What I Can Do (5)
The kaijin's weakness was simpler than I'd expected.
Its eyes split in two like a crab's, and its head was a soft, squishy mass where I couldn't even pinpoint a mouth—but the venom only ever came from one direction.
There were creatures charging in from either side wielding nightmarish close-combat weapons, others firing lasers from a short distance off, and every now and then a huge mass of mana came sailing through the gaps between them.
And far away in the distance, Delphinium stood on standby with a massive orb of mana suspended above her head.
Thwack! Rose drove a punch straight into the kaijin's face. The creature spat venom at her fist, but Rose's circuit was already spinning fast, synchronized with Hayun's mana.
Her gauntlets were coated thick with mana. You couldn't see it—but you could see the venom shattering and evaporating before it ever touched her knuckles.
At this range it even sprayed venom like an atomizer, the same trick it had pulled on us, but that accomplished nothing either.
Rose's fists were fast. She didn't simply land one weighted blow after another—in the space of a blink she hammered in punch after punch.
And in the wake of those fists, of those gauntlets, small gusts rose.
Gusts of mana.
The same mana that could stop bullets capable of punching straight through human limbs stirred up that wind—and naturally, a spray whose every particle had been scattered fine and small was rendered utterly useless.
What a terrifying sight. Had I really fought things like this? Honestly, it almost seemed admirable of me. My combat suit back then wasn't anything like the one I had now.
Not that the kaijin could do a thing about it.
Even if it somehow slipped free of that frontal assault, Delphinium's mana mass would come flying straight for it.
The only reason that mass hadn't been launched was simple: it was obvious one of her allies would get caught in the blast.
And that alone served as a warning, too.
The moment it tried to flee, it would take that mass head-on and black out.
Well—they wouldn't kill it, of course.
The kaijin stretched its arms and legs, shaping itself like a spider—or perhaps a crab—but those elongated limbs were sliced clean off by Hayun's blade.
Maybe it was thanks to her track record of facing down several kaijin at once last time that a single one didn't worry her much—or maybe it was simply because she was fighting alongside me.
Hayun's face was quite bright.
And the pink mana streaming from her wand was bright, too.
......
And that, strangely, didn't sit well with me.
As I frowned, the kaijin's hand came flying at me.
Whoosh.
But I wasn't about to take it lying down either. Once you can see how to break an attack, all that's left is to beat the hell out of them.
Graaaagh!
Both of its arms came off at the same moment. One severed, one torn clean away.
The kaijin's body slammed into the ground.
Perhaps in one last desperate struggle, its head swung toward Rose and spat out a long stream of venom—
and Rose caught that face roughly with her gauntlet.
Sizzle.
I could hear the gauntlet's surface melting, but Rose didn't seem particularly bothered. Was that because it was in gauntlet form?
Looking closely, the gauntlet's surface seemed to hover just slightly apart from the kaijin's skin. She couldn't hold on for long, but at least it was enough to grab for an instant without injuring her hand.
...Different from me, huh.
A small question stirred in my mind.
My body could be wrapped in mana, too. I could fend off most attacks with relative ease—in fact, that was how I'd protected myself any number of times.
But doing the same for my weapon was still beyond me. Mana did coat my weapon, yet it couldn't shield it the way it shielded my body—even with the Generator roaring that fiercely inside me.
Was it because I burned everything as propulsion?
Or because the kind of energy I used was different?
Or maybe simply because I was a half-baked magical girl.
Gripping the kaijin's head with her right hand, Rose clenched her left fist.
Then she hammered it into the kaijin's skull.
For a policy of 'don't kill,' it looked remarkably brutal, but there was no helping it. A kaijin, while conscious, would keep raging without end.
Call it a bio-circuit, I suppose.
Even if the glowing mechanism itself had never been precisely identified, the fact that this happened only on Earth at least pointed to a connection with human emotion.
So the only real options were to sever every limb and leave it unable to move at all, or to smash its head hard enough to knock it out.
In this era, restoring limbs was easy enough, as long as a skilled healer was on hand. That was why I could show up at school perfectly fine the next day even with bones broken as badly as mine had been. But lopping off arms and legs was another matter entirely.
I mean... come on. Broken bones are one thing, but...
After the shock to its head, the kaijin's limbs simply went limp.
......
Rose gazed quietly at its face for a moment, then slowly lowered it to the ground.
Even against the dirt it kept sizzling, melting into something, but at least it didn't bore its way in without end.
"...Good."
Rose murmured that, then lifted her head.
And looked at me.
No—not just Rose. Every one of the magical girls was looking at me.
Hm.
So in the end, it had been taken from me. On the surface it looked like we'd cooperated, but the result read not as me catching it alone, but as the six of us piling on at once to subdue it.
And besides, this situation right now... wasn't I in a fairly dangerous spot?
"We should pull back soon."
James said.
"You've shown them everything worth showing. For magical girls to arrive mid-battle means even they've judged your performance to be a threat."
At James's words I nodded and began carefully backing away.
