The Truth of the Executive
"Oh my. You didn't know?"
The Executive's lips curled into a sly, almost viscous smile as her gaze slid from the class president to Lee Harin and back again. That peculiar grin seemed determined never to leave her face, and beneath her lavender eyes, mischief churned in abundance.
Though whether "mischief" was even the right word, I couldn't say. She looked less like she was teasing and more like she was playing with people the way a child plays with toys — or simply reveling in the situation itself. There was no reading her. No predicting what she would do, what she was thinking, or which way she might lunge next.
After watching the scene unfold a moment longer, understanding seemed to dawn. The Executive's expression sharpened into something cunning, and she opened her mouth.
"That pathetic~ little Executive currently crushed under my foot? She used to be a magical girl, you knooow?"
The secret Harin had wanted to bury forever — the one she had entrusted to me, and me alone, with such aching care — was laid bare for everyone to hear.
As she spoke, the Executive nudged Harin's abdomen with the tip of her shoe, giving it a few light, dismissive taps, as if to stamp the identity of this defeated wreck into our minds for good.
"You... you bitch...!"
Harin flung her left arm toward the Executive, mana gathering at her fingertips. Purple energy condensed, briefly taking the shape of a razor-sharp spearhead.
But—
"Oh my. How pathetic. You think that's going to work?"
A sickening pressure drove down. The Executive had noticed an instant before the mana could fire, and she crushed Harin beneath her heel once more. The gathered energy shattered and scattered into nothing.
Harin seized the ankle of the leg pinning her with both hands, straining with everything she had to shove it off. She was resisting — but every time she did, blood burst from the corner of her mouth, ran down her cheek, and soaked into the earth.
"What on earth are you talking about...?"
The class president still couldn't seem to believe it. She looked at Harin, then at the Executive, then at Harin again. From where I stood, I could see her pink eyes trembling with a violence that was almost frightening — as if she had just witnessed an impossible truth, or been forced to confront a fact she had spent her whole life avoiding, or watched her only hope snap in two.
A dark pallor had settled over her face. When she spoke, her voice shook.
"That's a lie, isn't it? It has to be a lie. There's no way a Demon King Army Executive could be a magical girl..."
She still didn't want to believe a word of it. It had to be a trick. A deception. A magical girl turning into a Demon King Army Executive was something that simply could not happen — something that must not happen. Perhaps the concept itself had never even existed in her mind.
"Kyahaha! A liiie?! Why don't you just ask her yourself~?"
Far from offering a proper answer, the Executive only seemed more delighted. She glanced down at Harin with that same cunning smile, then ground her heel in a slow circle against Harin's stomach.
"Ghk...!"
Dark, almost black blood welled up and spilled from Harin's lips once more. Blood so thick it hurt just to watch.
"I said stop it!"
A volley of razor-sharp mana arrows erupted from the class president and streaked through the air as one. They did not arc toward the ground. They flew true, as if they would draw a perfectly straight line into infinity.
But whether the Executive had a transparent barrier raised in front of her, or whether her body was simply that absurdly hard, the arrows either snapped and vanished the instant they made contact or dropped weakly to the dirt with a dull clatter. And every time a spell struck and died, the corner of the Executive's mouth climbed a little higher, until she was grinning from ear to ear.
"Kyahaha! What even was that attack!?"
She jeered at the class president in a voice bright with excitement, then glanced down once more at Harin pinned beneath her foot. She looked back at the class president, then covered her mouth and giggled.
Harin made a strangled sound.
Still standing on her, the Executive hopped lightly aside, then took a single step toward the class president. She advanced slowly, studying her with open curiosity.
"Hmm... I feel like I've seen you somewhere..."
She tilted her head, one eyebrow knitting.
"Don't be ridiculous!"
The class president leapt backward even farther than the Executive had advanced, putting distance between them, and in the next instant filled the air with countless spheres of magic.
"Kyahaha! Well then — shall we see what you can do?"
The Executive's eyes didn't change. Her expression didn't change. She simply kept closing the distance, that sly smile never leaving her face. Something in her look and her tone was so deliberately provocative that the class president's brow furrowed, and she slashed her wand through the air once more.
Magic Missile
Dozens of missiles — hundreds, maybe more — arced toward the Executive in a cascading barrage. She treated them as a joke. With the barest minimum of movement, she slipped every last spell that came for her. Pink mist scattered uselessly through the air, mana dispersing into nothing.
"Oh my, is that really all? Looks like you need a little more practice, huuuh?"
Once again she dismissed the class president as beneath her, covering her mouth with her sleeve and giggling behind it.
