Another Demon King Army Cadre
Anyway, Siwoo. I’ll come to your place every once in a while to treat Harin, just like we talked about.
“Ugh, yeah. Just text me before you show up and I won’t mind. Right?”
“…Yeah.”
I jabbed her elbow while she stood right beside me, and she gave in with a reluctant little hum.
The treatment I’d received today… or whatever it was called—torture? I still wasn’t sure—had clearly left her looking wrecked.
Not that I could blame her. She looked better now, but the visual aftermath of what she’d endured was… a lot.
She’d been poked with something sharp, but not a drop of blood, and Harin hadn’t let out a single cry.
I thought maybe I should just tell myself she’d gone to a herbalist and gotten acupuncture. That would be a whole lot less terrifying.
“Ah, and Harin. Here.”
The homeroom teacher rummaged through his bag and held out something toward her.
I leaned closer. A smartphone. The screen was dark, and it looked like a mid-tier model from a few years back.
“You said you didn’t have a phone, right? Use this one. No data, so you can only use it where there’s Wi-Fi…”
“Put a bug in it or… press this button and it explodes…”
“No way!”
The teacher shouted at Harin’s awkward joke.
I found it hilarious. The original Harin used to do the same thing, and I’d heard it so many times that her reaction was actually funny.
She’s never been malicious, and he’d figure that out sooner or later.
Harin fiddled with the phone the teacher gave her, then slipped it into the pocket of her windbreaker.
“Hey, you two, you’re de-transforming, right?”
“…Oh, right.”
“Ah, yeah.”
The two transformed magical girls and the ex-magical girl who was also a Demon King Army cadre and my childhood friend both closed their eyes gently.
“Deformation.”
A flash of pink and purple light, and in front of us stood two ordinary high-school girls in their school uniforms and casual clothes.
The teacher and Harin looked at each other, then both smiled softly at the same time.
“How did we not notice that the civilian and transformed forms look so similar?”
“Well… that’s just how magical-girl transformation magic works. Nothing we could do about it.”
“You can transform with magic?”
I asked, surprised.
I’d figured it was some Demon King Army trick or religious thing.
“Of course. Before the Demon King Army invaded, I don’t even remember mana existing.”
“Yeah, but… I could use a different kind of magic. Everything looks so different from yours.”
“I agree with that.”
Harin chuckled.
“But what kind of structure does the transformation magic have that forces people to ignore the similarity no matter how alike they look? I’ve been curious since I first saw the teacher.”
“Yeah? Well… it’s not that amazing.”
The teacher tilted his head, then pulled a magic wand from thin air and started explaining.
“Simple way to put it… it messes with brain recognition. No matter how similar, it just doesn’t feel like the person you know.”
“Like perceptual distortion?”
“Right. Because the secret identity of a magical girl must stay hidden. So it separates the pre- and post-transformation appearances and forces everyone to treat them as different people.”
“What about right now?”
If the distortion kept my recognition of the before-and-after forms completely separate, then how exactly was I recognizing the teacher and Harin without any interference right now?
According to that explanation, even knowing their true identities, I should feel a creeping sense of wrongness every time I saw them transformed.
“You’ve already seen us transform and de-transform before. Close-up, with your knowledge of our real identities intact.”
Harin added.
“Huh? It includes that too?”
It wasn’t like coding a program.
Just changing hair, eye color, and clothes wasn’t enough?
“Of course! There are tons of magical girls in the Association who only study magic! They can’t change the appearance too much or they’d break the perceptual distortion!”
Apparently… if you already know the civilian name and identity of the person you’re watching, and you see the close-up transformation or de-transformation, the distortion breaks.
So that meant, until that moment, even with all the effort in the world, I couldn’t break my own mental distortion on my own.
The thought of my mind being constantly twisted, without being able to use magic, gave me goosebumps all over.
“…Wait a second.”
So last time Kim Min-ah had transformed into Purifier Blue in front of me.
I hadn’t known her name or face properly, and I hadn’t watched the close-up transformation either.
Did that mean she hadn’t needed to reveal her true identity to me…?
“Why does she…?”
“That’s… because Mina is a special case.”
When I heard the teacher’s words, I scratched my head.
Honestly I hadn’t thought it was that weird, but hearing it straight from a magical girl’s mouth still felt weird.
