Chapter 14. Confusion (3)
Iris had never once thought of fighting as a good thing. But to claim she had never enjoyed it would be a lie.
She was a magical girl, and she believed she fought for justice — and yet to say she had never felt a heady thrill in battle would be a lie all the same.
It stood to reason. She was a magical girl, after all. The combatants had never been a match for her. Even when executives of no small rank came hauling in every new idea they could conjure, the magical girls refused to yield and beat them back far, far too easily.
Which was why, to her, that one combatant — the one who came charging in every single time without a hint of giving up — had been a thorn in her side.
The surest way to pick that combatant out of a crowd... there had been her physical traits, of course, but there was also the matter of attitude.
Always draped in a somewhat flippant air, a combatant of the villain organization who, every time she crossed paths with Iris, would cook up one strange little scheme after another in a desperate bid to somehow, somehow beat her.
"......"
To be perfectly honest, that aggravation had been a small pleasure, too.
Among opponents who did nothing but run away every time, wasn't she the only one who ever actually picked a fight? Irritating, yes — but it had also stirred a strange sort of fondness.
In a fight with any other combatant, 'victory' simply meant the fight was over.
Fire off a few rounds, drive off the combatants at the front, and that was the end of it. There was no reason to chase anyone down and finish the job.
But the battles with that one combatant — with Jeong Jieun — had been a little different.
Iris had defined victory as the opponent giving up.
Her arrogance was born there. So confident was she that she would not lose a fight that she had measured everything by a single standard: whether the opponent quit and walked away from it all.
Perhaps that was why.
When Iris lost her battle against Jeong Jieun — when that researcher was ultimately snatched away for good — the shock had cut every bit that deep.
...And afterward, when she learned what had become of that combatant.
Had there been some moment, she wondered now, when Iris had begun to mistake those battles for play?
Her opponent had been fighting for her life with every bone in her body breaking, and all Iris had felt was a faint, curious sense of rivalry.
The thought chilled her, a little.
That was also why Iris remained in this place.
She had a reason — but no goal.
How was she ever to reach a goal she could not even name?
To let Jeong Jieun feel happy emotions — to see her live a hopeful life? Set against a purpose that had been to crush all such things, it was far too vague a notion. Above all, none of it seemed to be what Jeong Jieun wanted.
They said her goal was revenge, yet she never spared a thought for what would come after.
Simply this: to go on living without giving up, even in a situation like this one. That, more than anything, was Hayun's goal.
It was a strange thing, truly.
Iris knew that Jeong Jieun's circuit ran on an emotion unlike the one that fed a Hope Circuit. And she knew that emotion was never a bright one — at the very least, nothing hopeful.
And yet the sight of Jeong Jieun thrashing onward, refusing to surrender, looked —
for all the world, exactly like hope itself.
"This is... impressive."
When I murmured that, Cherry straightened her shoulders with a proud little look on her face.
Before I knew it, I was petting her head — until I caught Hayun staring fixedly at my hand, and quickly withdrew it.
Why had she been like that lately?
Was that it? Did my behavior look straight-up racist? Come to think of it, calling someone 'cute' — someone older than me, no less — just because they happened to be a bit short probably did look racist, especially when the reason for that height was tied to their species in the first place.
Hayun was the righteous type, so I couldn't really blame her for seeing it that way.
Maybe I should be a little more careful?
Once I started dwelling on it, there was no end to it. Until only recently I'd been shoving it all down, telling myself everything was over — but then Hayun went and risked her life to save me, and now I couldn't even bring myself to tease her anymore.
And at the same time, I found I didn't want to look bad in her eyes, either.
These days I could barely sleep at night. Hayun was right there beside me, and the moment I became aware of it, everything I'd said and done to her since coming here came flooding back until I wanted to kick my sleeping bag across the room.
Not that I could bring myself to, with Hayun sharing the covers with me.
...Anyway. Back to the point.
Cherry hadn't come all this way empty-handed.
Whether she had known things would turn out this way, or had come intending to make them turn out this way, she had built a projector-like function into her translator device — the ribbon hung around her neck.
There was no lens or anything of the sort, and seemingly no minimum focal distance either, so it didn't appear to be a projector as I knew them — but the result was a projector all the same.
And what that projector showed me was a map of downtown Seoul.
No navigation features. It simply displayed the map itself. The map was stuffed full of all sorts of information, though.
"......"
Come to think of it — I had never once been to the Chairman's residence, so how on earth had I made it into the sky above it?
My phone had of course stayed switched off the entire time. Going online risked broadcasting our location. I could have powered it on with the internet and GPS disabled, but what high school girl on this earth walks around with an offline map of Seoul saved to her phone?
And more important than any map would have been what the Chairman's house actually looked like.
It wasn't just the Chairman's house, either. The way we'd come to be here was the same story. I had wished for 'a place where no one, anywhere, could ever find me', and that was exactly what I got — but if you simply travel by leaving it all to chance, you would normally come down on some random patch of the planet.
There was no telling whether that patch would even be a city.
Was this, too, the work of 'magic'? Because I had believed so effortlessly, so utterly as a matter of course, that it would 'just work out'?