"Wait!"
Just as I was about to conjure a black hole, Hayun thrust out a hand and shouted, urgent.
"Wait... just wait a moment."
I stopped, exactly as she asked.
Frankly, it wasn't a rational call. Last time I'd hesitated a beat too long and taken a bullet—I still remembered that.
Behind me, I heard people walking. It didn't sound like the police moving; just a few sets of footsteps, spaced apart, like magical girls walking.
Iris, Delphinium, Dahlia.
All three specialized in long-range attacks. If they were training their aim on me, they might strike the instant I ran.
Though what they could actually do to me once I'd fled far away through a black hole, I had no idea.
Come to think of it, Delphinium's spell never did get fired after all. Which meant it was probably still hanging in the sky.
"Oh ho."
Watching this unfold, James made a sound of interest.
What, was it entertaining to watch me end up fighting the kids again? Needlessly edgy personality, that one.
Seriously, if I ever found the time, I was going to hunt down a recipe for roast mouse somewhere and pin it up inside the tent. Skewer him from anus to mouth and roast him over the coals—wouldn't that do the trick?
"I... I know you can't trust me."
Hayun said.
I narrowed my eyes slightly.
Of course I couldn't trust her completely. In some corner of my mind I still believed in Hayun—but trusting the magical girls fully in this situation would be plain stupidity.
Even if Hayun herself had no intention of harming me, the other four magical girls surrounding me—and the sheer mass of police—surely thought otherwise.
Public servants are people who move on orders. I understood that. When those above you say jump, you can't exactly refuse.
But from the receiving end, being angry was unavoidable. I had no intention of assaulting officers outright, but I did hope they'd cut me some slack for smashing a few pieces of equipment.
I had thought it through rationally and understood—so surely they ought to think it through rationally and understand me too, no?
"I've, all this time......"
Hayun began, then shut her mouth.
Then looked at me with an anguished face.
"All this time?"
I asked back, straining to keep my composure.
......
Even at that, Hayun couldn't bring herself to continue.
I waited a moment, then opened a small hole behind me.
The dirt and dust strewn messily across the ground swirled around that hole as its center. The space at my back grew a little brighter—the black hole was drinking in the light.
"Jieun, wait......!"
Hayun cried out.
"Wait for what, exactly?"
I asked.
All that waiting here would buy me was their reinforcements. I was already marked by the three biggest powers in this country.
No—maybe not just this country. Governments the world over might have their eyes on me by now. If they believed the same thing could happen in their own lands, it would be reason enough.
"Sitting around and waiting here does me no good at all."
I didn't want to say such cruel things.
But they kept spilling out of my mouth all the same.
It wasn't something my heart could hold back anymore.
Because in the end, that was what I had been thinking all along.
Thinking it, and swallowing it down, over and over.
Ever since I'd let the Despair Circuit overflow that once, I'd found it hard to keep my emotions leashed.
No—maybe it was because I no longer had to. Hiding myself in front of others wouldn't do me any good now. I was broken beyond repair anyway. Unable to return to how things were, perhaps I was simply living like this.
Even if it was ugly, I didn't much care anymore.
Caring wouldn't change anything.
If anything, I felt more at ease inside that abandoned house than I ever had in that suffocating school.
I didn't like it. I didn't think I'd ever come to like it. Staring up at that ceiling, lying in that cramped tent—I felt utterly wretched. I'd crossed into an entirely different world, and I had nothing to show for it.
But still, that was all it was.
There, I didn't have to face those rich scumbags who envied even the single friend I had, every time a new semester began. I didn't have to study like a maniac from the first week of term just to convince myself I deserved to be beside Hayun.
I didn't have to live in dread that someone would find out I lived at the orphanage. I didn't have to agonize every time Hayun hinted, ever so delicately, that she'd like to come see where I lived.
Yes, the road ahead was murky and the future looked hopeless—but that was all. Truthfully, I hadn't forgotten that feeling even once since coming to this world.
And because I was someone capable of thinking nothing but those shabby thoughts, everything I'd never said had slowly piled up from somewhere deep in my chest.
To the point that it would come bursting out the moment I opened my mouth.
I didn't like it. This situation. Hayun trying to say something to me. And myself, too.
Whatever Hayun said, I would push back against it. Without fail.
But whatever those words turned out to be, in the end I would be persuaded by them.
I hated all of it.
"...Are you going to tell me to come back?"
And yet—why was I asking her back like this?
Choosing my words with care, asking her for her reason. Why?
Maybe because, in the end, I was the kind of person who could never fully tear myself away from Hayun—no, who didn't even want to.
Maybe because I was no different, in the end, from those worthless pieces of trash who used to hover around her.
If Hayun hadn't been the heroine, would I have been at her side at all?
Would I have kept enduring, shrugging off that much wariness and jealousy?
I wanted to believe the answer was no.
So, as if to deny that very thought, I brought out more cruel words.
"What, now you want me to go back to school? Or go back to that orphanage?"
