Chapter 15. The Difference in Direction (1)
The moment I saw the circuit spinning in the opposite direction, a great many thoughts came rushing in at once. And of all those thoughts, the one that claimed the most space—naturally, if anything here could be called natural—was a single word: why?
Why? How? James had said it plainly: the Federation could never build a circuit like this one. The basic principle was similar, but the way a circuit behaved changed depending on the emotion feeding it—and that was exactly why even Iris, clever enough to tinker with bare circuits in an empty room and improvise one device after another, had never fully unraveled how they worked. If swapping the emotion alone could change what a circuit was for, she would have figured it out ages ago. Despair is a universal emotion. It's something anyone comes to know at least once in their life.
Or was this, too, the work of "magic"? Was it because I had looked at this circuit and believed, truly, that it could be achieved?
The pain faded, little by little. My blurred vision sharpened until the world seemed almost too crisp—sharper, if anything, than it had any right to be. My head was still a mess, but once the pain was gone, what remained was a single certainty: I could move.
I rose from where I lay. My hand closed around the hammer.
The hammer's generator—
Just as I'd thought, it was burning white. Like my circuit. Like Hayun's, just ahead of me. But it wasn't raging out of control the way it usually did; it was more like—hmm, this is going to sound a little lame—but it looked like a camera flash left switched on. Though of course, more mysterious than any actual flash, I suppose. If the black dot I had conjured earlier had resembled a black hole, then the light spilling out from behind the hammer looked like a star rising. It burned nothing at all. It simply wrapped everything around it in warmth.
Maybe it was the light, but my clothes looked a shade whiter, too. Had their appearance... changed? Well—there was no time to stand around picking apart the details. I couldn't say whether what was truly moving my body right now was hope, or despair that had spun itself around so far it had veered into some strange new resonance—but right in front of me, Hayun was fighting.
I couldn't just lie there. By the time that thought had finished forming, I was already dashing forward.
"...Jieun?"
Hayun called my name. Her expression, her voice—they said she understood this situation even less than I did. Far less. But Hayun had always been quicker to read a situation than I was, and far sharper. She didn't question why I had stepped forward; she simply fell in at my side.
What would the two of us look like, I wondered, to anyone watching? Would we look like comrades standing shoulder to shoulder, firmly holding the line together? Even I had to laugh at myself for thinking things like that in the middle of all this. I was the one who moved first. Hammer raised high, I sprinted with everything I had—no thrusters, no assistance, nothing but my own strength. Power gathered solid in the feet that pressed against the ground.
Whoosh!
The two-handed hammer moved faster than it ever had, and the sound of it cleaving the air was genuinely menacing. The Kaijin dodged the blow—
"...!"
—but the instant its body brushed the hammer's white light, the black fluid coating its hide began to evaporate, and it leapt backward a considerable distance. Was that stuff refined despair, then?
But I wasn't fighting alone. While I charged, Hayun—somewhere along the way airborne—spun through a flashy somersault and dropped down behind the Kaijin. Her pink blade, brighter and more threatening than it had ever been, came falling straight toward the crown of the creature's head.
The Kaijin jammed a black Energy Blade between its skull and her edge to stop it, and caught my hammer on another blade raised in its palm—but
Screeeech!
Deflecting us sideways, it seemed, was beyond it. Hope, it appeared, didn't act directly on the despair circuit itself. A circuit, after all, is governed by its user's emotions. Hayun could radiate fierce hope from right beside me, but if I didn't feel hope myself, my circuit would keep turning on despair alone. So if this Kaijin was weakening at the sight of the two of us together, it meant the creature, too, was feeling an emotion far removed from despair.
A Kaijin, too, is an Earthling, underneath. I had no way of knowing exactly what its insides looked like. If it had been forcibly made, something other than organs might be sitting where they should be. But—
—who could say for certain? The other Kaijin, when carried far from Earth and treated with care, had all returned to their original forms. If the being in front of me was truly an Earthling too, then once it was subdued, there might—just might—be hope of turning it back. Whatever that "original" form might turn out to be.
The white light blazed fiercer still, and Hayun's circuit flared in answer, burning just as hard. Pink and white wove together and mingled. Honestly, it was a dizzying sight.
And, just a little, it was a beautiful one.
Crrrack.
In the end, a sound rang out like the black Energy Blade's edge splitting. The sound of my hope overtaking its despair.
WHAM!
The white light struck the Kaijin's head, and it toppled over sideways onto the floor.
"Haaah!"
Haying drove her sword straight into the Kaijin's chest. That strange blade of hers—which never wounds human flesh, yet inexplicably cuts exactly what Hayun wills it to—pierced clean through the Kaijin's circuit.
There was no explosion. The bursting black light was swept away, as if carried off by the light of Hayun's sword—by that hope—diluted in an instant and gone. The way a single ray of light enters a pitch-black room that no light has ever reached: that is how Hayun's hope erased the despair.
