The Scorched Words
That scorched phrase. "Urk."
The moment she passed through the barrier, Rubra Camellia let out a pained groan and grimaced. Is it always like this? She glanced at Grand Orca. Grand Orca had steeled herself based on her prior experience. The pain was bearable. She nodded in response to Rubra Camellia's gaze.
But something was off. A cold sweat instinctively broke out along Grand Orca's back. A violent magical pain that could incinerate even winter's chill. The waveform felt eerily serene. No, it pulsed so faintly and rhythmically that it barely qualified as a wave. It didn't feel like a living being. Yet its presence and density created an indescribable pressure. Choi Il-mun's warning suddenly made perfect sense. The atmosphere inside the barrier was utterly different. Her limbs felt heavy, as if moving them took Herculean effort. Even as a magical girl, she felt her throat tightening, breathing labored. They managed to seal this thing away nicely, she thought.
Soon, a prickling heat and dizziness washed over her, like standing under the scorching midsummer sun. Agonizing pain tore at her skin in fine shreds, stirring the bright magical glow unique to magical girls in defensive response. Still, Grand Orca believed. No casualties amid such torment pointed almost certainly to another magical girl. She ignored the instincts screaming run. There had to be someone to talk to. She pressed on with magical girl endurance. The closer they got, the thicker the pain grew. The girl's presence loomed right before her eyes. But her unique waveform defied comprehension. Her identity felt as distant as that gap. The air thickened into sludge with every step, limbs flailing like in water. Breathing under the crushing pain mimicked deep-sea pressure. Yet they advanced. Enduring, they pushed forward. After repeated bouts of hazy perseverance, someone—an Awakened ability user—had drawn a yellow line on the ground with spray paint. The final threshold. At last, the girl's face came into view. The floor beneath her feet was soft and squishy. Sticky, but it didn't cling to her soles. Air and mana convected endlessly, blending space and existence itself. With every breath, she felt herself fading. Rubra Camellia, following behind, grabbed her hand. Leaning on each other—no, supporting one another—they took another step.
Rainbow strands evaporated and scattered in diffraction, at the center of the dense, scattering magical mass. A white girl sat with a forlorn expression.
Her eyes, cradling a dry white sea, blankly stared at the floor. The girl's pure, clear magical glow gnawed at the space with crackling sounds. Bored, numb. The pure white girl savored the quiet amid the sizzling, tearing agony of the space. Grand Orca vowed to herself as she watched the girl and took one more step. Her parched mouth was hard to open in the heat. She swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried to part her lips. Right then.
Grand Orca saw it. The bench the girl sat on was melting away, only to restore itself. The floor undulated and melted, then restored. A person impaled on a spear melted away, then restored. Corpse blood vaporized before it could even drip. Grand Orca's heart plummeted, her whole body seizing. She gripped Rubra Camellia's hand tight, then tried to let go. Unable to speak, she frantically signaled with trembling hands for her to go back. This wasn't a mid-tier 0th-grade. This wasn't a Magical Girl Law. It was simply "restoring." No mana, no principles, no logic, no laws existed here. It twisted the world. A phenomenon she'd only glimpsed in childhood books as a few lines of text. Something mimicking Magical Girl Laws. A cognition hazard beyond high-tier 0th-grade. Her premonition choked her breath. Endurance twisted into a grimace. In that instant, the girl snapped her head up and looked at Grand Orca. The cognition hazard erupted immediately. Grand Orca's head spun dizzily as she was engulfed in the sensation of vanishing. Not mental corruption. It's not mental corruption. She desperately clung to the thought to anchor herself. Dozens of billions of gazes from a single pair of eyes bored into her. The imagery of all worlds shattering into a boundless white sea flooded her mind. There too, the lonely white girl half-lidded her bored eyes, watching water droplets rise into the sky. White rainbows bloomed, blurring her features. The rainbow hues clumped fuzzily, stirring a faint echo of familiarity.
"Gran... Orca?"
The hazy form called her name in a quiet, parched voice. Some cheerful song lyric resurfaced, swirling chaotically in her ears. At the same time, the crackling of her magical glow stretched out endlessly. I'm dead. She'd done something foolish. Grand Orca closed her eyes against the dazzling rainbow light. Run, she'd signaled—but Rubra Camellia gripped her hand tighter, refusing. She braced for the pain. Please, no damage until we're outside the barrier. In that moment, all the force vanished. The thing before her eyes disappeared. No, was there something? What was it? In a place marked only by faint footprints, Grand Orca seized her bewildered mind.
"...Hah, hah. Ack."
She deeply inhaled the now-cool air.
"...What, what, what?!"
Rubra Camellia's frantic voice rang from behind. That voice—casual and boisterous, not the haughty act they put on during modeling gigs—felt endlessly welcoming. It was just Rubra Camellia shaking off her fear, but both found solace in it. Grand Orca finally gathered her wits. She'd come here to confirm something. And she'd found the culprit, presumed dead—no, definitely dead. Thus, another misunderstanding dawned.
It's a kaijin, isn't it?
Human-like in appearance, but mascots knew almost for certain. Magical girls could sense it instinctively. Decisively, kaijin crumbled to black dust like monsters upon death, dropping mana stones. Kaijin—humanoid monsters. Tales of humans degenerating into kaijin were staple urban legend fodder, but never verified. Easily confused with "kaijin-modified humans" engineered by evil organizations, but a different beast. Anyway, this one had been dead a while. Parts of the corpse were already crumbling to black powder and scattering. Whatever had happened, Grand Orca keenly sensed no major disaster had occurred. The intense impression was already evaporating, being rewritten. A Weird Phenomenon? What the hell was that? Joy at her partner's approaching waveform mingled as Grand Orca desperately tried to hold onto her thoughts.
Shame burned her cheeks. Seeing Grand Orca's pained face snapped her back to reality. Sunk in the cauldron of rage, she'd ravenously devoured the rising emotions scraping the floor. Too absorbed, she'd ignored her surroundings. At least the mingled emotions made her feel a bit more human. Seeing Grand Orca's face, she felt joy alone, then sorrow, then embarrassment. She hurried out, stepping into the starry void of space. She'd grieved, raged. She felt she understood herself a little better. A little closer to human. Space was good for contemplation. In the cold silence unlike the abyss, she savored the emptiness. Leaving the blue circle behind, she sorted her heart amid endless stars. Just a little rest.
She leisurely orbited Earth once. She secretly left footprints on the moon. She swam in the sun's warm tremors. The colorless, waveless universe was peaceful. Then she returned home. She wriggled under the covers and stared into the darkness with open eyes. Unlike her uncle days, it wasn't just void—much was visible now. She breathed naturally, in and out, gazing into the dark. A familiar act. Time slipped away like that. Suddenly, she missed Grand Orca. Guilt toward her and the others welled up. She pulled over her phone and searched for Harang's stream. The incident was already major news, society steeped in mourning. Personal streams were going dark in tribute. She opened OTube and found her clips. Admiring how Harang streamed casually while being a magical girl, so spirited. Or maybe she'd endured hardships too. Must have, as a magical girl. Yet she powered through. Not hiding from wounds like a hikikomori. Thus, she felt solitary respect. Younger, yet far more mature, the girl comforted her unasked. The hikikomori locked alone in her room, wasting years pointlessly, seemed to grow—just a little. With resolve. Magical girls always with resolve. She vaguely recalled where she'd heard it. But she reaffirmed that scorched phrase once more.