Chapter 7. Fellow Travelers (5)
One thing was certain: James was a technician.
And not just any technician — an extraordinarily brilliant one.
Mapped onto Earth terms, he was apparently someone famous enough in the power generation field to be a household name. Think of a researcher at the very forefront of fusion energy.
Modern science and technology had grown so vast and so deep that, by rights, no single person could ever fully grasp all of it. At least, that had always been true of Earth's scientists.
Even building a single generator required specialists for every component — and even each of those components couldn't be made by one person alone. Every process, every theory, belonged to a different expert's domain, and each person studied only their own slice.
So it was practically impossible for someone helping design a fusion reactor to also have professional-level knowledge of high-speed communications. The fields they'd studied were simply too different.
But, in true alien fashion, James apparently wasn't like that.
"Who do you think made the suit and circuit you were wearing?"
Well... come to think of it, a suit did involve all sorts of different specialties too. There was a difference between a power generator and the high-tech combat suit that generator powered.
"You made all of that yourself?"
At my words, James gave an indignant snort.
"One must be capable of at least this much to call oneself a Squeak-alien."
Ah. Of course you are.
And as a bonus, it seemed that Squeak-aliens in general considered teaching even the most basic fundamentals of their craft to outsiders a taboo.
Of course, no matter how clever a species was, there were physical limits, and limits to the knowledge any individual could hold. Their intellectual ceiling was infinitely higher than a human's, but their physical limits... well, no need to spell that out.
If one of them came to Earth and got caught without a translator, they might genuinely end up being kept as a pet.
Anyway, that was precisely why they had no choice but to share knowledge with others. Getting help from larger species from other planets when building things was important too, but more than that — to stand against opponents like Earth's humans, who had woven their knowledge into a network, going it 'alone' was a serious problem.
Form a nation. Join the Federation. Get hired by a company.
That was how the Squeak-aliens survived. And along the way, they flaunted their particular brand of cunning — insisting that for repairing certain components, it was most convenient to have someone of Squeak-alian size crawl inside, or patching critical sections with knowledge that only they possessed.
Starships built by Squeak-aliens were famous for excellent performance, but they all shared one notorious trait: maintenance was an absolute nightmare. For a species whose planet had joined the pan-galactic Federation, they were an extraordinarily closed-off group.
Apparently James had been the same way back when he worked at the Company.
"Doesn't anyone ever say something about that?"
"If I did nothing, the one who suffered would be the Company."
"...That whole researcher kidnapping thing — that was really just something you wanted to do, wasn't it?"
When I asked, remembering how James had been waiting alone in the car with no other subordinates around, he gave a shrug.
"If there's information I need, I extract it. I had that much authority."
"......"
Has it never occurred to you that that entire chain of events was your fault?
Then again, if there really had been humans inside the Company plotting to take James down, they would have acted eventually, sooner or later, whether then or now. And in the eyes of the Company's people, someone on the 'James line' like me would probably have been in danger too. One way or another.
Getting a job at that kind of company in the first place was my own mistake, so I wasn't about to complain about it.
Still, there was one thing I absolutely could not let slide.
"Or is it just that you're so obnoxious you made enemies everywhere you went?"
James ignored me.
Maybe even he couldn't deny it.
He glared at me as I heaved a deep sigh, but I just ignored him back.
We decided to act without Jigupa.
Since we were planning an operation in a place with only one room, some of it inevitably leaked out to Jigupa, but James didn't seem particularly concerned about it.
If pressed, his attitude amounted to 'what could you possibly do even if you figured it out.' Maybe he trusted me, given that I hadn't reported him to anyone so far.
Or maybe he'd simply given up. He'd already been purged from the Company, and what we were doing was practically terrorism — so perhaps every reason he'd given me was just something tacked on after the fact.
His real goal, in truth, was probably just to find the humans who'd tried to kill him and take revenge.
"......"
Even knowing I was being used, I didn't feel particularly angry. This was about all I could manage right now anyway.
So no, it wasn't that I was 'okay with it.' It was closer to resignation.
"Very good."
James said.
We had climbed up onto the rooftop of a building. We'd gotten there by perfectly ordinary means.
Where we stood was the heart of Seoul — smack in the middle of Gangnam, no less. Naturally, it was also some distance away from Noir Corporation's facilities.
It was an important installation, so of course they'd built it in the middle of the city. If anything, that was the point — positioned like that, the magical girls couldn't attack it even if its location was exposed.
The building I was standing on was a few stories taller, so slipping into the neighboring building looked easy enough.
Though it was still high enough that if someone told me to jump down, I'd ask if they were out of their mind.
How would the magical girls infiltrate? Probably thinking along the same lines as me. They'd come in through the rooftop.
"The magical girls are on the move. It seems they don't intend to use the Warp Point today."
"Why not? That'd be way faster."
"Hard to say. I don't claim to know everything."
Even so, James fell silent for a moment in thought before speaking again.
