Choice of Life
After the world became unreal, I felt it with every breath. But the reality around me hadn’t changed much at all.
A few hundred meters of new air-raid shelters here and there. Disaster alerts coming in more often than before. Streets that looked different every time I stepped outside. That was all.
At first glance, it didn’t seem like students’ lives had shifted much. But if you looked back, everything had actually changed far more than I expected.
The biggest shift of all was the complete overhaul of the school semester system.
Because of the Demon King’s Army and so many other reasons, classes had been pushed off course or we couldn’t stay in one place for long. As a result, final academic records no longer mattered as much as raw ability, and the old rule about missing too many school days and repeating a grade had vanished.
So if grades and attendance became irrelevant, what happened when a student simply disappeared or didn’t show up for class?
They were still considered enrolled. Until they were found dead, at least. For now.
Still, even in this system, grades weren’t completely ignored. We just used them as a reference point.
And if you kept showing up every day, proving your diligence… well, anyway.
I had never cared about schoolwork or future plans, but somehow I learned about this twisted system because of her.
“Harin-ah! Shouldn’t you come back to school soon…? Huh? I’ll help you with anything…”
“…?”
From the side, it felt like a volcano was about to erupt.
Please, just this once.
*****
The day before.
I had followed Harin to the place where the Demon King’s Army had appeared, watched her massacre everything in sight, and only then realized how quickly it had ended.
She suggested we take a short walk around the area.
…She didn’t want to stroll through streets soaked in sticky fluid and gore, but what could I do?
“Deformation.”
Even with the aftermath of battle still everywhere, a walk actually felt almost peaceful. The occasional itch of that demonic stench on my nose was the only problem.
After maybe a few dozen steps, something flashed blue far away.
—Fwoosh!
A pink streak of light slammed into the ground with a thunderous boom. Exactly the same spot where Harin had just wiped out the Demon King’s grunts.
“Eh…!?”
She was already finished, scanning the surroundings. Then she crouched, poked at the corpses with the tip of her shoe, and checked them one by one.
We slipped into the narrow alley between buildings and watched the captain crouch, frowning in confusion.
“This is strange… I was the first one deployed…”
He tilted his head, muttering to himself, then finally scooped up the unresolved mystery and disappeared into the building.
A moment later, pink light flared inside. When it faded, he had returned to his normal self and stepped back out onto the street, still looking utterly puzzled.
“…He’s the one, huh?”
—Creep.
“…Hey. Keep the promise.”
“…Okay. Just a joke.”
Even when she spoke normally, Harin’s words always sent shivers down my spine. I told myself it was just banter, but the chill wouldn’t leave.
I carefully slipped deeper into the alley before she could notice.
“Get us out of here before we’re seen. Once we’re spotted, she’ll give us a lecture for hours…”
“…?”
Harin nodded silently. She no longer felt like dealing with me.
We exchanged that quiet understanding and turned to leave.
Then—
—Snap.
“Ugh?!”
—Crash!
I stepped on an abandoned can and tumbled straight backward, only my upper body sticking out of the alley.
This bastard.
Some crazy person had dumped trash here. I was still debating how to handle it when—
“Siwoo?”
“Ah.”
I had fallen loudly and landed on my back, half my body sticking out into the street. When I looked up, I met the captain’s eyes.
“Siwoo! What are you doing here!?”
The captain hurried over with short steps, crossing the crosswalk even as the signal changed.
He scanned the area, then reached out a hand toward me.
“You should have evacuated! Why were you hiding in an alley?”
“That’s… uh…”
I tried to weave a lie using every excuse I’d ever heard.
The best one I could come up with was…
“B-because the captain said he’d be here soon…”
“…?”
That was it.
The captain had arrived within minutes last time, and here we were only a few minutes after the call. Pretending I was waiting for him to show up was believable enough.
I grabbed his hand and pulled myself up.
“An-and I started to leave… but…!”
On top of that… I wasn’t sure how to describe it, but my knee had twisted awkwardly from the fall.
Cause and effect were reversed, but the captain didn’t know that.
…It felt wrong to lie, but what else could I do?
