Chapter 18. A Certain Emotion (6)
CLANG!
I was a little taken aback to hear that sound from the truck I'd just struck with my hammer. After all, there hadn't been a single steel plate yet that this hammer couldn't smash through—and right now it wasn't even a hammer, but its pickaxe form.
Yet separate from the trailer refusing to break, the driver at least seemed thoroughly spooked. The high, artificial whine unique to electric vehicles hummed up, and the truck rolled forward. I spread my legs a little and held my balance so as not to be thrown from the swaying trailer.
Fair enough.
Well, if there was something important inside, of course they'd do their utmost to protect it. That much was only natural.
The truck was heading, naturally, toward the Warp Point. That side of things hadn't been sorted out at all yet—not from our end, and not from theirs.
Far in the distance, some two hundred meters away, stood a building that looked for all the world like an airport terminal. Perhaps because no planes ever needed to come and go, it wasn't as colossal as Incheon International, but it was a sleek, well-built facility in its own right.
The trailer, however, wasn't heading for the building's main entrance.
The Warp Point wasn't simply a gateway for people. It could move enormous volumes of cargo in a single trip—that was precisely why the Chairman had fixed on this place. And so, naturally, the building had been constructed in a C-shape so that countless trucks and heavy machinery could come and go, one whole side left wide open.
I had no idea how they'd managed to drive a truck this size all the way around to that open end, but it was already charging straight for it.
Since the place doubled as an international airport in this world, there were of course soldiers and police on hand—
"Aagh!?"
"Stop that truck! Where are our vehicles!?"
"They've already been cut in half!"
...Soldier or cop, no ordinary equipment could stop a magical girl.
It was true they'd become rather awkward to call magical 'girls' in more ways than one, but they fought the same way we did. Each one wore a circuit and fought by pouring out its energy, so from where their opponents stood, it must have felt like facing a tank battalion that flew.
And there wasn't just one truck, either.
Another truck had its trailer section open, fitted with something like the makeshift stage politicians tow around behind their vehicles during campaign season—though naturally, what stood inside was no politician gripping a microphone.
Gunfire crackled from every direction. The Chairman's side had dragged in not only 'Earthling Kaijin' but Kaijin made from aliens of other worlds as well.
Literally, they had committed to all-out war at this one location.
Tactics like striking one spot to draw every eye while feinting at another seemed never to have entered their thinking. Then again, they had to extract the equipment itself, and with the place treated as an international airport, punching through with a single truck would have been hopeless anyway.
And right now, they were a hair's breadth from succeeding.
I ran across the top of the truck. It was moving forward, but by driving all my strength through my legs I could push myself along toward the driver's cabin.
And there I confirmed that thick steel plating had been fitted over the cabin windows as well.
"...Impressive."
They should've just used an armored car and been done with it.
If it had been bulletproof glass, I could at least have tried cracking it with the hammer, but at this rate it wouldn't be much different from the trailer in back. Above all, I couldn't get a proper swing going.
A few beams streaked across the air ahead of me. Up in the sky, Jua was trying to bring the truck to a halt.
Whether a person or an artificial intelligence was driving, I couldn't say, but the attempts were having some effect.
The tires didn't blow. I had no idea what they'd done, but the beams couldn't pop them outright.
Jua noticed it too, and switched to focusing on throwing obstacles in the truck's path. She herded Kaijin into moving in front of it—
"Wh—hey, hold on!?"
CRASH!
An armored Kaijin slammed down in front of the truck, and the whole vehicle jolted violently. I had to bend at the waist, fighting with everything I had to keep my balance and stay aboard.
On top of that, Jua had used magic to churn the road into bumps and send shards of stone flying, so even without a Kaijin underfoot the truck pitched and bucked savagely.
What was that about?
Did she have some kind of grudge against me? I'd thought we'd gotten pretty close until just recently. I mean, she used to sleep with her forehead pressed against my back. Yesterday Jihye had been sleeping with us too, so Jua couldn't claim the spot right beside me—but if she had lain down there, she'd probably have used me as a hugging pillow, no question.
