Chapter 19. Yearning (7)
I really am hopelessly simple.
Seriously, where in the world would you find a magical girl who transforms when the girls around her kiss her? ...Well, in a world like this one, I suppose there could be one somewhere on the planet. In a country that manufactures and fields heroes under the label of "magical girl," I mean. I seemed to recall hearing that Japan had magical girls, so maybe one of them worked that way? Or maybe she transformed whenever her boyfriend kissed her. Other countries would be running Hope Circuits too, after all.
I looked at Jihye, who was smiling. For someone who'd come right out and told me to use her, that smile seemed to hold nothing but sincerity. The Jihye in my memories had never been much of an actress.
It felt like the deeper I dug, the more tangled things would get, so I severed the chain of thought before it could go any further.
"Planning to wait here?"
"Huh?"
Jihye looked a little flustered by my question.
"Catch him and bring him back—"
"Every time you turned your head, he darted straight out of your line of sight. No ordinary person can pull that off. That's exactly why I suspected he was an alien."
I said it while staring hard at Jihye.
"If I leave you behind, I get anxious."
Come to think of it, the fact that Jihye attended school separately made me nervous too. The police were supposedly helping, but sadly, I wasn't the trusting sort who could feel safe on the word of cops or government agencies. If things ever went sideways, they might just take Jihye hostage. Hadn't they already tried exactly that once before? If that happened, it would be hard on Jihye—and on me. ...Maybe I should consider my other options.
Besides, she at least had a police escort on her way to and from school, but right now it was just the two of us out on a casual outing—no cops, no anyone, anywhere in sight. Plainclothes officers might have been staked out nearby, but if so, I couldn't see them.
"So for now, shouldn't we at least travel together?"
"W-wait, Jieun—!?"
The instant I sprang upward with everything I had, Jihye's sentence broke off. The end of it shot up so high it turned into something like a scream, except rather than being loud, it came out as a faint screech of metal on metal. The few people nearby all looked up at us.
Jihye was wearing a skirt. Not her school uniform, but one that fell to just above her knees—short, if you felt like calling it that. Up top, a shirt and a flimsy cardigan. I slid the arm clamped around her waist down a little, and with my other hand cupped the outside of her right leg, holding the skirt in place from just below her thigh.
My posture had gotten a bit strange. It was less a princess carry than me hauling Jihye off like a slab of bossam pork, but in this situation an actual princess carry would have left the inside of her skirt gaping wide open toward the ground, so there was nothing to be done. Awkward as the pose was, it might have looked vaguely romantic to anyone watching.
Unable to bring herself to look down, Jihye pulled my neck into a death grip. With her face buried against my shoulder, her eyes were probably squeezed shut too. She didn't seem to have a shred of attention left to spare for what she looked like.
It's a slightly wicked thought, but honestly, seeing Jihye like this struck me as a little cute. She might get mad at me once we touched down, though.
"Don't worry. I'm never dropping you."
When I murmured it by her ear, Jihye nodded with a sound like a whimpering puppy. Well, as long as her eyes stayed shut, she wouldn't feel how high up we were.
With that thought, I lowered my gaze and swept the ground below again. People were pointing smartphones our way. Whether or not they'd read the article, by now the fact that I went around kissing girls must have become something I could never hide again.
I was starting to understand what Rose had meant. She'd been telling me that if I walked around fussing over my surroundings, the only person who'd end up worn out was me.
So, yeah.
Aliens who stalk me get caught.
Sneaking photos to sell to newspapers or broadcasters? Not a single coin of that comes back to us, and I had zero interest in fattening strangers' wallets.
The shutter sound had come from the direction beside where we'd been standing. From up here I couldn't hear it anymore, but I could still pick out one person in that direction. He had a camera trained my way—sunlight caught the lens, and I could see it glinting even from here.
Whether our eyes met through the camera or not, the man hastily lowered it and started scurrying off. His clothes were nothing unusual. But the camera in his hands was an ordinary one, nothing special about it—which meant, at the very least, that he hadn't modified his own body for the camera's sake. The shutter sound meant the camera itself was just a mundane, Earth-made product—well, I'd figure out the rest after catching him.
Watching him like this, I could see how he'd managed to stay just outside my field of view. His movements were quick and nimble. At a glance he looked like an Earthling, but apparently that wasn't the case. Still, I had a far better position than a man who had to sprint and swerve around obstacles on the ground. I was flying. Low-altitude flight like this comes without airplanes or anything else in the way.
"Eek!?"
...Eek?
As I took off toward the fleeing alien, Jihye made that bizarre sound. With the wind hitting her, the fact that we were airborne must have finally felt real. Even with her eyes closed she could feel the air, and she could tell every sound was rising from far below.
On the way down, she might manage a genuine scream. Sorry, but I needed her to hold out a little longer. Just holding her like this, I could feel power flowing through my body. Hadn't Jihye herself told me, straight up, to use anything and anyone that could be used?
"Eep!?"