"It may be that something has gone wrong with 'Hope.' The energy consumed by warp travel is truly enormous."
"......"
I tried to recall the webtoon.
It was ancient history by my standards, so I didn't remember it well. Still, my memory of it was comparatively clearer than of other works — I'd been quite fond of it since its blog-serialization days, reading it while waiting out hiatuses that stretched from a few days to weeks, even months.
Though I dropped the officially serialized webtoon, which updated once a week, partway through.
And this world was the world of that 'official webtoon.' A comedy that had been funny for its subversion of clichés had turned far too serious.
Racking my brain for what settings I could remember: the magical girls' circuits drew support from Blossom's overflowing energy. So if something happened to Blossom, the other magical girls' firepower dropped. Same went for Iris.
...Don't tell me it's because of me.
I was... Hayun's close friend, after all.
She really was the type who'd be shaken just by a classmate getting hurt. If a friend as close as me ended up in a state like this, it wouldn't be strange at all for her 'Hope' to falter.
"Are you worried about the magical girls, perhaps?"
James said mockingly, and I ignored him.
"Well, fine. Thanks to that, we have time."
"By the way, that thing doesn't leave access logs?"
I asked, looking at the smartphone James was holding.
"This is a smartphone built for combatants. Even if access logs remain, there's no record that I was the one who made them. I also kept it powered off entirely on the way here."
Presumably, once you were already this close, an access log meant nothing anyway.
"Besides, if we destroy it properly this time, whether logs remain or not is irrelevant."
"Fair point."
I drew in a deep breath.
It would be a lie to say I wasn't nervous. I was doing this only because it was all I could do — the truth was, I didn't really want to. If I could just run away forever, I would have.
I'd never get to see Hayun... or Jihye again.
...Yeah. In the end, I did admit it. I'll give myself that much.
"So, what's the plan?"
"Nothing complicated. When the magical girls arrive, we smash every piece of visible equipment inside the base. I'll accompany you and point out the critical machinery, so destroy those first."
"Got it."
I nodded.
Then I asked James:
"How do we get inside?"
"That magic you showed us last time will suffice. Yes... it may well produce an effect beyond merely sufficient. If the surroundings crumble from your black hole as you enter, wouldn't that itself be a fine attack?"
"Oh, I see."
I nodded.
Then asked again.
"So how do I use that thing?"
James's head, which had been planning the operation on my palm, snapped upward.
"......"
"......"
The two of us stared at each other in silence for a while.
"Hold on. Wait a moment."
James pressed a hand to his forehead.
"Don't tell me you don't know?"
"...I don't. No, actually — how does transformation even work in the first place?"
"You were supposed to know that!"
James stomped his feet on my palm.
Hearing that, it was actually me who was thrown off.
"I mean, you can't just say that... when I transformed, I wasn't even properly conscious."
I'd simply woken up to find things that way. The transformation had completed without my knowing, and the magic had fired off on pure instinct the moment I thought I need to get out of here.
That's right. Not once in that moment had I done anything deliberately.
"Energy! What about your energy!?"
I showed him the smartwatch.
Flipping my hand over made James's body lurch, but even in his panic he didn't fall.
No, strictly speaking, he did fall. Forward, onto the back of my left hand.
And from there, he tapped the smartwatch.
On the screen appeared something like a compass needle spinning round and round. When James tapped the display once more, a number popped up this time.
Eighty-one percent.
"Why on earth is the number like this!?"
No, you're asking the wrong person.
Though... it wasn't as if I had no idea at all.
These days my heart had been a little lighter, after all. The reason it hadn't dropped below eighty percent was probably still that I remained deeply anxious.
But I didn't want to tell James any of that. If my unhappiness made me stronger, James would simply find a way to exploit it.
"Think unhappy thoughts, quickly! Otherwise this operation fails! Do you intend to be captured alive and turned into Federation experimental material!? After everything you've pulled, even the government won't take your side this time!"
They never took my side in the first place.
"More importantly, I don't even know how to use a black hole or whatever after transforming."
"Magical girls use it quite naturally?"
You've never been a magical girl, have you.
I swallowed my complaint and let out a sigh instead.
...Well, fine.
James was right, as it happened. Stalling here only worked against me.
James had already set the board, and the magical girls were racing toward us. I had to move in step with that.
I carefully set James down on the ground.
Then I took a few steps back and closed my eyes.
I thought about my current situation.
That wasn't hard. Calming your mind through meditation has always been far harder than dwelling on bad thoughts before bed.
I dragged the worries I'd packed away back out into the open.
I pictured a future with no answers.
Most unwelcome of all, the circuit immediately began to resonate, as if something inside it were whirring at full force.
And that very unwelcome feeling dragged me down even further.
"Good, good!"
Even James's cheering irritated me. No one being encouraged to become miserable could possibly be pleased about it. I wasn't that much of a masochist.
I opened my eyes slowly.
Heat was rising from the circuit.
Even that alone felt far stronger than when I'd been a combatant wrapped head to toe in a suit.
