I Became a Magical Girl in the Spotlight (1)
"Just walking around is enough for me. This filthy fine dust, the blaring horns, even these ridiculously huge crowds of people!"
"...You're a strange one."
Just walking the crowded streets beneath a clear blue sky was enough. This was a landscape you'd never see in the Demon Realm — not even if you went to the human world. Now that I'd actually made it back, I couldn't easily decide what to do, but for now, simply wanderinging the streets like this was plenty.
"Do you not attend school? Surely this country called Korea has compulsory education..."
"I don't even have a birth registration. What school? Now that I think about it, that's a problem in its own right."
I stopped walking for a moment at Ren's words — for a fairy, he sure knew a lot of random trivia. I'd gone through all the trouble of getting a human body and coming to Earth, but my current situation was a mess. I had the body of a teenage girl who looked, at best, like a middle schooler. With a body like this and no legal guardian, there was almost nothing I could do in this country — and the office workers passing by were already shooting me glances, wondering what a kid was doing alone downtown in the middle of a weekday.
"You don't even have any money, do you?"
And there was another problem. The single most important thing for surviving on modern Earth: money. I didn't have a single penny of it.
"Hey, isn't there some way? A way to make money."
"Ghk— what are you talking about?"
I grabbed Ren by the collar and shook him. Since nobody else could see him, I'd look like a lunatic.
"Forge me an ID or something. At least so I can get a part-time job! Or don't you have some kind of activity stipend?!"
"W-why would a Magical Girl need something like th—GYAAAH!"
"Useless piece of trash. Then again, you lot even exploit desperate emotions for profit."
I slammed Ren down and started thinking more seriously. I'd been an idiot. I'd been so obsessed with just getting a body and returning to Earth that I hadn't thought about what came after. Unlike other Magical Girls, who were ordinary citizens before they transformed, I was a complete outsider.
"Ah, shit. This is such a pain."
I scratched my head roughly. Even if I somehow scraped together some money, with an identity like this I couldn't even get a place to live. I'd just be homeless forever.
"So how are you planning to get money, then?"
"I'll just shake down some villains, won't I? That's not the important part right now. I still need a foundation."
"Huh...? What?"
After thinking it over for a moment, I started walking again. Enjoying myself was fine, but this wasn't a day trip. I needed a foundation first.
"What kind of person are you... what exactly are you planning to do?"
"I'm an orphan with nowhere to go. They'll do something for me, right?"
The place I stopped was a nearby police station. This was where they handled this kind of thing, wasn't it?
"What's with that girl? Did she run away from home?"
"Keep your voice down! It looks like... her parents abandoned her."
Sorry, nameless lady cop, but I can hear all of that. Not that I had any intention of correcting the misunderstanding.
"For real?"
"She came to Seoul with just her mom, and her mom said she'd be right back and vanished. Two days ago, even."
"Haa...."
The lady cop took the story I'd casually fed her and padded it out however she liked. Not a bad story, honestly. Didn't know mom's name, no contact info, didn't go to school, and so on. I'd even lied and said I couldn't remember my own name. They wouldn't have any answers.
"What do we do?"
"What do you mean, what do we do? Follow the manual. It's unfortunate the shock messed with her memory, but if they abandoned her on purpose, it's already beyond what we can track down right now."
The middle-aged cop who seemed to be in charge handled it coolly. Exactly how I wanted it. It was a bit boring, but I waited inside the station until that evening, happily scarfing down the snacks the officers brought whenever they fussed over me with pitying looks. Having to play gloomy and withdrawn was annoying, but it was comfortable enough. If I'd been a sturdy adult man instead of a fragile little girl, I never would have received this kind of kindness. Of course, if I'd been a man I wouldn't have walked into a police station in the first place.
"Looks like you'll have to sleep here tonight. But you really can't remember your name?"
"...No."
When night fell, a young officer brought me a blanket.
"Some people who can help you are coming tomorrow. If you listen to them well... you might even find your mom."
"..."
I just nodded without a word. As if. My mother was living just fine somewhere that wasn't this world. Even if she happened to be living in this parallel world, she wouldn't be my mother.
"What a carefree br—giiih!"
I pinned the grumbling Ren — invisible to the cops — under my head and lay down on the sofa. I didn't need anything grand. Getting a decent identity and enjoying myself in moderation — that was my goal.
