Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 9 - Chapter 5

Beyond the Triangle

“There’s something I wanted to ask you about—got a minute?”

Princess Quake looked away from the weekly shonen manga magazine she’d been reading and turned in the direction of the voice. Princess Tempest was regarding her with a serious expression.

They were members of the Pure Elements, the magical-girl warriors who fought to protect the world from Disrupters, evil invaders from another dimension. But the Pure Elements weren’t on standby in the lab twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes, only two of them were stationed there—sometimes, only one—and it wasn’t uncommon for nobody to be there at all. Currently, there was just Princess Quake, their leader, and Princess Tempest, their youngest member, on standby in the briefing room. Being in elementary school, Tempest had a school day that ended earlier than those of Princess Deluge and Prism Cherry, who were middle schoolers, and Princess Inferno, who was in high school. And Quake was in college, so her schedule was even more flexible.

“Advice?” said Quake. “You mean from me?”

“Yeah.”

Princess Quake—Chiko Satou—was a university student. Being the eldest of the group had shoehorned her into the position of leader, and Tempest, being a little kid, surely saw Quake as an appropriate person to ask advice from. Though Quake felt guilty about Tempest’s evaluation of her being so undeservedly high, she nodded. She couldn’t say, “You’re asking advice from the wrong person. Level-headed Deluge or bubbly Inferno would be much better equipped for this. I’m probably the biggest social misfit of all the Elements. I’m the sort of quasi-creeper who finds herself looking over at children when I walk down the street.” It was Quake’s nature that when a child looked to her for help, she would want to respond, and when her petty pride got into it, too, she was forced to pretend to be an adult worth relying on.

Putting on a smile like she was quite calm about this, she set her elbows on the table and rested her chin on the back of her hand. Praying that this would make her look like a poised, mature adult, she prompted Tempest, “Do you have some kind of problem? Something on your mind?”

“I need romantic advice.”

It didn’t feel appropriate here to tease Tempest for being precocious. The girl appeared more serious than she’d ever shown even in training. It would have been so much easier if Quake could just tell her, “You’re too young to be worrying about relationships! Wait another ten years or something!” But at the mercy of Tempest’s earnest gaze, Quake couldn’t possibly say something like that.

Quake put her manga magazine down on the table. She had this hallucinatory sense that Tempest, on the opposite side of the table, was farther away than usual. Was it a psychological sense of distance? There was certainly a deep divide between one heart and another. The stark white briefing room felt bleaker than usual.

“Romantic advice…”

“Yeah, that. It’s about a love triangle.”

A love triangle. Suddenly, she was hit with a math problem.

It had been just under twenty years since Chiko Satou was born—long enough that she was about the age of majority. In all that time, she’d had so little interest in romantic affairs that you could basically round it down to zero. And not once had she ever been in any sort of romantic situation, either. Among her peers, there was so-and-so getting together or breaking up or whatever, but that all took place on an entirely different planet than Chiko’s. Some people out there put romantic relationships before anything else. If you were to tell them, “I don’t have a crush on anyone” or “I’m not interested in a relationship,” they’d scoff and accuse you of lying. That sort of thing would make Chiko uncomfortable, but she otherwise wasn’t bothered. Chiko’s few friends and interactions with the opposite sex were only ever on the level of business calls.

She had never particularly felt that she wanted to date someone. She would look out of the corners of her eyes at the little kids enjoying themselves on children’s playgrounds to soothe her heart, but it wasn’t like she wanted to be with those boys and girls. If those children were in trouble, she would offer as much of a helping hand as she could, and her recompense would be to enjoy herself watching over their sweetness from a distance. It was a symbiotic relationship—different from dating between men and women who vowed to treat each other like their possessions.

And this was the kind of person Tempest claimed to want advice on what might be called a real-world application of romance: a love triangle. If she had her way, Quake would prefer to tell Tempest that an adult woman with a wealth of experience in romantic relationships would not be absorbed in reading shonen manga in the briefing room. But could she say such a thing to her face, those eyes sparkling with respect and expectation? Quake couldn’t bear to cloud those beautiful, gleaming eyes with disappointment. So she steeled herself. She was now officially a master of romance. She would completely resolve Tempest’s worries. That was the way a leader should be.

