The Truth Is Sweet and Bitter
I staggered into my apartment, looking like a total mess. For a second I wondered if I’d been attacked by some Demon King Army monster other than myself.
Then I remembered I’d just rolled through the hallway, not been tossed around by anyone else. A laugh almost escaped me.
I didn’t laugh. Some tiny shred of humanity still lingered inside me.
…Just a guess.
“…Hah…”
Trapped in emptiness, I floated in mid-air and let out a long, weary sigh.
A piece of me that had been sealed away was clearly being chewed up by someone else.
I’d probably found the right spot, aimed correctly, and thrown it well enough.
I almost wanted to chase after the culprit and help. But the moment I realized the target wasn’t me but another magical girl, an unexpected spike of jealousy slammed into me.
And if her face had been exposed, the suspicions would have exploded even more.
Ever since the fight at school last time, I didn’t want to face her again.
…It wasn’t because she was a former magical girl.
I had promised Jung Siwoo I’d protect her, and that was all.
While I distracted myself with that thought, the front door creaked open.
-Swooosh.
I rose, created an exit, and pushed my upper body out.
“Harin-ah, I’m home.”
As soon as I heard her voice and turned my head, the sight of Siwoo—looking far better than he had tonight—filled my eyes.
A faint smile played at the corner of his mouth. It looked like things had been settled somehow.
“…You’re too late. If I’d already fallen too deep into brainwashing, you’d be responsible, right?”
“So I brought ice cream.”
Siwoo answered casually and held out a frosty white plastic bag toward me.
…Ice cream?
“…!”
Now that I thought about it, even if I ate anything, it was only the food he’d prepared or the chocolate pie from delivery.
I hadn’t tasted ice cream in a really long time.
At least, according to my memories.
“Let’s eat together.”
At Siwoo’s suggestion I nodded and jumped out from the shadows.
I didn’t forget to cancel the transformation.
Honestly, I wanted to stay in this form, but that would make him hate it.
I had tracked him in that exact shape and almost killed him.
He probably wouldn’t want to see an Executive’s face either.
Plus, my suit was semi-transparent and showed my stomach.
Of course he wouldn’t want to look at a monster like me.
Inside the plastic bag Siwoo had set down beside me were several kinds of ice cream.
I grabbed one from the pack, popped the lid, and stuffed it straight into my mouth.
I sucked on it lightly, enjoying the cold.
“…It’s not coming out.”
But the taste I was hoping for never arrived.
Only the bland plastic flavor coated my tongue.
“Of course. It’s rock-hard. Let it melt a little and eat it.”
“Hmph.”
I knew that much already.
It was just that I hadn’t eaten in forever, and the memories were all jumbled because of the Demon King Army. That was the only reason.
I pulled out one of my tentacles from the shadows, handed him the ice cream, and gently warmed the tip.
It would melt soon enough.
But I remembered I had to eat cold ice cream, so I had to melt it evenly.
“Even magic like that?”
Siwoo, eating a cone of ice cream beside me, asked with a puzzled tone.
“Needed to break through armor.”
“…”
The idiot probably thought this spell was only for heating up ice cream.
Normally it would melt thick plates, concrete, or the physical barriers magical girls created.
…But after promising him I wouldn’t use it anymore, I wasn’t using it.
Even now, a voice whispered from somewhere in my head: Go pierce someone’s heart. Like you always did. Slaughter.
I barely held onto this urge thanks to just one promise I made to someone like me.
-Swooosh.
Still, eating the sweet, familiar ice cream for the first time in a long time made the voice in my head gradually fade.
Just as I was savoring the cookie and vanilla of the ice cream, a stare fixed on me from my left.
I glanced over. Siwoo was staring right at me—especially the spot around my mouth where I was sucking the ice cream.
“I won’t give you any.”
I turned my body slightly to the right and muttered.
“I’m not going to steal it. Don’t worry.”
“…Hmph.”
Who was I supposed to believe?
Even after he forgot to buy the chocolate pie he promised last time.
…Thinking about it made me even more irritated.
If those damn magical girls and Demon King Army weren’t around, I’d be…
No. Stop thinking that.
Right now…
“…I remember the old days.”
I could lose myself in the rising memories and old feelings until the voice in my head disappeared.
“We used to eat ice cream together at your house. Was it during kindergarten?”