"Is this the child?"
"That's right."
Early the next morning, someone came to see me while I was comfortably eating cup ramen. It was the welfare facility person the police had contacted — a stout, ordinary-looking middle-aged woman.
"Why are you looking at her like that? Isn't she here to help you?"
"I suppose. But in my experience over the years, people who deck themselves out in pointless luxury are usually empty cans."
"A kid who's only lived a little over a decade, talking like..."
Ren looked like he couldn't understand, but I meant every word. The gold jewelry and designer brands slapped haphazardly all over the woman talking to the police... "Empty wagons make the most noise" was a saying that applied in the Demon Realm too.
"Oh my, such a pretty child, why would anyone..."
"Um... Director. It seems the psychological shock was severe enough to affect her memory. As for the corresponding measures..."
"Of course. I'll take the appropriate measures."
She came over, stroked my hair, and smiled as she reassured the police. My instincts had already kicked in, but I decided not to particularly care. I obediently took her hand and climbed into the van she'd brought.
"Hmm. This is... surely not."
The moment we got in the car, Ren started reacting. I could see his drooping ears twitch.
"It's faint, but an aura of evil clings to this vehicle. Can you feel it? Magical Girls can train their senses to detect evil."
The result wasn't much different from what I'd expected. I snorted a laugh and let myself be taken along. Appropriate psychiatric treatment? Didn't look like she had any such intention. The van left the city and headed for a building that looked like some kind of training compound, tucked away in a secluded spot. Even the walls, lined with barbed wire, rose high enough to pierce the sky.
"Get out."
"..."
Her tone had turned coercive, too. Ren chiming in that the aura of evil had grown thicker was a bonus.
"Teacher Park! Get over here!"
"Yes, Director!"
"Wash this kid and send her in."
"So this is the new one you mentioned."
The woman called Teacher Park approached. What she did was grab my chin, yank it up, and inspect me from every angle.
"Oh..."
"The face is quite something, isn't it?"
"More than that, there's life in those eyes. You. Your own mother dumped you, I hear?"
Teacher Park grinned and casually spat out words designed to wound. I'd roughly known they were this kind of people, but still.
"Follow me. You'd better do as you're told. You don't like getting hurt and punished, do you?"
One thing I was curious about was what they were doing this for. Child abuse was a common enough issue, but this wasn't the Earth I knew to begin with. Was there a reason they were taking the risk of running a facility like this?
"The aura of evil has grown even thicker. It's not an explosive kind of energy, but that makes it all the more viscous and heavy. It's an old aura."
On top of that, Ren had been spouting nonsense ever since we crossed the grounds and entered the building.
"See? They're all your friends."
"...Friends?"
"Brats dumped by their own parents, with nowhere to go."
The inside of the building was, as it had looked from outside, something like a training center or army barracks. The one unusual thing was the iron bars and locked grate-doors here and there — facilities that called a prison to mind. Kids around my current age were in there.
"You. This way."
But where I was taken wasn't among those children. The facility basement. There were rooms here too. The facilities weren't much different from upstairs — just that the bars, locks, and other security were more severe. These were definitely not things you'd use to keep immature kids in line. After they took a photo of my face, I was half-forced into an empty room. The door was locked from the outside.
"...I think I might've gotten mixed up with the wrong people."
"You idiot. Didn't I tell you I could feel an aura of evil?!"
I gave a bitter smile at Ren's words. I hadn't expected to get sent to bastards like this right from the start.
"Shouldn't you escape? You can't live the life you want locked up in here."
"From what you're saying, there's definitely something here. So why haven't you lot, so blinded by Merit, cleaned this place out?"
"Th-that's..."
"Ignoring it because it's not a big enough score?"
Ren avoided my eyes. Seemed I was right. Of course — these guys weren't a charity to begin with. They were thoroughly out for their own profit. And that's where my contrary nature kicked in.
"I'll watch for a bit. I should find out what kind of people they are."
"Youuu..."
I grinned and flopped onto the creaking bed. Why were they gathering kids like me here separately? Kids with no connections, whose identities weren't even clear. Human trafficking or whatever — it was obviously some serious crime. Judging by how Ren didn't consider it a big deal, there was a high chance they were a broker organization that sold kids like me off to other places.