Idle Chatter (4)
Quitting school to do this work was something I hadn't much cared for, at first.
No matter how boring school lessons were, they were never as tedious as simple manual labor. Besides, the hours I put in on the site were longer than the hours I'd ever spent studying.
Of course, if the school had started running mandatory evening study sessions, the comparison might have shifted.
But, how should I put it.
"Time to eat, everybody! Food!"
It wasn't some enormous work site; the jobs were all short-term, and the crew was small enough to count on two fingers—or maybe it was precisely because of that that this thought occurred to me. I found myself deciding this was work I could handle.
I knew perfectly well why. The only reason I could feel this at ease while doing such physically punishing labor was the circuit I wore. In my original body, I'd have been worn down to a rag by mid-morning. I'd always done work with my hands, so I had a basic foundation of stamina, but the endurance needed for labor that stretches on for hours is a different animal from the burst of strength a single fight demands.
In that sense, honestly, Jigupa was impressive. He was actually holding up in this environment.
Granted, the 'reason' I knew for Jigupa being here was nothing more than what Jigupa himself had told me, so the truth might be something else entirely—but whatever his real purpose was, he was working hard and making a life on this land at an age not so different from mine, pursuing the things he wanted to do in his own way on top of it all.
"What?"
Noticing me staring at him, Jigupa asked. Then he glanced at the gimbap in his hand and held it out toward me.
"Still hungry?"
"No, I've still got some of mine left."
With that, I popped a piece of gimbap into my mouth.
For the record, I'd also been handed a can of coffee—apparently I was meant to drink it after the meal. Naturally, none went to Jigupa. Everyone working here knew exactly what happened when Jigupa drank coffee.
Measured by caffeine per equivalent volume, canned coffee often packs more of a punch than the brewed kind anyway. Jigupa didn't whine that he wanted one either; he obediently sipped his sports drink. Though I was sure he'd buy himself a cup on the way home from work.
As I chewed through the utterly unremarkable gimbap, a slight shiver ran through me. Wearing the circuit didn't mean my body stayed warm the whole time I worked—move hard enough and you sweat, naturally, and with it being winter, that sweat going cold left me a little chilled. I picked up the pace of shoving gimbap into my mouth. It seemed smarter to finish quickly and go huddle somewhere a little warmer.
At first, I'd been a bit afraid that the people here might start asking about my situation. I'd have lied if they did, but the longer the tail, the easier it is to step on—stack up enough lies and contradictions start to surface, and then the odds of being found out only grow.
But the people working here never pried.
"No need to put things into words."
That was Jigupa's answer when I asked why.
"Plenty of people come here, work, and leave. Some of them are Earthlings, some aren't. I can't say every single person here is carrying some story or other, but enough of them are that we've all agreed not to poke at it."
"Right......"
So Jigupa stood in that same position—and so did I, the person Jigupa had vouched for. Knowing that eased my mind a little.
I knew my own circumstances well enough. I couldn't hide forever. Now that the whole affair had blown open, someone would inevitably come after me—be it the Company, the Federation, or the government.
For now I was only tucked away temporarily; if the Company cooperated with my hunters, finding me wouldn't be impossible. Didn't Noir Corporation possess the technology to track magical girls by their energy, pinpointing exactly where they were? There was no reason it couldn't be turned on me. James had warned me of exactly that.
So what we had to do was read the situation as quickly as possible and—whether that meant taking revenge on the Company's executives or something else entirely—make sure neither side could ever touch me freely again.
It would be dangerous work. Once things started moving in earnest, this life would be over too. And dragging Jigupa into it was, frankly, more than he deserved. Or, depending on how you looked at it, maybe he was already tangled up in it.
......
Amid all these thoughts, I kept stuffing gimbap into my mouth. After chewing and swallowing a decent mouthful, I washed it down with the little can of coffee. As the coffee—perhaps a touch heavy on the sugar and creamer—settled into my stomach, my exhausted body began to claw back its strength. Sugar and caffeine really are the perfect pairing for physical labor.
"Alright, wrap it up, folks—let's head home!"
At the older man's shout, I crushed the empty can in my fist and got to my feet. Maybe it was the meal, but the cold felt a little less biting now.
I drew a breath, and the air felt crisp. That was probably all in my head—this was a construction site, after all, a place thick with dust. And yet, strangely, I didn't hate any of it.
Because here there was no one shooting jealous glares at me for standing beside someone famous, no teacher glaring me down over some offense to their sensibilities, no troublemakers crawling out of the woodwork the moment a new semester began. I didn't have to strain to hide my circumstances, and nobody was going to beat me. No collisions with searing-hot masses of mana, no days spent worrying which bone might break. Just show up, work, take my pay, and on the way home pick up a few snacks to bring back with me—that was the whole routine.
I missed Hayun. I wondered whether Jihye was doing all right.
And yet, at the same time, I was doing my best not to think those thoughts at all. Nothing had been resolved, there wasn't even a hint of anything being resolved, and the few relationships I'd managed to hold on to had all come apart.
What I ought to be feeling here, obviously, was worry and heartache—and it would be a lie to say I felt none of that.
