CHAPTER 1
BEYOND THE PRISM
Prism Cherry
Sakura Kagami was the sort of utterly normal, ordinary girl you might find anywhere.
Compared to others, she wasn’t a fast runner, nor was she particularly slow, either. Her singing voice wasn’t so lovely that it was bliss to hear it, but she wasn’t terribly off-key. She wasn’t left behind in school, but she also didn’t take the lead. She wasn’t especially pretty to look at, yet she wasn’t so ugly you’d want to avert your eyes. Sakura was never at the center of a conversation, but she also wouldn’t be excluded from the group, left looking at the ground all alone, either.
Everyone sees themselves as the protagonist in the story of their lives. As such, it’s only human nature to believe that you possess the qualities suitable of a protagonist. Everyone has some sort of expectation of themselves from the time they’re little.
She had never thought of herself as ordinary until a friend of hers pointed out, “Sakura, you’re basically average in everything.”
If she made the effort, she could improve her grades. But making the effort was a bit annoying, too much of a pain, so currently, she was slacking off a little. Still, she thought for sure that she was someone who could do it if she really tried.
She didn’t reveal any special talents even in her extracurricular activities: swimming school, abacus class, calligraphy. She was average at basketball and volleyball, and her artwork and writing never won her any awards; since she caught a cold from time to time, she didn’t receive the perfect attendance award, nor did she receive any sort of certificate for perfect teeth since she’d gotten two cavities.
Sakura tried out all sorts of things and, upon discovering that she had no special talent for any of them, promptly dropped each one. She repeated the process again and again.
Without putting in any special effort or falling behind, either, she maintained the average as she grew and reached middle school.
And then, finally, her chance came. She was measured not by easily calibrated standards, like intelligence or athleticism, but by something unknown to her.
The magical-girl exam. In front of the school, she was handed an invitation that claimed to be written in ink visible only to those with an aptitude for magic. Her curiosity as to what on earth this was about led her to take a shot at this exam—and inside a community center in the middle of the night, Sakura Kagami became the magical girl Prism Cherry.
The dazzling costume with its giant cherry decorations sparkled as it reflected the light. Her boots shone so white they were practically transparent, and a charming cherry-shaped clip lay in her hair. And on top of that, even her face transformed into someone else. Looking at Sakura—Prism Cherry—now, surely no one would consider her “neither pretty nor ugly.” She was certain to turn heads and make everyone think she was exceptionally beautiful to behold.
Since the exam that day only had one participant, Sakura automatically became a magical girl. From that point forward, Sakura was full to bursting with anticipation: This would mark the beginning of a delightful, fun-filled, thrilling life, the kind she’d seen in anime and manga.
But that life never came.
Prism Cherry was the sort of very ordinary magical girl you might find anywhere.
Her strong arms and fast legs only qualified as exceptional physical prowess when compared to regular humans. Among fellow magical girls, she wasn’t particularly powerful, nor was she considered especially weak, either.
One time, Prism Cherry received permission from her magical-girl supervisor to observe a combat training session, but that only convinced her that joining in with the group would render her into mincemeat. After that, she abandoned the dream that she might be an incredibly strong magical girl.
Even her own beauty and flashy costume was a mere drop in the bucket among other magical girls. A single blossom alone has no chance to stand out buried among a field of flowers.
And it was the same with her magic. Compared to that of other magical girls, it was not especially convenient, powerful, or unique.
Her magical ability to change the image reflected in her mirror at will was very plain—it lacked style. She could turn the reflections of garbage into gold nuggets for fun, but the real garbage wouldn’t change at all and would continue to exist in reality.
It was only fun to play around as she pleased with the images reflected in the mirror for at most the first two months of Sakura’s magical-girl-hood, and once she was sick of it, she stopped using her magic much at all. In her eyes, she didn’t necessarily get fed up with it, but rather, there was nothing interesting about her magic.
Just because she was a magical girl, that didn’t necessarily mean she was the chosen hero. Helping resolve some small, mundane problems for people in the neighborhood—that was what magical girls were for.
There was no evil overlord coming to invade, and her mother never said to her, “Oh, so you’ve become a magical girl, too, Sakura. I did have an inkling that you were the only one who could inherit my role,” and no prince arrived from the Magical Kingdom. Prism Cherry lived out her magical-girl life dispassionately, picking up garbage and erasing graffiti, carrying away abandoned bicycles, and soothing crying children. Before she knew it, she’d reached her second year of middle school.
Once you’re in your second year of middle school, you start to think about the future. Receiving a salary from the Magical Kingdom—becoming a so-called career magical girl—was only for a limited class of elites, and Prism Cherry’s supervisor vaguely looked into the distance as she muttered, “You have to envy them, huh…?”
Sakura Kagami wanted to be someone.
That someone was merely a vague idea of a person with “success.”
Someone like a pro athlete, a popular manga author, a famous detective, a particularly sharp lawyer, a surgeon with the hands of a god, a musician with fans all over the globe, or the chosen magical girl who would save the world.
To win fame and fortune and leave her name for posterity: Sakura had once thought by being the protagonist of her own life story, she could do exactly that.
The reality was different. Even now that she was a magical girl, the “chosen ones” were so very far away from her.
The majority of magical girls only ever did it as a hobby and made a living through some other profession. Sakura had heard that some lived on welfare, or were criminals who used their powers for evil, or hermits who lived in the wilderness with beasts or some kind of fairies, but her supervisor muttered, “Lately, management has gotten stricter, you know… if you go a little too far, you’ll have your qualifications stripped from you. Even among my peers, one of them, you know…” Very much gazing into the distance.
Even now that Sakura had become a magical girl, it didn’t seem she could become a success. Was she not the main character? No. She was the main character.
Without exception, everyone else was a protagonist, too.
The world was crowded with nothing but protagonists. She wasn’t the center of the universe, and her own birth was not the start of it, nor her death the end of it. The world existed before Sakura was born, and it would continue after she was dead, too. It wasn’t as if she was the only special one.
Realizing this, she was aghast.
The world was overflowing with protagonists, and most of them couldn’t achieve whatever it was they aspired to, and so they compromised on their ambitions. If Sakura were to continue at this rate, she would surely end up like that.
To become one of the anonymous masses who would simply be forgotten. For the first time ever since she was born, impatience welled up within her.
Anything was fine. She just wanted something.
Despite this growing hunger, she had nothing to show for it. She was like a fish tossed onto a hill. She could try to breathe, but her lips merely flapped about, and she couldn’t get any oxygen. Should she study hard at school? Or was there something else? What should she do? She’d gotten this chance to become a magical girl, but nothing had changed. It only deepened her despair.
Sakura’s brooding increased.
Then one day, a classmate at school tapped her on the shoulder.
Turning around, she saw it was Nami Aoki, a classmate. She knew the girl’s name; the two of them were only familiar with each other to the point of exchanging hellos in the hallways or talking if they had a reason to. Sakura didn’t really know much about what Nami was like.
Nami ran with a different clique. She was one of the cool kids, and Sakura hung out with the blander sort. Nami’s clique was the sort that excelled in athletics or academics, while Sakura’s group would just enjoy some whispered gossip in a corner of the classroom, far from the central figures of the class. They didn’t interact much.
Nami’s face came so close to Sakura’s that she could feel her breath. When she reflexively leaned away, Nami gripped her shoulder tightly and drew her mouth in close. “Hey, Kagami, you’re a magical girl, right? You transformed on the roof of the Marudan Supermarket the other day.”
Sakura looked back at her, startled, and Nami beamed back. “I’m a magical girl, too.”
Sakura Kagami was an ordinary girl.
Prism Cherry was an ordinary magical girl.
But there was such a thing as extraordinary encounters. Nami Aoki was very far from ordinary, and the magical girl she transformed into, Princess Deluge, was also very far from ordinary.
Fal
“Snow White. You have to wake up soon. It’s almost lunchtime, pon.”
The silent, rounded ball underneath the blankets gave no reply to Fal’s admonition.
“Make sure that you’ll still be able to get up when your mom calls for you, pon.”
Still no answer. Fal hadn’t expected a reply in the first place. Instead, he returned to the magical phone and resumed his task. He had to finish within the day, or this report wasn’t going to get done.
While putting together the report, Fal thought about Snow White. She still wasn’t back. Would it just be a little longer, or did she need more time? But she was sure to come back, eventually. Fal understood how deep Snow White’s strength ran.
The magical girl known as Snow White was also known by another name: the Magical-Girl Hunter. This fearsome epithet was not her official magical-girl name. It was, properly speaking, a nickname.
She had survived the final exam proctored by Cranberry, Musician of the Forest, who had once forced magical-girl candidates into murderous tests. And after that, she’d cracked down on the illegal exams run by Cranberry sympathizers, exposing many.
Snow White had captured so many magical girls—and topping the list were famous figures like Flame Flamey, a graduate of the Archfiend Cram School, and Pythie Frederica, whose various crimes were rumored to be numerous enough to fill a library—that at a certain point, the Inspection Department had invited her to join them and granted her special investigatory powers. She wasn’t officially an employee, and although she was merely treated as external personnel, Snow White wielded the same level of authority as the department’s official members.
Was allowing a vigilante like her to do as she pleased a makeshift measure on the part of the Magical Kingdom to keep them from looking bad? Was there some oddball in the upper ranks who liked the way she did things? Did they consider her nothing more than a somewhat useful tool? Or was there value in using her role as honorary citizen of the Magical Kingdom? Fal didn’t know.
Thus far Snow White had exposed twenty-seven magical-girl crimes. Surprised, some people felt this was quite a lot, while others scoffed and called it insignificant.
In most cases, the culprit had obediently accepted being cuffed. However, in those where discovery of their crimes would mean their own destruction, some had resisted to the end. When this happened, Snow White would have to risk her life to subdue them. Fal, her mascot, would record the scene and spread the footage far and wide. Of course, Fal wasn’t doing this of his own accord, but on Snow White’s instructions.
Spreading around Snow White’s attention-getting activities was a deterrent to further crime, and it also gained her cooperation in exposing evil deeds.
Of course, there was also the possibility that wrongdoers would resent her and make her the target of violence, but she was aware of that. Snow White had made the choice to become a flag, a billboard, bait. She used herself to carry out her goals.
