Chapter 13: Counterattack (9)
It took me quite a long time to grasp what was happening.
No—that's not right. Measured in seconds, it might have been the span of a single heartbeat.
But considering that only barely, right before hitting the ground, had I managed to arrest my fall, then measured against the situation itself, it had taken a very long time indeed.
Thud.
Because I'd only barely stopped the descent at the very last moment, dropping to the ground right afterward was simply unavoidable. That was how hard it had been to keep my focus.
"Hayun!"
That was the first word out of my mouth.
I called for Hayun.
There was no answer.
Cradling Hayun's limp body where it lay draped over me, I pushed myself up into a sitting position. My hands were damp. What coated them wasn't Hayun's sweat.
Red.
It was blood.
We had clearly failed to escape the bomb's blast range—that 'fifty-meter radius.' Or perhaps the problem had only grown worse because I'd set the thing off in the sky.
Matter doesn't simply vanish. The components at the circuit's core might have evaporated in the intense heat, but everything wrapped around them would have become 'shrapnel,' scattering in every direction. In my rush, I'd failed to check any of that. I should have made a black hole and hurled the thing inside instead.
From the moment I saw that red, my hands had begun to shake. My breathing turned ragged. Hayun still lay with her eyes closed, unmoving.
Had she thrown up a barrier of magic in that final instant? Had it been enough to hold back the shrapnel? Judging by how her body hadn't been shredded, it seemed so.
But she was still unconscious, fragments embedded in her back and legs, bleeding. She might have burns, too. My own skin stung with heat—Hayun must have gotten it far worse.
Footsteps sounded nearby. Not Iris's. The footsteps of many people.
We had soared into the sky, then dropped in free fall. There was no way we'd come down where we'd merely jumped from.
"They're falling!"
The shout rang out, and people hoisted riot shields over their heads. Every gaze that had been fixed on us lifted to the sky.
Their faces had all gone deathly pale.
Was it because they were only now believing that such a bomb had really existed? Because I'd thrown it into the sky to somehow deal with it? Because Hayun had collapsed as a result?
No—maybe none of those were the reason at all. If you thought shrapnel was about to rain down on your head, of course you'd wear that expression.
But those people had no need to worry about shrapnel.
Slowly, a dark shadow settled over our heads. I lifted my gaze.
The light was converging on a single point. As though mocking the laws of physics, the sunlight that had split into countless rays and filled the world was streaming toward the black hole like a meteor shower, gathering into a river.
It was... not a particularly reassuring sight.
No shrapnel ever poured down like rain. The black hole that had been floating small above us even before I fell must have been dragging in everything in the sky with a force far greater than their own.
Ever since Hayun had seized my body and pulled it in front of her—it had gone on like that, without pause.
In the end, she couldn't keep the shrapnel from reaching her, but—
"W-we're being sucked in...!"
The people's fears had changed completely by now.
The ones who'd been bracing for something to fall on their heads were now crouching as low to the ground as they could manage. The hems of their clothes fluttered. The air around them swirled as if caught in a whirlpool—all of it flowing upward, toward the sky.
The black hole, smaller than a fist at first, had now grown larger than any I had ever made. Floating more than fifty meters overhead—no, unmistakably far higher than that—it all but filled one corner of my vision. My left wrist burned as though scalded, trembling beyond my control.
I rose slowly to my feet.
Unlike everyone else, my body alone seemed to defy the laws of physics here. Even as I gathered Hayun into my arms and drifted slowly upward, I wasn't sucked into the black hole.
"Blossom!"
The shout came from below. Looking down, I saw Iris, James, and Cherry rising up together.
James rode his own drone. Cherry sat in Iris's hand—her drone had already been destroyed.
In one of Iris's hands hung my hammer. No gun. Perhaps she'd stored it in her sub-space.
And below, a crowd of people straining to crane their necks up at us. Figures dressed in black, shields in hand. A few of them were drifting slightly with the wind. Several cars rocked where they stood. Even so, not a single person had been pulled in yet.
"...Jeong Jieun."
Iris said, sounding startled at the sight of me. At the sight of Hayun in my arms, she couldn't manage another word.
Hayun's clothes were reverting to what she'd originally been wearing. The sections torn mercilessly by the blast pressure stood out vividly. More exposed than her magical girl outfit had been, the red wounds beneath were starkly visible.
"We have to go."
"Back to where we've been staying?"
Iris asked quietly. Did seeing Hayun not worry her at all?
No, it couldn't be that. She was only feigning composure—the fingertips of the hand Cherry sat on were trembling faintly.
"...Somewhere she can be treated."
I was no different.
My voice was flat, too. Flatter, even, than it had been during our argument over how to handle the bomb. But in truth, it was nothing of the sort. My emotions were churning so violently I couldn't have named them—and that was exactly why my voice stayed flat. I didn't know which feeling it was supposed to carry.
But even amid all that, one thing was clear.
That enormous black hole. That black pit of the abyss, completed only by my Despair, was larger than any hole I had ever made.