"Hmph."
James made that noise at the sight of Cherry's smug expression.
"What difference would a map make? Even without knowing the precise location, you could travel anywhere on a verbal description alone."
"Is this your first time guiding a magical girl?"
Cherry said to James, chin tilted up a touch.
"I suppose that would explain why you lost every single fight."
"...I did win once."
"Once. Exactly."
Considering the consequences that single victory had unleashed, it could hardly be dismissed as a small match — but I figured that if I took anyone's side here, the argument would never end, so I simply kept my mouth shut.
"See, here's a mistake people make all the time. They think imagination grows stronger the less you know. In reality, the more information you have, the more concrete the ability becomes."
"......"
"You look like you don't believe me. Then think back on everything Jieun has pulled off so far. Does she happen to have rocket engineering tucked away in her head?"
"No."
"Exactly. And yet she swings that hammer around like it's nothing, doesn't she? Even imagining that much requires knowing, at the very least, that 'rockets exist'."
It... worked like that?
"The gap between one piece of common sense and another. That's what people call imagination. For imagination to be concrete, a good stock of common knowledge goes a long way. And it makes sense — magic, in the end, is bound to collide with reality. So long as 'reality' exists, you can't simply wish it out of the way, and to exploit the gaps in between, you need to know a great deal. Wouldn't you say?"
She sounded exactly like a schoolteacher.
No — more like the caregivers back at the orphanage.
I glanced at the other magical girls. They were nodding along with faintly startled expressions.
As if they suspected James and I had known all of this all along and had been quietly exploiting it.
"No matter what or how much anyone learns, there's a limit to a single head, you know? Even professors trained systematically in one field, when they run an experiment, tend to think 'this is what will happen' rather than 'I wonder what will happen'. With magic, that 'this is what will happen' is the very heart of it."
So that was how it worked.
Technology had its limits. As far as I knew, even those marvelously advanced aliens had yet to uncover the causes behind physical phenomena. If anything, leaning on magic kept them from digging any deeper.
Which was why, apparently, Earth was unrivaled in the galaxy at theoretical physics. Though most aliens seemed to think 'what would we ever need that for'.
Then again, even in the Ha●ry Potter series, the wizards look down on Muggles something fierce.
"So you see, a map like this is a good thing to have, no? Easier to think with, easier to plan with."
"You can slip in and out through the black hole in a single hop — what use is planning? We are striking as guerrillas; all we need is a list of places to smash."
James's words left Cherry briefly at a loss.
But I understood exactly where she was coming from.
If I... if it ever came to pass that I could no longer use the black hole, a 'map' would become tremendously useful information. Finding the shortest route when every second counted on the run — that was invaluable.
Of course, no one here knew yet that my power was fading. Most of them didn't even know the principle by which circuits ran in the first place.
I stole a glance toward Hayun.
She met my eyes and smiled, and I quickly dropped my gaze.
...Why? Even after I'd been so harsh with her.
Biting my lip lightly, I turned my attention to the map.
"So. Where should we go next?"
"From what I heard on the radio,"
James opened his mouth quickly, as though determined not to be outdone by Cherry.
"security around the company building has been reinforced. Police patrols have increased, and at the Chairman's request for protection..."
James moved his hand against the floor — the same pinch-and-spread gesture you'd use to zoom a map on a smartphone.
The projection enlarged, and then even shifted into full three dimensions. Some navigation apps render building models in 3D; it looked exactly like one of those.
The building was apparently in Yeouido. If you asked me to sketch the shape of every district in Seoul from memory, I honestly couldn't swear to it — but I did at least know what Yeouido, jutting out into the Han River, looked like.
"...It appears this building's power supply has been reinforced."
"The department store?"
"Not anymore. It's a research lab now."
In the world I used to live in, an enormous department store had stood on that spot. Over here, I'd never felt any particular urge to visit. Living where I did, there was no reason to travel all the way out to Yeouido in the first place.
"A research lab in the middle of Seoul? They do research here?"
"Well, it does differ somewhat from the research conducted at the Complex. The subject matter is circuits in both cases, mind you — it's an internal arrangement to pit departments against each other and squeeze better results out of them."
Fair enough. They weren't building these to sell, after all. Not right now.
"For the record, the circuits our combatants use are manufactured at the Complex. That line is far more productive."
"So."
I asked James.
"What's this supposed to tell me? That they're just worried the lab might get raided? Or is the Chairman actually here?"
"Presumably they want us imagining it's both. Or at the very least, imagining it's one of the two."
"Meaning there's nothing important left in there?"
"If the other side has any sense, yes. One does not leave valuables behind while deliberately baiting an attack. Ah, and for the record — combatant circuits may be made at the Complex, but that circuit you use came out of this very lab. Frankly, it never made financial sense to sell it. Complex, expensive circuitry, and not a single human being who could operate it properly."
"So what you're telling me is, the place you used to work is being purged."
"......"
James said nothing for a long moment.
"That is probably also why they had no choice but to use the circuit as a bomb. It may be that they have reached the point where they 'can build nothing but that'."
"One person leaves, and the entire company's technical prowess collapses? Noir Corporation really is in a sorry state."