School was nothing but enemies now. Nothing but kids who hated me. At best, Hayun alone would still like me—and I had no desire to return to a place like that.
The orphanage... I hated it in a different way. It scared me. I was terrified of what the people there would think of me now.
Even if the whole world came to hate me, the people there—at least the ones who'd shared my childhood—
I wanted Jihye, at the very least, never to hate me or fear me.
And after putting her through all of that, I was still thinking things like this.
"It's too late."
I said, almost in a whisper.
"I've come too far."
To turn back now.
At my words, Hayun's expression crumbled.
A face that looked ready to burst into tears at any second.
It was an expression I'd seen before.
Except back then, it had been the other way around.
Every time the world wounded Hayun, I was the one at her side, comforting her.
Sometimes with nonsense that had nothing to do with the situation. Sometimes by buying whatever sweets I could find and stuffing them into her mouth whether she wanted them or not.
And now, I had become one of the people hurting her.
Worst feeling in the world.
The wind grew fiercer.
My circuit vibrated harder. The percentage—somewhere along the line, I'd stopped caring about it entirely. A hundred percent, or whatever percent—at some point I'd stopped watching the numbers, transforming without a second thought, summoning black holes without a second thought.
Which meant that, at some point, my circuit had been running continuously at over a hundred percent.
I was in constant despair.
Whether I felt good or bad, deep in my chest, always.
The exact opposite of the hope Hayun felt every time she looked at me.
"That's why—"
"...No!"
As I took another step back, Hayun shouted with everything she had.
Even inside the wind whipping around us like a small storm, Hayun kept walking toward me, little by little.
"That's not it!"
Hayun cried.
Tears were streaming from her eyes. Her face had come apart completely.
Had I ever seen Hayun cry that hard before?
I had caused all of this—and I was the one who stopped in my tracks, too.
"I'm not asking you to come back. I won't even ask you to come closer."
Hayun said.
"Everything that happened until now—all of it—was too much... went far, far too far, I know all of it. And I know a simple apology won't make it right."
......
This time, it was me who couldn't find the words.
"So... so, just let me do one thing."
"One thing."
"Yeah. Just one."
I kept my mouth shut.
I hadn't agreed.
At least, not out loud.
But my feet wouldn't move. My head and my heart were both screaming at me to run, but the me buried deep in my soul was begging me not to. Would 'she'd grabbed my ankle' be the right way to put it?
At some point, Hayun had closed to within a few steps of me.
How long had I been waiting, really?
Declaring I would leave, while hoping she wouldn't come near.
And then—
......
An expression rose on Hayun's face.
One you could only call 'resolute.'
And only around then did I realize I'd been thinking about this all wrong.
I tried to turn away.
My feet scrambled.
But Hayun was faster. She had probably been planning this since she arrived—from the very moment she started fighting at my side.
That must be how she'd managed to hold onto such hope through the entire battle.
Hayun seized me tight.
Both arms wrapped around my waist from behind and squeezed.
But—she wasn't holding me back from leaving.
—That's not it.
Just as Hayun had shouted at me moments ago.
"Just one."
I heard Hayun's whisper at my ear.
The tearfulness was gone entirely, and it didn't quite match that resolute expression I'd just seen, either.
It was simply the ordinary Hayun voice I'd heard countless times before.
The arms around my waist tightened. Soft, but firm. Hayun's body pressed against my back was soft.
And warm.
How long had it been......
"Let me... come with you. Together."
Hayun whispered, so quietly.
Afraid the others might hear—just like we always used to. Like when we'd press close and murmur so the other kids in class couldn't hear.
......
That's cheating.
Cheating.
Holding me this tight. Pressing her body into mine.
Whispering right against my ear.
To someone who'd been apart from her for far too long, it was all, simply, cheating.
Did Hayun know what she was doing?
Or was she just acting the same as she always did?
I couldn't tell.
If it was the latter, then it only meant that Hayun herself was cheating—just by existing to me.
What the hell is that.
That's not fair.
That's not fair......
Really......
In an instant, the black hole flared up as though it would swallow everything around it.
It drank in the nearby light, even sucking up the small debris scattered across the ground.
The first ones pulled inside were the black magical girl and Blossom, who had been right beside her.
Blossom had thrown her whole body into catching the black magical girl, but perhaps she couldn't overcome the speed.
Or perhaps she simply couldn't withstand the black hole's ferocious pull.
Either way, they vanished into it.
The same went for the magical girls who had been closing in around the black magical girl.
As if to rescue the leader who'd been taken inside, they leaped into that black hole as one.
The instant every girl's silhouette dissolved into the light—
the black hole, which had hung there radiating an overwhelming presence, vanished without a trace in a heartbeat, as if it had never existed at all.
What remained were the fierce scars of battle.
And the police ringing the area.
......
That many officers—and for a long while, not a single one of them made a sound.
"......We're fucked."
Only after several dozen seconds did someone mutter that, alone.
No one echoed him for a long while after that—
but in their hearts, many of them agreed.
With the fact that something had gone very, very wrong.