Making herself the sacrifice to realize her plans may as well have been a deal with the devil, and as her mascot, Fal would have normally stopped her. But Fal couldn’t do that. Even when Fal got together with Snow White’s magical-girl friend Ripple in an attempt to convince her as much, Snow White had not amended her severe methods.
No matter how they tried, in the end, Snow White persisted in her ways, never listening to their attempts to dissuade her. Therefore, it was best to collaborate and present her with the safest possible options. That was what Fal had decided after a secret discussion with Ripple. They wouldn’t let her destroy herself to keep doing this. Fal would protect her with everything he had at his disposal.
But now that determination lacked any meaning. A few months ago, Ripple had been involved in an incident. No one knew if she was alive or dead, and Snow White’s fervent search for her had ended in vain. They had no idea where she was. Ripple had gone out on a trip to take an induction course, and at her destination, she’d been involved in some sort of entanglement.
As for why she had sought to take that course, it was because she wanted to be successful as a magical girl.
And the reason why she had been trying to do so was because she’d wanted to support Snow White from a position where she could have just a few more connections.
Snow White had been aware of Ripple’s motives. She’d searched for Ripple in a mad panic but hadn’t even been able to find her body. In the few days since her search, outside of her daily life as a normal human, she’d stopped speaking, stopped trying to seek out villainous magical girls. In fact, she wasn’t even helping people, something that had once been a constant part of her daily routine, even after she’d been dubbed the Magical-Girl Hunter.
Fal encouraged her, soothed her, and comforted her, unfazed by how it never reached her heart at all, and then did it all over again. Fal performed the regular duties left undone while Snow White wasn’t engaging in magical-girl activities, and even as he was tortured by a sense of helplessness, he worked to try to be useful to her.
Snow White saw herself as personally responsible for Ripple’s loss and thus took the blame. But Ripple had made that choice of her own accord. There was no need for Snow White to feel responsible.
In acting for Snow White’s sake, Ripple had lost her life. Snow White had become strong in order to protect the things that were important to her, but the most important of all had slipped through her fingers. Losing Ripple had wounded Snow White deeply.
But Fal knew this wouldn’t be the end. After many twists and turns, Ripple had come to want Snow White to do what she did and had tried to proactively cooperate with her. Snow White knew how Ripple had felt. She understood she couldn’t waste Ripple’s efforts.
Besides, they’d received information from the Inspection Department that Pythie Frederica, who had been involved in the incident with Ripple, was on the loose.
Rotten magical girls wouldn’t vanish because Ripple was gone. There needed to be people who would punish villains.
Snow White was sure to get back up again. As her mascot, Fal would prefer to lead a peaceful lifestyle, but he wouldn’t reject whatever lifestyle Snow White chose. She was sure to accept Ripple’s death, toss off her blankets, then start up once again as the Magical-Girl Hunter.
All Fal could do now was lay the groundwork for when that time came, to prepare so that the Magical-Girl Hunter could start hunting again whenever she was ready.
As Snow White’s activities garnered more notoriety, people started sending anonymous messages to her magical phone. They were indictments saying, “This magical girl from somewhere named something has been doing these bad things.”
At first, the majority of them had been pranks, but nevertheless, Fal had made sure to look into every single one. Fal had been modified by his former master, Keek, and his functionality far surpassed that of the regular standard for digital fairies.
When Fal made use of these abilities, anonymity might as well not exist, and he could easily determine who sent each e-mail.
Fal had doled out appropriate punishments to those magical-girl pranksters who were just having a good time or those who thought to spread half-truths and lies to harass someone or bring them down. And for those few who reported real crimes, Fal and Snow White would take them on with thorough earnestness, even employing force to make arrests, if necessary. When it got around that prank messages were being punished, then the pranks decreased like the ebbing tides, and the reckless types who were only trying to tease Snow White went away. They’d made an example of the pranksters, saying, “This is what happens when you approach the Magical-Girl Hunter without taking her seriously.”
Fal didn’t only deal with messages. He would also sift through and analyze the information that came in through their wide information net.
Snow White didn’t talk much and didn’t say much to Fal, either. As her mascot, Fal had to consider beyond what he was instructed to do.
Even now that Snow White was out of commission, Fal continued to work without pause. Digital fairies didn’t need rest. Apparently, some mages said the greatest merit of digital fairies was that no matter how you made them slave away, they never complained.
Fal wasn’t going to complain—and definitely not when he was working of his own accord in order to have Snow White do her work safely.
Fal finished putting together some documents and making reports, saved necessary data, and then opened up the message application, thinking to check over the in-box, when he noticed there was one new message and so canceled that task.
The sender was… Ripple. The message had come from the magical girl Ripple’s phone.
A sender couldn’t falsify their identity to Fal when sending a message. Fal was not only a computer expert living inside a magical phone, he was one that had been specially made to order, and nobody could deceive his beady round eyes.
In his virtual space, Fal flapped his wings, two, three times, scattering wing dust.
Ripple was alive? So then why hadn’t she come to see them? What was going on? Or was it just that someone else was using her magical phone to send a message? If that was the case, then what was their goal?
And most importantly, what did the message say? Fal spent a moment trying to gather his thoughts and then, after confirming once again that they wouldn’t gather, after all, opened the message.
Artificial magical girl research facility extant in S City, K Prefecture. Requesting investigation.
Furthermore, the content of this message is to be kept absolutely secret. If you do not obey these directions, I have magically ensured that both your memories and those of whoever you tell will be erased.
What’s this?
Artificial magical girls? Research? And first of all, it didn’t say a thing about Ripple. They had intentionally sent a message from Ripple’s magical phone to Snow White, yet they hadn’t so much as mentioned Ripple. What’s more, they’d cast memory-erasing magic? Fal couldn’t say such a thing was impossible. Keek had previously attached magic to e-mails, too.
As a test, Fal tried a basic analysis of the message, but the attempt failed. Analysis seemed unlikely, even with Fal’s abilities.
Ultimately, Fal had no idea who had sent this message or to what end. Still, he had to report this to Snow White. Once she was out of bed, he would tell her about this message they had received, and they would have a discussion for the first time in a long while.
Prism Cherry
There was nothing ordinary about that transformation on the roof of the Marudan Supermarket.
Prism Cherry wasn’t in charge of managing S City as a whole. Tonoe, the area where the Marudan was located, lay outside of her region. Normally, there would be no need for her to transform there. But that day, there had been a fireworks display at the nearby castle ruins. Watching from the roof of the supermarket would give her a great view.
She’d changed into her magical-girl form to climb up to the roof, where she then promptly detransformed. Fireworks seen through human eyes were more beautiful than those watched through the excellent night vision of a magical girl. Then, when the fireworks were over, she transformed once more to run back down to the ground.
Fundamentally speaking, it was forbidden to engage in magical-girl activities outside of one’s own region, but she had decided rather nonchalantly that if she were found out and incurred the displeasure of the higher-ups, then oh well.
Prism Cherry had never been all that earnest about magical-girl work. Ever since she’d realized that she was an ordinary magical girl, she’d lost her enthusiasm. As a result, her excursions to go and help people—what she was supposed to be doing—had decreased in frequency to once every three days, then once every four days, then once every five. Lately she would patrol one night a week, at most.
“Hey, Kagami, you’re a magical girl, right? You transformed on the roof of the Marudan Supermarket the other day.”
When her classmate, Nami Aoki, said that to her, Sakura had been utterly startled. She’d been told on day one that if normal people were to find out about her, then all her memories of being a magical girl would be taken away. This was beyond incurring displeasure from some higher-ups or anything like that. Even if she wasn’t serious about being a magical girl, if it came down to having her powers stripped from her, she’d panic.
“I’m a magical girl, too.”
So when Nami followed up with that remark, Sakura was relieved. If Nami was a colleague, then there was no problem, even if she’d been exposed.
For starters, no normal human would have been able to see her up on the roof of the Marudan Supermarket in the dead of night. If Nami weren’t a magical girl, then she’d have to be a bird, a monster, or an alien in order to pull off something like that. Feeling a little embarrassed about her pointless worrying, Sakura lowered her voice and replied, “So you’re a magical girl, too, huh, Aoki?”
Though they were in the same class, their relationship only went so far as passing greetings if they happened to run into each other. They were in two very different circles, after all: Nami with the popular kids, Sakura with the plain ones. Hence why they’d gone halfway through the first term without ever hanging out or having a real conversation.
Nami and Sakura quickly exchanged e-mail addresses, then promised to meet that night on the roof of the Marudan Supermarket at twelve thirty.
Looking at Nami from behind as she walked off toward her friends, she seemed somehow reliable. Sakura didn’t know many other magical girls. What a coincidence for there to be another one in the same class. She was so excited her pulse was racing.
“What were you and Aoki talking about?” asked a friend, to which Sakura answered vaguely, “Just some TV drama from yesterday.”
As class began, her pulse gradually slowed and her head cooled, and as her heart calmed, doubt clouded her mind.
Prism Cherry was in charge of this whole area. The Marudan wasn’t in her territory, but she’d never heard anything about a new magical girl being stationed over there. So then why had this magical girl called Nami Aoki seen her on the roof?
Once the thought planted itself in her mind, she became too distracted to concentrate on anything else. During lunch hour, she pulled out her magical phone and sent a message to her regional supervisor: Is there a magical girl in charge of the area around the Marudan? The reply came back soon after: No, there isn’t.
So then why had Nami been there as a magical girl?
Sakura racked her brain but only came to the conclusion that it would ultimately be fastest to ask the person in question, so at twelve thirty at night, she headed for the roof of the Marudan Supermarket.
Beyond the Marudan logo sign was a magical girl. Covering her right leg was a single scaled stocking, while adorning her left shoulder was a similarly scaled epaulet, and a tiara fitted with a large blue gem sat atop her head. Standing there with a trident longer than she was tall, she looked like the queen of the sea. No matter how you looked at it, she could be nothing other than a magical girl.
“Aoki…?”
“Don’t call me that. I am…” Raising her right arm, she pointed her trident upward diagonally. Her expression seemed posed, with her jaw pulled in slightly as she gave Prism Cherry a firm look. The intensity in her eyes made Prism Cherry reflexively retreat a step, and her back hit the roof’s chain-link fencing.
“… the azure torrent—Princess Deluge!”
