Chapter 13. Counterattack (5)
Lately, there had been something nagging at the back of Jua's mind.
She wasn't so pessimistic as to see their situation as hopeless. Of course, as Jeong Jieun had said, things weren't entirely rosy either. Even if they went back to school, could they really start over properly from their second year? Could they graduate on time and make it into university? However she turned the question over, answering it with a confident yes would mean looking at their circumstances through far too optimistic a lens.
She did carry those worries about the future—but well. Looking at what the five people here had built with their own hands, it didn't feel quite so simple.
Even without the Hope Circuit the Federation government had handed out, Jua—or rather, Iris—had managed to produce a device that actually worked. She couldn't claim she'd done it without the help of civilization, but there was a way to live. And somehow, it felt as if she were only now learning that for the very first time.
Here, there was no one pressuring Jua to do this, do that.
There was no opponent she had to beat.
Everyone here had to work to survive in the first place, so they took on tasks of their own accord. The more they helped one another, the better things got, and life grew a little richer day by day.
Of course, if someone told her to spend the rest of her life here, she'd start plotting her escape soon enough.
"...Not here today, either."
She murmured it as she came out from washing up, drying her hair.
Building a hair dryer hadn't been as hard as she'd expected. There was a motor that could spin, an energy source, a heat source—all she had to do was assemble them without breaking anything. With no wiring to connect and no battery to install, the parts count actually dropped, which meant reliability went up.
That, too, was something James and Jua had built together. Every woman here had fairly long hair. Even Rose, who wore the shortest cut of them all, had hair too long and too thick to simply air-dry.
Besides, James was covered in fur from head to toe, so a device that blew warm air was bound to become a necessity sooner or later anyway.
"Looks like they went out for a walk."
Rose answered, easygoing as ever.
Each magical girl accepted their current situation in a slightly different way, but true to their nature as beings who had always fought on hope, not one of them had sunk completely into despair. They all showed faint traces of anxiety, yet somehow they all moved as if, for once, they could breathe easy.
...
Jeong Jieun, who had been the first of them all to arrive here, was a little different.
Even now, Iris felt something strange every time she looked at her.
The first feeling that surfaced was guilt. She didn't think what they'd done had been entirely wrong. Combatants often did work no different from hired thugs, and she hadn't felt much hesitation about stopping them.
But that didn't mean she felt nothing when the person she'd beaten black and blue was standing right in front of her.
In particular, Jua had recognized Jeong Jieun many times. That unmistakable figure of hers had made it easy to pick out the "annoying one."
Even with no chance of winning, she always thrashed to the bitter end. Knowing she couldn't manage it, she'd still come charging in, fists flying.
Jua still couldn't name the feeling that thought stirred. Their circumstances had been completely different from the start, after all.
If the reason she'd taken that job was to bring money back to the orphanage she lived in...
She finished drying her hair and set down the homemade hair dryer. Then, after a moment lost in thought, she rose from her seat.
"Going to find them?"
Rose asked, wearing the look of someone who already knew exactly what she was up to.
"...Just getting some air."
Jua said that and stepped outside.
Finding the two of them wasn't particularly difficult. Unless you ventured into the crumbling ruins, there was nowhere to hide in this place to begin with. It might have gotten trickier if they'd gone into the forest, but no one was about to do that in the dead of night.
When Jua spotted the two sitting near the village entrance, she quickly tucked herself out of sight nearby. Maybe she didn't strictly need to...
But the sight of them sitting close together in the moonlight somehow radiated an atmosphere that said do not intrude.
There was no conversation.
No laughter, either.
Hayun was simply sitting with her eyes closed, leaning against Jeong Jieun's shoulder.
...
A little distance away, crouched against a wall with her body hidden, Jua held her breath, her heart beating a little too fast.
Why?
She had no idea why she was feeling this.
To Jua—or rather, Iris—Hayun was an important person. A friend... yes, that was part of it, but she was also a wall she had to climb over.
There were seniors who had become magical girls a year before her, but even next to them, Hayun was somehow different. It wasn't simply that she was skilled—it was more that... how should she put it? She had something in her that shone without any effort on her part.
Hayun's "hope" was different.
A magical girl's hope usually sprang from her sense of purpose. And the other magical girls' sense of purpose sprang from the job of being a magical girl itself.
It was a profession, it was work, so it carried a certain sense of duty—but at the same time, the magical girls took a certain pride in holding that position. That was where Iris's condescending treatment of combatants had come from.
Strong, righteous beings. Ones to be admired.
So much so that she could understand why the Federation pinned titles like "magical girl" and "hero" on the talents it scouted.
But Hayun's hope was... far less concrete than all that.
And yet it always burned bright and clear.
Iris remembered the moments when that blazing hope had faltered. When something happened to Jeong Jieun. When she lay unconscious in a hospital bed, when the police hunted her, and when she infiltrated the company building. Not just Iris—every one of the magical girls could tell, plain as day, that Hayun's hope had dimmed.