Better to keep Harin’s secret than face her wrath.
“Ah, you got hurt, didn’t you? Wait, let me heal you…”
The captain immediately dropped to his knees, both hands on my knee, eyes closed. He murmured softly.
“Healing.”
Pink mana flowed between his fingers. The pain in my knee gradually eased.
A short while later—
“Done. Much better now?”
“Yeah… thank you, Captain. I owe you my life.”
“No big deal. This is what a magical girl is supposed to do.”
I dusted myself off and glanced back down the alley.
A bleached-blonde figure was walking away in the distance.
She must have been giving me space because revealing herself would have made things far more complicated for me.
At least I had finished that one chocolate pie.
“By the way, this place is pretty far from my house…”
—Startle.
My body went rigid.
“What are you doing here?”
I hadn’t expected her to ask that question.
What could I say?
I hadn’t had a real conversation with a friend for months. The few times I had spoken were either with the magical girl captain or Harin, a former Demon King Army executive. The very idea of normal small talk seemed impossible.
Just a little closer, that was all.
Mostly chewed-up, digested information.
“J-just… taking a… walk…”
It was too far to call it a walk.
In a world where the Demon King’s Army could attack at any moment, a powerless high-school student walking this far without evacuating needed a miracle of a lie.
The captain, who had come this far for a reason, would believe it.
I squeezed every last drop of creativity out of my brain.
“I was walking… just to clear my head, and…”
I deliberately added the distance.
“Ch-check on a friend…”
“…?”
The captain tilted his head.
Was my acting that bad? Or had he sensed something I couldn’t explain?
He could have just asked a simple question. Why was he making it so hard?
Magical girls really carried lie detectors in their heads?
Just as I was thinking that—
“…You.”
The captain spoke carefully.
“You had a friend, didn’t you?”
“…?”
*****
A few minutes later, the place we reached was a simple cafe still open despite the chaos.
I wondered why they hadn’t evacuated after the attack, but Harin answered before I could ask.
“It’s a resting senior magical girl’s cafe…”
“Ah.”
That made sense.
—Ding-dong.
The little bell above the door chimed as we entered.
“Ah, Seoyeon-ah.”
“Senior Haneul, hello!”
Behind the counter stood a woman who looked about college age. She waved gently at Harin, then turned her gaze to me. The captain had brought a normal high-school boy, not a magical girl, and she looked genuinely curious.
…Of course.
If the evacuation order had been given and no one followed it, they were either magical girls or Demon King’s Army. The latter had a different explanation, but still.
“…Friends.”
“Ah.”
She smiled lightly, nodded, then looked at me again.
“Come play. Relax.”
“Haha, okay…”
I bowed and followed the captain up to the second floor of the cafe.
We sat by the window. Harin stared out for a moment.
“You shouldn’t say anything about this, right?”
“…For now. But I think you already guessed, didn’t you?”
Harin let out a long sigh and glanced out the window at the distant wreckage.
The same scars Harin had left behind.
“Anyway, why did you come all this way to meet a friend?”
The captain tilted his head again.
I would have been curious too, if I were in his place.
She had revealed her true self and saved my life, then the next day she was dragging me into Monster Aggro territory. I had been chased by a former executive until I barely survived. Normal people would have been sent to a mental hospital long ago.
It wasn’t just my strong mental fortitude that kept me sane.
I had already been broken beyond repair. Hitting me harder with a hammer wouldn’t make me worse.
And I didn’t look like the weird person who hid the cracks.
“Well… we finally got in touch after a long time…”
That was true.
We had only crossed paths a few times in the neighborhood and at school. In the old days we had been closer, but childhood friendships don’t last forever, especially when the other person is a girl.
…Still, months had passed since I last saw her face. Now she was a Demon King Army executive.
Anyway.
“There’s someone named Harin…”
Maybe saying it more detailed felt right. Or maybe I just wanted to spill everything to the captain’s genuine worry.
The moment the words left my mouth, her eyes changed.
“Harin!?”
—Bang!
The captain, who had been sitting quietly, slammed the table and stood up.
…What the hell?