It took Prism Cherry about ten seconds to realize, Oh, she just wanted to introduce herself with a cool pose.
Nami Aoki—the magical girl Princess Deluge—eased up and softened her expression. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m Prism Cherry.” It wasn’t as if she’d never thought up a pose or line, but she didn’t have the courage to try them out in front of someone else.
“Prism Cherry! That’s a cute name!”
She was delighted by the compliment. Aware of her embarrassment, she replied, “Princess Deluge is cool, too.” The name “princess” did, in fact, seem to fit.
“What laboratory are you from, Prism Cherry?”
“… Huh?” Her embarrassment evaporated. She understood that she’d just heard something incomprehensible, but she hesitated to question it. Prism Cherry looked back at the other girl, no doubt with a foolish expression on her face.
Princess Deluge tilted her head. “Um… you’re a magical girl, right, Prism Cherry?”
“I am…”
“So then which laboratory are you from? I only know of the one in this town, though…”
“Um… what do you mean by laboratory?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
Prism Cherry knew of no laboratories that magical girls would be affiliated with. Princess Deluge thought all magical girls were associated with laboratories.
Prism Cherry’s regional supervisor had assured her that she was the only magical girl in the area. She wasn’t the type to lie, and there would be no point in lying anyway. Princess Deluge looked to be nothing other than a typical magical girl.
She had a pretty savage-looking weapon, not that Prism Cherry hadn’t seen magical girls with weapons like that. But what she took as common sense wasn’t right. She was affiliated with this laboratory thing that Prism Cherry had never heard of, and it seemed she took that for granted.
A magical girl who was not ordinary. Prism Cherry’s heart began to pound.
Prism Cherry had contacted the regional supervisor about this. Princess Deluge’s claims contradicted all magical-girl common sense.
Prism Cherry would take this story to her superiors and check to see what the heck was going on here. Ever since her exam, she had been told time and time again to always remember the three musts of any bureaucracy: report, communicate, consult.
“I figured I’d take you to meet the team…,” said Princess Deluge. “… That’s okay, right?”
“The team? There’s a team?”
“Of course. You don’t have one?”
“I just have someone like a boss.”
“Ohhh! Wow, that’s like working at a company.”
This was where Prism Cherry did something that went against what she’d been taught to do.
“I’d like to meet your friends, too.”
“Really? Yeah, of course you would, they’re all great girls.”
“I’ve always been on my own as a magical girl, so I’d love to have some friends.”
“You’ve always been alone? I bet that’s been tough.”
Prism Cherry was trying to go along with what the other girl was saying, somehow, and wheedle her way along. She wasn’t used to doing this, so it had to look awkward. But she was desperate. Maybe, at the end of this conversation, she would find that specialness she’d always been seeking. That thought would make anyone desperate.
“So then, let’s go together,” said Princess Deluge.
Prism Cherry gave a silent cheer as she nodded.
From the roof of the Marudan Supermarket, they traveled to the western side of Tonoe, far from the area Prism Cherry was in charge of. Following after Deluge, hopping from roof to roof, she raced along. Her hopes waned a bit when she was guided into an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town, but when they opened the old worn door and headed underground, those waning hopes rose up so high that she felt like they might bubble over.
This wasn’t so much a laboratory as something worthy of being called a secret base. Going down the ladder, there was another door, a sparkling metallic one, which Deluge easily opened.
“It’s actually supposed to require a password, but we never set one ’cause it’s such a pain. That by itself was enough of a hassle in the first place.” After that little bit of shyness that sounded a bit like an excuse, Deluge went on ahead. Prism Cherry followed after her, which was where she encountered something special.
Fal
“Only one detected. You’re the only magical girl within a hundred-yard radius, pon, Snow White.”
“Can you expand the range?”
“I can expand it to two hundred, pon. Any more than that is impossible on a basic magical phone, pon.”
“Then expand it to two hundred.”
“Roger, pon.”
It was evening, the time of day when the colors of twilight oozed out from beyond the tall buildings. They had yet to find the artificial magical-girl laboratory that was apparently in this town.
Mascots existed to provide support to particular magical girls or those who were especially beneficial to the Magical Kingdom. Having a mascot character serving you was, to a magical girl, a kind of status symbol.
There were, however, plenty of mascots who would insist that they were individuals, not medals or trophies. They would say that mascots were tasked with correcting magical girls when they went astray, and mascots who just blindly followed their girls couldn’t be said to be fulfilling their responsibilities.
The digital fairy–type mascot didn’t have such a prominent ego, as far as mascots went. These types would not complain even if they were treated like a trophy, since in the first place, they had been made to love magical girls unconditionally and work themselves to the bone for their sake.
Upon some self-reflection, Fal would always feel a certain something. Perhaps it was a sense of inferiority. It might even be the opposite: a sense of superiority. It could be something else, but Fal couldn’t even put it into words himself.
Fal’s origins were unique. He had been awaiting disposal as defective product when the magical girl Keek, who had been operating like a god in virtual space, had picked him up and used her power to modify and manipulate him.
Fal did not feel gratitude toward Keek. No matter how high-powered he was now compared to the regular FA series digital fairies, he couldn’t see that as a good thing. Keek hadn’t modified Fal out of kindness or affection, either.
Keek had been twisted. She’d believed herself correct and determined that everyone else was wrong. That had led to the Magical-Girl Hunter taking her down. She’d been fated to meet ruin sometime, somewhere. She had rightfully failed.
Fal did not feel gratitude or pity, but even so, thinking of Keek made him sad. Thinking of Snow White, his current master, made him feel something even more complicated. If Fal had only hated Snow White, he would probably have had more simple thoughts and feelings. He might have hated her and cursed her as the one who had killed his former master. But Fal didn’t hate Snow White.
What felt like emotions for digital fairies were constructs engineered by their programming. Fal masochistically thought that it would have been easier if they’d never had such a function to begin with, and when he considered how these masochistic feelings themselves were the result of programming, he resented his creator very much indeed. Fal’s likes, dislikes, sadness, and happiness were all calculated—algorithms with no guarantee of solution—despite how many people had asserted time and time again in fiction that artificial intelligence imitating emotion would never lead to anything good.
“I’ve expanded the range to two hundred yards, pon. But still no change.”
“Roger.”
Koyuki Himekawa was constantly alert to everything around her but also walked in such a manner that you’d never think she was on guard as she strolled through downtown. She was calm. She would show no joy or sadness in combat, no anticipation even before a fight. This was in stark contrast with Keek, who’d had an absurd array of expressions, and noticing that he was comparing her with Keek made Fal feel glum.
Fal hadn’t asked what Snow White thought of him. She never brought up the subject, and Fal was too scared to ask something like that. The digital fairy Fav, who had been greatly involved in Cranberry’s exams, had been from the FA series exactly like Fal. Some of the people who had gone through Cranberry’s exams would feel nauseous and have flashbacks just from the sight of an FA series model.
Snow White was surely using Fal out of convenience. Fal was a special made-to-order mascot, modified by Keek, who had been untouchable even by the Magical Kingdom when in her digital space. Fal couldn’t feel any sense of superiority about this when he considered the goal he had been made for, but he possessed functions that others did not, as well as the technical specifications necessary to make free use of them, ensuring no others would ever approach a similar level.
By monitoring all magical-girl presences within a two-hundred-yard radius and sharing in Snow White’s transformation mechanism, even in the event of a sudden accident, she could respond in a matter of nanoseconds. Furthermore, Fal had sneaked a program into the cell phones of Snow White’s family, friends, acquaintances, everyone they could think of, so that in an emergency, they would be pulled into an empty space in the virtual world Keek had once used. Doing this meant that Snow White could be merciless even against villains who might try to use a magical girl’s relatives as a shield. You might say this was a function only Keek would have come up with, since as the pinnacle of magical-girl righteousness, she’d continuously researched through anime and manga and formed her own ideas about what enemies magical girls might have.
The title of Magical-Girl Hunter made villains tremble, but it also meant that Snow White could be targeted by attacks that were all the more vicious. Perhaps Fal’s application, with its childish concept drawn from anime and manga, was what Snow White needed most right now.
“There are more students out now, pon. There are too many moving bodies, and it’s slowing operation. Can I shrink the radius, pon?”
“Reduce precision and leave the radius as is.”
Fal’s functions weren’t even in a management-level magical phone, never mind a normal one. They went beyond high-spec and into overengineered.
Fal was aware that he was capable. And he knew Snow White understood that, too.
“You don’t mind if I reduce precision, pon?”
“By the minimum amount necessary.”
S City was the second-biggest city in the prefecture, after the prefectural capital. It was small compared to N City, Snow White’s hometown, but more densely populated. The downtown area in the evening was crowded with so many people, it was no different from the middle of the big city. Of course, there would be magical girls watching over these areas, but Snow White had come in secret, without telling them.
“… Koyuki?”
“Huh?”
That had to be a local high school student. A girl in uniform came over to talk to her.
Snow White must not have expected to see someone she knew here. Snow White—or rather, Koyuki Himekawa, her pretransformation identity—seemed a little confused as she responded. “Akari?”
“So it is you! I haven’t seen you in forever.”
Fal checked his application again. If she was a magical girl, then it would react, even if she weren’t transformed. But there was no change in the number of magical girls detected within range. The one speaking to Koyuki was not a magical girl.
She was half a head taller than the petite Koyuki, and her hair, which hung around her shoulder blades, was dyed a bright brown. Her school bag looked mostly empty, and her accessories were loud and garish. She didn’t seem like the type who’d be friends with Koyuki, but the both of them smiled brightly.
Apparently, the two of them had been in the same class in elementary school. They happily caught up on everything that had happened since Akari had moved and how things had been going since high school.
Casually chatting with an old friend, the Magical-Girl Hunter Snow White looked like nothing other than a normal, young girl. Even if, on the inside, she was always cautiously keeping an eye out around her, she never let any of that show on her face as they shared memories of when they were children.
Back when Snow White’s friend Ripple had been around, even as a magical girl, Snow White had smiled sometimes. She would laugh or poke or tickle with expressions she would never show to Fal—something Fal, who had only ever had cold and robotic exchanges with her, was envious of.
