Chapter 14: Confusion (5)
Hope was not an emotion one could only feel when circumstances were bright. If anything, it was the kind of feeling that could blaze all the brighter precisely because the world around it had gone dark.
A single ray of light lingers in the eye all the more starkly, all the more intensely, the deeper the darkness around it. What Hayun was feeling just then must have come from that same place.
Objectively speaking, the situation was far from good. But at the very least, Jieun was at Hayun's side right now — the Jieun whom, only days before, she had feared she might lose forever.
"...Magical girls...!"
The facility was not entirely free of combatants, however. As if determined to seal off the way to the ground floor, they appeared in ones and twos with every level the group descended, and by the third floor down, combatants in skin-tight black combat suits came pouring out in a crowd.
Hayun's sword danced. She swayed just enough to let a fist aimed at her face slip past, then severed the wrist behind it with her blade of mana. That vivid pink edge split through the energy sheathing the combat suits with almost insulting ease.
Sshk.
The circuit in the combatant's wrist burst — though it did not erupt with the thunderous blast that came when she cut into a kaijin's circuit.
A beam of white light grazed past Hayun's side and punched through the several combatants blocking the way ahead. The ones standing firm, apparently resolved to hold the line at any cost, vanished from sight in a single instant.
"......"
Iris blinked, looking slightly startled. Perhaps she hadn't known her shot could pierce several enemies at once.
It was a sorry state of affairs for the combatants. Anyone caught in that beam had certainly been hurt. They would heal quickly enough with treatment at the Treatment Center — but remembering how they had beaten Jieun, Hayun couldn't quite feel easy about it. Even so, there was no choice but to fight. Because Jieun was fighting alongside them.
Combatants rushed Jieun in numbers, yet the sight of that weapon — fearsome enough to gouge great cracks into the walls and floor — kept them from closing in easily. They had charged with no tactics whatsoever from the very start, and the ground-shaking blows sent them scrambling back in a panic, tangling the mess even further.
If anything, the wide corridor became more of a shambles because there were so many of them: those at the rear shoving forward while those at the front refused to advance, the combatants knotting together all the more.
The one who drove the wedge into that chaos was Dahlia. Marble-like orbs of mana came streaking in from behind, hammering into the combatants. They weren't especially dangerous — she had evidently dialed back the power so no one would be hurt too badly. About the force, perhaps, of a grown man swinging his fist: a blow that hardly threatened anyone in a combat suit. But when the magical girls fanned out in long lines on either flank and advanced without the slightest fear of being outnumbered, the enemy apparently decided there was no winning this.
At the very front were Hayun and Jieun. When Hayun came on trailing her radiant blade from one hand, and Jieun stalked forward with her hammer in both, murder written across her face, the men at the point recoiled in horror and wheeled around. Only then did the ones pushing up from behind seem to grasp how badly things were going.
The front line collapsed. Among those who watched the first few men take a beam and vanish, some spun on their heels at once and started running. At a glance it might have looked as though a single attack had erased them — but in truth they were merely hurled far away. They might be injured somewhere, yes, but they would never die.
They knew that as well as anyone. Knowing it, however, and finding the courage to stand and watch it happen were two entirely different matters.
Dahlia kept scattering her little magic bullets, and Delphinium held a monstrous mass of mana suspended above her head. To look at that lump — blazing far more intensely than the artificial lights illuminating the corridor, poised to come down on the combatants' heads the moment anything went slightly wrong — was to feel that standing one's ground at the front was utterly meaningless. Once a few turned tail and fled, the rest eventually turned and ran with them. The magical girls stood still for a moment, staring blankly at the tangle of figures sprinting away.
After that, Hayun, Rose, and Jieun no longer needed to trade blows with any more combatants.
"Kind of... anticlimactic, honestly."
Rose, robbed even of her chance to fight, muttered it as though she felt oddly cheated.
"There may still be enemies left, you know."
Seeing Hayun say it as if to console her, Rose let out a short laugh.
"You think so?"
That exchange felt like the ones they used to have back when they fought — back when they still fought beneath the Federation.