Risen even this high, I still couldn't see the color of the sky. Everyone around would be watching it. After the sound of an explosion in the heavens, this thing had simply come into being.
...The aftermath of it all—I couldn't begin to think about that now.
"Let's go. Together."
Iris said. There was no need to answer.
The staff at the Magical Treatment Center nearly panicked themselves sick at the sight of us.
Naturally. For these people, it was a bolt from the blue.
Normally you'd have to wait in a fairly long line to get inside, but the moment I walked in carrying Hayun, the medical staff frantically ushered me toward the emergency ward. So at least the people here wouldn't throw me out, even knowing who I was.
I'd expected James to say something about me coming to a place like this, but in the end, he said nothing at all.
The Treatment Center rarely performs anything like 'surgery.' Unless a limb has been severed outright, a broken bone simply needs to be set and then healed with magic. No pins, no plates.
And Hayun's condition was far better than that.
...
Knowing the patients around us were frightened, I still sat down beside Hayun's bed.
I was still wearing the magical girl outfit. Just a few months ago, if someone had handed me clothes like these and told me to put them on, I'd have reacted with sheer revulsion—I probably wouldn't have worn them even for money. Now, I couldn't have cared less. No—if anything, I needed to stay like this. Someone else might come along and raise a fuss about dragging me off.
Iris had changed back into her original clothes. She'd set my hammer down carefully beside me.
...I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do for Hayun. And she lay there, unconscious.
It was my fault. All of it.
I should have simply left. The bomb going off was beyond anyone's control—it wasn't even my fault. The police had said they'd evacuated the people nearby on their own; I should have trusted that and just walked away. Then Hayun would never have been hurt.
I was the one. I was the idiot.
Iris, hovering beside me, kept clenching and unclenching her fists. She seemed unable to decide whether she was allowed to put a hand on my shoulder. I lifted my expressionless face and looked at her.
"...Go back. I'll send you home. Take... Cherry and James with you."
Even though I'd called Cherry's name too, Cherry—sitting at Hayun's bedside with a worried look—didn't change in the slightest. A silent agreement, then?
"...I'm staying here."
Iris answered softly. I didn't bother to argue.
A few minutes later, the police came pouring into the emergency ward, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. But not one of them managed to say a word. Was the air around me really that heavy?
Or were they afraid of the hammer lying beside me? If I went on a rampage in here, every patient and staff member would be in danger. I said nothing. Iris looked a little worried, though.
After sitting there for a long while, I grabbed a medic who had come to check on Hayun.
"Hrk, eek...!"
The moment the wanted fugitive judged the most dangerous in Korea right now—no, probably in nearly the whole world—seized them, the medic nearly fainted on the spot.
"...Her condition?"
At my terse question, the staffer swallowed hard and answered.
"No major trauma. We've done everything we can... If there are no complications, she should wake within a few hours..."
"...Got it."
With that, I stood. She wasn't hooked up to an IV or anything of the sort, so I simply gathered Hayun up from the bed and rose. When Hayun's arm slipped loose and dangled, Iris caught it and laid it back across her stomach. I turned and walked toward the Treatment Center's exit.
If they'd come to arrest me, this was their best chance—and yet the people carefully stepped aside to let me pass. The way they looked at me, and at Hayun in my arms, was different now. And every one of them was a police officer.
Some had already removed their caps.
I could see their attitudes had changed, but my head was already so full of Hayun that I had no room to dwell on it. I just wanted to get back, quickly, and keep her safe. To lay her down somewhere as warm and secure as possible.
Hayun's body felt warm in my arms. Her chest was still rising and falling in a steady rhythm, so the medic had probably been right.
So I tried not to worry. I didn't want to worry.
I didn't want to blame myself.
...
On the way back, the black hole I had made was enormous once again.
Right up until now, I'd kept trying to deny it.
I liked Hayun a great deal, and I'd thought of us as close friends—but I'd never thought of her as my life's purpose or anything like that... or so I'd believed. But like this...
Depending on Hayun's condition, on what she said to me, on how I felt about her, the state of my circuit swung violently.
And so, I couldn't deny it any longer.
In the end, Hayun's existence had been my Hope. Simply because Hayun had stayed by my side—because of that—I had never fallen any lower.
I had simply been jealous of that Hope. Simply denying that very fact.
I realized it far, far too late.
When Hayun opened her eyes... honestly, even Hayun herself had no real idea how long she'd been out.
She could tell, at least, that a good deal of time had passed. The others were all fast asleep.
The last thing she remembered was fainting up in that sky, yet what greeted her eyes was a somewhat unfamiliar stretch of orange fabric.
A tent?
She had seen a tent that color before. Hayun was living with Jieun, after all. Jieun's sleeping tent was this exact color.
Startled, she moved to sit up—and realized her body was bound in some strange way. No, not bound... she was inside something like a sack. Looking again, it wasn't a sack at all, but the sleeping bag Jieun slept in. Whoever had tucked Hayun into it had even zipped it all the way up past her neck.
