Magical Girl Neige
“Magical girl Neige.”
“Junior Mana?”
“Yeees, senpaaai…?”
Mana smiled with an airy, scattered laugh, and the sight of it felt so much like she was on something that Seol couldn't help asking.
“…Are you okay?”
“Hmmm? That's strange…. Chae-rin asked me the exact same thing, senpai. Back then, she kept saying I looked feverish when she saw my face, you knoow.”
“I really don't get why everyone keeps acting like that. I'm perfectly, perfectly sane. Hehe. I'm just so happy, that's aaall.”
“R-right…?”
“Really, I am! I could swear it on Ggyu's life! I am absolutely in my right mind.”
“Did you happen to meet my sister, too?”
“Ahaha, you mean senior Hong? Mmm, we did brush past each other, but she didn't seem all that interested in me, noo.
I did see her walk right by me in her magical girl outfit and turn down some alley or other, though.”
Something was wrong. This wasn't the Mana Seol knew. What on earth had happened in the past few days?
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“Is the magical girl work going okay?”
“Even when I tryyy, my Ggyu doesn't really want to talk to me these days~”
“…Is that so?”
“She's been sooo quiet? Right, Ggyu?”
But her staff did not move. Like a plastic toy, it had lost its light and wouldn't so much as twitch.
Something was off. Seol's instincts were sounding the alarm.
As Mana turned to leave and Seol reached out a hand to stop her, a scent drifting from the girl's hair tickled her nose.
'This is….'
It was far too similar to the sweet pink slime of the tentacles — the scent that still made her lower abdomen throb deep into every night.
Seol glanced at her phone. There was still time. In the end, she sent her sister a text to put her on standby, and steeled herself.
She would tail Mana.
If it came to it, she would knock her out cold to stop her.
At least on the surface, Mana seemed to be enjoying her college life to the fullest. She was dense, too — she didn't seem to notice Seol tailing her at all.
'But… did she really have that many friends?'
Seol didn't know Mana well, but she could at least recognize the friends Mana normally kept company with. One of them was quite the social butterfly, so Seol had often spotted her out on the street while working magical girl shifts.
But Mana wasn't the type to be this proactive about making friends. Groups of them would join other friend circles together, striking up conversations as naturally as breathing.
“Hey, you busy with that assignment? We're working on something really similar right now — want to come join us?”
“Coffee's on me.”
“Our assignment's pretty much done, so we could all go over it together. What time are you free later?”
'Unless you're a top-tier social butterfly, you wouldn't even dream of trying that.'
What was stranger still was that Mana's friends were all just as flushed in the face as she was. Every breath they took seemed somehow ragged and panting, and every now and then they would shudder, eyes squeezing shut.
And then they'd repeat it.
When each class ended, they'd focus on 'making friends'; when break came, they'd slip into the bathroom and stay gone for a while; then they'd emerge again and head to the next lecture… an endless loop of the same.
The peculiar part was that whoever went into the bathroom would come out as another 'friend', walking out hand in hand.
'…This is seriously dangerous.'
Somehow, Mana had gotten tangled up in something dangerous. Or she might have fallen victim to some kind of psychic attack. But the truly dangerous thing was the thought of diving in alone like this.
'Still, it's a delicate situation. The Bureau wouldn't ask a single question before forcing her to her knees. They'd call it stripping Mana of her magical girl powers — they might snap her staff right in two.
Tell the Manager? Ugh… that's a bit….'
She didn't want to drag her little sister into something this dangerous. Asking Hong's friends was dicey too. But calling the Magical Girl Management Bureau meant Mana's situation would be treated as a threat.
'Am I being stupid?'
Arms crossed, she hummed and hawed over it. She'd clearly gotten into the magical girl business on a lark — had she really needed to agonize this much?
— Your judgment is correct.
— Risking yourself alone to rescue a junior does not compute into a favorable cost-benefit analysis.
Snow's synthesized voice chimed in her head.
'Maybe. But… I don't really feel like doing that, somehow.'
— State reason.
'Well, she's a junior I've spent a fair bit of time with, isn't she? Besides, without her, I'd just end up working more shifts.'
Saving people was what magical girls were for.
Which meant the only conclusion available to a magical girl was, inevitably and utterly predictably, going in by herself.
'…Guess I'm doing this.'
Seol stopped in her tracks. Evening was already creeping up. Her stomach growled, and she figured it was about time to call off the stakeout and head home.
“Senpaaai? Is that you?”
“Wha—!?”
She spun around, and Mana was standing there.
She smiled that airy smile. Still just as unnatural as before.
“…Oh. Hey, Mana.”
“Senpaaai, what are you doing here?”
“Just… passing through. Wait, how did you know I was—huh?”
“Ggyu told me. Right, Ggyu? …Ngh. Mm. Yeah, that's right.”
Mana hunched in on herself. For just a moment her body shuddered, and she let out a hot, heavy breath. …There was no staff in her hand. But Seol could have sworn she heard a strange, wet squelch.
“So… did you come here just to see meee…?”
“Well, if I put it that way, it does sound weird. Come to think of it, where are your other friends?”
“Ah, I went off to make friends.”
“…Seriously, Mana. Something's off about you.”
“Yeees?”
Hehe, Mana laughed.
“Thank youuu. But did I really change, though? In what way?”