Ripple had gotten involved in the B City incident and went missing. Fal didn’t like thinking back on that time. Snow White had gone to B City and had searched and searched for Ripple so single-mindedly. She’d rushed all around, going to hospitals and the scenes of incidents to hear the full story of what had happened from the broken and battered surviving magical girls, clenched fists shaking in her lap all the while. Fal had used every function in his library to search for traces of Ripple but had never been able to find her.
And now, there was this message. When Snow White learned that it had been sent from Ripple’s magical phone, Fal noticed a change in her countenance for the first time in a long while.
Fal had been unable to rouse her in any way. But Ripple would not only be able to bring about change to Snow White’s face—she could bring Snow White to action.
“See you another time, then.”
“Yeah. And give me your e-mail. Say hi to Yocchan and Sumi, too.”
Waving vigorously, her old friend disappeared into the throng, and the bright smile that had been on Koyuki’s face suddenly vanished as her fingers reached for the magical phone in her pocket.
“Fal, any response?”
“No change. Nothing in particular, pon.”
“… Really?”
“I wouldn’t lie, pon. Did something happen?”
Snow White’s eyes narrowed as she looked out over the throng where the girl had disappeared. “No, not really. Anyway, I’m not going back tonight.”
“Pon?”
“I’m going to stay here until I learn something.”
What had been written in that message—that artificial magical girls were being researched in this town—seemed like nothing other than a prank. But it had been sent from Ripple’s magical phone, so it couldn’t be.
Princess Inferno
The emergency alarm went off, silencing the casual chatter on a dime. As they all watched with due attention, the main monitor displayed the following message: A new Disrupter has appeared.
She could hear the sound of Prism Cherry swallowing even from this distance. Princess Inferno felt tense but not to an uncomfortable degree. Another message followed: Number: three, two soldier class, one knight class; and Location: Mt. Takatoko; and as their phones read the map data, the group all stood at once.
“Let’s hurry!”
“You don’t have to tell me!”
“I’m taking the lead, okay!”
“If we all go out at once, we’ll get stuck at the door.”
The bulkheads opened one after another, and they raced down the hallway at random. It seemed there was no sense of unity here, but this was actually on the organized side. Things had been worse at the start. They’d all tried to run with their weapons in hand, and the prongs of Deluge’s trident had stabbed Quake’s tail while Tempest had sliced her own fingers, bled all over the place, and cried.
Now they were used to it.
The group passed through the training hall, then went through the corridor to the elevator, aiming for ground level.
Kicking up dust, the elevator emerged above ground, and Princess Tempest, who was waiting impatiently for the door to slide out to the side, literally flew out.
She was the only one of the Pure Elements who could fly. Every time Inferno saw her zoom ahead like that, frankly, she was a little envious. But Inferno wasn’t planning to come in second.
Quake, Deluge, Inferno, and Prism Cherry all rushed off after her. Never slowing a moment, they ran from the back entrance of the abandoned factory to the building beside it, rushing up the wall to the roof, and then to the neighboring building, then the one beside that, and next was the top of a telephone pole, racing along at a good tempo. Fundamentally speaking, they were supposed to avoid being seen, but this was an emergency. Besides, no human eye could keep up with a magical girl’s speed anyway.
Inferno bent her legs, then extended them, tensing with all her strength in her knees, and released. The joy of running and leaping was something that Princess Inferno—Akari Hiyama—knew far better than anyone else.
For a while, she’d thought she’d never be able to run around at full speed again. In her mind, she was yelling, You see this, you stupid doctor?! Look at me running like hell! Although it wasn’t as if anything so horrible had happened to her that she would call the doctor “stupid.” In fact, the doctor had been quite helpful, so she revised that statement to something a bit softer: Look at how much I can run now, Doctor!
Glancing over her shoulder toward the footsteps following behind, she saw Prism Cherry running with a look of desperation on her face. Deluge was by her side, making sure to support her. With her help, Prism Cherry could keep up with them.
The first couple times the five of them had all mobilized at once, Prism Cherry hadn’t been able to keep pace with the Pure Elements and had wound up pitiably straying from the group in the middle of a sortie. Plus, since it had basically been an emergency and they had to save the world from disaster, the others hadn’t been able to slow down to match her.
Inferno grabbed the iron fence on the roof of the damaged insurance building to make a sudden turn. Unable to take the impact, the fence bent and the roof cracked, sending concrete fragments scattering down below. She’d arrange for a repair application later.
Going over the high-rises, they crossed the railway line, leaping onto the elevated rail structure.
Since there wasn’t yet a train on this line, there were no carriages to collide with or kick aside as they ran straight ahead over the elevated rail line through the night, when construction was on pause, too. They could move far faster this way, compared to leaping over buildings.
Following the navigation directions communicated from the Princess Jewels decorating their tiaras, they came down from the train line. They continued to maintain their speed across mountain roads and game trails, going from cliff to cliff, even climbing up rock faces to arrive at their destination.
“There it is!” Tempest pointed at some sludge-shaped lumps undulating at the edge of a marsh. Two were about human-sized, while one was about the size a bear might be.
As reported, two soldier class and one knight class—three Disrupters in total—were about to materialize.
“Looks like we made it in time, huh?”
“Tempest, you can’t just rush in.”
“But you guys are all slow.”
“Come on, let’s all assemble properly. The footing here’s unstable so be careful.”
“Squish in a little closer, squish! It’ll look real lame if we slip and fall on our butts.”
“… You guys ready?” Quake made sure they’d all nodded, then gave a thumbs-up.
“The azure torrent, Princess Deluge!”
“The crimson blaze, Princess Inferno!”
“The white whirlwind, Princess Tempest!”
“The black earth, Princess Quake!”
Princess Quake’s Princess Jewel actually shone more of a yellow color, but “the yellow earth” sounded kind of stupid, so they’d all talked it over and decided to go with “the black earth” instead since her costume overall did have a lot of black.
“The twinkling flash, Prism Cherry!”
Instead of being assigned a color, Prism Cherry was dubbed “the twinkling flash.” There wasn’t really a specific color that went with her name, and Prism Cherry herself had even said, “I was never a member in the first place, so I don’t need to introduce myself.” But the Pure Elements felt bad for her to be the only one with no catchphrase, and besides, having the light-elemental Prism Cherry as their fifth member really fit perfectly. If they got a sixth member, she would be dark elemental for sure. When that time came, they might have to reconsider Quake being the color black as well and rearrange their current group pose, which put Prism Cherry in the middle.
The moment they were all done announcing themselves, the Disrupters finished materializing. The two soldier-class ones transformed into demon-like creatures: dirty and dark in color like a muddy river, with bat-like wings, sharp claws, jagged teeth, bestial faces, and long tails. The knight-class one had the head and lower body of a mountain goat and the torso of a brawny adult male—also quite demonic, really. Its arms were as thick as Tempest’s back. All three creatures were smooth, looking like statues made of sludge.
It wasn’t that Disrupters looked like demons, but rather that people from long ago had witnessed or fought Disrupters and had called them demons in their records. The Disrupters were invaders from another world, and their vanguards had been dispatched to Earth since before the dawn of civilization. Therefore, it wasn’t particularly strange that, having witnessed this threat, the ancient people had passed down this message to their descendants in the form of myths.
The teacher responsible for turning the four Pure Elements into magical girls had taught them things of this nature, too: the real history you would never know if you lived a normal life. History class… or rather, history in general, had never been Inferno’s forte, but she enjoyed exciting stuff like this.
Right now, there were more Disrupters bouncing around here in S City than there ever had been before. Realizing the gravity of the situation, the Japanese government had apparently decided to establish a base of activity for an anti-Disrupter squad. Constructing an underground base like theirs couldn’t be done without the power of the government. When Inferno had first heard it, she’d snorted, but now, she was very much convinced.
“We five combined! The Pure Elements!” they all said in perfect unison.
Putting her left hand to her Princess Jewel, Inferno prayed. With her right hand raised, she grabbed the scimitar that materialized and dashed for the howling Disrupters.
“Cherry Flash!” A powerful light flashed from behind her as Prism Cherry reflected a flash of light in her hand mirror. The Disrupters were denizens of darkness and hated the light. That was the reason they appeared late at night, in unpopulated areas.
Exposed to intense light that would blind even human eyes, the three Disrupters cried out in agony, cowering and shielding their eyes. Once they were like this, it was checkmate.
The hammer swung down, the scimitar sliced, the boomerang spun, and the trident thrust out, and in less than a second, the three Disrupters were returned to oozing black mud, melting away into the ground.
Tempest cried, “We did it!” while Deluge and Prism Cherry high-fived. Once again, they had upheld peace in the world. A certain sense of satisfaction filled Inferno’s heart.
“Okay then, we finished faster than we expected, so once we get back, we’ll do a little more combat training.”
“Awww, can’t we just call it a day?”
“You always want to slack off, huh, Tempest? You’ve gotta try a little harder, you know?”
“You slack off, too, Inferno,” Tempest shot back. “I heard your mom saying, ‘Oh, my daughter hates studying so much, all she ever does is goof off whenever there’s a test coming up.’”
“Hold it right there! Bringing my mom into this is against the rules!”
The croaking of frogs and the girls’ laughter rang out through the nighttime marsh.
Prism Cherry
When the hammer swung toward her, the girl leaned way back to evade by a hair, thrusting out her trident, but the three prongs were repelled by a scimitar, and then all three girls leaped back at once as a bladed boomerang cut through the air. Before the boomerang whirled back again, the scimitar suddenly reversed its course, but the boomerang girl somersaulted in the air to lightly dodge the blade before firmly catching her boomerang.
This wasn’t actually a real fight, and it only looked as if they were trying to kill each other. The boomerang looked as if it could cut your finger with the slightest of touches and had the characteristic glaring sparkle of a blade. The hammer held nothing back in its blaringly aggressive design: It was a massive hunk of metal with two sharp points mounted on a long handle, and any hit from it was sure to turn you into a crushed frog. The scimitar and trident both had weight, reach, and sharpness.
Normally, a hit from any of these would kill. Even magical girls, who were built tougher than normal humans, would die. This was beyond something that could be managed with a little bit of sturdiness.
Before, when Prism Cherry had gone to visit the Archfiend Cram School out of curiosity, she’d been certain that if she were to join in, she would die.
But even in the Archfiend Cram School, they hadn’t gone flailing around blades and blunt weapons. There had been minimal consideration to prevent them from killing or being killed.
