Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 9 - Chapter 8

Are Our Real Lives Fulfilling?

“There haven’t been any good jobs recently,” she said with a sigh. The other three girls present had been looking over the menus and discussing with serious expressions: “This one tastes bad.” “This one’s actually okay.” They turned to face the speaker—Kafuria.

“What do you mean by a good job?” asked one of her companions.

Kafuria snorted and took a sip from her cup. Her coffee was already completely cold. “Well, a job you can get lots of money for, of course. What other kind is there?”

“Money, hmm… But what about something a little more extravagant…? Oh, like how about a job where you meet someone?”

“An encounter? I’ve had enough of men.” All three of her companions smirked. Kafuria flicked the empty sugar packet lying beside her saucer, sending it flying to the corner of the table.

“You’re so jaded, Kafuria,” commented her other companion.

“Can you blame me?”

“Seriously, though, it’s all about meeting someone,” said her first associate. “If you can marry rich, then that solves your money problems, right? Oh, though I know you’re not going to meet anyone, Kafuria.”

Kafuria was about to set down her cup rather hard, but then she took a moment to bite her lip lightly before she placed it gently on her somewhat large saucer. If she were to use any additional force, she’d break both the cup and the saucer—and worst case, the table, too. If that happened, they wouldn’t be allowed here anymore.

This place, a cosplay café in a certain prefecture in a certain city, Magical Teatime, loaned out costumes to customers, but said nothing about whether you were allowed to bring your own. However, they also didn’t forbid it. They offered some clarification on dress code, like “within the range of common sense” or “excepting anything obscene.” It was because these rules were so fuzzy and vague that magical girls could surreptitiously use this place while transformed. This was the only place you’d find, even if you searched all of Japan. It would be a waste if they got themselves banned from the café.

Among all the jumble of decorations were paper chains, shelves lined with plushies and figurines, and posters of anime airing this season as well as some from ten and even twenty years ago. Girls in anime cosplay smiled with the customers, and the mustached, bow-tied owner silently wiped dishes. Magical girls mingled here and there among the clientele. Though the customers and staff might think, What an amazing cosplay or What’s with that costume? they never said that out loud. Occasionally, the girls might be asked if it was okay to take a photo.

Pausing a moment, once she’d calmed herself, Kafuria continued. “I’ve met a man or two myself. The last time was about two or three years ago, though, when I sneaked into a party at the PR Department.”

“Two or three years ago? That’s quite a while back, isn’t it? And nothing since then…,” the pigtailed girl commented.

“I get that you want to make a snide remark, but let’s listen to Kafuria’s story first. So then what happened?” the masked girl asked.

The background music playing inside the café changed from the opening theme of a battle anime to the ending song of a romcom. With that mellow ballad in the background, Kafuria began, “A man who really came off like a show business type was trying so hard with me. He kept offering cliché compliments, like, ‘You have a traditional beauty that the frivolous magical girls in anime lack; you really deserve to be called the magical girl of Japan.’ When I asked about him afterward, I found out he was a pretty important person. They said he wasn’t from the Magical Kingdom, more like something of an entertainment figure.”

“Ohhh, wow. So he was talking to you kinda like, ‘You’re the idol of the next generation!’” the masked girl exclaimed.

“Well, he was pretty cagey, though. Like, ‘Maybe you’re not quite suited to anime.’”

“What the heck’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, do you think I’m suited to anime?”

“Oh… Um, maybe you don’t come off as the hot new thing.”

“But he said he wanted to get to know me better and wanted my number.”

“Well, I guess I might call that…a guy who’s honest in a lot of ways.”

There was a smile on Kafuria’s face. Since most of her face was hidden behind a veil, the other girls could only determine she was smiling from her lips. “I gave him a fake number.”

“Huh? …Why’d you do that?”

“You hear lots of stories where you start dating a man who compliments you as a magical girl, but then when he sees what you look like in human form, he treats you like a fraud and dumps you. Am I wrong?”