“A love triangle, huh? That’s a tough one. Mm-hmm. Well, first, tell me about it.”

“There’s a boy named Shou who moved here last summer,” Tempest began, but then she whipped around the other way.

With a mechanical whir, the bulkhead was sliding up. Someone was about to come into the briefing room. Once it was about eight inches up, they could see her boots. Black and red. It was Princess Inferno.

Tempest crawled atop the table, bringing her face close to Quake’s. “Sorry, I can’t talk about it with Inferno here. I’ll ask you another time.”

Quake ruminated over Tempest’s fragrant breath, her adorable face—which had been so close she could just about sense her body heat—and that last whispered comment. Quake’s blissful, slack-jawed expression shifted to a frown. Tempest couldn’t talk about it when Inferno was here. Quake was sure that was what she’d said.

Maybe Quake was slow on the uptake, but she could still get a vague idea at times. Tempest had said she wanted to ask advice about a love triangle—could it be that one corner of that triangle was Inferno?

Tempest returned to her seat, then went to greet Inferno as if nothing had happened. “Welcome!”

“Heya! Sup, guys?”

“You’re early today, Inferno.”

“’Cause I transformed on the way and ran over.”

Tempest addressed her like always, and Inferno responded the same as always, too. The way Quake saw it, she couldn’t see anything particularly strange about the two of them.

“What’s wrong, Quake? You look down,” said Inferno.

“Oh, do I? No, I’m totally fine.”

“Is there something on your mind?”

“Ummm, uhhh… Oh, yes. A manga I like got canceled.”

“Ahhh, that robot manga. I only ever flipped through it from time to time, so I didn’t notice.”

The topic shifted to the manga that had been canceled in that week’s magazine. Inferno took a seat in a free chair, and Quake said, “I bought the first volume, and they added some extra content for the print volume,” as she casually examined Tempest’s expression.

Tempest had gone back to her usual, cheerful magical-girl self, with no sorrow or cares, listening to Quake talk. Had that been Quake’s imagination? No, it couldn’t be.

“Ooh, you bought it? You’ve got some weird taste,” said Inferno.

“Hey, watch it. I actually really liked it, okay? And besides, you didn’t even notice it had been canceled…? That hurts.”

“But it was boring!”

“Don’t hit me while I’m down, Tempest! That manga was just, you know, aimed at a slightly higher age bracket.”

“Even a high schooler would think it’s boring, though,” said Inferno. “Like, if you’re gonna have robots, you want more stuff going on, more fights. The story dragged on and on with all that behind-the-scenes stuff. You’re not gonna win votes on the reader survey like that.”

“Hey, that’s the kind of world-building that builds a proper foundation.”

“But if you get canceled while you’re building the foundation…”

“Pardon me!”

“Hello!”

“Oh, Cherry and Deluge. Showing up conspicuously together, huh?” Inferno teased.

“What were you guys talking about?” asked Deluge.

“Manga,” answered Tempest. “Anyway, since we’ve got everyone here, let’s play a game in the training room. I’ll beat you this time for sure, Inferno.”

“That’s not a game—that’s a mock battle,” Inferno shot back.

“Mock battle, game, whatever. C’mon, c’mon, let’s do it!”

“You join in, too, Prism Cherry,” said Inferno.

“Huh? But I should be in the briefing room.”

“It’ll be fine, no worries! Today we can totally go with the no-weapons-allowed option.” Prodding Prism Cherry’s back, Tempest headed out of the briefing room. Oh, dear. Deluge sighed and followed after them while Inferno tossed the manga magazine on the table.

Right when Inferno was about to get up, Quake called out to her. “Do you have a minute?”

“Hmm? What? Everyone’s going, though?”

“Is there someone who moved into your neighborhood, Inferno? Around summer of last year?”

“Oh, Shou from the Minamida family? Why do you know…? Ah—Tempest, huh?” Inferno’s curious expression turned into a mischievous smile. “I heard on the autumn neighborhood field trip last year, Tempest got hurt and Shou saved her. She’s kind of been into him ever since.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“Before, she’d toddle along after me all like ‘Aka! Aka!’ And now, she’s following Shou around. It’s a little lonely, but nothing you can do about that.” She smiled, her tone light as she slid her chair out from the table. “Come on, let’s go. Tempest’ll be mad if we’re late.”