Prism Cherry freaked out the first time she witnessed the Pure Elements’ battle training. When the scimitar had come down to make a clean impact with the top of a girl’s head, she had gone beyond panic and passed out.
Noticing some dirt on the left side of the monitor, she wiped it with her thumb. Now, she was calm enough about it that she would notice dirt on the screens. The four girls looked like they were having so much fun as they fought, Prism Cherry did think it would be nice if she had the skill and strength to join in their training.
The hundred-square-foot room was chaos with all four magical girls flipping back and forth between attack and defense at a dizzying rate. Between their temporary alliances, sudden betrayals, using opponents as screens to launch surprise attacks and strikes on weapons, there was no time to even blink.
As all this was going on, the girl with the hammer tried to avoid the boomerang but failed to dodge the trident coming at her from behind, and when it hit her right in the spinal cord, a flabby-sounding blorp rang out.
A buzzer sounded, and the door that had been blocking the rectangular entrance slid upward. When someone got hit, that meant the mock battle was over.
Inside the monitor, the four girls evaluated one another’s moves, saying, “This part was good” or “We could work on that thing a little more” as they pattered out of the room, and Prism Cherry turned the safe mode switch beside the monitor off. Shadow fell over the previously white room, and the whole space turned gray as the door at the entrance slid downward, closing.
Prism Cherry checked to make sure the dispenser was full of drinks, then opened a drawer to the side of the monitor, third from the bottom, to pull out a pill for each of them, lining them up on the desk.
She was just like their manager. When she had first been invited to this facility, she hadn’t thought that things would wind up like this.
“Agh, man, I was so close.”
“You fling yourself around too much, Tempest.”
“Because you guys all get in my way.”
“Well, of course we’re going to get in the way.”
“All those acrobatics look nice, but they’re a bit much for actual combat.”
With Princess Deluge at their head, the four magical girls walked into the monitor room.
Princess Tempest, who threw a boomerang.
Princess Inferno, who wielded a scimitar.
Princess Quake, who swung around a hammer.
United, they were the Pure Elements. When Prism Cherry had first met them, she’d been greeted with their individual catchphrases and group pose. Each member had a different weapon, and their costumes didn’t match, either.
Quake had a thick reptile tail, Deluge’s outfit was covered in scales, and Tempest had a ring on her back that looked like the bough of a big bay laurel, while the tips of Inferno’s hair flickered with flame.
Though they were mismatched in design, there was a sense of unity to their various parts. Their tiaras were set with different colors of large gems, and they each wielded an element: earth, water, fire, or wind. And all of them were such amazing fighters, Prism Cherry couldn’t even compare.
Most of all, they all had a similar air to them.
“Ohhh, you set out our medicine. Good stuff, Cherry, thanks.”
“Love you, Cherry!”
“Whoa there… Sorry, but I love Cherry way more, okay?”
“All right, Quake. Let’s take this outside, shall we?”
They all laughed, Prism Cherry included.
Even after that hard training workout, the four of them laughed like they were having a good time. It wasn’t that their laughter made her laugh, too—it was more like it made her want to laugh together with them. It was that sort of laughter.
They could laugh from the gut even over stupid jokes or lame puns. They were just like four close sisters—but they weren’t related by blood.
The Pure Elements said that they’d become magical girls in this research lab, under the ruined factory outside of town. And every day, they gathered in this base to train.
And they thought all magical girls trained in the same way to become full-fledged. They thought magical girls existed to fight Disrupters, invaders come from another world. And in order to maintain the magic necessary for transformation, they took special pills once a day.
Both Prism Cherry and the Pure Elements understood themselves to be magical girls, but what each of them knew was out of sync with the other. Prism Cherry went along with what they knew so that things would work out for her no matter which way things rolled, but still, more than once or twice, she’d been unable to hide her surprise.
Was what Prism Cherry knew wrong? Or was what they knew wrong? Or were both of them wrong?
Even if something was amiss, the monsters called Disrupters were real, and it was an unquestionable fact that the Pure Elements were fighting them at a rate of about once every week or two.
The Disrupters were actual monsters that oozed like sludge and bared their fangs like beasts. Whenever these creatures attacked, they would tremble all over from the joy of enacting violence against human beings. Their physical prowess rivaled that of magical girls, and they could mow down thick trees with only the swing of an arm. It was the most Cherry could do to keep up with their swift movements.
Just what was the other world that sent these monsters to them? Why was their world being targeted? The more she thought about it, the more frightened she became. And the more frightened she became, the more it hit home what a big matter she’d gotten involved in.
The pressure was immense, but it also meant that her joy in being needed was all the greater.
When she first met these girls, Prism Cherry was so glad, so ecstatic to be involved in something so out of the ordinary. Most exciting was the fact that this was anything but normal, followed by the thrill of keeping a secret, too.
Now, things were a little different.
“Inferno’s the only one who looks like she’s in her underwear. Like, garters and stuff.”
“Huh? Seriously? What the heck, Tempest? That’s what you think of my costume? If you’re gonna be like that, then Deluge’s—”
“Deluge’s wearing a swimsuit.”
“Hey, don’t drag me into this!”
“If we’re talking skin showing, it’s about the same.”
“Hey, guys… Cherry’s got this look on her face like, ‘Oh, this has nothing to do with me.’”
“Uh, it doesn’t, though.”
“Says the girl with the see-through skirt. What say you, Miss Inferno?”
“I daresay it’s quite obvious who’s temporarily topping the ranks of sexiest magical girl, Lady Quake.”
“Hey, if that’s how it’s gonna be, then Tempest is basically wearing a loincl—”
“I do not! This is just how it’s designed!”
Prism Cherry had always worked alone as a magical girl. Taking care so as not to be discovered, never receiving praise from anyone, never receiving recognition from anyone, she’d wandered the town at night in secret, searching for people who needed help. There had been nobody to complain to and nobody to laugh with: She’d been all alone, unable to talk to anyone. That had been normal.
Now, things were different. She laughed at Inferno’s jokes, exchanged glances with Deluge at school, borrowed manga from Quake, and gave Tempest advice about her first love. It wasn’t fun because it was “special.” It was fun because she was with friends she got along with.
The Pure Elements were probably not recognized by the Magical Kingdom. Otherwise, there was no way Prism Cherry’s supervisor wouldn’t know of their existence, and the fact that Prism Cherry had even found out about them was just one coincidence layered on top of another. If she hadn’t broken the rules and left her assigned region, she wouldn’t be together with them now.
What would the Magical Kingdom do if they were to find out about the Pure Elements’ existence? Prism Cherry didn’t think they would attack without even initial communication, but they might not react very positively. Looking at the facilities in the laboratory, it was clear there was a major organization backing the Pure Elements, and their relationship with the Magical Kingdom could well be hostile.
Prism Cherry made up her mind that if that were to happen, she would act as a mediator for the two parties. She wasn’t especially skilled at talking to people, but as a Magical Kingdom–approved magical girl who was working together with the Pure Elements, she figured she could act as a bridge between the groups.
It would be returning the favor. They had shared with Prism Cherry a joy she never would have experienced otherwise. So if these girls were ever in trouble, this time, it would be her turn to help.
It had been quite a while ago when she’d first thought that she would go talk to the one in charge of them, the one they called their “teacher,” but Prism Cherry still had yet to ever meet this person.
The girls told her that this teacher had never been away for this long. According to Inferno, “She must be busy with something, probably.”
Princess Deluge—Nami Aoki
Princess Deluge was a cheerful and fun-loving magical girl.
Quake, Inferno, and Tempest must have assumed she was the same even when not transformed. Even Prism Cherry, who was in the same class as her, had to think so.
But that wasn’t actually true. Nami Aoki was a spiteful, brooding middle schooler, and it was only since she’d become Princess Deluge that she’d thought for the first time life could be fun.
Ever since she’d first started school, Nami Aoki had been a part of the most popular clique in her class. She made an effort to maintain her position. She tried to be cheerful and sunny.
When she asked herself if she was actually a cheerful and sunny person, the only answer she ever got was negative. She prioritized self-preservation, figuring that being cheerful and sunny would mean she was unlikely to make enemies, and these thought processes were in truth dark and depressing.
Whenever Nami smiled and exchanged greetings with neighbors, there were only a few thoughts running through her head: I have to smile properly. Say it loud and clear. Do I look okay? She would probably have to wind back to primary school to find a memory of saying “hello” to someone completely naturally, without any affectation.
She’d had bullies in her elementary school classes. They didn’t do anything violent like hitting or kicking; they just excluded certain people and said mean things behind their backs.
But if you were on the receiving end, being hit or kicked wasn’t that different from being ignored, was it? As this outcast lost her cheer day by day, superficially, the others would ignore her, while behind her back, they’d be mocking her. They would laugh loud enough to be heard and whisper mean words to each other like “dirty” or “gross.”
The cause of it had been something very minor. Nami couldn’t remember specifically what it had been. Maybe it had been important to elementary school–age children, but it was something so petty that once she got to middle school, she couldn’t remember it anymore. It had probably been something that, once she was an adult, would make her snort.
Ultimately, that was just the trigger. Someone who held power among the girls would get a little miffed, and that would lead to talk like, “That girl is kinda full of herself,” and from there it would snowball, until before anyone realized, a one-against-everyone-else structure had come about. The girls would gain a sense of solidarity, and picking an outlet for their aggression would actually make the atmosphere more cheerful.
It was all a sham. It wasn’t fun or anything. The girl who was the outcast lived in Nami’s neighborhood, and they’d known each other since preschool. Nami knew she wasn’t a bad kid.
Nami didn’t want to see her looking sad and having a rough time. It had hurt to see her mother say, “Good morning,” and smile back and say, “Good morning,” in return.
But Nami had done nothing. She’d gone along with everyone else, sneering at her, chattering gleefully away behind her back, and had ignored her greetings, turning the other way.
I shouldn’t be doing something like this. I should actually be doing something else. I’m the only one who can be on her side. Stressed by these melancholy feelings, Nami vented by looking down on others.
The perpetual motion machine of building up stress and then venting it, which in turn caused the building of more stress, continued to spin around and around.
Unfortunately, at that school, there was no system of changing classes, so this continued until graduation. The outcast girl must have spent all the time she would have wasted hanging out with her friends on studying instead, as following entrance exams, she transferred to a private middle school.
