Communal Living (5)

The night was, more or less, bearable. Of course, there was no helping the thought of just how warm it must be inside that tent. No matter how close the stove sat, a single layer of plastic sheeting over a derelict house riddled with holes couldn't fully shut out the midnight chill.

By day the temperature climbed until it felt almost a little too warm, but at night it dropped considerably—not enough to freeze to death, but enough to notice. In this country, spring and autumn were the seasons of wild temperature swings.

"I have an idea—want to hear it?"

While Hayun and Jieun were off washing up, Iris had come up with an idea. It wasn't anything anyone would call revolutionary, but it was worth a try.

After dinner, once Jieun had slipped into her tent wearing what looked, for some reason, like a soured mood, the remaining magical girls exchanged a few quiet words and then got to work.

First they searched the woods near the squat for decent branches—nothing that had to be especially long, just big enough to clearly outsize the stove Iris had built.

Gathering branches that could just as well have served as firewood took about an hour. They'd been shivering a little when they first set out, but as they kept moving, warmth crept into their bodies and things got a bit better.

The materials they needed turned out to be closer than expected. The house with the agungi firebox wasn't the only one of its kind—more precisely, most of the abandoned houses around here were much the same. So among the ruins there were a few backyards where kindling for the furnace had been stacked in great piles.

The thick logs already cut into rounds were of little use, but some places had piles of snapped-off branches that were fairly thick. From those, the girls picked out a few that looked especially sturdy and long.

Then they shifted the stove from the center of the house a little closer to the tent and stood the thick branches upright around it. The floor inside—concrete or cement, apparently—didn't crumble easily, so they scrounged up a few bricks to anchor the base.

And so they raised a somewhat larger tent, joined to Jieun's.

It was clear plastic sheeting, so from the outside it wasn't much to look at, and anyone moving around inside had to bend double at the waist. But at the very least, it held the stove's heat in far more surely.

The five girls stood outside it, gazing at their makeshift shelter with no small amount of pride.

"...Can we really call this 'temporary'?"

At least, they'd been feeling a certain sense of accomplishment—right up until Delphinium murmured it in a slightly worried voice.

"...Well, we'll have to tear it all down come summer anyway."

Rose said it half-jokingly, but the words did nothing to lift anyone's spirits.

Would they still be here come summer? No—more to the point, how long were they supposed to stay? Every girl except Hayun was probably thinking the same thing. In a sense—no, in every sense, the girls gathered here were all runaways.

…

Still, not one of them was tactless enough to say it out loud and make everyone conscious of the fact all over again.

The first to go inside was Hayun. As if she'd simply accepted the situation for what it was, there wasn't a trace of hesitation in anything she did. Whatever had been said between them while they washed, the faint reluctance she'd shown earlier was gone from her now.

The remaining four exchanged glances.

"Haaah."

The first to move was Iris. She heaved a sigh deep enough to sink the earth, then ducked into that 'temporary' tent. Next came Rose, scratching her head. Then Delphinium and Dalia.

Their efforts hadn't been wasted—the inside of the tent was thoroughly warm. Warm enough to last the night under nothing but quilts of plastic sheeting stuffed with dried leaves.

...I wonder how everyone else is taking this.

Lying on the hard floor, Iris gazed up through the clear plastic overhead and thought.

The radio carried only the most tightly limited information: the magical girls had vanished, and people from every walk of life were working to find them. Nothing at all about how citizens were reacting, or what was supposed to happen once the magical girls were found.

Were they controlling the information? It frightened her. How would her parents react when she went home? She had skipped school without permission, abandoned her sacred duty as a magical girl, and vanished with her circuit in tow, no less.

Rose, Delphinium, Dalia. The three of them, a year older than Iris and Hayun, had worn uneasy faces too. All three were exam-year students this year, and still they were here.

Fine—you could excuse Hayun, because of a girl named Jeong Jieun. But Jeong Jieun herself—

...She couldn't picture it.

Because Iris was now enjoying every last thing that girl had never been allowed to have. If you took even what little remained from a girl who had nothing to begin with...

Iris shivered.

Iris—had recognized Jeong Jieun in battle. Without ever knowing who she was, she had known, every single time they met, exactly who she was. And she had tormented her, relentlessly. Taking aim again and again, firing magic bullets, driving her off, sending her elsewhere.

She had never once thought about what came after. Simply because... they were the bad guys. Bullies who hid behind corporations and preyed on the weak. The people keeping this Earth from entering galactic affairs—even though those very corporations had come from beyond the galaxy themselves—

Then did that make everyone who earned their living at those corporations villains too? Was the money one of them earned to fill in what the orphanage children lacked also malice?

She had never thought about it. Not once. Only that the combatant who refused to fall in a single strike had gotten under her skin. That one combatant, who fought and was knocked flying and hurt and still rose without surrender to charge back in—Iris hadn't liked her. That combatant, so desperate to win somehow—no, so desperate to land even a single blow in a hopeless fight—that she'd become an annoyance—

—she had tried, to break her.

