The Perfect Target
"How is a civilian in...!" Red gasped, leaping to her feet. Her finger trembled violently as she pointed at me. I figured she'd react like this.
"Oh, come on, Senior! A civilian? She's our brand-new junior! I just ran into her in the hallway, and oh my gosh, isn't she just as cute as a doll?"
Pinky, standing right next to me, beamed as she grabbed my arm.
"She's right. Her magic power is faint, but she has a very pleasant attitude. She said she wanted to study monsters first and asked us to show her around the archive room," Blue added calmly.
Red's jaw dropped. I widened my eyes and offered the most harmless, innocent smile I could muster.
"A... a rookie? A magical girl...?" Red muttered blankly, collapsing back into her chair.
Well, I couldn't blame her for being shocked. A kid who was definitely a civilian yesterday had suddenly become a magical girl overnight.
"That means you're my senior now, too. I look forward to working with you."
I approached her, deliberately flashing a bright, radiant smile. It felt a bit awkward since I hadn't smiled like this in ages, but I thought I pulled it off naturally.
Yet, for some reason, the look on Red's face as she received my greeting was deeply unsettling. Beyond mere shock, her face drained of all color, turning a sickly, pale gray.
What's with her? Is it really that shocking? I tilted my head, lightly resting my index finger against my lips.
"Wait, what? You two already knew each other? No fair, Senior! You knew someone this cute and you didn't even tell us?!"
"Come to think of it, we haven't introduced ourselves yet. What's your name, rookie?"
"...Mir."
"Oh!" Pinky clapped her hands together and squealed the moment my name left my mouth.
"Mir? Did you live abroad or something?" Pinky asked, leaning in close. *Abroad, huh.* It certainly wasn't a typical Korean name.
"Well, you could say that. The place I used to be is... quite different from here." Though technically, I'm talking about my body. At my words, Pinky's eyes doubled in size.
"Oh my gosh! I knew it! Which country? America? Europe? Or maybe Northern Europe, the holy land of magical girls?"
"...Well, something like that..." I scratched the back of my head, offering a vague, awkward smile. What on earth is the 'holy land of magical girls'? As I trailed off to avoid answering, Blue stepped in to wrap up the conversation.
"Pinky. Don't pester her too much."
"Aw..." I let out a quiet sigh of relief, glad to have dodged the bullet.
"Ugh, fine." Pinky sputtered for a moment, momentarily lost for words, before pumping her fist in the air. "Ooh, I know! Since we finally have a rookie, we have to throw a welcoming party!"
"We just threw one when Snow joined," Blue pointed out.
"That was a whole week ago! A week is practically a lifetime! We absolutely, 100% have to do it!"
Hmm. A welcoming party. What should I do? Since all the magical girls in the Association would gather, it might be the perfect opportunity to find someone who wanted to quit. But...
"Um, I'm really sorry, but it's actually time for me to go to my academy."
"Academy? Ah..." Groans escaped Pinky and Blue simultaneously.
"Well, nothing we can do about that, then."
"Yeah. See you next time, Mir!" Leaving their disappointed farewells behind, I quickly slipped out of the archive room.
"Mir, why didn't you go to the party?" Popo peeked out cautiously, poking its head out only after confirming the coast was clear.
"Well, you see..." On the surface, it did seem like a great opportunity. However, the golden rule of infiltration is to extract only the necessary information and slip away, not to become the main character and draw everyone's attention.
Besides, trying to match the hyperactive energy of those kids would have drained my soul dry before I could even start.
"Because I've already achieved my goal." I reached into my clothes, pulled out a single sheet of paper, and waved it right in front of Popo's nose.
While everyone was distracted by Red's haggard face and the talk of a welcoming party, I had quietly swiped a magical girl's personal record from a shelf in the corner of the archive room.
I sat down on a secluded bench in the corner of the hallway and unfolded the record. On the paper was a photo of a young, innocent-looking girl, alongside the name: Magical Girl Marchen.
"Marchen... Have you ever heard of her, Popo?"
"Marchen? Hmm, it's a pretty name, but Lord Popo doesn't think he's ever heard of her!"