“Ahhh… Yeah, you’ve got a point.”

“But don’t you think that’s the kind of good one you don’t get that often? You don’t actually have to show him your face as human.”

“Don’t you try to get others to do something you can’t,” said Kafuria. “Oh, talking about unpleasant things makes me thirsty. Pardon me, server. I’d like to add an ‘End of the World Milkshake’ to my order.”

When the costumed staff brought over a cup and set it on the table, a certain someone swiftly snatched it away from Kafuria. With her giant, strangely silver Afro in bizarre combination with the typical fancy magical-girl costume, this girl stood out more than anyone in the café, tilting back the milkshake in an elegant manner that clashed with her fashion sense.

Watching her drink be stolen away, Kafuria’s lips twisted in displeasure. “Auro, why are you taking the milkshake I ordered?”

“Hmm? You didn’t order it for me?”

The other two girls at the table laughed at the same time while watching Kafuria and Auro’s exchange. Kafuria pouted. She wasn’t actually as angry as she acted, and the others understood that.

There were four magical girls who had come that day. They were all freelancers—career magical girls unaffiliated with any organization who made their livelihoods in the magical-girl business.

“There’s nothing more ridiculous than trying to get a man to support you in this industry.”

The magical girl Kafuria—her ability let her know who among a group would be the first to die. When she told people about her magic, they always looked disturbed. When that was all it was, it was on the better side—it wasn’t unusual for people to run away or yell at her. She did personally like her costume, which was in the style of mourning attire, but when she went to fancy events, it stood out in a bad way.

“That’s just stuff you tell yourself after it’s over. You should’ve gone out with him right away.”

The magical girl wearing a fox mask on the side of her face, Kokuri, used magic to move around spare change at will. However, she could control only one coin at a time, and what’s more, she couldn’t make it go faster than a human’s brisk walking pace. She basically couldn’t use her power other than for manipulating a kokkuri-san—a Ouija board—however she wanted, but being surprisingly superstitious, Kokuri said, “If I did something like that, I’d get cursed,” and didn’t use it for ill.

“I am kind of getting a sour-grapes feeling, here.”

Negino, whose green hair was tied in pigtails with green onion-shaped clips, was an onion-style magical girl who was always at the top at onion-related events, but it seemed such events were only necessary once a year. She insisted herself that her magic, to “generate the smell of green onions,” was more useful than anything when you wanted to enjoy the smell of onions. That, and the group’s comebacks to that, was one of their standard jokes.

“A magical girl dating a regular human is nothing but trouble, though.”

Auro, who boasted a large silver Afro, simply had a magic Afro. Its magical protection kept her hair from ever getting messed up. She would tuck small items like her magical phone and writing implements into her hair and pull them out when she needed them, and still her Afro would maintain a perfect shape. It was only the people around her, not Auro herself, who felt like the Afro was too big and annoying in small spaces.

Freelancers—those not affiliated with any organization who made their living in the magical-girl business—were treated harshly by magical-girl society. The “normal magical girls” who worked hard to help people without compensation and earned the money to support themselves through other means, saw them as money-grubbers who were anti–public service. The full-time magical girls who received salaries from their work with affiliated various departments in the Magical Kingdom held them in contempt, seeing them as an undisciplined, greedy, and calculating bunch of hoodlums who weren’t talented enough to get real jobs.

It was only a very few specialists who were treated with courtesy. The majority were regarded as trash who weren’t able to get salaried legitimately, and though they were mocked, they desperately made livings for themselves.

It wasn’t that they were incompetent. And that wasn’t just putting on a tough act. An incompetent magical girl couldn’t make a living as a freelancer. In this business, where being deceived, used up, and thrown away was a daily occurrence, they survived thanks to their skills.