Waiting in front of the sliding bulkhead, Quake was certain. Of course—Shou was one corner of the triangle, Tempest was another, and the last corner was Inferno.

When the bulkhead had risen about a third of the way, Quake slid under it into the hall. Hearing Inferno saying, “You’re worked up for this, huh, Quake?” behind her, she overtook Deluge and Cherry, then slid under a closing bulkhead to come up by Tempest, who was doing stretching exercises in the training room.

“Hey, about what we just talked about…”

“You mean…”

“Who Shou likes. Could it be someone I know?”

Knees bent, Tempest looked up at Quake pleadingly, her lips pouted, simultaneously oozing unconscious charm and frustration. “Shou…”

“Yeah.”

“It seems he likes Aka.”

“Ahhh.”

“He’s in middle school and I’m still in elementary school, so there’s a pretty big age gap. But when I transform into a magical girl, the difference in appearance at least isn’t as big, so I thought maybe that was okay, but I was wondering where I should run into him and how.”

The bulkhead went up, and the others came into the training room, so Tempest didn’t further elaborate. But that was enough info for Quake.

During the mock battle, Quake couldn’t stop thinking about Tempest’s love triangle, so she dropped out early and went to wait with Cherry at the edge of the training room. She sank deeper into thought, hugging her knees in front of her, and wondered: If there was something she could help with, then just what was it?

First thing in the morning that weekend, Quake went to work.

She had ruminated over a way to resolve this conundrum to the point that her brain practically went numb, but it wouldn’t come together. She realized that in the first place, her lack of any experience to base this on would result in nothing more than a lecture on academic and abstract theory. She couldn’t give advice based on common opinions, either. So then she would have to conduct a thorough case study. First, she would learn about Shou, the target. She would observe him, figure out if he had a girlfriend, learn his lifestyle, the way he thought, his hobbies, preferences, and weaknesses, and create a foundation for Tempest to operate at least at a slightly greater advantage. In both manga and in real life, a foundation was key. And in order to flawlessly carry out the covert operations to that end, she needed information. She had to begin in the span of time between late night and early morning.

She pulled a baseball cap low over her eyes and wore a reversible fleece. The advantage of it being reversible went without saying. It was good for following someone. When turned inside out, not only the color but even the length of the fuzz was different. It would come off totally different to anyone who saw it.

Four in the morning. Chiko headed for Tempest and Inferno’s neighborhood on her folding bicycle. She had looked up the position of the neighborhood assembly hall. There were no streetlamps, and the area was dark, but this was actually convenient for her. Even in the darkness, her German-made night-vision goggles would amplify the visible spectrum, so she could manage just fine, no problem. She’d bought these thinking there might be an opportunity to watch over children at night. It was a good thing they’d proven useful.

Investigating the geography of the area, she discovered a pretty good crack under the stairs of the neighborhood assembly hall. She also found a bunch of other good spots, and in every one of them, she set up a directional microphone. She’d bought these in order to pick up on children’s voices, so she could rush to them if a crisis impended. It truly was a good thing they’d proven useful.

Her preparations were complete. She hid herself in the shadow of a cement-block wall that was out of sight and at a slight distance, then pulled some manga out of her suitcase and began to read. Two hours of waiting. Then she heard a child’s voice through her headphones. Quietly peeking out from the shadow of the cement wall, she slid along. She noticed children gathering at the neighborhood assembly hall.

Tempest had said that she was going to be picking up garbage with the kids’ club that weekend, so she would be starting up with the Pure Elements in the afternoon. Inferno had also mentioned she’d be helping out with that, so her schedule would be the same. Quake got a stealthy look at Inferno’s and Tempest’s human forms. There was no mistaking it. The garbage cleanup would be done right there, that day.

Moving from shadow to shadow, staying hidden, she observed the children. Chiko Satou liked children. She loved them. Every day she would observe children from afar and sketch them; it was a balm for her soul. But if others were to find out that she was watching them secretly, it’d be a social disaster, so she had made sure to acquire the skills to avoid detection.

With particular attention to what went on around Inferno and Tempest, she observed.