Cherry said it like she was poking a bruise.
"Didn't your own side complain about how lost they were without you? Other countries have beings like you, I'll grant — but the very moment that news broke, it rather suggested your existence was never a small one."
"......"
This time it was Cherry who found herself with nothing to say.
"I'm going back."
"When, exactly? When the Federation finally stops running experiments on the girls? Or when this precarious little alliance with Noir Corporation shatters completely?"
"......"
Cherry's ears drooped. She looked so deflated it was hard to watch.
"Anyway."
I cut in between the two of them.
"So what's it going to be? Do we hit this place or not?"
"For now, let us pretend to take the bait. They are almost certainly doing this deliberately. They want me provoked."
"So we fall for it a few more times, and keep it up until they finally drag in enough manpower to capture us. That's the idea?"
"Was that not the plan we drew up in the first place?"
James looked up at me with an expression that asked whether I had truly forgotten even that. I flashed him a grin.
He was already visibly fuming over Cherry's steady needling at his side, and my grin appeared to push him over the edge.
"......"
Meanwhile, I was burning up inside.
How could I not be?
If the police were reinforced, if they were marshaling forces specifically to capture us —
Could I really go out there and fight it through? Or would I only weigh the girls down, failing even to escape with my life?
Even as those thoughts churned, my circuit no longer turned with anything like its old strength.
Hayun... it seemed she had been a far brighter hope to me than I had ever realized.
Damn it all.
We rested for roughly another day, keeping watch on the situation.
The radio kept reporting that security there had been reinforced. There was even talk of the Chairman coming and going.
There was no way to verify whether any of it was true. Maybe it was nothing but planted information; maybe the Chairman really had gone in and hurried right back out.
Even so, in the end, that place became the target.
With bait this nakedly obvious, James argued we should play along one more time — and the other girls and Cherry agreed.
The lab where James had once done his research. According to him, it had most likely already been shut down by the time the assassination attempt happened, with every scrap of important data spirited away.
"...And yet the researcher himself was stationed at the Complex."
"In those days, the Complex and the Yeouido lab alike were all under the Former Chairman. We never had any intention of showing that researcher our technology to begin with."
Fair enough — they had never expected me to succeed in the first place, so it would hardly be strange if my placement had been a bit of a mess.
...After all, from the very start, it had been little more than a stage play between the Federation and the Company. Even so, under the Former Chairman, the Company and the Federation had still been in genuine 'opposition' — merely circling one another warily, prodding without ever crossing the line.
The current Chairman... was in the middle of shattering that balance.
Because, according to James, he was 'blinded by the profit right in front of his eyes'.
Though the 'profit not right in front of him' that James spoke of seemed to lie impossibly far away.
The raid was tomorrow.
If the place happened to be crawling with kaijin, things could turn dangerous.
Even with my heart brimming over with despair, I had never managed to bring down those armored kaijin easily. If I were forced to retire early, the other girls would be in danger too.
Hayun might be put in danger.
"Jieun."
I had stepped outside claiming another walk, gazing up at the sky and turning it all over in my head, when Hayun came up beside me and spoke.
The circuit, which had only just begun to turn again, went dead still the instant she opened her mouth.
"......"
I turned around without a word.
There was Hayun. In this dim, dreary place, dressed in those filthy clothes with their hems worn through to threads, she was still beautiful.
"Is something worrying you?"
There was a way to get my despair circuit spinning, right here and now.
Treating Hayun with deliberate, senseless harshness.
To the point of nearly severing what we had altogether.
But I hesitated.
What if I cut her off like that and the circuit still refused to turn? What if it ended not in despair, but in giving up entirely?
Even if despair was fated to end in surrender someday, that was not the ending I wanted.
"...Yeah."
Of all the answers circling through my head, the only one that made it out of my mouth was that single short syllable.
"Don't worry too much."
Hayun said, drawing closer.
"You've done so well up until now."
Hearing words like that made my chest sink.
Not sinking into despair — it meant I felt safe.
That was clearly something I used to say to Hayun, back before we ever came here. Whenever she grew anxious, I was the one who spoke, the one who settled her heart.
Where, exactly, along the way did it all get reversed?
Closing the distance slowly, Hayun reached out and took my hand.
"I'll help you."
"......"
The circuit was silent.
"So let's be strong. Together."
"......"
For a long while I floundered, unable to answer.
Even now, I ought to say something that would hurt her. That was the only way Hayun would stay out of danger tomorrow.
Yes — if it came to it, and Hayun failed to escape on her own.
If she ended up captured.
...What would the Federation do to her then? These were people who had meant to haul me away and run experiments on me — there was no telling what vile things they might visit on Hayun.
"......"
But in the end.
"Yeah."
That was the only answer I could give her.
My head was too tangled.
My heart was too still.
Perhaps it was simply that the hope I felt for the first time in so long felt good.
As though I had become addicted to it, I could not tear myself away.
Whether this counted as salvation — whether it was truly hope — I had no idea at all.
"Someday, we're going back. Together."
"...Yeah."
If only at the very end — when I answered those last words of Hayun's — the circuit above my left wrist trembled, just a little.