Negino and Auro were graduates of the circle of mayhem that was the Archfiend Cram School. Negino was among the top six on the ten-thousand-meter dash, while Auro had scored among the best eight in an arm-wrestling championship. But even being this good, since they looked silly and their magic would prompt snickers, they were not invited to join the smaller cliques in the Archfiend Cram School, like the “Four Heavenly Kings” or the “Eight Legions.”

Kokuri had become a magical girl from being acknowledged by the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, who was known for the strictness of her exams. Apparently, Cranberry had praised her enthusiastically: “Even when you get into a frenzy, you maintain a bird’s-eye view of yourself, and with great athletic talents and excellent combat sense, you always make the optimal choices. That’s the talent most necessary on the battlefield.” But even so, the scouts had never come.

Kafuria was like them. She wasn’t as confident in her skills as the other three, but she was still more physically capable than the average magical girl. Plus, when it came to flying, no one was any match for Kafuria and her wings. Dogfights, high-altitude observation, covert operations, acrobatics—she could do anything. And not just for combat. She was also proficient in mission backup skills, like information analysis, negotiation, even clerical work.

What brought them all together was the one thing they had in common—their rather lackluster magical abilities. They’d found out about one another at a job they’d been hired for and had grumbled about their magic together, and even after finishing the job, they’d agreed to meet regularly despite their differences in ages and careers. And now, they’d built a small little gathering of sorts.

Because they knew their abilities were the kind that would only ever get them mocked, they made their connection a secret. Leaving aside solo jobs, which were first come, first served, if there was a job for multiple people, then they would share that information, and by accommodating one another, they built a network that benefited everyone. Since no one would guarantee them a regular salary, they had to take care of themselves. And even just complaining to one another at Magical Teatime about people mocking their abilities or laughing at their looks and such—that was meaningful enough.

“I’ve been stalked before, too,” Auro said.

“You? A stalker?” Kokuri mused. “Did they have an Afro fetish?”

“Close. A hair fetish.”

“This is why I can’t stand men,” Kafuria complained.

“Nah, it wasn’t a man; it was a woman. A magical-girl stalker.”

“Can’t stand women, either.”

“Kafuria, doesn’t that mean you just can’t stand people in general regardless of gender?”

“You’re young, Negino, so you don’t understand how ugly people are.”

“We’re the same age.”

“Anyway,” said Kokuri, “what happened with your stalker in the end, Auro?”

“She started following me one day and then dropped me out of the blue, like, ‘Your hair is very beautiful, but it’s just not quite to my tastes.’ Can you believe that?”

“Wow, rude.”

“Just awful,” Kafuria agreed.

“Far too mean,” said Negino.

All four of them sighed, then sipped from the drinks in front of them. Only Kafuria lacked a drink—since Auro had stolen it—and so she moistened her throat with a cup of water. “Money over love, after all.”

“I suppose a nice job won’t simply fall into our laps, will it?” said Negino.

“I hear Magical Girl Resources is recruiting people on a temp basis,” said Auro. “What about them?”

“I hear they pay quite well,” Kafuria added.

“Then it’d be a good idea to check ’em out,” said Kokuri.

“How about the Department of Research and Development?” Negino asked.

“Perhaps this is bias on my part…,” said Kafuria, “but I feel they’d treat you like a research subject.”

Kokuri nodded. “Ohhh, I believe it.”

“Since all of us have rare magic,” Auro agreed.

“Speaking of not wanting people to see your pretransformation form,” Kokuri said, “it’d be pretty sad if you were too embarrassed to even let people see your posttransformation form, huh?”

This time, they all laughed together. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call it a bitter laugh.

They spent a while chatting about good jobs they’d had in the past, until finally, when there was nothing more to talk about besides the bad economy—at which point Auro started plucking at her hair with her right hand—they called it a day. Auro had the habit of fiddling with her hair when she started getting sick of a discussion. The other three were aware of it, and while they laughed at Auro’s lack of focus, they accepted it.