It wasn't that she wanted to return to the Federation. Going back wouldn't return Jieun to her old life, after all. It was more that it felt as though they had stepped back to the days before all that — to when the magical girls still believed, simply and completely, that they were righteous. Back to a time that wasn't this, drowning in worry every single day; a time when they still traded stories about ordinary life and shared their small troubles. Her heart lifted, just a little.
Her circuit was turning.
A Hope Circuit.
It spun hard and vigorous, and around Hayun's emotions the other girls' circuits turned in answer, as though resonating.
—Every circuit but Jieun's.
Jieun alone, among all of them, wore a look of confusion.
Hayun had noticed it for some time now: the force behind Jieun's hammer swings had grown strangely faint. The blaze of her thrusters had dulled, and the mana that until recently had shimmered around her body had thinned as well.
Jieun's strength was fading.
And Hayun did not think that was purely a bad thing.
She felt a little guilty toward Jieun for it, but Jieun's circuit never ran on good feelings.
Hayun had overheard the conversation between James and Cherry. The language of the Squeak-seong-in was too different a kind from human speech to follow perfectly, but unless she had badly misunderstood, a certain word had been mixed in there.
The word despair.
She couldn't be certain it had anything to do with the circuit. Perhaps they had simply concluded, during the work of dismantling the circuit back then, that it was "despairing." Perhaps they had been chatting idly about Jieun as they worked, and she had caught a scrap of them saying Jieun's situation was "desperate."
But even so, Hayun believed that word was bound to Jieun's circuit.
Hope and despair. Were they not concepts in perfect opposition?
She didn't expect a straight answer even if she asked Jieun to her face—
...and yet it ached.
Because if Jieun's energy truly was despair, then it meant Jieun was despairing even in this very moment.
How could she give Jieun hope? How could she haul her up out of that despair?
As always, she had no answers. But at least one thing was certain: Jieun's energy had been trickling away, little by little, from some point on.
And that was what let Hayun hold onto hope. If simply staying at her side was what gave hope, then Hayun could stay at Jieun's side for as long as it took. Forever, if need be.
"......"
And yet Jieun's expression was still dark.
It wasn't perfect yet. So Hayun tried to smile. Because at the very least, she could not become one more source of Jieun's despair. Because she could not — not the way she had before — wear that crumbling look every time Jieun's eyes found hers.
Hayun strode boldly on. Even if Jieun's strength kept slipping away, she swore that no harm would touch her; she would guard her at her side, no matter what.
Just as Jieun, in their childhood, had held Hayun steady so she wouldn't crumble.
Because that was one role she would never, ever hand over to anyone else.
I wished anxiety would set my circuit spinning, but it didn't come that easily.
I didn't want to be protected. I wanted to fight for myself. Even if it was nothing but worthless pride.
I... wanted to beat Hayun. I still did. Loving her or not, that inferiority complex of mine hadn't vanished completely.
But the longer I stayed beside Hayun, the paler my own power grew. It made me frantic.
Was it that I'd taken in Hayun's power? The strength of the magical girls around me was surging too — so much so that I could hear the thrum of their circuits turning even from a little ways off. Before I could so much as cross blades with anyone, the enemy was already in full retreat.
I......
"Let's keep searching as we go."
Rose spoke up.
"Any documents lying around? A prototype or two, maybe?"
"Or they may have left parts behind. The more circuits the better, I always say. You can build anything with them."
"Exactly. No matter how thoroughly they cleared the place out, some of it would have stayed — these aren't things a person can just carelessly toss. Besides, a facility this size would take its sweet time to sort through, department by department."
Cherry had answered James's words with a firm nod of agreement.
Sure enough, the closer we came to the places that had held the most combatants, the more stuff there was. How important any of it was, how valuable — that much I couldn't judge for myself.
"They might've left fabric behind too— hm. Hold on. Aren't we being way too blatant about playing bandits right now?" Dahlia muttered.
"...We are literally thieves, though," Delphinium replied.
"I feel my identity as a magical girl beginning to waver a little..."
