, click, imitating a certain actor she’d once seen in a period drama. She was already thinking about what she’d do when she got home. Once I’m back, how am I going to lecture them? she wondered.