The Magical Drunkard
"Heyyy, Charlotte... What've you been putting on your skin lately? It just keeps looking better and better..."
"I'm using the exact same stuff I always have."
"Is that sooo? Being young really is the best... Back in the day I could do the bare minimum and my skin would stay so soft. These days it just feels dry and... all crumbly, you know...?"
"I wouldn't put it like that. You're plenty pretty as it is, Team Leader."
"Heheh... What's with the sudden flattery...?"
If there was one thing I could say for certain, it was that a drunk Team Leader was a little... no, quite a bit... of a handful. She wasn't a lightweight, exactly — our resident magical lady simply happened to enjoy a drink a great deal, and with a spread of genuinely excellent food already laid out in front of her, she had no intention of letting the opportunity pass. Instead she started coaxing me to drink with her, and before long a proper drinking party was underway. The result of all that was the situation I now found myself in.
"Nnnh... If you'd just stop saying those mean things, you'd be so, so pretty..."
"Team Leader, you sound like a really suspicious boss right now."
"Hhk..."
We'd started the meal sitting across from each other, but once the Team Leader got properly drunk she could no longer keep herself upright, so I'd ended up bringing her around to sit beside me. From there she kept pressing her shoulder and her chest against me, pinching and tugging at my cheeks, and generally making herself at home. She was a beautiful woman doing all of this, so I couldn't honestly say I felt much aversion — but even accounting for that, she was still my boss. It was awkward in more ways than one.
On top of that, a supervisor who was ordinarily so gentle had, the moment the alcohol hit, started giggling with these eheheh and ohohoho little laughs. Age aside, the Team Leader had always been a quietly composed person — but once the alcohol was in her system, she was a complete and utter goofball.
"I wanna be young toooo..."
"You already look plenty young. When we first met, I thought you were a regular employee, not the Team Leader."
"That's flattery. Pure flattery."
"Mm..."
Ordinarily, whenever I teased her about her age, she'd tell me to knock it off — and yet here she was, telling me to knock it off for saying she looked young. What exactly was the pattern here? I knew perfectly well that few things were more exhausting than conducting an in-depth study of a drunk person. But when she kept rubbing those soft, ample curves against my shoulder and carrying on like this, I couldn't help but think a few extra thoughts. That it felt nice — soft, obviously — was one of them.
"Haaah... I'm so jealous..."
"You're pretty too, Team Leader."
"Kids don't understand this feeling..."
"You look plenty young as it is. If you just took the glasses off and went a little lighter on the makeup, nobody out on the street would ever guess you were thirty. When I tease you, it's only out of fondness, you know..."
"Nngh... that special brightness unique to young people just keeps spilling out of you..."
"......"
This is getting annoying. I had no idea what tune I was supposed to play along to — whether I should keep praising her, or tease her the way I usually did. More pressingly, though, I figured it was about time we got up from the table, and I said as much. It was already ten o'clock. Tomorrow might have been a day off, but this old soul was just about ready for bed. Having a drunk Team Leader wandering around in public was a problem all by itself.
"Nnnh... is it because summer's almost over...? The weather's just a tiny bit chilly."
"It is. Being in a back alley probably doesn't help."
"Mm, yeah, that must be it."
After settling the bill for the crab, the grilled prawns, and the seafood dumplings we'd so thoroughly enjoyed, we headed out into the alley behind the restaurant. The Team Leader's car had been left in the parking lot, and there was only one reason we'd come straight to a back alley like this: there was no way she could drive in her current state.
"I wanted to take you all the way home, but my head's all spinny... hehe..."
"It's fine. I wouldn't want to impose on you anyway — and the other women from the office have been over to your place before, haven't they?"
"That's true..."
The Team Leader's Awakened ability was Magical Girl. Not in the sense that she used magic — in the sense that she became a magical girl. She transformed into the kind of outfit little girls would wear, all frills and ribbons, and then used magic. That was her power. Unlike her days on active duty, she was retired now, working as an ordinary team leader at the Welfare Bureau. Casually using an ability out on a public street was something she had every reason to avoid, which was why we'd had no choice but to come down this alley.
"Magical Girl...!"
"Trans! Form!!!"
⟨ Magical Girl Transformation ⟩
"Pfft..."
The moment she shouted the phrase, the back alley lit up bright as day for about five seconds — and the Team Leader in her business suit became a magical girl. Magical girl. Every time I saw it, I couldn't help thinking those were the wrong words. Not that I was calling her unattractive. The purple-tinged hair, the amber eyes — every last feature belonged to a genuinely beautiful woman. But she was thirty. Magical lady felt like the far more accurate term.
