I've Acquired Annoying Eyes That Watch My Enhancements!
Im Hyun-ji! What is this?! Why does the mascot look exactly like my face!
And why is she wearing a completely snow-white frilly dress?! She looks exactly like a magical girl transformation outfit!
But even faced with my burning glare, Hyun-ji simply flashed a sly smile, bent down behind me, and gazed adoringly at the little mascot.
"Aww, whyy~ isn't she just adorable~? Look at those darling little twintails~. I could just pinch those cheeks and take a bite~."
"Adorable, my foot! If it weren't my own face, maybe!"
Ugh… seriously, it's like the me in the mirror crawled out and walked around. That exact face I'd been staring at for days now.
"As a mascot, my cheeks do not become squishy like my Master's, even if bitten."
The mascot who wore my face stared at Hyun-ji with a perfectly blank expression as she said it.
Unbelievable. Both of them, absolutely unhinged. What kind of nonsense was that?
"Hey! My cheeks aren't squishy either!"
"Magical girl bodies carry average cheek fat, and visually speaking, Master's cheeks appear plumper than average. I merely stated a fact."
"What kind of lip is that to your own master?!"
"Correcting my master's misconceptions is also part of a loyal mascot's duty."
…This girl is worse than Tokkaengi. Twice as insufferable, at least.
Hyun-ji was already doubled over, cackling. Oh, come on!
After having her laugh, Hyun-ji picked up the mascot, who had been sitting quietly, held her up in front of my face, and made the introductions.
"Right, we should start with a name, shoulnd't we~? Her name's Yeonji~. 'Yeon' from Yeon-sol, 'ji' from my name — Yeonji~"
I suppressed my irritation just enough to ask Hyun-ji politely, through gritted teeth.
"Who on earth asked you to name her like that?"
"It's a joint creation of ours, y'seee~"
"It was never a joint creation!"
"Well, if you don't like it, you name her then~. Being so mean, you're hurting my feelings~."
At that, the mascot made a show of rubbing her eyes and hung her head low.
"Sob, sob, sob. I quite like the name Yeonji, but my Master is simply too cruel."
…Her fake crying is so obviously fake that it just ticks me off all over again. And the fact that she's crying with my face makes it even more infuriating.
"Why did you have to copy my face of all things?"
"Hmm, to analyze your mana with precision, the mascot needs high resonance sensitivity~. Which means she has to match your body as closely as possiblle~."
"Correct. She was designed that way from the production stage, yet my Master is simply too cruel. Sob, sob, sob."
"…Seriously?"
"It didn't have to be the face too, thoughhh. That part was just my taste."
"Hey! Im Hyun-ji!"
I seriously can't live like this!
"Sob, sob, sob. My Master must simply hate how pretty I am."
The mascot called Yeonji turned her fake sobbing up even louder.
"Haaah…"
A sigh escaped me of its own accord. The two of them were shaking my sanity in perfect sync.
Continuing down this line of conversation felt like a one-way ticket to a full-blown aneurysm, so I changed the subject.
"Okay, quit the fake waterworks and let's get down to business. So if I enhance something, you can verify the effects precisely?"
Only then did Yeonji drop the act, look me straight in the eye, and answer.
"That is correct. I analyze mana to determine exactly how my Master's magic has influenced a target. That was the top priority during my production, so I am confident there exists no enhancement effect I cannot read at present."
Yeonji crossed her arms and floated around the room, practically radiating pride. Sure, some exaggeration was probably mixed in — but if she could say it that confidently, she must have at least the receipts to back it up.
Hmm. Well then, shall we put her to the test?
"Fine, then let's enhance something random."
I glanced around the room, and my eyes landed on the very box Yeonji had arrived in.
Hardness would be too obvious, too easy to read. So instead—
'Let this box become delicious.'
Could she properly analyze an enhancement this absurd?