At the farewell party where that girl was the only one not present, Nami and everyone else chattered away with stale old backbiting, calling her a teacher’s pet and a nerd, and then they all left that school, scattering to a number of different public middle schools in the region.
But even if they were in different middle schools, it wasn’t as if she had moved away. On the way to and from school, Nami would see the girl and her mother. And as she always had since elementary school, the girl’s mother would call out, “Good morning!” to her. In other words, the girl must not have told her parents what had gone on at school.
The two never spoke to each other. Even when they passed each other by, their eyes never met, and they had no relationship beyond pedestrian A and pedestrian B.
The always sunny and cheerful Nami Aoki, at those times only, would become dark and gloomy. Her eyes would drop to the ground so as to avoid contact, her mouth would stay closed, and she’d walk quickly.
Even once in middle school, Nami put what she’d learned in elementary school into practice. She could not make enemies. She took care of her appearance. She had as many friends as possible. She would keep up with conversation. Always cheerful and sunny.
She worked even harder at it than she had in elementary school. And in order to make it look as though she wasn’t working hard, in order to make it look as if she was calm and enjoying herself, she worked even harder. It seemed like that outcast girl was having more fun than she had been in elementary school.
Whether Nami liked it or not, she would see that girl go out with her friends on weekends. With the kind of happy smile on her face that she’d never shown since the bullying had started, the kind she’d had no chance to show, the girl would pedal off on her bicycle, chatting about something with the girl beside her.
Was she trying to avoid being hated in life, too? Had that bullying in elementary school been a lesson for her, and now she was fitting herself to her surroundings to keep that from ever happening again?
Maybe that was merely what Nami wanted to believe. Maybe she just didn’t want to feel like she was the only one living a life of shame. That girl couldn’t be thinking of anything that heavy. She was living much more freely than Nami.
Nami was not free. When choosing clubs, she would go with what others picked, and she would never be alone when they were going to other classrooms, and she would even prioritize her friends’ convenience over physical demands like the bathroom. Because she didn’t want to be placed into an uncomfortable situation, she was living in discomfort. She measured a distance away from people that was neither too close nor too far, all with a smile on her face that said, “I’m not measuring anything.”
As these days of cheerful sunniness that were nevertheless dark and gloomy went by, one day, she got an e-mail on her smartphone. Sitting at her study desk, which she didn’t use for studying, she aimlessly checked her in-box, and reading this one gave her a shock that almost knocked her out of her chair.
We’re recruiting magical girls. That was what was in the message.
She wanted to cry. Only her friends should have known her contact information. In other words, that meant this message had been sent to her from a friend.
This was a disaster. One of Nami’s friends was teasing her with this prank e-mail.
She tried to think back on where she had gone wrong but couldn’t come up with anything. But that time in elementary school, the bullying had started from something minor. She didn’t know who had sent this prank e-mail, but if it wasn’t going beyond a prank, that was fine. If nothing developed from this, she just had to put out this fire before it spread.
Those who couldn’t go along with a joke were not well liked. And falling for a prank would be cute. If she did that, she could find out who had sent this, and she would be able to try tilting the social atmosphere in her favor.
Nami followed the directions in the e-mail to go to a website, typing the necessary information into the form there, then pressed the send button. Praying, I hope this works out somehow, she threw herself into her bed.
The next day, she was hanging in suspense. She always had her guard up when she was at school, but this was more exhausting than usual. Inside her mind, she was doing a mental search of people who might have sent a prank e-mail like that. It was a pretty involved scheme. They’d probably borrowed that site and even set up that e-mail form.
For all her laughing and fooling around, she still couldn’t trust a single one of her peers. School had always been like that for Nami, but that day particularly so. The simplest method to avoid being bullied was to put yourself on the bully’s side. And teasing was no different from bullying.
Heavyhearted, she went home and was surprised when her mother handed her an envelope addressed to her. The labeling made it clear it had to do with the magical-girl recruitment e-mail.
After what had happened the day before, now this. This was beyond elaborate—this was serious determination. She couldn’t understand why someone would want to bring her down that badly.
There hadn’t been any signs of something coming at school that day. If they’d been conspiring to ridicule her, make fun of her, laugh at her, then she would have been able to see something. Nami was excellent at picking up on those sorts of signs. If she was socially aware, then she wouldn’t be bullied.
In her room, she opened the envelope. The opening was sealed tightly with tape, so she opened it up with scissors. Inside, there were a few sheets of what looked like plain A4-size copy paper. Written in precise, Ming-typeface font were something like application documents, instructions that she must not let her identity be discovered, and a notice that there would be an information session that week, on Sunday afternoon at three in the second meeting room of the municipal library.
Just how long should she keep going along with this? Worse than how awful and painful it was to become a laughingstock was the fact that it was such a hassle.
Princess Inferno—Akari Hiyama
When she had been in her third year of elementary school, they’d all made a secret base in the forest. Their old secret base had been a hand-me-down from some older kids, and while it had a solid framework with a proper tarp pitched over it, the hand-me-down feeling had been undeniable, and so they’d decided they might as well make one themselves. Using a blueprint, their group of six friends had brought in materials and built it over the course of one month.
Akari Hiyama had taken charge of building direction, and even now that she was in high school, she still occasionally visited the site of their old fort. By this point, there was nothing left but some wreckage twining around an oak tree, but when they’d first finished making it, that feeling of accomplishment—“We did it!”—had welled up from deep within her, and all of them had high-fived, though she’d hit too hard and made one of the others cry. The novel design of using an oak tree as the pillar of their secret base had even enabled them to make a two-story-style structure that had been impossible with their old secret base.
But now, after such prolonged exposure to the elements, it was in ruins. Its former majesty was difficult to imagine.
Giving it a steady look from top to bottom, Akari was impressed by how sturdy the rope still was, and circling around to the other side of the trunk, she checked to see all their names carved there. Noticing there was an umbrella drawn over a pair of them, her cheeks relaxed into a smile.
That reminded her—she seemed to recall she’d heard rumors that those two had started dating, once they were in middle school. Though at the time, all that had been between them was teasing and being teased. Time passed so quickly.
Kids these days did not make secret bases. Her little sister and her friends, who met up at the local kids’ club, seemed to enjoy hearing about making secret bases, but they didn’t consider doing it themselves. Maybe stories of adventure were just like fairy tales to them. Maybe it was good enough that they would enjoy listening to that stuff, at least. Maybe soon, kids would be treating such things as the rambling of an old fogey.
Akari patted the trunk, as if comforting it, and then turned away from the oak tree.
Making her way through the forest growth, she swung her legs over tree roots and pushed her way through thickets. On the way, she discovered a big praying mantis sitting on a branch and picked it up thoughtlessly, then let it go with the casual regret that she hadn’t brought a box to safely take it home in. Coming out beside the shrine, she brushed off the grass stuck on her socks. When she checked her phone, she saw it was about time.
Magical girls, huh?
It was a nasty prank. But she had to go. She wanted to give the ringleader a good smack or a kick, at least. And if it wasn’t a prank but a crime of a more malicious nature, then she would have to hit or kick them hard. In the large carry bag she held, she had a stun gun, a slingshot, a keychain alarm, a bully stick, firecrackers, and bear spray. With this kind of heavy equipment, if a cop were to stop her on the way, she was inevitably going to get taken to the station.
This big collection of equipment was heavy as hell, and the weight of the bag seemed promising. Busting into enemy territory while armed was a very Akari sort of plan. She thought so herself, and if she were to ask anyone else about it, they would surely agree. Akari Hiyama didn’t need sentimentality.
Sentimentality was something society extended to athletes who were forced to retire because of injuries. And there was also a trend forcing the athletes themselves to feel sentimental about it.
Akari had been in the track-and-field club through elementary and middle schools, and having run through all these sports grounds, in her first year of high school, she had literally stumbled. A dramatic fall had bent her knee joint in a direction it should not bend, and even now that it looked healed, she was no longer able to run freely.
So she’d quit the club. All her friendships, which had been centered around the club, wilted at once. She was seeing different faces during lunchtime or going to the bathroom during breaks.
She’d decided herself that it was what it was, but the world showered her mercilessly with rude, pitying looks. Even when they had to hurry to the gym, nobody would try to run, and people would hem and haw over the subject of track, and even those classmates who were the most serious about canvassing for clubs would avoid trying to canvass Akari only.
Once things got to that point, of course Akari would be affected, too. It made her want to come out like this to see the secret base she’d made together with all her friends from elementary school and bask in nostalgia.
But since the secret base was all crumbling down, there was far less nostalgia than disappointment. That was just how things went, she supposed.
It was inevitable this sort of thing would happen when she was doing something that wasn’t in her nature. Since Akari was still Akari, as always, it was best for her to live like herself, to have energy and enthusiasm.
With the chirping of birds at her back, she descended the mountain, aiming for the train station at its base. She fixed her eyelashes in the bathroom of the station building, batting her eyes in the mirror. Not bad. In fact, they were looking pretty great. If she was going to arrive as the hero, she had to look cool.
Eyelashes were particularly important. They protected her eyes—something highly essential—and boys were all weak to eyelashes. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that eyelashes were a status symbol among girls. That said, when she’d announced this theory to her friends, they’d laughed at her. But she actually took this fairly seriously. In society, the entertainment world, and at school, all the girls who were fawned over had exceptional eyelashes.
From there, she took the train two stations over, then walked ten minutes to arrive at the municipal library. Since she’d never been a reader, she hadn’t used it before.
She’d thought the building had been there since before she was born, but it was newer than expected. Its design was rather elaborate, with European-style stone paving, and strangely shaped decorative potted plants, like modern art.
Going through the automatic doors, she went into the main hall and, checking a sign, took the hallway on the right. There was a middling number of people there. So did normal people read books then, after all?
She stopped in front of Meeting Room Number Two and listened closely, but she couldn’t hear any sounds from inside. She didn’t know if there was anyone in there, either.
For somewhere she’d been invited to for the nonsensical purpose of becoming a magical girl, the place was awfully formal.
She knocked on the door three times, and then after ten seconds, a voice said, “Come in.” It sounded young—the same generation as her. A magical girl, maybe? Despite having come here knowing it was a scam, she felt excited.