Inferno was the one giving instructions. She was one of the adults, not the children. She was a great worker—the adults relied on her, and the children trusted her, but she could still make everyone laugh and have a good time.

Tempest was among the children, as a participant. While she chattered away with kids her own age, occasionally, she would glance off in another direction. Over there was a boy of about middle school age.

He was different. Among the other middle school boys with shaved heads or pimples or school uniform track jackets, he looked like a different creature, smiling with his hair smoothly fluttering in the wind. That had to be Shou. It seemed a pretty face with a slim-lined frame was Tempest’s type.

But it didn’t look as if he was paying as much attention to Inferno as Tempest said. He was laughing together with his male peers. And it looked as if he approached Inferno as a subordinate did a leader. That was respect, and it was different from longing. It could be that Tempest had the wrong idea about Shou liking Inferno. If that was the case, then Tempest very much did have a chance.

Chiko pulled her digital camera out of her suitcase and took a bunch of photos from the shadow of her sleeve. She’d practiced this skill over and over to be able to take photos without looking through the viewfinder. She didn’t use the flash, of course. There were no streetlamps, and the light was still dim in this season, but if she bumped up the camera sensitivity as high as it would go, there was enough light. She had the shutter noise off, too, so her subjects would never notice. Vigilance was crucial in order to spy on someone.

Eventually, the children received some sort of instructions, and they went off in threes and fours, some on bicycles, some on foot. There would be no need to investigate what Inferno and Tempest were doing right now. Chiko followed after the little group Shou was a part of.

Along their way, the small group split up further, and pushing a wheelbarrow, Shou proceeded deeper into the residential area. Chiko trailed him cautiously, making use of all the techniques she had cultivated until now. She couldn’t let anyone blow her cover and make things difficult for her going forward, even if that meant she had to transform into a magical girl to run when the time came. Yes, going forward—not just for now. She wouldn’t stop at observing—she also had to do things to promote Tempest. She couldn’t fail here.

Swiftly moving from the shadow of one telephone pole to another, she monitored Shou’s movements. He went from house to house without pause, piling cardboard boxes, newspapers, and stacks of flyers into the wheelbarrow. He piled the items meticulously, loading the wheelbarrow properly without leaving gaps, and when he ran into people from the neighborhood, he greeted them breezily.

Shou moved deeper and deeper in, and then once he added the cardboard box from in front of the gates at the dead end to the pile, he had a big enough stack of recycling that he had to hold the top of the wheelbarrow mound with one hand, or he couldn’t wheel it properly.

Before Shou could turn around, Chiko headed back to the main road, then made herself small in one residence’s backyard as she waited for him to pass by. She couldn’t allow herself to be found here. She couldn’t stop trailing him. One of her goals was to follow him until she could learn where he lived. Finding his house would make it possible to know him deeper, more thoroughly.

She felt quite bad for doing this to him, but this was for Tempest’s sake. In Chiko’s mind, ranking children by their priority took greatest precedence, and when it came to Tempest, her friend, she ranked higher than the law, ethics, or even Chiko herself.

Hiding behind a cement-block wall, she slipped past Shou. She waited for the moment her target disappeared from her field of view, then crossed over the wall to come out in the alley. Remaining cognizant of the various blind spots available, she was about to emerge from the alley onto the road when she sensed a presence, and panicking, she hid in the shadow of a telephone pole. When she gently peeked out to check on things, she saw three children carrying recycling who had gathered and were chatting. Seeing the face of the high schooler who came over to them, Chiko shifted from the telephone pole to behind a cement-block wall. It was Inferno. She was telling them with a smile, “Don’t stand around chatting here; let’s get this over with quick.”

It was bad for Inferno to be there. Her intuition could be abnormally sharp at times. Though Chiko had only ever shown her face in her human form once, Inferno was definitely not someone you could be careless around. From behind the cement wall, Chiko made sure that Inferno had left, leading the children, then after they were out of sight, she breathed a sigh of relief. Taking off her baseball cap, she wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. This was bad for her heart.

“Um.”

When she turned around, there was Shou, the target she was supposed to be monitoring.