I tapped the box lightly with my hammer. It glowed just like every enhancement I'd ever done, then the light faded — and Yeonji stared at the box like she'd been waiting for exactly this.
Then she crinkled her eyes in an expression of pure contempt and fired back with a tone of utter pity.
"…I have confirmed that my Master's tastes are perverse. So you have a fetish for wanting to eat boxes, do you? And not just any box — the one I was shipped in."
"Hey! It's not like that! It was a demonstration — I told you to analyze it!"
"Yes, yes, of course. The sugar and salt content inside the box has increased noticeably. Upon consumption, you may expect a sweetness comparable to an average cake, and a saltiness on the level of instant ramen."
…It produces a flavor that strong?
But Yeonji looked down at me and added:
"Do not misunderstand. I said sweet and salty — I never said delicious. Does my Master believe that sweet-plus-salty automatically equals tasty?"
…Check out the sass on this thing?
"Furthermore, the material remains corrugated cardboard in its entirety. Ingestion is therefore strongly discouraged."
"I wasn't planning to eat it!"
Well, at least her capabilities were confirmed beyond doubt. Even if I did something ridiculous with an enhancement from now on, I'd be able to verify most of the results.
Though I wouldn't mind doing something about her personality or the way she talks.
"Hyun-ji unnie, can you change her personality? The way she lords over me is a bit…"
Hyun-ji just shrugged in response.
"We couuld change her personality, but I wouuldn't recommend it~."
"Why not?"
"Mess with her carelessly and you risk a conflict with her existing settings — bugs that tank her performance, y'seee."
Oh, right. She keeps getting called a mascot that I momentarily forgot — she's an AI. An AI, Yeon-sol.
"If she were the type to just do housework around the house like Tokkaengi, it'd be one thing. But your mascot has to take extremely precise mana measurements, y'knooow."
Then Yeonji, orbiting me in a slow circle, landed another hit in a flat, monotonous tone — a far cry from her needling a moment ago.
"It was not a mere, simple personality adjustment. It was an act tantamount to hypnotic brainwashing — erasing a mascot's persona and overwriting it with a brand-new existence."
…You said that like an AI printout on purpose, didn't you? And what do you mean, 'hypnotic brainwashing'?! Hypnotic brainwashing?!
That was the last straw.
I snatched the little pest out of the air where she buzzed around me like a fly and flicked her square on the forehead.
"Ow."
She clutched her forehead with both hands and rubbed it.
Oho. So mascots can feel pain after all.
At which point Hyun-ji snorted and twisted the knife again.
"You think I'd bolt a useless pain sensor onto an AI? Shee's actiiing, that one~."
……
Come to think of it, her eyes didn't crinkle even a little, did they?
"Ah. You caught me."
That perfectly placid voice, and the arms crossing again — and my lid finally blew clean off.
"AAARGH! Take her back, Im Hyun-ji! I want a refund!"
…After that brief uproar, I sank onto the sofa in half-hearted surrender.
Hyun-ji sipped her drinks beside me with insufferable smugness, while Yeonji, at some point, had settled daintily onto my knee, swinging her little legs back and forth.
Like a pair of fluffy dumplings glued to me.
…At this rate I was going to spend the whole day getting roasted, so I steered the conversation elsewhere.
"So, we can get to work now, right? I've been waiting on Yeonji this whole time, haven't I?"
Hyun-ji set down her glass, stretched lazily, and answered.
"Mm-hmm. That's why I put the other girls' commissions on hold, after aaall~. The unnie who built your mascot bumped the others down your queue too, y'see~."
Then Yeonji looked up at me and spoke.
"Current enhancement requests: 107 in total. Of those, 8 have been classified as 'Persons of Interest.'"
"You just got here — when did you even input all that?"
"I organized and analyzed the call log data Im Hyun-ji left on her computer."
Oh. So that's what she was doing during those five minutes she disappeared?
"By the way, what's a 'Person of Interest' supposed to be?"