“Pardon me.” Her voice might have gone a little squeaky there. Quietly opening the door, when she went inside, she found lines of desks and chairs, a white board, a wall clock, the same decorative plants she’d seen by the entrance with modern-art style pots, a flat-screen TV, and three girls.
Anyway, first she had to say hello. Greetings were the basics of communication, standard operation. She raised her right hand up with her fingers tight together. “Hiya.”
“Hello.” That sunny-looking girl seemed to be about middle school–age. She was looking all around, as if worried about something.
“… Hi.” The not-very-sunny girl was older than Akari. She didn’t look like she was in high school. She looked more grown-up, so she was probably in university.
The last one was far smaller. She was about the size of a child in elementary school—
“Huh? Aka, is that you?”
“Huh…? Mei? What are you doing in a place like this?”
It was a friend of her little sister, who was in her second year of elementary school. Akari didn’t know every single one of her sister’s friends or anything, but she saw this girl at the neighborhood kids’ club, so she knew her well. Her name was Mei Higashionna, and Akari called her by her first name. The local kids’ club was a real rough-and-tumble bunch, but Mei was, relatively speaking, a good girl—though ultimately it was all relative, compared to the others. She would reluctantly take on the jobs all those bad kids hated: cleaning up after festivals, picking up trash, shoveling snow, and taking her turn volunteering at the children’s library.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” Mei stood from her chair and scampered over to Akari. The sunny middle schooler and the not-sunny university student were giving them dubious looks. Mei straightened herself up to her tiptoes and leaned close to whisper in Akari’s ear. The ends of Mei’s hair, tied in two pigtails, tickled her, and she just about giggled.
“People who are gonna become magical girls come here,” whispered Mei.
Akari replied at a whisper, too. “I know.”
“So then why’d you come?”
“’Cause I’m gonna become a magical girl, obviously.”
“But, Aka, you said that was all lies.”
“Did I really?”
“You said before at that kids’ book group that ghosts and fairies were all figments of our imagination, and that Santa Claus is actually kids’ parents just pretending, right? I know the grown-ups got mad at you.”
Now that she mentioned it, Akari got the feeling she may or may not have said something like that. “Well, to be honest, I don’t think I can become a magical girl.”
“I knew it. But like I asked—why’d you come, then?”
“It’d be trouble if some bad guys were going around tricking kids, right? There’s laws against fishy stuff like this, y’know. Someone’s gotta beat ’em up.”
“You’re always so suspicious of everything.”
“It’s totally normal to be suspicious, though. Sakuna worries about you, too. She says you’re gullible.”
“No, I’m not. I just don’t want to become jaded like you, Aka.”
“Well, of course. It’s the grown-ups’ job to be suspicious, right?”
“My mom says high schoolers are still kids.”
“Did you make sure to tell your mom you came here?”
“Of course not. They said I have to keep it all secret, or I can’t become a magical girl.”
Akari still had a few things to say, but Mei ended the conversation there. Her shoulders indignantly squared, Mei returned to her chair and sat down with a loud thump. It seemed Akari had made her angry. Unlike Akari’s own little sister, who was lackadaisical and thoughtless about everything, Mei was, to put it nicely, sensitive, and to put it badly, a pain in the butt. Of course, Akari wasn’t going to get into a fight with a second grader. But she didn’t have the skills to manage her well, either.
She was getting the feeling the sunny middle schooler and the not-sunny university student were looking at her with increased suspicion. So she figured she’d try to pacify Mei for now and was reaching toward her when the door opened.
“It seems everyone’s here.”
Just who was the mastermind behind this? Akari had imagined various criminal profiles, but all of them were way off. This seemed like a classy lady—in her fifties or sixties? Her thin jacket was properly tailored. There were some roses embroidered at her chest, and that one thing stuck out, oddly vivid.
“Those roses are pretty.” Elementary school kids were not timid. Perhaps this wasn’t true of all of them, but at the very least in Akari’s hometown, they were not.
Mei’s sudden declaration made the woman smile. “You might say it wards away bad luck.”
“It does?”
“There are some frightening people out there who are scared of roses.”
The older woman circled the desks, passing by the windows, pulling down the blinds as she went to go stand in front of the white board. She set the manila envelope in her hands on top of the desk and looked at each of the girls in turn: elementary school, middle school, high school, and university student. She looked kind, but there was strength behind her eyes. Oh, and her eyelash game was strong.
“Now, let’s learn how to go about becoming a magical girl.”
Princess Tempest—Mei Higashionna
What a huge failure. A truly massive failure.
I never thought Aka would be here…!
The one person who should not have come was present. Mei had wanted her there even less than her own parents.
She was going to become a magical girl no matter what. And to that end, she would do anything, withstand any painful training, welcome any trial that came her way. But Akari Hiyama could not be there.
Mei Higashionna was in the second grade. Her height was average, and her weight was a little less than average.
Akari Hiyama, a first-year high schooler, was so tall that Mei had to crane her neck to look up at her. She was fairly developed in all the right places but still nice and slender. Her hair was dyed a brilliant red, and she was wearing makeup. Akari also worked part-time at a convenience store—she was basically an adult. She always stood up front and took the lead at the neighborhood kids’ club. Even the rowdy group of boys who did nothing but get up to mischief behaved themselves when she was around. The girls respected her, too. Mei also secretly respected Akari.
Mei didn’t want to make an enemy of her, if possible. But still, she had to surpass her.
Akari was always at the center of attention, and Mei was right next to her. That was exactly what gave her a good view of how people felt about Akari.
Last summer, middle school second-year Shou Minamida moved to town because of his father’s work. He was quite different from the other local boys, who were all stupid and boorish. His features, somehow tinged with melancholy, the kindness he showed younger kids, that dignified smile—such traits had been sorely absent among the locals prior to his arrival. He spoke politely and with reserve, something that would hardly befit any of the other boys around town.
There were, in fact, a lot of girls in the older grades who would whisper in secret to each other about who they had a crush on, but Mei was past that phase by now. Instead, she opted for the grown-up style of not telling anyone about her crush, keeping it hidden in her heart.
When Shou had first moved in, Mei hadn’t particularly paid him any mind. The most she’d thought about him was, Huh, he’s pretty different from the others.
It wasn’t until last year’s autumn field trip that she started to take notice of him.
Stimulated by all the excitement, Mei had dashed along the mountain trail only to slip and fall. She wasn’t badly injured, fortunately. But her leg hurt, and blood oozed from the scrape on her knee. Her clothes had gotten dirty, and her hat had flown off into a nearby thicket.
Her friend was three feet above the drop-off, looking down with concern, but she was scared she would fall, too, so she couldn’t help. And when Mei was feeling helpless and about ready to cry, the one to rush to her was Shou.
Unexpectedly, for his waifish image, he told the nearby children to go call an adult, and his voice as he called out to Mei not to worry was so reassuring. She would never forget the feeling of his arms when he came to scoop Mei up to safety as he circled around along a gentler slope.
Held in a bridal carry, looking up from below to steal a glance at Shou’s face, her heart continued to pound like mad. Any more, and it could well have stopped entirely. All she could see from below was his chin, but even so, her heart wouldn’t calm.
Once she was aware of Shou, she quickly noticed something: His attention was on Akari. At any occasion, he would look toward her, and he would immediately go help her over the littlest things. It wasn’t only that Akari was at the center of attention; when Akari came to help at the kids’ club, Shou would be smiling brighter than usual. He would be more proactive, and he would start making jokes, too.
Everyone else there was just a kid, and they were inattentive and insensitive and careless, so they didn’t notice the changes in Shou. Only Mei, who was watching him, realized.
Akari Hiyama, first-year high schooler. Shou Minamida, second-year middle schooler. Mei Higashionna, second grader in elementary school.
It was unfair. How could a middle school–age boy who admired an older high school girl accept a confession of love from an elementary school kid? Akari’s school was co-ed, and Shou could easily get in. If worse came to worst, in two years’ time, Akari and Shou would be in the same school—she, a third-year, and he, a first-year. If that happened, then Mei, still in elementary school, would have no chance of winning.
Mei had been soaking her pillow in tears, thinking there could be no second grader more miserable than she was, when that solicitation e-mail had come: Won’t you be a magical girl? She was certain this would be her last chance.
A little kid was not a good match for a boy in middle school. But what if she was a magical girl? Mei knew quite a bit about magical girls. On Monday mornings, she would talk with her classmates about the Cutie Healer episode that had aired the day before.
Sometimes, when a magical girl transformed, her body would change completely, too. She wouldn’t just decorate herself with a costume, baton, compact mirror, tambourine, or other such props. A little girl might transform into an older girl, like middle school or high school–age. And of course, she would look stunning.
If the magical girls they were canvassing for now were that sort of magical girl, then Mei could gain the right to grab hold of her happiness. In other words, she would confess to Shou, and if things went well, then she could date him.
She knew she was supposed to work hard to protect the peace of the world and make people happy. And being aware of that, she figured she’d keep her true goal a secret when she became a magical girl. If there were lots of magical girls out there, then surely some would have impure motives of their own. But if she did all the right things once she was a magical girl, then she was sure to be a good one, no matter what her reasons for getting there.
But now Akari was here, too. Since she couldn’t win in the same arena, Mei had thought she would resolve her situation by becoming a magical girl—so Akari couldn’t become one, too.
“And this is very important. As all of you know, a magical girl must never let her identity be known. If you break this rule—”
Mei calmed herself as she took notes. She glanced over at Akari, who looked bored. It didn’t seem as if she was actually listening. She hadn’t even taken out a notebook or pencil.
There was no way Akari could become a magical girl if she wasn’t going to be serious about it. And even if she did, she’d get fired right away. That was obviously what would happen.
Even if, by some mistake, Akari didn’t get cut, if Mei was the diligent one and Akari was not, surely Mei would become a great magical girl. And when that happened, Shou would only have eyes for Mei.
Looking over at the other two girls, Mei thought they seemed to be listening, but they weren’t taking notes. This might end in Mei’s solo victory. She underlined the items the teacher said were most important with a highlighter. The squeaking sound of it rubbing the paper was somehow pleasing.
“All right then, here.” From her manila envelope, the teacher pulled out four small hand mirrors and gems and handed them out one each.