She had wondered why.
Iris poked her head out a little further and looked toward the two of them. She couldn't see them properly—only Jeong Jieun's profile as she sat there. Her expression wasn't a bright one.
The feeling stirring in her chest was one Iris had never known before. It wasn't jealousy. It wasn't quite bewilderment, either. If anything, the bewilderment she already knew far too intimately, so that one was easy to tell apart.
...
Blossom's hope.
She didn't know its source, but she was someone with the courage to never, ever give up. Someone who ran her circuit on emotions that should have been dark, yet was never devoured by them. Someone who, no matter the situation, refused to let go—clinging stubbornly to the cliff face, refusing to fall.
Maybe that was why Hayun saw that person as her "hope."
Iris thought back once more. To that combatant who kept charging at her, cooking up one strange trick after another just to land a single blow to Iris's face.
If their positions had been reversed, could Iris have done the same?
...
The conclusion was "unknown."
She couldn't tell whether she'd settled on that answer because she didn't want to understand and accept the situation, or because Iris was arrogant enough to believe she could have managed it herself.
If she hadn't thought of herself as "someone who fights evil with her circuit," would Iris have broken?
Reaching an answer to that question frightened her. Because it felt as though it would make her someone with less grit than a single combatant.
And then, recalling just what that feeling had been, Iris sank into bewilderment all over again.
Envy.
Envy of the person that fierce, blazing light of hope was leaning on, while Iris herself sat crouched against a wall.
She knew full well how rude and cruel it was to look at someone in that position and think I'm jealous—and yet there it was, that feeling, inside her all the same.
When she heard the two of them getting to their feet, Iris quickly straightened up. Hiding her footsteps wasn't difficult. The two of them didn't seem to have heard a thing.
The plan didn't take long to settle on.
If I was going to toss reason aside and strike first, there was obviously one more candidate: the current Chairman of Noir Corporation.
"Good."
And it was exactly the kind of operation I'd been hoping for.
People kept telling me to think rationally, but human beings aren't creatures capable of ignoring emotion entirely. Just look at everyone here, running on despair and hope—the very force that moved them wasn't reason, but feeling.
Hope can reach for something even when it's empty. Despair can be conjured all on your own even when everything's fine. I don't know who made this world, but isn't it just wonderfully convenient?
"So we just storm the Chairman's house, then?"
"That won't be quite so simple, I'm afraid."
James said, seated square on the floor with his arms crossed.
"I know where the Chairman's estate is, but I find it hard to believe that coward is still sitting there."
The Former Chairman had, in the end, also thrown his subordinates aside and run when his own skin was on the line, but I didn't see much point in bringing that up just to set James off.
"But it is sound reasoning. Yes—because he is not a 'rational' man. Since the goal is to make the enemy suspicious and force him to watch his own back, breaking in and smashing the place to pieces would suit our purposes nicely."
"Oh."
I smiled, genuinely pleased, for the first time in a while.
"You think there'll be kaijin there?"
"Probably."
"Then there's no real need to fight them, right?"
"Correct. A kaijin's attacks make no distinction between friend and foe. However much one controls it through resonance, issuing it specific orders is impossible."
Having said his piece, James stared at my smiling face for a long moment, then spoke.
"Well then. Any questions?"
"Yeah, one."
"And what question would that be?"
"How much expensive stuff is in there?"
...
James heaved a long-suffering sigh.
"That estate belonged to the Former Chairman. Naturally, the current Chairman's possessions there won't amount to much. Frankly, the only reason he keeps the place for himself is jealousy of the Former Chairman."
"Ah. That's a shame."
Not that the Former Chairman was entirely without fault either, but at least he'd never personally laid a hand on me. He'd threatened to go after Jihye, in words, but never actually done it.
...
Then again, come to think of it, the reason Jihye had been put through all of that in the first place was precisely because the Former Chairman had run a background check on me. In that case, I didn't imagine breaking a few of his belongings would weigh on my conscience much. Good.
"What's with that refreshingly vindicated expression?"
"Nothing. Just feeling good about finally starting the counterattack."
...
James narrowed his eyes and glared at me.
What. What is it. What.
He was the one who'd come up with the target. Glaring at me wasn't going to change the plan.
"So I'm going alone?"
"No."
Hayun said flatly. I turned my head to find her staring at me, her face set hard.
"Why? Worried I'll get captured again?"
"Yep."
Seriously, did you have to answer that fast?
"The whole point is to show I moved on my own. What am I supposed to do if you tag along?"
"You can say we followed to stop you."
...
I stared at Hayun for a while, then opened my mouth slowly.
"Even if you don't come, I'm not going to go smashing up anyone else's home."
At my words, Hayun's mouth hung open, dumbstruck for a moment.
...Why the shocked face?
Didn't we already settle all of this before?
"Anyone else? More ideas?"
When I said that, this time Iris shot her hand up.
Now what's with you?
Weren't you supposed to be the least swayed by emotion among the magical girls? Well, Delphinium fits that bill too, I suppose, but in the original story your role was more about reining in reckless plans, wasn't it?