"Among the representative magical girls requesting enhancements, individuals who may become hostile should their commissions be delayed. I cross-referenced them against the Magical Girl Administration's evaluation metrics built into my systems."
…She's actually pretty capable, huh? A bit sharp-tongued, but as support, she seems solid.
Hyun-ji chimed in with the explanation from beside me.
"Plenty of trainees put in enhancement requests too, buuut the popular, stronger representatives are the ones who really make a fuss when they get antsy~."
"So you're saying I should enhance their gear first?"
"That is correct. Master has already produced meaningful results enhancing the wands of Ahn Seo-yoon, Choi Soo-bin, and Park Ji-yoon. Considering that, there is no reason to delay. It is an opportunity to elevate your social and economic standing."
Yeonji answered the question I'd aimed at Hyun-ji. Hyun-ji nodded along in agreement.
Well, fair point. If I could squeeze even ten percent margins out of all of them, I'd be sitting on an obscene pile of money.
And buying their goodwill meant securing some powerful backers, too.
"Oh, and one of your 'Eight Persons of Interest' — Jeok-wol — is apparently hunting for bus tickets right nooow~. Sib-iwolhwa's trying to talk her out of it, buuut~ she might not hold out looong?"
At Hyun-ji's playful remark, I snapped fully awake.
With Ji-yoon, things had ended in tears — but if I ruined Jeok-wol's katana…
No. Don't panic, Jung Yeon-sol. I might still be too green for this.
So I shook my head and answered.
"No. I want to start with the trainees' gear first."
"Hmmm… and whyyy is that?"
"I went through trial and error enhancing Ji-yoon's wand. I failed to understand exactly what she wanted, made a mistake, and nearly hurt her because of it. So I'd rather not lay hands on a representative-class magical girl's wand from the get-go."
Thankfully I'd been able to overwrite the enhancement, so Ji-yoon's wand had turned out fine in the end.
But what if that had simply been a stroke of luck?
What if there were limits I didn't yet know about — a cap on overwrites, or hidden risks in repeated enhancement — and the wand ended up ruined because of it?
In games, one careless press of the enhance button had turned a three-million-won weapon into glittering dust.
What guaranteed a magic wand would be any safer?
And if it broke, it wouldn't just be broken equipment — I'd be wrecking that person's entire career as a magical girl.
"So trainees breaking their stuff is fine, is whaat you're saying~?"
Hyun-ji's eyes narrowed as she looked at me and asked.
That wasn't it, either. I shook my head quietly.
"That's why I'll work my way up — enhancing relatively low-risk items first to confirm things as I go. A completely ordinary object nobody cares about, then a keepsake a magical girl carries often, then a wand. In that order."
The point was to find out how many times I could stack enhancements, and whether the process itself risked damaging the item. Now that Yeonji could analyze things at my side, the results would be that much more reliable.
"And after that, I'll enhance the trainees' wands a few more times to build experience. Working from the data Yeonji accumulates means far less danger, too."
"And if that magical girl says she has to go fight right now, hmm~?"
"Then schedules matter. Someone who can spare a few days, and someone who'll still agree after I explain the risks. I won't take just anyone."
Hearing my answer, Hyun-ji swirled the drink in her glass and studied me with an odd light in her eyes.
"Pretty cautious, aren't yooou. Well, can't argue with any of it. Could be we've just been lucky so far, after aaall~."
"I learned my lesson with Ji-yoon. If I make a bigger mistake in front of the people Yeonji flagged as Persons of Interest, it won't end with anyone crying."
"Then, Master — shall I select a candidate from among the trainees?"
When Yeonji looked up at me and asked, I shook my head.
"No. There's already a magical girl I have in mind."
Someone at the same office — a trainee whose claim to go first no one could reasonably dispute.
The one who, right after Ahn Seo-yoon, had thrust her wand into my hands and been the very first to beg for an enhancement.
If I was going in order, then offering it to her first was only right.