The rocks were a little too large to call gems, so maybe they were fake. They were egg-shaped, smooth and round, two or three inches long. Each one was a different color: Akari’s was red, the middle school girl’s was blue, the university-aged girl’s was yellow, and the one Mei took was white. The colors were deep and vibrant. They didn’t look like mere glass balls.
The hand mirrors were about four inches wide with plastic grips and price tags that indicated they each cost one hundred yen including tax. They were most likely from a hundred-yen shop.
“The mirrors are not any sort of magical item. I’ve brought these for you to see yourselves after transforming. The gems are magic. I will entrust them to you, but if you lose them, that’s it. Please be careful to never lose them.”
That was quite sensible.
“Now then, please stand up. Take your gem in your right hand and touch it to your forehead, please. Yes, like that. Hold it properly, and take care not to drop it. Now close your eyes, please. Think about magical girls. It doesn’t matter in what form. Good, now then, say, ‘Princess Mode: On.’ You may whisper it or cry it out loud. This room is fully soundproofed.”
To yell it, or whisper it? In the darkness behind her eyelids, Mei hesitated for a moment.
What would Cutie Healer do? She generally yelled it. But she got the feeling that Cutie Blade, who had betrayed the enemy side, Dark Eden, to become an ally, had whispered it. Those sorts of nonorthodox transformation sequences were one of the things that had made Cutie Blade popular.
But right now, there hadn’t really been any dark hero-ish events like betraying the enemy forces or anything. In other words, Mei should stick to acting like a classic magical girl.
“Princess Mode: On!” she yelled.
She got the feeling that something changed. It also kinda felt like nothing had changed, though. No, that wasn’t right—something had indeed changed. There was something on her back.
“Now then, slowly open your eyes and check your mirrors, please.”
Mei no longer possessed the kind of calmness needed to obey such directions. She just wanted to know as soon as possible what she’d become. She snatched up the mirror and looked at her reflection. There was a beautiful girl there.
Her eyes were large and bright and faint green in color. Her facial features were frighteningly perfect.
Her hair was scattered with golden gems and tied in two ponytails that flowed out behind her like wings. Sitting on her pale-brown hair was a tiara with another gem fitted in it. This was the one she’d used to transform. It was wreathed in a wavering light, like flame, and faintly sparkling.
She moved the mirror around so she could examine her whole body. Her outfit was very exposing, like a swimsuit worn by a pinup model, and the cloth around her lower body in particular was unsettlingly like a loincloth. On her back she carried a large ring made of leaves, and from her waist hung a great blade that glared under the shine of the fluorescent lighting.
Her eyes felt higher up than they had before. She was looking at the world from a greater elevation. Her limbs were long and slender. She looked like she was in her early teens.
“Yesss!” Mei yelled, pumping a fist in the air. She wasn’t the cheap type of magical girl, the kind that only got a wardrobe change. She was the type that got a total appearance transformation. With this body, she would be a match for Shou. She was pretty, she was just the right age, and there wasn’t anything he could complain about.
“Congratulations.”
“Yes! Thank you very much!” She bowed her head a whole bunch of times to the older woman, who was doing a little clap. Now, Mei’s dreams might come true. Finally, she would be able to stand at the starting line. Today was the day it would begin.
Looking around her, she saw a girl with a tail carrying a big hammer, a girl who was blue all over with a trident, and a girl whose hair was burning at the ends and had some kind of big weapon, and all three of them looked dazed. Their eyes were wide, their mouths hung open, and they were exchanging looks. They’d come here knowing they’d become magical girls, though, so just what were they so shocked about? Mei was clearly the most super of the group, after all. Now she was sure to win Shou’s heart.
The older woman wound down her applause with a couple of claps. “All right then, now I’ll explain your jobs.”
Princess Quake—Chiko Satou
Chiko hadn’t thought she would actually become a magical girl. The reason why she’d come was that she thought she’d discover the purpose behind that absurd magical-girl e-mail sent by whoever these people were. Or to be more accurate, that was her secondary reason.
She didn’t care if it was a new religion, information selling, a pyramid scheme, or some dubious self-help seminar, as long as it would be enough material to fill up her blog for the day.
They’d said it would be in a conference room at the public library. She wasn’t going to get abducted from a place like that. If something happened, she could run. It didn’t seem that dangerous, and she had free time.
Recruiting people by using magical girls as the hook was unheard of, so if Chiko were to put something nice together and post it online or on her blog, it might even get a little corner post on a news website.
That could be a good in for her, if that happened. And if she could, it’d be great to earn a little pocket change as an affiliate.
Though she’d come with the intention of making some fraudster a laughingstock, it had actually turned out to be the real thing. She couldn’t make a story out of this now.
Reflected in her mirror was a beautiful girl carrying an absurdly large hammer. Her skin was pale and fine in the way of someone who had never done any physical labor, so how could she be shouldering a hammer that looked to be three times her body weight? When she tried lowering the hammer to the ground, a heavy shudder ran along the floor, and the linoleum made an unpleasant creaking sound. It wasn’t papier-mâché. It was a real hammer.
A girl with the kind of dangerous blade that would only serve a violent purpose was bouncing about gleefully. Chiko was impressed she could be so happy in such an abnormal situation. For an adult, it would be normal to feel panicked or stunned.
She recalled that before transforming, that one had been just a little girl. Chiko felt—not for the first time—how amazing children were, to so easily accept even this completely impossible situation.
That was essentially the number one reason Chiko had come here. She felt that if any children might be deceived by this con artist, she absolutely had to save them. She didn’t want to see or hear about children meeting misfortune.
Chiko Satou had never experienced what one could call a childhood. A child is a person who is loved unconditionally. Others might describe them as cute or sweet, and even terms like brat or rugrat have a note of sweetness in them. Cuteness is a necessary condition for being a child, and having never been called cute, Chiko had therefore never been a child.
She took after her father in looks, and her silence alone would net her undesirable reactions, like “She’s so gloomy” or “Why are you angry?” or “She’s scary” or “I’m sorry,” and so on and so forth. Thoughtless, crude boys had given her nicknames like “gorilla” or “giantess” or “hard puncher” and on and on, only ever things that rather sounded like insults, and if she’d been a more sensitive girl, it would have hurt her terribly.
And even Chiko, who wasn’t that sensitive, wound up spending most of her time inside, which accelerated her descent to the polar opposite of cuteness.
She was so curious to know why other children were doted on for being childlike. Observing, analyzing, and researching, her feelings regarding children deepened.
She wasn’t jealous. She felt a yearning for this thing she lacked, but she also had respect for it. She was strongly drawn to the nature of children, especially girls—their emotional chemistry, how they were molded, and more.
Recently, she’d taken up a hobby of sitting on a bench in the children’s park where she could look down on the elementary school and watch the girls in the pool splashing each other. The most wonderful thing about being in college was the flexible schedule. Once she’d had her fill of the supple muscles of the girls rippling underneath soft fat; the round curves that made up their forms; the traces of sunburns; the youth she had never had; the glowing smiles; the short little fingers, she would return home to sketch, thankful to her parents for her twenty-twenty vision.
She had mountains of sketchbooks with drawings of children packed into her closet, and if chance were ever to bring the police in here, Chiko’s life would be over on the spot. Thinking about what would come to pass if she happened to die in an accident and her parents came to clean up her apartment sent a chill down her spine.
She didn’t aspire to be a school teacher or childcare worker at a preschool or any specific job of that nature. She’d never had the sort of personality that children would like, and despite all the piles of research she’d done, she couldn’t put any of it into actual practice. If she were to become a teacher or a day care worker, she wouldn’t even be able to use tricks like getting their attention with candy anymore.
She never forgot that her hobby was so indecent in the eyes of society, if she were found out, she would be attacked for it, or perhaps even shunned, and so she always continued on in secret. Her research was personal and done surreptitiously, with quiet reservation, and without scaring children.
Fortunately, Chiko was a woman. Though these days, people were more hyper-vigilant about suspicious types, it was really mainly male lurkers who got cracked down on. So the focus of government authorities, school, and society in general was lax.
As a result, even when she gazed down at the pool from the park, people wouldn’t throw accusations at her for it. It was the same with any of her other enthusiast activities. If she continued it secretly, without getting close to the children and without hurting them, there were any number of ways to do it.
But…
Now she had become a pretty girl herself. Though she had been plenty satisfied with what in the Showa era would have been called pure love, or in the Heisei era, stalking—being satisfied just loving from afar—to be in this position of less than zero distance… For a child to be there, on the very same axis as her, was shocking.
Chiko had come to the rational decision regarding her appearance that as long as she was clean, it was fine. Her clothes were from the cheap department store, she cut her own hair, didn’t use makeup, didn’t wear any sort of accessories. Such severe stoicism made her stick out like a sore thumb even among her otaku friends.
She had never imagined herself as lovely. But the version of herself here right now was, objectively speaking, unquestionably lovely.
On the inside was Chiko Satou—just a college student who had wound up becoming an adult without ever having experienced a childhood. The girl in the mirror had a tail. When she focused on it, it twitched, smacking against the floor. A real tail. It wasn’t connected to her rear, but rather, to her back.
So this was magic? The unreality was eating away at reality.
Fear and shock came first. The next thing that came to her face was joy, and finally, sadness awaited. While she was completely absorbed in looking at herself in the mirror, thinking, What about my back, my hair, inside my mouth, the underside of my tail—suddenly, this joyous occasion ended, and she went back to the old Chiko Satou. She was just one foolish-looking college student, hyper-focused on examining her own appearance.
Looking around, she saw they had all gone back to normal. The elementary school girl was pouting, while the middle and high school girls were looking at each other. The elderly woman clapped her hands twice to get their attention.
“At present, your transformations will still come undone very quickly. From now on, if you train yourselves gradually, you’ll be able to remain transformed longer and learn to use your various powers. First, we’re going to leave here so I can show you the secret base. However, any who do not wish to become magical girls, please say so. I will erase your memories, and you’ll return to your normal lives.”
Muttering, “Secret base…,” the high schooler raised her hand and said, “I’ll be a magical girl!” The elementary schooler nodded haughtily as if it was obvious she would do it, while the middle schooler declared, expression serious, “I will, too.” Of course, Chiko had no choice but to take part.
She could join in among girls to do things as a girl. Could she truly be so happy?
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