…

Had it hurt? Of course it had. Iris had never been struck by her own magic bullets, but she wasn't foolish enough to think they would leave no mark. No—she used them to attack precisely because she had calculated the damage they would do.

Badly wounded somewhere on her body, she would come limping back from some place Iris knew nothing about. Why had she never thought about what came after? A magical girl who was hurt could go straight back for treatment. There was a set place for her to rest. Support could reach her anywhere— but think for even a moment, and it was obvious the combatants had none of that.

She knew perfectly well that dwelling on such things in the dead of night was no way to fall asleep, but she couldn't bring herself to stop. In the end, it was a long, long while after that before Iris finally slept.

When I woke in the morning, the inside of the tent was oddly warm. It was a tent with decent insulation, granted, but normally the moment you crawled out of your sleeping bag, the chilly air was there to greet you.

It puzzled me even more when I sat up and touched the tent's entrance. There was a stove outside, sure—but could it really be this warm?

Only after unzipping the flap and crawling out did I realize the girls had put up another tent inside the house. They must have built it to somehow endure the night's cold. It was still a little chilly, after all.

The stove, drawing on my energy, was still running smoothly. With no blankets or sleeping bags to be had, they had apparently used quilts made of plastic sheeting again—quilts loosely stuffed with fallen leaves.

…

Faced with that earnest display of wilderness survival, I was briefly at a loss for words. Were they serious? Were they actually saying they meant to stay here? Why? Did they really want to help me that badly? Were they saying they'd cut ties with the Federation that had employed them all this time and keep living here? Without even going to school?

No one was asleep. Beyond the plastic, the space outside the door was bright. Were they all outside doing some chore or other?

I stepped out through the plastic, hunched at the waist.

"Jieun!"

And the moment I stepped out of the house, Hayun's voice rang out. The girls were standing in a plot of earth. Having been called by name, standing frozen in place felt a little off, so I walked slowly over to where they were.

There was a vegetable garden there. These weren't merely sprouts—these were crops unmistakably growing toward the sky. Just as the girls had said, they looked exactly like they could be eaten 'soon.' Another week, and they might genuinely be ready to harvest.

…

Hayun watched me with a bright expression, but all I could do was stare at it, speechless. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠On the girls' wrists were circuits running on my energy. Not using their own—merely resonating with mine to function. With the same energy as mine, these girls had coaxed the sprouts to life.

"Jieun?"

At Hayun's voice, I raised my head. I didn't know what face to make. Smiling would be strange—right up until a few days ago I'd been seething with resentment, and I hadn't felt like smiling even once. But flying into a rage... that would be too pathetic.

Then again, it went without saying that I was a pathetic human being. Ever since I learned magical girls existed in this world, there had never been a single moment when I didn't envy them.

In the end, the next action I chose was every bit as pathetic. I turned around and walked back to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠house. I wish there had been something more I could have done—

Beep-beep-beep-beep—

Before I even reached the house, the pager went off. The magical girls' pager. Though of course, since I was still keeping hold of the others, mine was the only one that rang.

…

I took the pager out of my pocket and looked at it.

Judging from the wording alone, it looked quite urgent. Well, they had relied on the magical girls' help all this time, after all. The police had introduced their own equipment for capturing kaijin, but they still couldn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠perfectly handle every one of them—only last time, there had been kaijin that melted their restraint wires on the spot.

I turned around. The magical girls' faces were pale. The look of girls who wanted to sprint off that very instant but had no idea whether I would allow it or not. Even Hayun avoided my eyes, as if she couldn't bring herself to say let's go. The bright expression from mere moments before had drained to pallor, her shoulders sagging.

…

What was I supposed to say? Should I tell them they weren't magical girls anymore? Or that while they were with me, they were to follow my orders? I couldn't speak to the first, but I'd already said something like the second. Thanks to that, I'd managed to do nothing at all yesterday.

I looked up at the sky. Clear. Spring often brought days hazed with fine dust, but strangely, the sky was spotless. Though that had been true ever since the Galaxy Federation came to this country—they were pouring in support of every kind, declaring they would improve the state of this world's environment.

And, cause still unknown, they had brought the kaijin along with them. Or rather—people who carried the potential to become kaijin themselves. The way any ordinary person carries the potential to become a criminal.

"...Let's go."

In the end, I murmured it like that and headed for the house. Behind me came the footsteps of five girls following.

Jihye still didn't know, even now, exactly what had happened that day. 'She suffered no particular harm'—that was what the medical staff at the hospital where Jihye had been admitted said.

Asked whether the others were all right, the doctors put on somewhat grave expressions, then said—out loud, at any rate—that 'everyone is fine.' The teacher was fine. Most of the children, too. But a few of the youngest were the problem.

No one knew what kind of gas had been released into the orphanage that day. Officially, it was said to pose no great harm to the human body—but lethal dosage was always a relative matter. An amount that would only knock an adult unconscious or send them to sleep would, naturally, be several times more potent in children far smaller than that adult.