"That makes sense." I ran my finger down the details of the record. Written there was a rather bitter personal history.
An impoverished household, no parents, and only her bedridden grandparents left. It was the tragic life of a young girl forced to juggle her studies, part-time jobs, and her duties as a magical girl.
"She doesn't have the luxury to be a magical girl." Since she was responsible for her family's livelihood, she was likely clinging to the role of a magical girl solely as a desperate means to receive subsidies and allowances.
At the bottom of the record, a short sentence, presumably written during a counseling session, was scribbled:
"I hope Grandma and Grandpa get better soon."
Found her. The perfect target. Energetic girls like Pinky or Blue could wait. The prime candidate who was probably crying right now with a resignation letter clutched to her chest was exactly someone like this.
"I'll have to track her down starting tomorrow." I carefully tucked the record into my clothes and walked out of the Association building.
Pinky and Blue chattered as they left the archive room, and the door clicked shut behind them. Silence reclaimed the room. Red remained frozen, still clutching her pen.
"...This makes no sense." That was definitely her. The civilian girl she had hung out with alongside Harang at the cat cafe just a few days ago.
She vividly remembered pushing the girl in the opposite direction with her own hands when the monster warning went off.
"How...?" Becoming a magical girl wasn't a matter of mere luck. A magic core only formed when one harbored a desperate wish in a life-or-death crisis, or when a pure will to protect someone awakened.
Because of that, without fail, the miracle always occurred during a girl's very first encounter with a monster.
But... "No monster appeared in that sector that day." Not only was the path Mir fled along completely untouched by the monster's attack, but no other monsters had appeared anywhere else that day. If so, where on earth did that girl awaken as a magical girl?
"..."
Red ran a trembling hand through her hair. No, it's just a pointless doubt. Maybe she was too overworked lately to think rationally. Yet, no matter how much she tried to dismiss it, a lingering unease clung to her.
"Right, that mysterious girl..." Red forced the distracting thoughts away and sank back into her chair. "...Why isn't she here?"
She had scoured the Association's official database and even dug through past archives, but there was no information on the mysterious girl—not even a record of anyone with a similar appearance.
"No, this is..." Red's fingers trembled slightly as she scrolled through the database. The deeper she investigated, the more bizarre discrepancies she uncovered.
The most shocking discovery was that all data regarding 'The First' magical girl—the very foundation of the Association—had completely vanished.
"How can the records from the founding era be entirely gone?" It was as if someone had deliberately torn the pages out. Not a single line remained from the first few years of the Association's establishment.
That was the most critical period—when monsters first appeared, plunging humanity into despair, and when the hope known as magical girls first blossomed. Yet, there was absolutely no information on what kind of power the legendary figure wielded, or why the Association was even founded.
"Then... could it be?" Red swallowed hard. Her gaze drifted to the deepest corner of the archive room, resting on a heavy iron door.
The coldly glowing warning sign. Beyond that door lay the Forbidden Library.
"...I've officially lost my mind." What if she got caught? She knew instinctively that it wouldn't end with a simple scolding. In the worst-case scenario, she might be stripped of her status as a magical girl forever.
Yet, Red didn't stop. *I have to know.* She reached out with a trembling hand and pressed her palm against the cold iron door.
"Huh?" Contrary to her expectation that a complex locking mechanism would block her path, *creeeak*. The door swung inward without any resistance. *...I can't turn back now.*
Though a sense of foreboding washed over her, once she started, she had to see it through. Red cautiously stepped into the Forbidden Library.
"Cough, it's so dusty." The interior was blanketed in a thick layer of dust. The musty smell of old paper assaulted her nose, making her scowl.
"This is..." Clear footprints were pressed into the thick dust. It looked like someone had been coming and going until very recently. As if possessed, Red followed the tracks and stopped in front of a bookshelf where the footprints ended.
Unlike the other books, which were buried under layers of dust and faded with age, one book jutted out slightly. It was completely pristine, without a single speck of dust, as if someone had just finished reading it and slid it back in.
"..."
Red glanced around warily before slowly reaching out.
"Ma-in...?" A word she had never heard before—neither magical girl nor monster. Frowning in confusion, Red turned the very first page.