When I angled downward, Jihye made that sound again and clamped down on my neck. Her face pulled slightly forward, and my nose ended up brushing her hair. She smelled nice. Well, she had spent a good long while washing this morning. I don't smell, do I?
Fussing a little over something that couldn't have mattered less right now, I landed in front of the stalker. There was a fairly loud sound. Not the kind a magical girl makes dropping at full power from somewhere high and smashing into a car, but loud for a person touching down. At that sound, Jihye couldn't even manage a scream.
"Gah!?"
As I landed, the reporter—or stalker, the label fit about as well—froze with that strangled noise. He whirled around and tried to bolt, so I tore after him at full power—ah, right, I was still holding Jihye. Using my hands or shoulders felt a bit off, so I spun my whole body around and gave his back a shove with mine.
Crash-clatter. The man tumbled across the pavement and the camera went flying onto the ground. If it had been a smartphone instead, the lens wouldn't have been knocked out of true, but I doubted that thing could be repaired and kept in service easily. Well, I didn't feel particularly sorry about it.
"What is the meaning of this!?"
Having rolled across the ground and apparently concluded he couldn't run any farther, the man shouted at us.
"Do you have any idea what that camera cost—"
"No idea. Five million won, give or take?"
Cutting him off mid-sentence, I set Jihye down. I steadied her so she wouldn't topple over, then did my best to smooth out the wrinkles my hold had pressed into her clothes. Well, short of running an iron over them, there was nothing to be done about the creases.
"You okay?"
"I-it was scary."
Seeing Jihye answer with such perfect honesty, I fought my hardest to hold back a laugh. If I didn't, she might genuinely get angry. Still, spending her days with me, her old personality had been coming back.
"Five million, my foot! With the lens and everything, it's—"
"With everything, what?"
When I cut him off and turned around, the reporter flinched and fell silent. One look at my expression, and he'd apparently gathered that I was well past merely angry.
"Is how much it cost really what matters here? In this situation?"
"...What did I do wrong?"
"If you did nothing wrong, why did you run?"
When I asked as if dumbfounded, the reporter growled.
"People like you come charging at my camera all the time. This isn't cheap gear, so I protect it as best I can."
"Is that so?"
I said, tilting my head.
"So tailing two minors around and covertly photographing them isn't wrong, then?"
"The public has a right to know, and of course they need to know what this newly appeared magical girl actually is."
"So which is it—you want to run a story about some creep who goes around kissing three girls? Or that magical girls can generate extra power by kissing? What was it—neither of those means anything, does it? That's not about the public's right to know. You're just hunting for whatever article sells."
I said, taking a step toward the reporter.
"If that was your thinking, you should've pointed that fancy camera at the chairman of Noir Corporation instead. Nobody knows what experiments he's running on Earthlings, or whether he's manufacturing them. Magical girls are risking their lives fighting that monster, and you're off snapping pictures of those girls to sell. Isn't that going a bit too far?"
I said, brow furrowed.
"Who benefits from whatever I do, or who I do it with? Who profits off photos of who I kiss? Anyone besides you and your paper? And when a corrupt corporation waves money at you to pull a story, you'll pull it, won't you?"
The reporter looked ready to explode at my words, mouth opening as if to fire back—
"And another thing, you."
I stepped in close and seized the back of his neck.
"What do you think you're doing!? This is assault—"
"If this were your skin, I'd grant you that."
Saying that, I tore the nape clean away.
"I'm no expert, but I've seen artificial skin a few times."
The Earthling robot James had been piloting wore artificial skin too. From a distance it looked almost exactly human, and until my hand touched it, telling real from fake was difficult. But no matter what, artificial was artificial. According to James, they could make versions indistinguishable from the genuine article out of protein, but apparently those were a staggering nightmare to maintain.
The nape felt faintly rubbery. Not thick, though. It had to be a thin layer laid over the surface to pass as real. So it tore—and tore quite easily. An ordinary person's grip might struggle, but for the hands of a magical girl like me, it was more than enough.
And so I ended up holding what looked like a strip of torn human skin. Somewhat gross, but not horrifying—there was no blood on it. And the skin revealed underneath was yellow. Not the "turned yellow" people usually mean, but a brilliant yellow no human face could ever have. Somehow it made me think of Pangpang. Granted, Pangpang's skin was blue. Was this guy from her part of the galaxy too?
"Are you with Noir Corporation? Or do you just like hiding, so you were hiding like this?"
"I-it's obviously because it's easy to hide!"
The man shrieked his answer in a panic. So he at least had the bare minimum of sense.
"Really? Then shall we head straight to the police station?"
"Th-that's..."
"Sorry, but you've got two options. Go to the police station, get investigated, and get deported—or have a private talk with me. If you were sent by Noir Corporation, I have plenty of questions."
"..."
"An ordinary reporter has no reason to hide being an alien. Walk around in your own form carrying an alien-made camera and you're just another dime-a-dozen tourist. But layering artificial skin over yourself means you're in a situation where you have to pass as an Earthling, doesn't it?"
I said with a sharp grin.