...Oh, don't tell me you're about to call this plan reckless.
"Going alone would be far too reckless."
And that prediction did turn out to be somewhat on the mark.
"...Um, didn't we already finish this discussion?"
"No plan is ever truly finished until it's carried out. If there are gaps, we need to pin them down for certain."
Rose chimed in beside Iris.
If this had been shortly after I arrived here, I probably would have brushed all of that off. Back then, I figured they were more likely to waste my rations than actually help me.
But now, having received so much help, flatly ignoring their opinions was impossible.
Besides... the magical girls had already fought in sync with me more than a few times. When girls like that pointed out "gaps," there was a good chance they meant it.
"...Fine. Go ahead."
Unable to ignore all three of them in the end, I asked with a shrug.
"What gaps, exactly?"
"It took every one of us fighting together to handle a single kaijin. You may be good at dodging, but you know a kaijin doesn't just lock onto one target and stay there. What makes you think you won't get caught?"
"Because I have the black hole, obviously."
"And if you take a hit to the head and black out?"
...
"You're human. You can't cast magic empty-handed. If you're knocked out cold and your circuit gets seized or destroyed, there's no coming back to this side. You'd be captured, plain and simple. Or should I say, 'taken alive'?"
Wow, way to make that sound grim.
But she wasn't wrong.
What if there were several kaijin? As a magical girl, my dynamic vision was far sharper than usual, and I was confident I wouldn't go down from a single blow. But my magic was still crude next to the other magical girls'. If the kaijin in that house turned out to be as numerous as the ones in the broadcasting station, it could get dangerous. Judging purely by 'possibility'... well, it wasn't outright impossible.
"A valid point. Miss Jeong Jieun, what will you do?"
Apparently sensing how sour I felt about being argued down by Iris, James asked, shooting me a sidelong glance.
"...And if you all come chasing after me, then what?"
"For one, I can provide covering fire. And my covering fire includes 'warp.' It stings a little, but in a pinch I can move you somewhere else."
Speaking as someone who'd been on the receiving end plenty of times, getting shot again wasn't exactly appealing.
"Furthermore, I am perfectly capable of 'pretending to restrain' you. When you warp, you put on a tremendously flashy show of light and noise, don't you? If the magical girls are trying to stop you, wouldn't it be stranger for me not to wedge myself in between?"
...
I had nothing to say.
James looked back and forth between Iris and me, looking thoroughly delighted at the sight of me being cornered. So I scooped James up and started poking and prodding him all over.
James squeaked and flailed, trying to wriggle free, but he lacked the strength to escape my grip. Biting me wouldn't even land, not when I could channel my circuit.
...For some reason, Hayun was eyeing my hands with an icy stare, so I set James back down. Come to think of it, they're magical girls. I suppose this might count as racism, too.
Still, she was glaring at my hands rather than my eyes, so it wasn't quite as terrifying.
"...Fine."
Harassing James bought me a little time, but in the end I couldn't come up with a single counterargument.
"Me too! I wanna come too!"
Hayun said, shooting her hand up just like Iris had.
"It can't hurt to have someone watching your back!"
"...No, you two are supposed to be coming to 'stop' me."
"That's fine. We'll just make it look like we're confused too."
I stared at Hayun as she said it. The moment our eyes met, Hayun squirmed, somehow embarrassed. With her eyes turned up toward me like that, she looked quite adorable—but she was every bit as thorny a customer.
Had Hayun... ever wheedled like this before?
...
I thought it over for a moment.
The fact that she was pushing this hard—could it be the situation was actually rather dangerous? That's why Hayun was so dead set on coming with me.
It was true that all my confidence so far might have made me underestimate the enemy. Underestimating and overestimating alike end up hurting us in the end. But if I had to pick which did more damage, it was underestimating, obviously.
"...Okay."
In the end, that was all I could say.
Though watching Hayun's face light up, I couldn't help feeling I'd answered wrong somehow.
"Will you two be okay? Should we come along too?"
Before we left, Rose asked Hayun one last time.
"Of course! We'll be totally fine!"
...
It's not a picnic, you know.
Having her... think so well of me wasn't a bad feeling, but I honestly didn't know what to say to Hayun reacting like this.
It felt like we'd gone back to the way things were before we came here. My instincts screamed that this wasn't entirely a good thing, but sure enough, some corner of my chest welcomed it all the same.
Hayun's face was bright; Iris, by contrast, looked a little stiff.
"If it's really too much, you can stay behind. I don't mind."
"Do you really think I'd say all that and then bow out?"
Iris reacted a touch sharply to my words. Did that come out sounding like a provocation?
...Well, given the history between me and Iris, fair enough.
But I had no desire to get tangled up in that and burn through emotional energy, so I simply raised both hands a little.
"Good. Then we're all set? Circuits charged."
Letting a trace of my old working habits slip into my voice, I nodded.
"...Then, let's go."