“Can I help you?” she replied, feigning composure, but inside, her heart was now palpitating with an intensity incomparable with the time Inferno had come, and she was sweating considerably from her palms and back—so much so that she could feel the sweat dripping down her spine. Not only had she been discovered in a questionable position, she was startlingly unused to talking to handsome young men. She didn’t even have the mental capacity right then to consider if a middle school boy even counted as a young man or not. Shou was confident in his approach of this suspicious woman who was rattled while pretending to be calm. Chiko remembered a friend saying that what made a face handsome was not only looks but manner.

“Would you mind letting me through?” Shou asked.

“Pardon?”

“Forgive me, the road’s quite narrow.”

“Oh, sorry.”

The road was too tight for a woman with a suitcase and a middle schooler pushing a wheelbarrow at maximum capacity to pass each other. Chiko lifted up her suitcase, doing her best to squish aside, moving to the edge of the road to yield the space. Shou bowed his head with a “Thanks,” and then he brought the wheelbarrow close enough to the wall that it nearly scraped it, but even so, Chiko’s suitcase touched Shou’s shoulder.

Her suitcase was filled with secret tools. She didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she were to drop the suitcase now and spill out all the contents. They were all goods she’d bought for observing children, and the odds were high that other people would get the wrong idea if they saw. In other words, she had to keep it all hidden.

Chiko had confidence in her grip strength for a woman. She grasped her suitcase firmly, squeezing it to ensure it would absolutely not fall. But that meant she was paying less attention to other things. She lost the sense of weight that had been in the pocket of her fleece, and something fell onto the concrete with a thump.

She wouldn’t leave anything in her pocket that would get her in trouble if found. What had fallen on the concrete was the manga she’d been reading to kill time while waiting.

Before Chiko could bend over, Shou, pushing the wheelbarrow, came back and picked up the comic. Chiko extended her hand and said, “Thanks for doing that,” but she didn’t get the comic back. Shou’s eyes were on the cover.

“Um…” He opened his bright eyes wide, tousled his hair, and looked at Chiko.

Overwhelmed, Chiko backed up, but Shou grabbed her wrist and wouldn’t let go. “This manga!”

“Pardon?”

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, I suppose.”

Shou clenched his fists and pumped them up and down as if overcome with happiness. “Yes!” he cheered to himself. Chiko could see the joy of someone lost in the desert having found an oasis.

“I like it, too!” he said.

“Oh, really?”

“I don’t know anyone else who does… And honestly, the reception online hasn’t been too great, either. If you say you like it, then people just harass you… It’s almost like you can’t talk about it anymore.”

“You’re better off not worrying about that sort of thing.”

“I never thought I’d run into anyone who’s actually bought the book! Seriously, I’m so happy! I sent in my vote on the survey postcards every week, but its ranking kept going down and down, so I started buying two magazines to send in the postcards, but it still kept going down, and then it got canceled…”

At this point, he went, “Ah!” and released Chiko’s wrist. “S-sorry for suddenly taking your hand like that.”

“No, really, don’t worry about it.”

“I’m just so glad I got to actually meet someone who’s bought that manga… Sorry.”

“I get that. I mean, I wish it were more appreciated, too. Hopefully the additions in the final volume will improve the reviews a bit.”

“Huh? There’s gonna be new stuff?”

“The artist said so at the magazine’s event, apparently. They haven’t revealed what the additional content will be, but I think it’ll probably be an epilogue. There were also a lot of parts of the final battle that got cut, so maybe they’ll add that, too. Rateman was like that, too.”

“Rateman?”

“You don’t know the old anime, Paranormal Knight Rateman? This manga was pretty blatantly paying homage to Rateman. I heard it had a pretty big influence on the writing.”

“Oh, really…? I had no idea.”

“But it’s not a rip-off or anything. For example, there’s the relationship between the main character and the heroine, right? The way if one dies, the other will be forced to die, too, is based off Rateman—but then it’s got the guts to take it a step further.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

Seeing Shou happy somehow delighted Chiko, too. She told Shou the things she’d learned about it online and in other media and even things that were basically just rumors, but he reacted to everything in a practically exaggerated sort of way.

He took Chiko’s hand in both his own, passionately saying things like, “That’s what tightened up the story,” “I felt like they were trying to bring it to a conclusion, even though it was getting canceled,” and “It became a manga that you can’t fit into the box of other robot stories.”