Or... was it that?
In the original work, too, Jua had been close with Hayun. Sure, she snapped at her and sometimes opposed what Hayun did, but that feeling was never a bad one.
In the comments on the official serialization site, the main fanbase had split so cleanly that talk of that sort had all but vanished, but before the official run began, plenty of readers had interpreted Jua's feelings toward Hayun as 'love-hate.'
And some had gone a step further, saying she outright liked her.
So... hmm.
If seeing Hayun kiss me had left her with a twinge of envy—or stirred up jealousy—
THUMP.
I clamped down on the jolting truck and held on. It wasn't violent enough to throw me off, at least. They couldn't know what equipment was inside, and there might be someone in there we needed to rescue—so naturally, they weren't trying to flip the thing outright.
It must be my imagination, then?
By the time I'd steadied myself and straightened up again, Jua, who had been circling in the sky, alighted gracefully at my side.
"...Stopping the truck won't be easy. In this situation it will take some time to reach the end, but there's nothing ahead to block it with, either."
Just as she said, the police and military vehicles had all been blasted to scrap. The road ahead looked like a battlefield. I prayed the casualties were few, but wishing wouldn't change a thing.
"That power from before seems to have fallen a little short. Or is something troubling you? Has your heart not settled enough to turn your circuit all the way?"
"No, it's more that they prepared for us."
Confronted with Jua, who had come out with what sounded like a barb out of nowhere, I was considerably flustered.
It wasn't so much that it stung—my first thought was simply, why is she acting like this all of a sudden?
And wasn't it fair to wonder? Sure, I'd put my hands on Hayun, but holding that against me in the middle of a crisis like this seemed a bit much, no?
Or rather—she'd never actually said anything of the sort, so maybe I was the only one feeling awkward about it.
"Exactly. They've seen how we usually fight, so they'd have prepared thoroughly. Who knows how many Kaijin are riding inside. They'll be throwing every method they have at us."
Jua's tone was impossible to read.
Her face looked a little angry, and yet she spoke so methodically that it only made it more confusing. The analysis itself was sound, wasn't it?
A single circuit could wrap a person in a barrier that shrugged off a magical girl's attacks, so conversely, rigging several circuits together could shield an entire truck.
These were lunatics who carved people up until they could run circuits, so they might well have found other tricks—ways of driving a circuit in some particular pattern, for instance.
"Clearly, as of right now, there's no clean way through."
I was tempted to ask what business she had delivering lines like that while the ground was still bucking under us, and I gave the question some genuinely serious thought.
No—more than that, couldn't we just grab some other obstacle and try stopping the truck? Come to think of it, couldn't we even haul over the wreckage of one of those armored vehicles?
"Which is why you need more power."
"Huh?"
For a moment, I didn't follow what Jua meant.
And as if she meant to pounce on exactly that instant of incomprehension, Jua laid her hands on my cheeks.
Huh?
Why did this gesture feel so familiar?
I mean—it felt like one I'd seen today, too.
To be precise, it was exactly the gesture Hayun used on me.
Wh—no way.
"I don't know how much help I'll be, but going by everything so far, you're certainly a pervert who needs this sort of treatment."
"No, wait—"
Before I could get a single word out, Jua was already rising onto her tiptoes.
Her face closed in with a rush, and there came a soft little smooch.
In a situation like this, maybe that was only natural—but it wasn't quite my lips... rather, something soft and warm seemed to touch somewhere on my cheek, close by.
...
No, what part of that was 'natural'?
Who kisses someone in the middle of a battle like this? Huh?
I couldn't make heads or tails of Hayun or Jua. Did kissing a woman make me look like some strange creature that overflows with power?
Not that it felt bad. Hayun was someone I liked from the start, and Jua... I didn't dislike her either. As Jua herself had put it before—'as a friend, do you like me or dislike me?'—if I were forced to answer with exactly one of the two, I'd have no choice but to say I liked her. I like her, that's why we're friends; if I disliked her, how could we even be friends?