Still, she was doing the right thing and hadn’t caused any trouble. Maybe it was a blessing?
“Ah, right. By the way, she said she’d ask you for a favor sometime. She said thank you for last time and to make time for her?”
I flinched.
Harin, standing right beside me, moved her body and glared at me.
Some kind of “did I help her for nothing?” emotion flashed through her eyes.
“Want me to give you her contact?”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll ask her at school tomorrow and get it then.”
I waved the teacher goodbye after setting aside the lingering gaze and the strange feeling.
“Alright. Then I’ll really be going now. Siwoo, Harin.”
“Take care.”
“…Take care.”
And just like that, the teacher’s visit and Harin’s treatment ended peacefully with no incidents.
The only problem that had appeared after she left was this one.
“…Harin. So what exactly is wrong?”
“Hmph.”
Harin pouted for some reason I didn’t understand and flopped onto my bed like she owned the place.
*****
—Thud!
“Clp, kehek…”
Floating islands and a cracked sky hung in the purple void of the Demon King Army world.
Grimoire’s book had unfurled, and from within it Voracious tumbled across the floor.
Her once-beautiful white dress was filthy with dirt, and the pain she’d suffered while trapped inside the book still made her limbs twitch.
“Uh, e…!? Wh-where…?”
In the first moment of regaining freedom, Voracious frantically felt her own body with shaking hands.
“Hmm. So you’re still alive, after all?”
“Ah, ah! Grimoire-sama…!”
Before she could even hug herself, she slammed her head into the ground and bowed low.
Being trapped inside the book again was an experience she never wanted to repeat.
In a world without any stimulus or sensation, her cognitive abilities had dulled so much she couldn’t even guess how much time had passed outside.
She could only accurately remember that she’d been locked away for what felt like forever.
How many years had it been? Voracious was terrified.
“N-never again… P-please… have mercy…!”
“Kyahaha! What did I ever ask you to do? And you went and did something I never told you to, huh?”
“U-uh…”
“Still.”
The sudden change in Grimoire’s tone made Voracious lift her head.
“Learning that there was a runaway made you very competent. I’ll give you praise. Thanks to you, this outcome is going to be quite entertaining.”
“A-ah…! Then…!”
“But you failed. Don’t tell me you’re going to deny it? Eh?”
The tiny hope that she might be forgiven vanished again.
If things went this way, she’d be trapped in the book once more. That was certain.
What should she say? How should she answer?
Voracious’s mind spun in confusion.
“So, my foolish subordinate… Surprise! I have a gift prepared for you~!”
“A-surprise gift…?”
“Yes. Normally I would have kept you locked in the book forever… but truly, it’s a surprise!”
—Tap.
Someone stepped out from behind Grimoire.
She wore a suit similar to Harin’s, but the fabric was thicker in more places on her body.
And her eyes were hidden behind a thick visor that covered half her face and both ears.
“With the tiny trace of the magical girl’s consciousness you consumed… I reverse-engineered it! Kyahaha!”
“T-that’s… impossible…”
“It is possible.”
A cold female voice spoke from behind Voracious.
“If I may say so.”
“Nightmare-sama…!?”
“Huhuhu. Nice to meet you.”
Unlike the casual dress of Grimoire and Voracious, she always looked fully prepared for combat.
Compared to the other executives, she seemed more forward-thinking.
The way her movements were crafted purely for agility and fighting made Voracious’s entire body break out in goosebumps.
“W-what did you… do, Nightmare-sama…?”
“Huhuhu. Well…”
—Click, click.
Nightmare walked forward, one step then another, and placed a hand on the woman’s back, who had been standing silently behind Grimoire.
Voracious followed her gaze to the masterpiece.
“A completed work created using the Essence of Nightmare and the traces of that magical girl’s mana…”
“…”
“Without a personality, without a self, only obeying commands, and possessing resistance to the mana of magical girls. A perfect work.”
A purple lightning bolt flashed across the sky, and the surroundings brightened as the figure was revealed.
“The one who will bring about the end of the magical girls of this world.”
The unidentified “work” standing before Voracious…
“My name is Dark Blue.”
In a voice devoid of emotion or self, she spoke.
And the voice of that combatant…
“Give me your orders.”
It sounded terrifyingly like Kim Min-ah’s.