Except—
One hundred percent.
......
I still couldn't transform.
Why?
"Transform! Transform!"
James shouted, but I couldn't do it.
I thought back to that time. I'd been beaten black and blue, in pain, with a net draped over my body. Not just any net, either — a wire mesh so heavy that laying it on a person could seriously injure them.
Only when I was captured like that, on the verge of being dragged off to who knew where, had I finally managed to transform.
Did I have to face that kind of situation again just to transform once more?
At the thought, the circuit heated up further. The humming grew louder.
But no overflow came.
Had James built this circuit with transformation in mind? It looked that way on the surface, but perhaps it wasn't.
He'd known my energy could grow strong enough to protect my body, but the reason he hadn't made a suit was probably simply that there'd been no time.
And I'd needed to be able to hide, too.
So maybe this was never transformation equipment to begin with, and I'd only forced it into that role that one time.
Did I have to be beaten harder, tormented worse?
Was I going to have to go through that every single time I solved one problem?
The circuit was hot. Hot enough that it alone could have warmed my whole body.
And yet, strangely, I grew colder and colder. Cold enough that I wanted to lie down on the rooftop and curl into a ball. But I knew that wouldn't fix anything — the chill was coming from somewhere deep inside me.
I was cold.
"Good! That's it!"
I squeezed my eyes shut again and wrapped my arms around myself.
Then I murmured:
"Transform."
And—
Nothing happened.
"Transform!"
I shouted it again, and still nothing happened.
Panic crept in.
Was this it? Had the webtoon been so obsessed with breaking clichés that it refused to follow even this one?
The circuit was scorching hot, and my body was freezing. Even without pressing my ear to it, the humming was deafeningly loud.
"Please — transform!"
I shouted, and no answer came—
"...Jieun?"
"......"
At that voice, my heart felt like it plummeted straight down.
I opened my eyes slowly.
The voice had come from above.
Up there stood the magical girls in all their colors.
My clothes were rippling. Thin black smoke was drifting up from the circuit — not quite enough to cover my body completely.
Suddenly I felt something tugging at my pants. Something was crawling up my body, I could feel it—
"Transform, now!"
James shouted from my shoulder.
"If you don't transform this instant—!"
What did he expect me to do about it?
Ah. I just wanted to die.
Do you have any idea how hard I'd worked on my image in front of Hayun? How much effort I'd put into looking cool? Honestly, even collecting music CDs had been for that reason. I could've just streamed everything, but knowing the actual albums like this made me look good, didn't it?
And now, I'd blown it.
I'd been standing here shouting "transform" and whatnot, after all.
Magical girl transformations didn't seem to work that way. To be fair, the officially serialized webtoon skipped transformation scenes entirely, but in the earlier blog version there'd been characters who thought shouting a transformation phrase was embarrassing.
Which meant—
"Jieun!"
Watching Hayun come toward me, calling my name, I squeezed my eyes shut.
For an instant, I felt my body lift slightly.
"...Ah."
Really, how absurd.
A power that wouldn't move at my command, and yet it connected in exactly this way, at exactly the moment I never expected.
The world before my eyes went black. Even the faint light that usually slipped through closed eyelids vanished in an instant.
The voice calling my name receded, as if from far away.
Something tight wrapped itself around me. The cold inside my body responded to it and began to consume me.
It felt like drowning underwater. I couldn't breathe properly, and my chest ached with pressure.
Even when I tried to scream, my voice was completely sealed, unable to escape. My ears felt stuffed with cotton.
As if I had plunged deep, deep into the heart of despair itself.
The depths of the sea — a despairing ocean where not a single ray of light reached.
And inside it, I thrashed.
Crack.
I had heard that sound before.
The sensation of the shell wrapped around me breaking away.
My darkened vision brightened rapidly, and my blocked breath suddenly opened up.
I gulped air again and again, hands clutching at my throat to check that nothing was still squeezing it.
When I looked down, I had already changed into entirely different clothes.
"Excellent! Perfect!"
James cheered.
When I lifted my gaze, Hayun was looking at me with an expression too complicated to put into words.
"......"
Cold sweat ran down my back.
I wanted to get out of here.
I knew it was meaningless. I knew that what I ought to do here was talk.
But looking at Hayun made my chest feel like it was being crushed.
I didn't know why. I just — wanted to run away from this place.
Was it because she'd seen me at my most pathetic? Or—
Because I was afraid of being called out for lying? Because talking meant explaining it all, piece by piece—
Because Hayun would, without a doubt, look at me the way you look at someone pitiable.
"......"
The humming circuit stopped for a moment. Maybe my heart stopped too.
The cold sharpened my mind, refusing to let me faint.
I hated that.
I hated not being able to stay in the same place as Hayun.
"Jieun...!"
Hayun turned toward me. The magical girls nearby panicked and lunged to hold her back—
But behind me, a black hole had already opened, drinking in the surrounding light.
I ran away again this time, too.
Just as I always had.