If I'd disliked her, I'd have recoiled long ago from the way she clutched my hand tight at night, or slept pressed right up against my back.
No—right. Okay.
Thinking rationally, even without knowing about my past life, Hayun and Jua alike would know perfectly well that gestures like that give me power.
When Hayun had crushed me in a fierce hug last time, and when Jihye had embraced me, I'd spun my Hope Circuit at full force and done real things with that energy.
Reason it out logically, and that's the only conclusion there is. Jua, of all people, would have reached it even faster.
But actually going for a blatant kiss on the lips between friends—that took someone brimming with self-sacrifice from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, like Hayun. Jua couldn't bring herself to go quite that far.
She didn't seem to have ever had a boyfriend, so this would have been her first kiss. In my past life, if someone had ordered me to give my first kiss to a man, I'd have panicked just the same.
Aiming near my lips at all was already a tremendous sacrifice. Between two girls, no less.
And sure enough, Jua's face was scarlet, fit to burst. Her hands, cupping my cheeks, trembled violently. The tips of her eyebrows were hiked up as if in fury—it seemed the sacrifice had truly been a sacrifice.
But still.
But, you see.
I had things to say too.
"In the middle of a fight?"
When I blurted that out, flustered—
"Th-then what was I supposed to do!? Hayun is fighting way over there, and it's just you and me here! I have to draw out your power somehow and smash this thing open, don't I!?"
No, if she's far away, you could just call for her first... And more than that—calling her 'Hayun' by name mid-battle instead of Blossom said plainly enough that she was flustered too.
Right. It must have been that urgent. In which case, I suppose she had no choice but to pull out every means she had.
The truck was still moving, and it was drawing closer and closer to the Warp Point with every second. From where Jua stood, this was probably the best option she could devise.
I could only blame the fact that girls hugging me set my Hope Circuit spinning.
"...Fine. Nothing for it."
Saying that, I gently laid my hand on top of Jua's head. Startled, she scrambled backward with a yelp and nearly tumbled off the truck.
Hold on—she clings to me like that sleeping at night, and when she can't, she sleeps gripping my hand tight, but she hates it when I pat her head?
Right after pulling that almost-kiss, too?
As I stared at her, more than a little dumbfounded—
"Wh—hurry up and smash the truck already! We're running out of time!"
Jua's words snapped me back to my senses.
Right. Of course.
I couldn't know for certain that Pangpang was riding in this truck, but we had come here to find her, after all.
If the Chairman showed himself, I'd make them pay in full for tangling everything up this badly—but the urgent matter, right now, was Pangpang.
Besides, bullets were raining down over our heads this very moment, and the other magical girls were darting back and forth to buy us time. There was no room in a situation like this for keeping score.
I turned sideways and ran back toward the trailer.
Then heaved the pickaxe high above my head.
To be honest, I couldn't tell whether Jua's kiss had actually worked. Maybe it was because it hadn't been as stimulating as one on the lips—or maybe it was something else entirely; I couldn't say.
But it was also true that Jua's stunt had eased my heart, if only a little. The hope that came from being among friends, and the despair of a friend taken by the enemy.
If I could draw on neither, I wouldn't be worthy of the name 'magical girl' at all.
But at the very least—
Before the enemy, I would not be alone.
If someone needed saving, I had friends who would stand with me. Even at the cost of their lives—and even when it meant resorting to absurd methods like this one.
Because I had friends who would sacrifice themselves to help me without a moment's hesitation.
I shouldn't take that for granted. Part of me even wondered whether I was allowed to feel hope over something like this.
But feelings like that don't bend to my control.
So for now, I would simply be grateful—and use this power.
"Nngh!"
My pickaxe came swinging down with tremendous force, cleaving the air with a hiss. The sound alone was deeply menacing.
And—
WHAM!