There was still a child who hadn't woken. Even the medical staff seemed to be agonizing over what to do. It wasn't supposed to be seriously dangerous, and yet those children were still 'asleep.'

…

What had happened that day? What had the intruders been trying to do? Despite everything that had occurred at the orphanage, not a single news report or article had appeared. The kids at school knew only that Jihye had been hospitalized because her health was poor. And once she understood the situation, Jihye could tell what was really going on without anyone volunteering an explanation.

'Don't tell anyone.' That was surely it. It was better left unsaid. To anyone. Even the teacher had said nothing at all about that day.

The orphanage had returned to normal to an almost abnormal degree. There was never any shortage of money for the hospitalized children's care—there were subsidies, and the money Jieun had earned... was still there. Everything broken had been repaired. The teachers, the children—everyone was simply trying to let it all pass. Only Jihye harbored a faint suspicion that it had all been connected to Jieun.

Afterward, Jieun had appeared one more time. She had even stood against a kaijin alongside the magical girls. And after that, the news had abruptly stopped. There were no articles. Even the ongoing story of the magical girls' disappearance had, at some point, simply dried up.

But that didn't mean the talk on the internet or on the children's lips had vanished entirely.

The magical girls have betrayed the Federation. They've joined hands with that black magical girl—apparently they mean to become criminals, plain and simple...

Naturally, most of the rumors drifting around in a situation like this were nothing but sensational and malicious. Jihye heard them around her, too. There seemed to be stories circulating about her hospital stay as well—of course, no one said anything to her face, so Jihye couldn't know exactly what those rumors claimed.

Whatever all those rumors said, the conclusion was the same. So then—who deals with the kaijin now? Perhaps the police could manage. If the police couldn't, perhaps the soldiers could. Of course, there might be far more sacrifice than when the magical girls stepped in to take the blows in their place—a kaijin's attack was the kind that could kill an ordinary person in a single strike.

The Federation kept its silence, the government seemed never to have cared much to begin with, and the Company was busy promoting its combatants. The people who had seemed ready to devour Jieun with one heart and one mind now behaved as though they had nothing to do with one another—as though that story had never existed in the first place.

Her chest felt tight. Ever since she'd been discharged from the hospital—no, even before that, ever since Jieun had vanished from her side—Jihye's chest had felt tight.

Did Jieun know? That the room had been left such a wreck? That her treasured audio equipment and CDs had been shattered? Did she know that someone had come that day, and might have done something to Jihye's body? It terrified her.

The only person she could have talked to about it was Jieun. The girl she'd slept beside every night in the same room, who was as good as family, whose very name was almost the same as hers. And that Jieun had disappeared. Had become impossible to see. And so, ever since then, her chest had—

Bzzt.

Her phone vibrated. It wasn't just hers. The phones throughout the classroom rang—even the teacher's. The teacher took out her phone and looked at it. So did Jihye. So did the other kids.

It was an emergency disaster alert.

The teacher set her phone back down as if it were nothing and carried on with the lesson—

Screeech.

But Jihye shoved back her chair and shot to her feet. What she was thinking, Jihye herself couldn't rightly say. They were in the middle of class.

"Is something the matter?"

The teacher looked at Jihye with wide eyes. A perfectly ordinary expression, without a trace of malice. That was the world for you. Jieun gone, the magical girls gone, and still everyone acted as though nothing had happened—as though it had always been this way. After all the help they'd received. After all the torment they'd inflicted.

"Ah, I..."

Jihye opened her mouth. Beneath ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her uniform, sweat was breaking out along her back. And, without meaning to, she lied.

"I-I need the bathroom..."

A few of the kids laughed. Harmless as ever—laughter born simply because the situation was a little funny. If Jieun hadn't disappeared, if Jihye hadn't been through what she'd been through, and if the one who'd stood up had been some other child instead of Jihye herself, maybe she would have laughed too.

"All right, go ahead."

The teacher said it with an amused little smile. Jihye gave a quick bow and hurried out of the classroom. Now sweat was beading on her forehead, too.

Should she go? To where the kaijin was—was she even allowed? Last time, she'd only been snatched up by a kaijin and caused trouble for everyone. But she couldn't possibly sit still. If she didn't go, she would never see Jieun. Even if Jieun wasn't coming, there was at least a chance she might—

So Jihye walked. To the end of the hallway, as far as the bathroom door. But she didn't go inside. Instead, she ran for the stairs.

She flew down the stairs as fast as she could and burst out of the school, dashing across the playing field. No one called after her—no one even knew she'd left. Jihye ran. There was no time to look back, no time to second-guess. The guard at the main gate seemed to be shouting something after her, but she didn't so much as pretend to hear.

Because it felt like Jieun would disappear again. Like this time too, she'd be gone before Jihye could even get a word out—

…

No—it was the people around her who would surely make it that way.