"You're an illegal resident, aren't you? You used to be attached to a Noir Corporation subsidiary, but that company's now all but shut down, so your visa never got renewed—isn't that about the size of it?"
I knew next to nothing about alien visas. I wasn't an alien, after all. But I did know that a visa issued for the sake of "working" required the sponsoring company to still be in business.
In this country, aliens—unless they were tourists—were targets of discrimination. Coming all the way to Earth to scrape together money meant you were either doing something shady, or you'd hit the point where your own society had no work left to give you. Even Earthlings with zero interest in anything beyond this planet knew at least that much.
In that sense, Pangpang had been in a slightly precarious position too, but the government knew perfectly well what would happen if they simply shipped her off-planet in her current state. They weren't going to let her out easily. No matter how soundly she'd awakened again.
At any rate, my words seemed to leave the reporter badly rattled.
"I know exactly how this goes, because I've been on the receiving end of people like you before. It's not as if your kind didn't exist back then, either."
After all, I'd been chased down by a stalker once, back when I was with Hayun.
"So let me say it one more time. You are in no way in a favorable position right now. Who cares that your camera broke? Wouldn't you say an illegal resident trailing minors around to photograph them kissing is in far deeper trouble?"
"...What is it you want?"
"For you to leave Earth."
"...And if I refuse?"
"Then I'll take you somewhere myself."
"Even for an illegal resident, torture is illegal in this country."
"Who said anything about torture? I'll hand you over to a legitimate investigative agency. You'd probably end up in prison or something."
Of course, I had no real certainty it would play out that way. Just as Noir Corporation's current chairman didn't treat Earthlings as people, there were more than a few Earthlings who didn't treat aliens as people either. ...Even I had gone a good while without treating James like a person.
Torture? Of course it was illegal. Under normal circumstances, laying hands on an alien civilian would be no different from some unmodernized nation in the age of imperialism torturing the citizens of an imperial power. But the Federation wasn't stupid. Now that they'd learned, one way or another, that Earthlings were of enormous benefit to their Federation, all sorts of debates would erupt furiously inside that "modern society" of theirs. Noir Corporation's current chairman seemed to want to go out and join hands with whatever corners of the Federation might find him useful, but the rest of the Federation wouldn't see it quite so simply.
"But you know, someone who knows even a little about Noir Corporation's inner workings—wouldn't the Federation find them quite interesting?"
"..."
Just as every nation on Earth could close its eyes and wave off the death of one ordinary person, the Galactic Federation—a union of states spanning the entire galaxy—wouldn't hesitate to commit exactly the same sin.
"As far as I know, the Federation still wants this country to join it."
The fact that they still hadn't said otherwise made that certain. If they hadn't, they'd have turned hostile long ago and branded the entire nation terrorists.
"I really do wonder what this country, or the Federation, would think looking at a Noir Corporation affiliate who made that situation catastrophically worse."
"..."
"So—"
"Were you planning to turn him over to the police?"
Ah, things were going so nicely, and now someone else had to butt in. I turned toward the voice and found a big man in a black coat standing there.
Judging by the outfit alone, he looked like he'd strolled straight out of a noir film set in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Black trench coat, suit underneath. Even salesmen these days didn't dress that stiflingly. And yet he didn't quite give off a salesman's air. If anything, he seemed like a man who simply didn't know how to dress for the present era.
There was exactly one reason I thought that. He wasn't an Earthling either. Though unlike the other man, he wasn't wrapped in artificial skin. The man before me had skin of dark red. How to put it—he looked like one of those "devils" from live-action films. The two antennae sprouting from his head clashed with the whole look, spectacularly.
"And you are?"
A stranger, yes—but somehow, going by his air and where he'd likely come from, he seemed connected to Pangpang. At my somewhat edged tone, the man curled his lips into a smile, then drew a single slip of paper from inside his coat and offered it to me. It was... a business card.
"..."
His was not a name I felt any more inclined to actually call him by than Pangpang's. At the very least, it didn't suit this build or that face.
"I serve the Chairman. She apparently judged that a liaison was needed, so I've come in person like this."
I could work out right away that the Chairman he meant wasn't the "current chairman" now on the run. Well, not that the former chairman wasn't also on the run, in her own way.
"..."
I stared at the man without a word. As I narrowed my eyes at him, he bowed with careful politeness.
"We first called on where you've been staying, but you weren't in, so I've taken the liberty of seeking you out separately."
How on earth had he tracked me this far? Interrogating him about each and every one of those details wasn't really an option, given the circumstances.
"Did you come because of Pangpang?"
"You could say that."
"Really, Pangpang...?"
"The Chairman's granddaughter, yes."
The man lifted his head again and spoke while looking at me.
"Thanks to you settling the situation, Miss Jeong Jieun, the Chairman is able to move once more. She instructed me to begin by conveying her gratitude. Thank you."
This was going to get complicated. I turned to look at Jihye.
Jihye was simply staring at the whole scene, eyes blinking blankly.
...There went today's plans, ruined from top to bottom. I let out a long, long sigh.