The white stake bored inward from its very tip, as if in slow motion. The pointed end struck something solid, and sparks of black and white, jumbled together, sprayed in every direction.
And this time, it didn't bounce off.
Like footage of a knife slicing through tofu shot on a high-speed camera, it pierced the invisible barrier over the surface as though slowly melting its way in.
And at last, it reached the thick steel plate beneath.
The surreal sparks, white shot through with black, gradually shifted into the orange glow you'd see at a welding site.
And then—
CRUNCH.
Steel crumpled with a groan, and the white blade sank deep inside.
BAM!
The 'hammer' at its rear slammed into the rest of the plate with a tremendous crash. The plating sheathing the trailer buckled inward, mangled beyond recognition.
Hope, it turned out, was only hard to grasp the first time; once you found the knack, from then on it lit the way ahead as though it were following right at my back.
I lifted the hammer.
Through the hole, I could glimpse the interior. I couldn't take in everything yet, but it was a far sight better than not being able to break through at all.
My heart pounded like mad. As hard as it had when I'd sunk into despair.
But the feeling this time was the opposite.
Not that I could do nothing—
but that I could.
At least this time, I knew, beyond any doubt, how I would win.
BAM!
The pickaxe came down again. The plate shattered. Two holes now.
BAM!
Another hole opened between the two, and the three merged into a single gap.
At some point Jua had come around to my side. She'd extended a blade from the tip of her rifle like a bayonet, wedged it into the severed edge of the barrier, and was prying it outward.
It could do that, too?
Maybe she'd added that feature because of me, too. After all, just about the only person who'd charge straight at 'Happy Iris' and throw a punch was me.
Jua kept the barrier from sealing itself closed, and I swung the pickaxe—or hammer—down through the gap, again and again.
And then—
"...I can see it."
The interior. I could see it.
The sun was still riding high overhead—the hour when warmth begins to creep in, when the sunlight might even feel a touch hot, so long as the sky stayed clear.
That bright light spilled into the interior.
"...Pangpang!"
I called out the name of my friend inside.
No answer came. She lay with her eyes closed, as though asleep.
No—more precisely, she was sealed inside some kind of capsule.
I knew exactly what that was. Not from the webtoon—because among all the advanced technology that had come from space, it was the one thing we humans had found most useful.
A capsule for treating human beings. One normally used to stabilize the bodies of the critically injured on the very brink of death.
"There's nothing to worry about."
As if she'd read my thoughts before I could voice them, Jua said:
"They used these even in the early days of space travel. You don't have to be critically injured to ride in one. Keeping the body stable while holding someone unconscious for long stretches—that function comes standard even on the newest models."
I gave a vague nod and dove through the torn gap.
"GRAAAH!"
Inside, Kaijin lurked on every side, as if the whole trailer were one big trap.
BAM!
I drove my fist into the solar plexus of one of them—with one of those Energy Blades, the kind I used to conjure back in my combatant days, already drawn from my wrist.
Had they feared that if these things rampaged in here, the Chairman's granddaughter might die?
Or had they simply lacked the capacity to produce anything stronger?
Or, if not that—maybe it was because of the energy now overflowing through my body.
The blade sank into the Kaijin's chest and wrecked the circuit embedded there.
Looking again, the Kaijin were tethered to the walls of the huge trailer. Less to guard the interior, perhaps, than to move and protect the truck itself.
Jua leaped in after me.
"What do we do?"
Jua, who had been staring blankly for a moment as I drove fists and pickaxe into the other Kaijin's midsections, blinked at my question, then said:
"Let's stop the truck first."
"Got it."
With that, I punched my Energy Blade straight through the front of the trailer.
And through the rear wall of the driver's cabin just beyond it.
"Gahk!?"
The person in the driver's seat—quite possibly not an Earthling—whipped around toward me and recoiled in horror.
"Stop."
I told them.
"Or I'll stop it for you."
Gulp.
Even in the middle of all that chaos, I thought I could hear them swallow.