Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 7 - Chapter 3.5

INTERLUDE

The papers were all stacked in front of her, on top of the table with its Battenberg lace tablecloth. The materials Ripple had prepared for her included profiles and portrait photos.

As a result of Frederica’s firm discipline and wholehearted guidance, Ripple was now a full-fledged worker.

It had been quite a while since they’d left the place where Frederica had educated her, but the joy of a student’s growth—a joy that couldn’t be traded for anything—had utterly enraptured Frederica in every sense of the word.

With her crystal ball laid down on the edge of the table, Frederica was absorbed in reading the papers. Anyone—including herself—would acknowledge Frederica as a magical-girl enthusiast, and she spent this time melting away, body and soul, into the utmost bliss.

Each of these magical girls had particular quirks of their own. Some of them sought strength, some sought another sort of power, these lumps of ambition or irrepressible curiosity—they were simply bursting with energy.

She would occasionally put down the papers to sip at her tea and bite into a cracker, then take the materials in hand again to flip through them.

Before, Frederica had filed magical-girl hair into a collection. Her previous collection had been confiscated by the authorities, but she was grateful to simply have the chance to gather another, and she had enough positivity to enable her to think that.

Ripple’s materials, unfortunately, did not include hair. Well, there was no helping that. They were all the sort of professionals you would have to be extremely cautious with. There was a trick to snatching a strand of hair. Perhaps Frederica would have to pass that skill on to Ripple.

She sipped her tea and crunched her crackers. She peeked into her crystal ball to check out what was going on. It was multitasking.

Outside the window, sheets and yukata fluttered in the wind. The lenience of hanging laundry someplace that could be seen from guest rooms was not at all unpleasant to her.

Sweeping the cracker crumbs off the table, she turned one of the pages.

Snow White. She had gotten tougher. That look on her was good—less naive, compared to before.

Marika Fukuroi. That was a familiar face. She wasn’t to Frederica’s taste, but her purity was desirable.

As she was about to move on to the next one, her hand stopped. There was a single hair sandwiched between the materials, stuck there carefully with Scotch tape.

I see. So she narrowed it down to the softest target from whom to gather hair, hmm?

Avoiding those who were bound to discover her if an unpracticed stalker attempted to harvest their hair, such as mercenaries you had to be wary of, hunters with tense nerves, and magical girls associated with certain departments, she had narrowed it down to the one who lived in a carefree, easygoing manner, and harvested her hair. This cautious method wasn’t something Frederica had taught her. Was this tendency just Ripple’s nature? That wasn’t at all a bad thing. Frederica could feel her sincerity, that she was doing the best she could within the range of what was possible.

With the thumb and index finger of her right hand, Frederica carefully peeled off the hair to prevent it from being damaged and held it up to the light.

She was dazed for a moment, breathing out an ohhh.

She tried letting it sit in her palm. Even when it wasn’t held up to the light, it sparkled. There were no kinks in it. Even in this one strand of hair, she could pick out gradations of white, blue, and purple.

She immediately looked over the materials again. She was curious as to what sort of magical girl’s hair it was.

Frederica loved magical-girl hair. But she rarely had a reaction like that. Beautiful hair had a story. It was based on that story that hair became beautiful, to begin with.

Cranberry’s gruesome half lifetime.

Archfiend Pam’s bold and steadfast lifestyle.

Snow White’s brilliant future.

All the magical girls who had light and darkness that Frederica lacked.

She would taste their hair with her eyes, nose, and tongue, and experience their lives vicariously. That was the sort of enjoyment she had in loving magical-girl hair.

This hair was different. Before even discovering whose it was, a stake had been driven through her heart. A chain was wrapped all around her body that would never let her go. For this one single ordinary strand, a story was unnecessary.

It sparkled like a gem, but that wasn’t what made it precious. If she liked gems, she could simply go steal them. Frederica’s magic could be used for that sort of thing, too. In this hair, there was a world that went beyond stories. Just its existence was beautiful. It captivated and stole the hearts of those who saw it.

She gazed at it from above, from below, she put it on the table, she drew her nose close to it and sniffed it. She wanted to eat it, if possible, but since this one was her only strand, she couldn’t do anything rash. If she were to impulsively eat it and were then to hear she would never get another, that too-luxurious meal would be over. If she left the hair, she could enjoy it more.

When she tried changing the angle, she discovered an entirely different wonder in it. Just slightly changing the things she placed behind it, the scenery she saw through it, the accessories to it, would bring new emotions surging through her, and overwhelmed, she fell backward. She couldn’t catch herself and hit the back of her head on the tatami to lie there, entranced.

Now that I think of it, she thought and got up. The materials would include not only this hair but also a photo. What sort of head did this hair grow from? How was that hair arranged? How was it styled? She had to see it. There was a beauty in an individual hair. But the whole would also have a collective beauty.

Excited for this new passion, she threw herself at the table. A sigh leaked from her lips. Such a magical girl had lain undiscovered in that town? And no one had ever questioned it? “The world is all wrong,” she moaned.

The destructive power simply in seeing this picture. If Frederica were to see this in the flesh, she might die. This was no joke.

It wasn’t as if she wanted to die. She didn’t feel as if dying would be all right with her—the world was full of joy and happiness. She wanted to experience more, more of it.

But even so, Frederica was unable to stop herself.

Holding the end of the hair in her mouth, she wrapped it around the little finger of her right hand.