But the strongest thing I felt, right now, was liberation.
A strange liberation—the pressure I'd lived under from the very people I'd longed for so desperately, simply gone.
"Hayun, want to go grab something to eat together today?"
A group of girls who had almost never exchanged a word with her struck up a conversation.
"Uh, that's......"
"Or maybe a movie? Do you like movies?"
"Karaoke works too. You've had so much annoying stuff going on lately, right? Let's go blow it all off."
The girls spoke as though they understood everything Hayun was feeling. Hayun found it a little bewildering—these were girls she'd almost never talked to before, ones who, when they did approach, had always tiptoed around her as if checking her mood first. Yet over the past few days, as if they'd seized some opening, they'd been closing in close enough to feel almost suffocating.
Ironically enough, quite a few of the girls approaching her were faces she knew—or rather, girls whose parents knew one another.
"Or, want to come over to my place?"
One of them even offered that.
"No need to go somewhere loud and crowded—you can just relax at my house for a bit before heading home. We live close by anyway."
Had they? Maybe so. If their parents visited back and forth, and they attended this school on top of it, it made sense. But Hayun found all these invitations a little overwhelming.
"Sorry, today I......"
"There's nobody interrupting every single day anymore."
Someone said that, and Hayun's words died mid-sentence.
"Right? Even when we barely got time alone with you, she'd show up out of nowhere, butt in, and drag you off."
"You don't have to be scared anymore. Nobody's going to push their way in now."
"Come to think of it, wasn't she the one living at the orphanage? Wasn't she actually after something, getting close to you like that?"
"Why would you say that?"
The girls' chatter snapped off mid-flow at Hayun's words.
"......Ah, sorry."
The girl who'd been badmouthing Jieun apologized to Hayun. Her expression, at least, seemed quite sincere.
"I didn't mean it that way—I mean, I didn't say it for that reason. The world is full of stories of people who overcame hard circumstances and made good. But, you know how it is, Hayun..."
The girl lowered her voice a little.
"Every time you tried to do anything, she'd pop up out of nowhere and get in the way. We'd just say one word to you and she'd cut in and start bossing everyone around. You remember? Obviously not everyone who ends up in situations like that is like that. But...... doesn't it seem a little suspicious? If it weren't for her, Hayun, surely a lot more girls would—"
No. That wasn't it.
Hayun knew the full context, and it was nothing like that. Jieun noticed instantly whenever Hayun disliked something, and she'd take Hayun by the wrist and pull her away—because people who suddenly closed in were frightening, and being surrounded by a crowd tossing out this remark and that was frightening too.
"I—I'm...... sorry. I already have plans today......"
"Aww."
At Hayun's words, the girls surrounding her made openly disappointed faces.
"Oh, I see. But you've been saying that all week, haven't you?"
"After everything that happened......"
"Mm-hmm."
With the girls standing and Hayun seated, their posture toward her inevitably became one of looking down. But when Jieun had stood like that, Hayun had never once felt this way. Her smiling face had never looked this frightening, and Hayun had never felt that she wanted anything from her.
Had the other girls always been like this? Or—
"Hayun, it's not that you dislike us, right?"
A voice that seemed to ask with care. Eyebrows lowered slightly, as if a little worried. A troubled smile. Everything about it seemed to proclaim no ill will.
So why was it? Hayun caught herself wondering what thoughts might be hiding behind that smile.
Was I always this suspicious?
The thought startled her.
"Hayun?"
"Huh?"
"It's not that you dislike us, right?"
The question came again.
"Yeah...... it's not that I dislike you......"
"Okay, good."
The girl said it as she took Hayun's hand.
"Then let's all get together like that sometime when you're free. Having lots of friends can't be a bad thing, right? And later on, you'll—"
Hayun could only listen to the rest with a blank expression.
Until now, Hayun hadn't disliked school. It wasn't that she'd loved every last bit of it—she was human too, and there had been parts she didn't care for. But not now.
As if the 'reason to like it' had been wiped away entirely, school had become simply a place she didn't want to go. Only one thing had changed: Jieun was gone.
Whenever someone made Hayun an offer and she stood there wavering, it was always Jieun who stepped in and turned the conversation. Whenever Hayun was feeling low, it was Jieun who took her hand, led her off somewhere bright, and bought her something sweet to bite into.
Just from Jieun being gone, people's attitudes had changed this much. When Jieun suddenly cut in and spirited Hayun away, what must everyone have thought of her? Surely nothing good, not ever. Had Jieun been taking, in Hayun's place, all the looks that should have been aimed at her?
......
Hayun had liked that Jieun looked at her without any agenda. But had Jieun truly done it because she wanted to?
Or was it because Hayun—her friend Hayun—was watching her that way, that she'd forced herself to keep acting that way even when she hated it? Hayun had wanted others to look at her without calculation—yet had she herself been looking at Jieun with vicious calculation all along?
She missed Jieun. But at the same time, she was afraid—afraid that the reason she wanted to see Jieun was nothing more than wanting someone else to take the hate in her place.