Iris lamented.
I said nothing.
What was there to say? At this rate, all I was good for right now was playing the hired cart, shuttling those girls and their finds from spot to spot.
If I voiced that worry, Hayun would tell me, that's important work too. She might even say, you fought as well. But I knew I wouldn't be persuaded so easily. My temperament had twisted to exactly that degree.
I felt hope, and in the same breath, despair. My circuit held on, barely refusing to snap. At the very least, I still had enough energy left to keep it turning.
It told the whole story of my split heart: even with the bright light before my eyes, I was sinking into my own inferiority.
At some point Hayun seemed to have noticed, because she kept stealing little glances my way. I avoided them.
I didn't know what face to make if our eyes met. Like a child who blows up without knowing the first thing about being angry, and then keeps up the act because the anger has already drained away and they have no idea how to end the scene.
Ending the scene. Yes. Thinking back on it now, everything had gone wrong because I had blown up in the first place.
Should I have simply let myself be sacrificed? The way those girls tried to—
Thud.
Just as my thoughts were sinking toward someplace deeper and darker, a heavy sound rang out, as if to cut the spiral short. My head snapped up.
Had the kaijin appeared again? If they kept combatants on hand, it would be no surprise for them to have more kaijin in reserve.
Thud.
"Hold on."
At the second sound, Hayun said it, one hand raised slightly. We stopped walking, and turned to look toward where the noise was coming from. Finding it wasn't hard — the direction was straight ahead of us, some way off.
The interior of the research building was no wide-open hall. Just as a department store is filled with shops each raising its own walls to claim its ground, so was this facility. The only difference was that where a department store has at least one open face, this place was a lattice of rooms laid out on either side of two fairly generous parallel corridors.
There were hardly any doors — perhaps a courtesy, so the researchers could come and go comfortably. But now, ahead of us at the corridor's end, stood something that looked exactly like a hangar.
The girls slipped into combat stances with confident looks. I gripped my hammer tight.
An alarm sounded. Yellow warning lamps mounted on both sides of the huge door — one split to open top and bottom — began to blink, and slowly, from the bottom up, the door started to rise.
"That thing there — do you know it?" I asked toward the drone James was riding.
"Know it — yes, in a manner of speaking. Circuit-driven war machines were researched here as well, you see. Well, even once we built things that functioned in theory, we had no human being who could actually pilot them, so the project was quietly abandoned. That was where such unfinished work was stored."
"...Isn't that thing dangerous? Considering I'm here......"
"Hard to say."
James's drone bobbed up and down once, the very picture of a shrug.
"Whatever lies beyond that door may not be what I remember. At the least, if it is what I remember, it will hardly be a match for you all — not now that you magical girls seem to have recovered your 'hope.'"
Still an uncooperative hamster. Or was he talking that way on purpose, to keep my emotions in check? I wished he'd just cut me a little slack for once.
So the hangar-like door rose, slow as anything — as though something inside were straining to launch itself out — and when it stood about half open...
KRAK.
An enormous hand emerged from within and seized the door, then heaved it upward with something like impatience. Where those white fingers touched, the panels tore away like sheets of paper.
"Hahahaha!"
And from beyond it rolled a frivolous laugh. Not a voice heard directly — a sound slightly warped, as though its owner were pressing his lips right up against a loudspeaker.
"James! My friend!"
"I'd love to know who he's calling a friend."
James muttered it as though he knew exactly whose voice that was.
I knitted my brows. It sounded like a voice I'd heard somewhere before, but it didn't surface easily. Probably one I'd barely ever heard at all.
"And — my one-time subordinate."
Oh. Could it be that guy?
"...Mohican?"
"That's right," James answered my murmur.
But the thing standing beyond that door... was no bare-bodied man. What stood there was a giant — brutish from crown to toe. Well, at least it didn't look like a remodeled human body, and for that much I was grateful.
Its design ran in the same family as the armor the kaijin wore, only far larger — large enough that a grown man could, in theory, climb inside and take a seat.
In other words, that thing was a genuine, honest-to-goodness 'robot.'