Pulling a shawl over her shoulders as minimal cover to hide her wings, Kafuria left the shop. At times like these, a sensible magical girl would turn back to human before heading home. Kafuria didn’t do that because it had been too much trouble to get changed, and she hadn’t wanted to do more laundry, so she’d transformed while in her pajamas to go out. So she had no choice but to return as a magical girl.

Though she had a mourning-wear motif, her clothing wasn’t actually mourning attire. Someone in a getup like this walking around town stood out a lot. Even removing the veil, the outfit would pass inside a cosplay café only. Nonetheless, Kafuria kept it on—it was a hassle otherwise. She rather pointlessly complimented herself for at least having enough common sense not to think, I don’t mind if anyone sees me, so I’ll just fly back.

Once they saw Kafuria, the high school kids whispered to each other. An old woman went, “Oh my,” her expression surprised. A child called out loud and tried to point but was restrained by their mother. If Kafuria were to roll up her veil and show her face now, then those nasty comments from the shadows would turn into remarks of shock and awe, and back when Kafuria had just become a magical girl, that would have satisfied her pride.

She didn’t think about doing that now. At this point, she was sick of it.

The things she talked about with her friends had changed as the years passed, too. “I pity those salaried magical girls, being so restricted; they don’t have any freedom. Magical girls should live the freelance life—we have the freedom magical girls should have!” That was how they’d talked in the old days.

None of them said things like that now. They envied the salaried, and if possible, they wanted to become like that. It was because they couldn’t that they were forced to be freelance, keeping their eyes wide open in search of profitable jobs.

Lining up at the bus stop, she got on board, ignoring the stares all around her. Seeing an open window seat on the right, second back from the front row, she was about to walk to it when there was a poke on her shoulder.

“You dropped this.”

It was a boy who looked to be in his preteens. He wasn’t at all bothered by Kafuria’s unusual appearance, offering her a handkerchief with a natural smile. The pattern on it was familiar. It was hers.

“Oh, thank you.” She expressed her gratitude and accepted it, then took her seat and closed her eyes. In her mind appeared the man from the PR Department who had complimented her for her traditional beauty.

She’d spoken about it in a lighthearted manner with her friends earlier, but her worries about it were more earnest. The man had complimented her for how attractive she was, but when she had asked him, “So then could you make me into an anime as well?” he’d clearly shaken his head to say no. He’d said flatly that she wasn’t suited to anime.

That had made Kafuria angry, but thinking over it afterward, she thought he’d actually been sincere in his attitude. A man who was used to seeing the magical girls of the PR Department, those you might call the crystallization of glamour, had complimented Kafuria outside of work. She didn’t even want to count how many times she’d thought she should have given him her number, how many times she’d rejected that idea, and how many times she’d regretted it.

She shook her head. It was far too much for her imagination to be jumping from a boy who’d picked up her handkerchief without being intimidated by her outfit to the man who’d once complimented her appearance.

She looked out the window. The frog statue in front of the drugstore had fallen over.

Kafuria had already forgotten how she’d felt when she’d first become a magical girl. It wasn’t like she didn’t remember the time when she’d started to realize that maybe her magic was a dud, but she didn’t want to think back on it, so she didn’t.

Kafuria returned her attention to the inside of the bus and slightly squinted her right eye under her veil.

It was the weekend, so maybe that was why the bus was fairly crowded. All sorts of people aside from Kafuria were occupying the seats. The one with the skull mark hanging over his head was a boy sitting in front of her who looked about middle school age. It was the boy who’d picked up her handkerchief. Earlier, she’d been face-to-face with him, and he’d filled most of her field of view, so she’d ignored the skull mark. But even when there were other people in her field of view, the skull mark continued to float over his head.

To Kafuria, the skull mark was just part of the background. If she let it bother her every time, she wouldn’t be able to live her life. But when it floated over the head of someone young, it did upset her. If it was someone who had been kind to her, then particularly so. It wasn’t like she thought people should die by order of age, but there were plenty of people in her field of view who were older than him. Men and women the age of his parents were walking around. An old man leaning on a cane was about to get off the bus, and there was the old woman helping him out, and the old man passing by the boy’s side, walking to the seat behind him—there were lots of people packed into her field of view, so it really was depressing that the first of them to die would be a young boy.