No one ever showed that kind of feeling openly in front of Hayun. But wasn't something else entirely unfolding behind her back? Just as Jieun had been made to work for Noir Corporation—wasn't she, in truth, being bullied mercilessly somewhere Hayun couldn't see? The moment that thought surfaced, she went a little cold.
"......Jieun......"
Where no one could hear, she murmured the name quietly. There was no answer, of course—Jieun's seat was empty.
Could she ever come back? Could things return to the way they were before? Or—maybe Jieun no longer wanted to come back to that life at all? She was afraid.
That was why, the moment class ended and the homeroom teacher finished speaking, she'd shot up from her seat, grabbed her bag, and fled the classroom. Even back home, her father and mother were out; they'd probably come home late again today, the situation still not sorted out. With a slightly weary expression, she went to her room and lay down on the bed without even changing clothes.
What had Jieun thought, all those times she looked at Hayun? Hayun had believed she was good to Jieun—whenever they went out together, she'd gift Jieun the things Jieun's eyes lingered on.
But now, actually trying to recall, she realized she had no idea what Jieun liked. She knew Jieun liked listening to music, that she listened to every genre without discrimination—Hayun had bought the same albums Jieun bought and listened to them herself. Beyond that, Jieun had simply gone along with Hayun, without ever being asked, without ever saying she wanted something. And Hayun, for her part, had known nothing at all about Jieun's circumstances.
"......I want to see her again."
She was scared, not knowing what words might pass between them. But even so, she wanted to meet—wanted to apologize for what she'd done wrong, and say thank you for what she was grateful for.
If they met again, it would never be under circumstances fit for a proper conversation. And still.
......And that wish would be granted before the day was even out.
"While you've been out working, I have taken the liberty of setting our priorities."
He said it as though, while everyone else was out laboring, he'd been the one doing something important.
Well, to be fair, judged purely by how much he ate and, well, produced, James was the cheapest of us to keep. He ate almost nothing but nuts and seeds, and even those didn't amount to a full handful. He did bathe, but a basin of water in the sink was plenty; these days I simply filled the water basket in the bathroom and set him inside it—at least that way he could climb out on his own.
A hamster who bathes himself and even knows where to do his business. No matter how I looked at it, the ideal pet.
Of course, I was the only one in this house who saw him that way. Jigupa, at least, recognized James as an 'alien'—every time I played with James, he'd fix me with the expression of someone watching a virulent racist abuse another species. The only reason I never pressed the point was my own lingering grudge against James, I supposed. Jigupa had been a combatant under him, after all.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
James, who had suffered plenty at my hands, spoke with wary eyes at my gaze. At some point he'd braced his front paws—no, hands—against the floor, frozen in a posture ready to bolt at any moment. Lately, whenever I tried to grab him, James would flee behind Jigupa, and every time he did, Jigupa's expression grew that much more conflicted.
"......Never mind. Go on with your explanation."
At my words, James—still eyeing me the way one eyes a suspicious human—picked the explanation back up.
"The most important thing is evading pursuit. I never went to the trouble of building tracking technology for combatants. Most of them radiate such meager energy that tracking by energy alone is nearly impossible—it would have required far more expensive equipment."
Right. The Despair Circuits simply came with GPS built in—I remembered the Squad Leader telling me that if you could just attach one, that route was far more economical. The reason magical girls were tracked by energy instead was simple: no one could plant a GPS inside a magical girl's circuit. When the mice gather to plan putting a bell on the cat's neck, how is that supposed to succeed?
"So?"
"The tracking is done by satellite. But we can hardly bring the satellites down."
Reconnaissance satellites in geostationary orbit. Trying to track anything with a satellite that circled the planet once every ninety minutes would only get you intel refreshed once every ninety minutes—far better to keep one parked in geostationary orbit.
"But what if we were to destroy the receivers at the base stations?"
"They'd just switch to new receivers."
"Are you aware? That technology itself is a closely guarded secret. It was built for the government, you see."
"You're saying there are no backups?"
For something supposedly that classified, every combatant had been allowed inside to see it. Some magical girl probably knew about it too—they'd captured plenty of combatants in their time, so it wouldn't be strange if a little information had leaked.
"Only a very few know the locations of the base stations. And yes, correct—there are no backups yet. To be precise, they are still being built."
Which meant.
"If we destroy all of it, we can remain free for some time. A few months at the shortest, and at the longest, a stretch of more than a year."
......
Wait—you were saying we'd have to commit terrorism to pull that off. Wasn't that a little dangerous?
"As it happens, relations between the Federation and the Company have soured considerably. There are plenty of ways to leak the information. Once the Federation learns of that 'tracking technology,' they will inevitably want it. And the Company cannot simply hand it over—the technology serves them as a 'means of leverage' as well. Even if they surrender the core of it, they will want to keep a card or two up their sleeve."
......
I stared at James for a long moment.
"You know, you sound exactly like a proper villain."
"Oh, you flatter me."
Watching James—his fur patterned like a businessman's suit—smoothly dip his head in a bow irritated me in a way I couldn't quite name, but I held it in.
So that was the plan. In other words: when the two of them clashed, all we had to do was slip in quietly, achieve our objective, and slip back out.