But then after talking for a while, he seemed to realize he’d grabbed Chiko’s hand again and let go of it with an apology. He was beet red. “I really am sorry. I got worked up… I’ve never had anyone I could talk about this manga with before. And then you told me all sorts of things I didn’t know… You know so much.”

“Oh no, not at all.” Chiko could understand why he’d get excited. Though it had been serialized in a major magazine, there weren’t many people who would want to talk about a canceled manga. You could go online to seek such people out, but the manga had had an unfavorable reception on the Internet, too.

Chiko and Shou talked about the manga’s story, the characters, their own opinions, and the artist’s previous work as well. Standing side by side, leaning against the cement wall, they passionately discussed their theories of manga. The enthusiasm of the person you’re talking to is infectious. Shou must have been pretty excited, too. Occasionally, he grabbed Chiko’s hand, and every time, he’d blush and apologize.

The topic of conversation was extending even to the merits and drawbacks of the cancellation system that placed so much weight on surveys, but at this point, they heard a loud voice that carried well coming from the main road.

“Heeey, this group is late! C’mon, we’ve got to get this done already.”

It was Inferno’s voice. Chiko and Shou both jumped away from the cement wall.

This was bad. The number one person she couldn’t have finding her had come. Regretting that she’d gotten too into talking about manga, Chiko rushed to leave but lost her balance and pitched forward.

“Oh, s-sorry.”

It was because Shou was holding onto Chiko’s suitcase. She swallowed the remark, “Just what are you trying to do?” in the back of her throat and tried to leave, figuring she had to get out of there, but this time, Shou grabbed the cuff of her fleece.

He started opening his mouth and tried to say something, looked down, put his hand on his own shoulder, then looked up and opened his mouth again as if he’d made up his mind. “Um, uh… Would you…exchange e-mails with me? There’s no one I can talk about these things to… Um, if it’s not a bother.”

“Oh, sure. Right. Then I’ll e-mail you later.”

“Th-thank you so much!”

She wanted to get away immediately. Inferno could come over at any time. Pulling out her smartphone, she quickly exchanged e-mails with him, and then they parted ways. This was the first time Chiko Satou had ever exchanged e-mails with a young man in her life, but as for whether a middle school boy counted as a young man or not, the answer never came, until the end.

At a later date, in the briefing room.

Having finished their training, all members of the Pure Elements were sitting on chairs around the table. Inferno and Deluge were together, reading the same shonen manga magazine, while Tempest was doing her math homework, and Prism Cherry was at her side as her adviser.

Even as Quake was grinding for levels in a cell phone game, she was thinking about something else completely. She hadn’t e-mailed Shou yet. Even if he was a middle schooler, Chiko had never gotten that deep into a conversation with a young man. Was that what they called the power of a handsome face? Maybe that was what had charmed Tempest, too.

Having acquired Shou’s e-mail was a plus. And there was one other plus—observed objectively, it didn’t seem as if he was attracted to Inferno. Now they had two pluses. She would inform Tempest, while being vague about the methods she’d used to acquire that information as much as possible. Tempest would surely be glad.

First, Quake would make it so that she was alone with Tempest and tell her the situation. Then she would also send an e-mail to Shou. Maybe it would be best to leave it to the two of them what to do from here on out. Tempest was trying to build a romantic relationship in her magical-girl form, but Quake wanted to have a proper discussion with her about whether that was truly a good idea. She was still a second grader. She would make mistakes. And Quake wanted to be someone who would kindly admonish her when she made mistakes.

Tempest had gone out because she’d run out of lead for her mechanical pencil. Quake thought about following after her and telling her about Shou, but there was no need to hurry that much. Better to let this sit as long as possible. As she was waiting for the right moment, Quake could daydream about Tempest’s smiling face. That would be such a happy thing. Chiko acting as the matchmaker, treating them to coffee or cake at a café while chatting might not be so bad, either. When Chiko tried imagining it, she just couldn’t help making it too picturesque, and she immediately erased the thought. Feeling embarrassed for some reason, she shook her head.

Two would be better than three. Two young people together was nice. Quake would not come to the fore, committing to the Cupid role. She figured romantic matters were a hassle—no good at all. But if she stuck to playing Cupid, then this could actually be rather fun. Starting to see why society was so in love with romance, Quake felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a little smile.