"A robot with no kaijin inside it. My, my — it seems they haven't learned their lesson over there, either." James's voice drifted out of the drone.
"The Company does have its reasons for putting a kaijin in there, you know."
"What the hell, you—!?"
That would be Mohican shouting, presumably settled into the pilot's seat.
"Without a kaijin, it's nothing special. Couldn't the magical girls simply strike it at full power and dismantle the thing?"
At James's words, Iris stepped forward one pace — and loosed a single beam at the robot.
But—
"Kgh... KWAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Predictably enough, it hadn't so much as fazed him.
"It seems it was a touch too big for me to send flying?"
"...Well. I did expect as much."
Iris heaved a long sigh and cycled the bolt. A spent fuse dropped to the floor and rolled.
"Then we'll simply have to open with something far stronger."
Rose said it. And from behind us came the sound of something being whirled in tremendous arcs.
BAM!
For one instant, the impact was loud enough that I genuinely wondered whether the building was coming down.
"...Don't worry. I did the calculations."
Did I look that spooked? It was Delphinium who had spoken to me.
"Look at you, Delphinium, saying something kind for once."
"......"
As if Rose's jab didn't merit an answer, Delphinium shut her mouth and began preparing her next spell.
"Fine. So this is how it ends up."
So said Mohican — from within the robot.
Perhaps because he had crossed both arms to catch Delphinium's spell, the armor plating there sat caved in — yet the Mohican behind it appeared entirely unharmed.
"Haha, you haven't the faintest idea. James, my boy! So there were things even you didn't know, hm?"
"Noir Corporation is a vast place. Naturally I couldn't have known every project, could I? There must be plenty of programs you don't know either. Those circuits jammed into every corner of that robot, far in excess of what it needs — every one of them would be the resonance devices I myself drew up. So let's have an honest answer, shall we? Is production holding to standard these days?"
"......"
"It is difficult to keep an artisan's quality once the artisan is gone. How amusing. That the men so confident they can turn a profit on 'low-efficiency circuits' would come crawling, in the end, toward the high-efficiency kind — the kind that feeds on a magical girl's despair."
"You son of a bitch......"
Perhaps James's words had found a nerve, because Mohican growled the words out low.
"Get you lot out of the way, and the plan is complete."
"True enough — if there were no one to get in your way. But you see, even among the people standing here is one whose very purpose is to obstruct you."
James's drone swung around toward me.
"Besides... mmm. Given the state of your forces at present, I don't believe you can win."
James said it while looking at me, in a tone that suggested he knew something.
Was there more to it than me simply failing to use my circuit properly?
"Nothing that needs saying."
Rose said it with a gleeful grin, holding up her clenched fist.
"We'll know soon enough once we trade blows, won't we?"
The circuit on her left wrist was turning fierce and bright.
"James."
At Hayun's word, James's drone turned again to face her.
"Is that person... someone important?"
"Oh, very much so."
James answered in a voice one breath away from bursting into laughter.
"He was a cadre, as I was. The Company had more cadres than just the two of us, of course — but if he seized my old seat, then he must surely have climbed to quite the position."
"I see."
Hayun nodded. "If you're an important person, then..."
She stepped forward as she spoke. That blade of hers was shining, brilliant beyond looking at.
"...there are a few things I intend to ask you, once I've pulled you out of that robot. I can't say how much you'll be able to answer — but pray excuse me."
She framed it all as courtesy, but there was no smile anywhere in those two eyes. They were blazing white-hot.
As if in sympathy with my rage. As if to say that, questions or no questions, my vengeance came first.
My heart slammed against my ribs. This — fighting beside Hayun — this we could win. Even if something dangerous sprang up halfway through, somehow, with the girls as they were right now, it felt like we could overcome all of it—
Even as my Despair Circuit turned, in that doubled heart of mine, I was cradling hope.
Even the display of Hayun's circuit seemed to have brightened a little.
That circuit — the one I had seen across countless encounters with magical girls — was now spinning fiercer, more brilliantly, than it ever had—