The inside of the sleeping bag was a little damp. Honestly, a little hot. The night still carried a chill, but the sleeping bag sealed it out completely—warm enough to raise a faint sweat on her skin.
Clumsily working the zipper down from inside, she suddenly realized how terribly cramped the tent felt.
...
It was strange. The tent Jieun had prepared was by no means that large, but neither was it so small that even one person couldn't fit properly. If Hayun had been alone in there, there should have been room to spare—yet for some reason, both her shoulders were pressed against the walls beyond the sleeping bag.
...One side was definitely the tent's fabric wall. When she pressed against it, she could feel the taut springiness of stretched fabric. But the other side was blocked by something a little firmer. Not a rock or anything like that—rather, something soft and warm, like...
Yes. Like a person's back.
Hayun's breath caught.
There was no basis for it whatsoever, and yet somehow, she felt she knew exactly whose back it was.
Slowly, she raised herself out of the sleeping bag and looked at the person lying beside her.
It was Jieun.
Jieun was asleep right next to her. Though her back was turned this way, they were pressed almost completely together.
There'd been no other choice. For two people to sleep in this tent, that must have been the only way. Which meant Jieun had gone to the trouble of pushing Hayun inside, then squeezed in after her, contorting her body to lie facing away—forced to sleep pressed against her side.
She could see the black, glossy hair. The ends were a little split, but measured against everything they'd been through, it was in remarkably good shape. A shoulder rose and fell with quiet breaths, slightly exposed—the collar of Jieun's comfortable old t-shirt had stretched so loose that one shoulder would slip fully into view if she wasn't careful. And below her shorts, pale white legs.
...She didn't look hurt anywhere. Hayun had held her from the front, though, so her front was another matter. At the very least, Hayun's own body didn't hurt. Had she somehow been treated? Even feeling wherever her hands could reach, she couldn't find a single wound.
...
Once again, there was no evidence for it—but somehow, Hayun felt that even this was only possible because Jieun had looked after her.
No one else was awake. Everyone was sleeping quietly. Probably, anyway—the tent was closed, so she couldn't see outside.
Hayun slowly slipped out of the sleeping bag. The sight of Jieun lying there with nothing covering her was too pitiful to bear.
After a moment's deliberation, she flipped the sleeping bag over. Spreading open the unzipped end, she draped it over the two of them like a blanket. It was a little cramped that way, but there was just enough to cover them both.
Though it meant pressing tightly together.
With her body still damp and faintly sweaty, Hayun pressed herself against Jieun's back.
Jieun was warm.
Embracing her from behind, Hayun thought: Jieun had let her sleep in here, so leaving her with nothing over her would never do. But if Hayun herself went uncovered, Jieun's feelings might be hurt.
So—this was the best option. For now.
To press closer and secure what little space there was, Hayun carefully wrapped an arm around Jieun's waist.
Perhaps because she'd been through something so exhausting, she was sleeping deeply.
Jieun didn't wake through any of it.
Her hair carried a faint fragrance. Hayun didn't know exactly what the scent was. But she vaguely thought it was nice.
Hayun, too, was somewhat reassured by the warmth of Jieun's body, and soon drifted back to sleep.
Right up until the next day, when Jieun took in the situation, bolted upright in horror, and screamed—Hayun slept on, deep and peaceful, the entire time.
An explosion had torn through the heart of one of the city's wealthiest districts.
At first, people assumed the terrorists had struck yet again. But once a few videos filmed on smartphones around the site made their way onto the internet, the story began to change.
The black magical girl had risen rapidly toward the sky carrying something enormous. High above, the girl had hurled that enormous object upward with all her strength. And Blossom, scrambling up after her in a desperate rush, had wrapped the girl in her arms.
Then came the massive explosion—so bright the smartphone footage went white for an instant.
Where the bomb had detonated, a colossal black hole had formed. The black hole swallowed every last fragment, and thanks to that, no shrapnel ever rained down on anyone below.
If this had been a 'terrorist' attempt, then ironically, the black magical girl's own magic had thwarted the terror. Hardly the deed of a terrorist herself.
Experts who analyzed the footage from every angle put the blast radius, by their estimate, at a little over fifty meters. Thanks to the magical girls' warning, the police standing nearby had fallen back, and the evacuation of local residents had been wrapped up relatively quickly—but within that fifty meters, an elderly couple with limited mobility had remained behind. So had the two officers escorting them out.
Had the bomb detonated on the ground as it was, the analysis concluded, they would certainly have been caught within that radius—and would never have survived.
Because the two magical girls had risked their lives to hurl the bomb high into the sky, aside from a few shattered windows and some ruined interiors in vacant houses, not a single life was lost.
No one called that act 'terrorism.'
No one knew how the girls had learned of it and gone in. But one thing was certain: whatever their intent, the girls had succeeded.
It was a result that could be called, at the very least, a counterattack against all the baseless rumors swirling around them.