Actually saying it out loud turned out to be harder than she'd expected. How was she supposed to tell her that she'd grown clingier, sweeter, more vaguely suggestive than before?
While Seol fumbled for the right words, Mana tilted her head slightly.
“Senpai, were you curious about me?”
Choose your answer carefully. Seol steadied herself inwardly.
“You see, it's just~? You seemed a little feverish! That's what seniors are for, right?”
“Ahaha…. You know, actually, I've kind of been wanting to talk with you too, senpai.”
“You have? Right now?”
“Yeees.”
“Out here, though—”
“There are so many people passing by, aren't there? And it makes me uncomfortable, seeing you just standing here like this, senpai.”
There was a smell in the air. A sweet one.
“…Fine.”
“Then let's go together~”
And so, the two of them found themselves walking side by side, quite suddenly.
“Hmm hmm hmmm~”
Mana hummed a little tune in high spirits, but the way her body twitched and jolted every few steps looked deeply, strangely suggestive. Enough to make the lower abdomen that had been throbbing since that day stir in response.
Seol scanned her surroundings. This wasn't one of the places Mana usually frequented. They were walking in precisely the opposite direction from the dormitory where the girl lived.
Keeping an ear out for footsteps nearby, Seol asked.
“Hey. Can I ask you something?”
“Yes?”
“…I haven't seen that one friend of yours all day. Mind telling me where she is or what she's up to?”
Her grip tightened around her staff.
“Ah…, you mean Chae-rin? We were supposed to go together today, but since she didn't come to school, I'd guess she's just enjoying herself plenty at home…?”
“Enjoying herself?”
“Yeees, feeling really good. She's my precious friend, so I introduced it to her, you seeee. Or maybe she's being loved over there right now…. Envy her, honestly.”
Suddenly, Seol stopped walking.
Stretched out before them, invisible to everyone else, was a dome-shaped barrier.
A barrier was a block. Nine times out of ten, it existed to keep whatever was happening inside from being seen.
“Senpai?”
“…Yeah. Let's go.”
The moment the two of them crossed the barrier, the scenery changed. A sealed-off space where the colors of the sky had dulled to gray….
And in that instant, Seol heard a sound drifting from somewhere deep ahead.
It sounded like a woman crying out. Not cries for help — something closer to wailing at the top of her lungs.
Ah, ahh. More, moooore. It feels so good. Sounds like that.
“Ah…, it sounds like they're enjoying themselves over there.”
They pressed deeper in, and the sounds grew vivid. The sounds were these:
“Ngh, oh…♡ Hiiiihn!! Hyah, ngh, ohh…. Oh! Haahngh! Ughhh…!!”
Squelch, squelch, squelch.
“Good, it's so gooood!! Deeper, deep♡ Oh, ohhooo…! Ahhek, he…. Hih!!”
“Here we aaare.”
Mana stopped at the mouth of the alley. Breathing hot and heavy, as if she simply couldn't wait to show off the unknown space beyond.
The shadows peeled away.
Tentacles. Tentacles, everywhere.
Yu Chaerin — and not just Chaerin, but countless others, all the friends who had spent the day at Mana's side — were held in the tentacles' embrace, being stirred and ravished.
“So happy♡ Ah! Hiiyah! Deeper! More, moaaare…♡ Hehe, hehe…♡”
“Ngh, oh, oh…♡”
People who sang the praises of the pleasure the tentacles gave and craved nothing else. People being hoisted up toward the sky by writhing limbs, people begging for more, please, more….
The tentacles that had once been confined to the ceiling had multiplied until there were enough to fill the entire alley.
“Wh-…what is this.”
At the grotesque sight she was seeing for the first time in her life, Seol instinctively took a step back.
“What do you meaan…? It feels wonderful, doesn't it?”
Mana smiled sweetly and lifted the hem of her skirt.
A bare, smooth slit with not a thread of underwear. Nectar dripping endlessly from it — and a tentacle, bound around one of her thighs, squirming ever so slowly against her.
“Aaahn, Ggyu…♡ Are you embarrassed…? Don't move so muuuch…♡”
There must have been plenty of them. Seol might well have been ravished on her way here, too. Tentacles cloaked in mana. An awareness-concealing barrier wrapped around the whole place — you only saw them once you knew to look.
“How… could, this….”
Beyond them, Mana's friend Chae-rin was bound in tentacles of her own, mewling and spurting.
And there — someone who looked like a magical girl from another region.
This was something that could only exist with a magical girl's complicity. The answer she had refused to accept was spread out before her eyes.
“M-Mana. You…!!”
“If it feels good, you shouldn't resist it…♡”
The burning Lechery Crest on Mana's abdomen flared with light. The tentacle squelched and writhed, conveying its intent to her.
“Mmnn…♡ O-okayyy…♡ Yes, since you're my precious senpaaai, I should tell you…♡ Ggyu, be gentle…♡”
Her light was still there. But something about it was undeniably different. A wicked, insidious aura curled around the edges of her gaze.
Outwardly, she was still the magical girl Mana — but this was unmistakably an apostle.
A proxy of the tentacles, and an enemy of magical girls.
“Ahaha…ahh. Good things are meant to be shared, you know…?
The tentacles make us feel so good…, so we want to spread this joy to more and more people…♡”
From somewhere deep within the alley, wisps of pink smoke came slithering toward Seol along with the tentacles.
“Now then…, Senpai Seol, come feel good with us…♡”