She sighed.

The skull was not at all absolute. When people found out about the skull, by Kafuria’s intervention, their futures might change. On the other hand, they might not change at all, or they might change for the worse. Kafuria herself didn’t know what to do to get what kind of result. But if she did nothing, then it would never change.

Regardless, she didn’t think to intervene. She could follow the boy, continue to watch him from the shadows, and make him see a doctor before he was struck with an incurable disease; or she could grab him and fly into the air if it seemed he was going to get in an accident. Then the skull mark floating above his head might disappear, but it would simply wind up floating over someone else’s head. What would become of Kafuria’s life if she were to go try saving every single person? And even if it was just this boy, she didn’t know if his death would be in ten seconds, or ten years.

So Kafuria wouldn’t save him. Even if she felt bad about it, she’d act like she hadn’t seen the skull mark.

The bus stopped in front of the supermarket, and passengers got on and off. There were more of the former, crowding the bus even further. Even though it was winter—no, because it was winter and the heat was on—it was stuffy. Kafuria flapped her veil to fan her face.

The bus departed. Kafuria turned her eyes forward once more, then scowled under her veil.

Something strange was going on. A skull was floating over the boy sitting in the seat ahead of her. This was no different from before. But there was also one floating over the woman who sat next to him, who was in her twenties. There were also skulls floating over the pair of teen girls sitting in the seats right across the aisle from them.

Kafuria’s magic wouldn’t measure strictly into units of 0.00000 whatever seconds. Based on her experience thus far, she figured it counted people who would die within about one second as simultaneous deaths, and she knew that when there were multiple people who would die at the same time, skulls would float above all their heads.

The two girls seemed to know each other, but the boy and the woman looked like they just happened to be riding at the same time, and they weren’t talking to each other. Kafuria slid her hand under her veil to rub her eyes and looked ahead one more time. Skulls were floating above the heads of all four: the boy, the woman, and the two girls. Now she noticed—there was one more person with a skull floating above their head. It was the driver.

An order of death that was highly unnatural did, in a way, also operate as a premonition. It was an accident. A fuel tank or engine explosion? The positioning was wrong. Falling from somewhere, crashing into something, getting caught in an explosion—whatever was going to happen, it would be a disaster.

Kafuria reached out to mash the buzzer. She had to get off right now, no matter what. She didn’t know specifically what sort of disaster would befall this bus, but it was clear that something was going to happen. She couldn’t remain here so casually.

Hitting the buzzer over and over, she called out, “Pardon me! My stomach hurts! There’s a hospital right over there!”

She stepped up to the front of the bus, and people started murmuring like crazy. “Is she having some sort of flare-up? No, maybe it’s labor pains.” In times like these, the trick was to make people think of you as a big hassle. Before long, the bus stopped on the shoulder of the road, and Kafuria paid her fare and got off. After getting off, she turned back to see the multiple skull marks were still floating there.

“Bad luck, begone,” she muttered and swiftly left.

Five minutes later, the bus was at the stop in front of the middle school. If it had been a weekday, all the kids on the way home from school would have come piling on. Since it was a weekend, it was just one or two people getting off. But the bus didn’t move. This was because Kokuri had grabbed onto the back of the bus, and she was making a five-hundred-yen coin repeatedly go back and forth inside the change machine to overfill it with jingling coins. The driver panicked and called the bus company over and over; the passengers were astir as Kokuri’s magic kept the change machine spouting like the Merlion. The coins it spat up rolled on the floor, while kind passengers scooped them up for the driver.

Checking on the bus from the air, Kafuria was satisfied that the sabotage had gone well.