Honestly, my memories weren’t complete.
If I compared them to film, the parts that had been glued together had been cut randomly with scissors. Some sections were wrinkled.
The wrinkled parts were at least in better condition.
My head still hurt, but I could still make out a few clear fragments.
But the cut parts were different.
No matter how hard I tried, they wouldn’t come back.
I had no idea what those memories contained, and I couldn’t guess.
…Right now, I should first straighten out the wrinkled memories.
“Wasn’t it… around the time we drifted apart… starting in middle school?”
I forced myself to lay out the “film” named memories and old feelings, then yanked the wrinkled parts.
It hurt, but it was fine.
Back when I first met Siwoo, I used to slam my head into the wall because of the headaches that followed me around the Association all day.
…And then it came back.
Even though it had faded into a haze from so long ago, a precious memory still remained clearly inside me.
There, I kept stealing Siwoo’s ice cream stick, and he would cry and we’d have a huge fight.
It was embarrassing, a memory from when I was little.
I was glad he didn’t remember it…
“At that time, you kept stealing my ice cream stick and we fought a lot.”
Unfortunately, he remembered it very clearly.
“T-that really happened?”
I tried to deny it, but my voice trembled.
It was obvious I was lying.
Suddenly.
“You even took all the kindergarten lunch I ate back then.”
The idiot Siwoo, who had no idea what that was, had invented a clear lie inside my memories.
“What nonsense! I didn’t steal it! Don’t make up stories!”
Annoyed, I raised my voice.
“You remember everything.”
Siwoo smiled faintly.
The corners of his mouth and eyes curved in a playful smile.
“Ugh…!”
Blood rushed to my face and my body heated up without my permission.
But as I stayed still, it seemed Siwoo had no intention of stopping the smile on his face.
If anything, it only deepened.
“Why, why are you laughing…! It’s not funny…!”
-Swooosh…
I pulled tentacles from the shadows and threatened Siwoo.
…I wasn’t going to stab him or choke him.
I just wanted to erase the smile from his face.
But.
“Puh, hah…!”
Because my heart was in turmoil, my magic control broke.
I could barely maintain my shape, swaying like laundry on a line instead of standing straight.
“I-it’s not funny! I…”
“No, th-that, tentacles… tentacles… kuhahaha…!”
Damn it.
I shoved the tentacles back inside.
It seemed they weren’t working anymore.
“Ah, you really… haven’t changed at all.”
“…Hmph. You haven’t changed either.”
For me to not have changed at all.
This brat had already forgotten what I looked like when I was an Executive.
Or was it…
“It’s nice that we’re the same as before. Back then, the kindergarten kids always teased us. They kept saying we were dating.”
“That’s right… back then, everyone who teased was just annoying.”
“Yeah. They always said we kept clinging to each other no matter what… maybe we were actually dating. Right?”
In the end, as always with this topic, the story turned into a chase after old memories.
The only comfort was that the memory-chaser wasn’t that bad.
“That’s all because they didn’t have friends.”
“…But we didn’t have any friends besides each other either.”
My answer made Siwoo reply with something completely irrelevant.
It seemed he still saw me as a true loner who had no friends, just like him.
“Shut your mouth. And I had a lot of friends.”
“Then why did you only play with me?”
Siwoo stared straight at me and asked while blinking.
That innocent gaze made me instinctively answer.
“Of course I…”
Then I realized I’d almost said something I didn’t mean and hurriedly swallowed the words.
The horrible story that had almost slipped out.
“Of course it’s because you were the one…”
“I-I did it because I was the one who played with you! You, even though you could talk to me the best…!”
I struggled to make an excuse with my confused mind.
“That’s what you were trying to say?”
Siwoo leaned his upper body forward a little and asked with a mischievous tone.
“No, what were you trying to say…?”
“Just one more word.”
In the end, the coward that I was hid behind another layer of lies and sharp attitude like before.
“I’ll choke you so you can’t speak anymore.”
…
I glared at Siwoo and barely managed to collect my thoughts.
I didn’t want to think about it, but the thoughts kept rising.
I couldn’t think about it.
A monster like me shouldn’t even feel those emotions.
I couldn’t drag you from the light into the darkness.
That was a sin, a dirty desire.
So today, too.
I pushed you away.
So I wouldn’t get closer to you anymore.