"Be quiet!"
The class president conjured another swarm of magical spheres in the empty air, then launched herself upward. Above the ruined buildings, countless pink spells arranged themselves across the sky until they looked like starlight over a countryside night. She leveled the tip of her wand at the Executive and thrust it forward, as if firing something from the heavens themselves.
Thunder cracked. Lightning erupted from the glittering orbs and filled the sky. The air flashed white. Bolts crashed down. Sparks flared.
"Kyahaha! Yes! This is more like it — now there's a fight worth having!"
This time, at least, it seemed to do something. Where the lightning struck or even grazed her, patches of the Executive's armor and the tips of her horns came away faintly scorched. That said, it was only a fingernail-sized spark that flared and died in an instant.
At this rate...
I was watching the battle through narrowed eyelids, my face scrunched against the glare, when the Executive — who had been moving just fine — suddenly stopped dead, like a wind-up doll whose spring had snapped, and said something that made no sense at all.
"Ah, but you see, I don't particularly care for boring plot developments."
"What are you even talking about..."
The lightning kept crashing down on her. She took every hit without so much as shifting her feet. It felt like a taunt — like attacks of that caliber didn't even tickle, like they couldn't inflict a single point of real damage.
And then—
"Mmm... aha! Yes. How about a twist like this?"
She laughed, a bright, childish peal, and opened the book in her hand. In the blink of an eye she had changed positions. She appeared behind Harin, who had used that brief window of freedom to roll onto her stomach.
"Sh—!"
Harin realized a heartbeat too late. She threw herself into a roll, scrambling into a defensive stance —
A sharp crackle split the air.
"From the heart of the tale, a single page is torn."
"Let the ending be written — and the mask be stripped away."
⟨ The End of the Story ⟩
The pages of the book in her hand began to flutter and turn of their own accord. A single torn page rose into the air, its shape warping, splitting, stretching, then knitting itself back together into the form of a spear.
And then—
The Executive's sleeve gave the faintest twitch, and the spear was loosed. Its target was Harin, still lying on the ground — not quite her heart, but a little above it. In a single thrust, it drove into the glowing purple gem nestled between her throat and her collarbone.
"Don't—!"
The class president reached out. She was already too late.
"Gh— kkh...!"
Harin cried out, her back arching like a drawn bow. At the same instant, purple light flared from her body and lit the street as bright as day.
"Ghhhk...!?"
"Kyahaha!"
The glare was so fierce it stung my eyes. I threw an arm across my face and turned my head away. After a moment the intensity behind my eyelids dimmed enough that I could crack them open and look toward where Harin had been.
The class president had shielded her eyes with one arm as well. She lowered it.
What we saw, in the same instant, was this:
"Ghk — hah...!"
The worst thing I had imagined had not come to pass. Harin was still alive, collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath.
There was, however, one difference.
"Oh my."
The Executive smiled that cunning smile of hers and snapped her book shut with a crisp, final sound. Purple particles began to scatter from Harin's body and fade, and the clothes she had originally been wearing came into view.
In place of the purple suit, an ordinary T-shirt and sweatpants. In place of the purple hair, a head of bleached, unkempt blonde. In place of those gleaming violet eyes, irises stained a deep and bloody red.
I had to correct myself.
This was not the worst thing I had imagined. This was the nightmare we had all feared — the one that should never, under any circumstances, have been allowed to happen.
"Looks like your transformation's come undone?"
Standing over Harin, whose transformation had been completely stripped away, the Executive leaned down with a wicked little smile. Their faces drew close. Harin had been glaring up at her in fury — and then she registered the state of her own body, the transformation gone, and her expression shattered into horror.
I felt as if I'd been struck in the back of the head. I could only stand there, frozen, staring.
And then—
"...Huh?"
The class president tilted her head, as if she couldn't make sense of what she was seeing. She kept staring, her eyes trembling, at the girl collapsed on the ground.
Harin had been glaring at the Executive. Then her gaze rolled sideways and locked with the class president's, who was staring straight at her. As if to say don't look, she lifted one arm — an arm that barely even worked — and tried to cover her face.
But a gesture that small could not hide an identity that had already been exposed.
The class president blinked. Then a faint, unhinged smile touched her lips — or perhaps it was despair, or resignation. She looked at Harin, and in a voice more unsteady than I had ever heard from her, she asked:
"Harin...?"
Harin glanced at her through the crook of her bent arm.
"...Hah."
She struck the ground in surrender, threw her head back, and stared up at the empty sky.
"...Fuck."
The word slipped from between her lips in a voice lower, and more hopeless, than I had ever heard from her before.