Flying in the sky during the day, even if she was going fast, increased the chances that she would be spotted. The Magical Kingdom did not like it when magical girls appeared in records as mysterious phenomenon or urban legends—however, this was an emergency situation, so she couldn’t be fussing over the little things.

She would leave the bus to Kokuri. Kafuria had told her to run if she thought anything was about to happen. Kokuri wouldn’t make that sort of mistake. Right now, she was there to buy them even a little bit of time to keep the bus from going anywhere.

Right after complaining of a stomachache and getting off the bus, Kafuria had called the friends she’d just been hanging out with and asked them to come meet her. If a big, sturdy vehicle like a bus got into an accident, then it was abnormal for all the people sitting at the front to die at about the same time, and Kafuria might not be able to prevent it on her own. Multiple magical girls were necessary. You could always rely on numbers.

From the air, Kafuria searched along the bus’s route for anything that looked like it would cause an accident. She found it immediately, zooming toward the bus along the major artery over the speed limit and weaving through traffic. It was a tanker truck. Kafuria flew lower and took a look through the windshield. The driver was nodding off. At this rate, even if they got the bus out of the way, it was going to cause a major accident somewhere. Kafuria went for a higher altitude again, following after the tanker truck as she sent a message to Auro and Negino with her magical phone.

Found the vehicle that seems to be the cause. Tanker truck, driver asleep at the wheel. Can you see him from there?

She could see Negino on the sidewalk thrusting her hands at the tanker. The aroma of green onions was powerful, and it had an effect like smelling salts. The driver lifted his sagging head. How could you stay asleep with the smell of green onions filling the inside of your vehicle? But there was one problem: It seemed Negino had gotten too enthusiastic, and the driver choked. The tanker wove across two lanes. The light vehicle running beside it jerked the wheel over as well. It somehow recovered to park on the shoulder of the road, but the tanker truck was completely out of control. It was a good thing he’d woken up, but now there were new issues to deal with.

Just then, a silver sphere jumped out in front of the tanker truck. It was Auro. Seen from above, her Afro was so big that Kafuria could see only the girl’s hair.

In a forward-hunched stance like in American football, Auro thrust her head to the front, and the Afro took the speeding tanker head-on. Auro’s hair was, at all times, perfectly in place. She said that even if she were wreathed in flames and Auro herself were about to burn to a crisp, her hair alone would remain. Catching the impact of the tanker truck, the hair took no damage, stopping it gently. But Auro couldn’t take the momentum, and still with a grip on the bumper through her hair, she was flying back across the road.

Negino leaped out into the road and grabbed on behind Auro, then Kafuria dived down from the sky above to grab on behind her. The three magical girls all struggled against the tanker with all their might, and the driver had probably stepped on the brakes, too. There was the screeching of brakes, drawing long rubber marks along the pavement until the truck came to a stop, whereupon Auro, Negino, and Kafuria immediately ran off the road and up the side of a nearby building to evacuate to the roof.

Vehicles were stopped all around and people were gathering. Police cars and ambulances were coming. The driver of the tanker got out of his truck, coughing like he was in pain.

Negino smiled. “Maybe I overdid it a bit with the smell, huh?”

“This is no laughing matter,” chided Kafuria.

“Come on, it all worked out in the end. Anyway, it’s too dangerous for a tanker driver to be that tired on the job, right? The company must be really pushing him, don’t you think?”

Auro put her hand to her mouth and smiled. “If we work this well, this might turn into a profitable job for us.”

“Think about that sort of thing later. I’m going to go check on the bus.”

Kafuria flew off. She still couldn’t relax until she checked the skull marks in the bus again. While flying through the sky toward the bus, she smiled a little. It had been a long time since she’d used her magic to help people… No, maybe it was the first time she had legitimately succeeded. And with the smell of onions, coin manipulation, and the big Afro getting in on the action, this was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime event that would probably never happen again no matter how many lives she lived. At their next meet-up, the four girls should try discussing how they could use their magical abilities to help people.