"...Shall we go home?"
"Yes. Let's go home."
"...Yeah. I'll get us there fast."
A sleeveless frilled blouse in an overall black, cinched by a corset that drew her waist into an even prettier line. A frilly miniskirt that put an almost indecent stretch of thigh on full display. A headband to keep her hair from getting in the way during a fight. Aside from the colors she would never normally wear, it was a surprisingly bright outfit, and I found it fascinating every time I saw it — this woman who always dressed in neat suits, slacks no less, standing there covered in frills. The Team Leader was thoroughly embarrassed by the transformation, but to my eyes it just looked like she'd put on a slightly unusual outfit. Like cosplay, more or less.
This is... thirty years old? No matter how I looked at it, she appeared far younger than what people generally pictured when they thought of thirty. Age aside, she simply registered as a beautiful person.
"Heheh..."
I'd been having a fairly hard time of it thanks to the drunk Team Leader just moments ago — but the instant I saw this thirty-year-old transform into a magical girl, into a magical lady, I couldn't help wanting to tease her.
"Ugh... at my age, a magical girl transformation just doesn't feel right."
"It suits you, though."
"Wearing this many frills at thirty is a bit much, isn't it..."
Perhaps because the transformation had improved her body a step beyond an ordinary person's, the Team Leader was answering me far more lucidly than before. Still, we were standing in a gloomy back alley, and I saw no reason to linger here chatting.
"Would getting held by a thirty-year-old magical girl count as a reward, or a punishment? If it's a pretty magical lady like you, I'd say reward."
"Could you stop with the weird comments for a second...? Even transformed, I'm still a little dizzy from the alcohol..."
"Yeees."
I nestled myself comfortably into the Team Leader's arms, and she wrapped one around my waist. Coming to this alley in the first place, transforming — all of it had been for the sake of getting to her house. And though she was a magical girl, that didn't mean she could use anything like teleportation. The magic she used was the kind that suited the name perfectly. She gave her wand a light flick, and the two of us began to rise slowly into the sky. It was, in the truest sense of the word, a magical moment.
"Whoa..."
It was a sensation I could never get used to, no matter how many times it happened. Who in the world wouldn't find it wondrous, literally floating up into midair? There was no rope. We weren't boarding a plane or a helicopter. No wings sprouted from anyone's back. We were simply — literally — rising into the sky. Of course it was amazing.
Once we'd climbed above the tallest buildings, we began to fly, soaring well over the rooftops. Held in the Team Leader's soft embrace, slipping between the buildings, looking down on the rooftops from above, watching the city pass beneath us one piece at a time... before I knew it, we had arrived at her home.
"Nnnh... flying through the air is always such a wondrous feeling. They call it magic, but you're literally flying with no equipment at all."
"Want me to do it again sometime? During the day... I'd be embarrassed, with all the attention."
"If you feel like doing it, then that's when we'll do it. It's not like I'd go demanding a zoom-zoom airplane ride whenever I got bored. I'm not a baby."
"That's true. Shall we head inside? I didn't exactly tidy up that much, but it shouldn't be a problem."
"Yes, Team Leader."
At any rate, we had arrived at the Team Leader's house on the outskirts of the city. Not an apartment, not a townhouse — a detached home set quite a way out from the urban center. That was precisely why we could arrive in such an unusual fashion, and why we could stand in front of the house looking the way we did.
"Hahh... maybe I should just skip de-transforming and go straight to sleep?"
"Because you're drunk?"
"Yeah. If I were alone it wouldn't matter, but I have a guest. And what I showed you a little while ago is a bit embarrassing...?"
"Heh. That was pretty funny, yeah."
"Haha..."
Still in her completed magical girl transformation, the Team Leader was in what counted as a fairly ordinary state — completely different from the thoroughly drunken mess she'd been. But that was only possible because she was transformed. The change had made her body far healthier, which was the only reason she could withstand most of what she'd drunk. Which meant that if she undid the transformation now...
"...I should undo it after all, right?"
"If you stay transformed too long, doesn't it start wearing on your body? Magical girls have mana, or some kind of energy like that, don't they?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"Then you should just undo it and relax. You've taken care of other people plenty of times, and so have I. It's fine to let loose."
"Haha... Then I'll leave myself in your hands, just for today?"
With that, she gave her magic wand a little wave. The magical girl costume vanished in a burst of light, and the Team Leader in her business suit stood in its place. She opened her eyes with every appearance of being perfectly lucid —
"Charlotteee... should we drink some moreee?"
"Haha..."
— and just like that, the magical drunkard from thirty minutes ago was back.