When the blinding glare had dimmed somewhat, what remained was the Kaijin, unconscious and collapsed. Its body hadn't returned to normal yet; it was barely managing to gasp for breath. But it was still alive. And as long as it was alive—yes, where there was life, there was hope of recovery.
……
The battle wasn't over. The others were still fighting, and plenty of Kaijin were still standing. But I could only stand there for a moment, dazed. The instant the tension drained away, my brain simply couldn't keep up with the sheer volume of information pouring in from my surroundings. Me, dressed in white, unlike anything I'd ever worn. The hammer's head, still spilling light. And Hayun, staring unblinkingly at me.
"...Ah."
I felt my face catch fire. Good grief. A white dress. Look, I know perfectly well that the world isn't short of white dresses, and surely some of them can be worn every day and still deserve the name. But no matter how I looked at it, what I was wearing went well beyond that.
In its black form, the design had been far plainer than this. It was closer to a costume than everyday wear—nothing I could stroll down the street in—and, oddly enough, it did show a hint of cleavage, but even so, compared to the other girls' outfits there was nothing especially remarkable about it. The design itself was still much the same now—except that every part which had once held color had been bleached into immaculate white. Even the semi-transparent skirt at the back had become fully opaque white silk, with an enormous ribbon perched on top of it. And thanks to that ribbon, the whole section puffed upward as if about to burst. A lovely bonus. So, taking it all in as a whole, this outfit—
It really wouldn't have been strange to call it something like a wedding dress. Granted, it had far too many questionable details to pass for an actual one, but squint hard and glance quickly, and it could absolutely pass.
Why? Once again, a single word and a question mark filled my skull to bursting. Don't tell me despair and hope come with black-and-white costumes to match? Was I in my right mind? Whose idea was this? Unsurprisingly, it was probably mine. I had never once thought I should wear something like this, but the either-or logic of it—despair means black, hope means white—was exactly the kind of thinking I would come up with.
Gritting my teeth, I shot up into the sky. I did my best to bury the embarrassment. Even now, astonishingly, my circuit was turning with tremendous force. Stronger than it had ever been. And to escape the eyes of the crowd gathered in a semicircle below, all of them fixed on the two of us, I flew off to help the others.
Hayun's mind was a tangled mess.
Jieun was... the friend Hayun loved most. Which was exactly why, when Jieun had been driven into that state, Hayun had found herself unable to fight at full strength. And yet, at the same time, it was from the moment she'd begun following Jieun that her strength had come back to her.
Honestly, it frightened her a little. She was afraid of what Jieun might think of her. As a magical girl, Hayun had beaten Jieun down again and again—no, "beaten down" didn't cover it. She had inflicted wounds that, five years ago, might have left scars for life. Might have left her disabled. Naturally, she was terrified that Jieun would hate her for it. She was terrified, too, of the way Jieun's circuit would spin like mad whenever they were together—because she suspected she was the reason it turned. Because she suspected that the source of those "negative emotions" Jieun felt was Hayun herself. That was what frightened her.
More than once, she had thought it might be better if she simply vanished from Jieun's side. After all, if magical girls had never existed, none of this would have happened to Jieun in the first place. But she couldn't give up. Even knowing the other girls were suffering as they followed her lead, Hayun couldn't bring herself to stop—so she had kept trailing after Jieun, again and again.
Lately, though, she had allowed herself a little peace of mind. Jieun had started to relax even with Hayun at her side—probably ever since Hayun had saved her with her own two hands. If Jieun could think of her that way, then Hayun would gladly stake her life for her as many times as it took. Of course, it was also the sort of thing that made Jieun worry far too much, so it couldn't happen too often—but all the same. That was how she felt.
...The reason Hayun's circuit was turning. The reason it could shine brighter than the hope she normally carried. Hayun had thought, perhaps, that it was thanks to Jieun. Because Jieun was beside her, because they could keep fighting together even in a situation like this, because Hayun could act for Jieun's sake and Jieun could act for hers—that was why she could hold hope this fierce. Or so she had believed.
But maybe that wasn't it at all. The magical girls had been able to wield such power because of Hayun's strength. The fierce hope Hayun carried had helped turn the others' circuits, letting the whole team produce brilliant synergy. So then—couldn't the reverse be true as well? If Jieun drew hope simply from being at Hayun's side, and if that was why Hayun's own circuit could burn so intensely—
The thought alone was enough to fill Hayun with hope so vast that the darkness around her couldn't touch her, not even a speck—
And now.
……
Watching Jieun stare down at her own white dress with a dazed expression, as if she couldn't believe her eyes, Hayun became certain. Whether Jieun was being influenced by Hayun, or Hayun by Jieun's transformation, she couldn't yet say for sure. But.
"...This can't be."
Cherry, clinging to Hayun's shoulder, murmured the words. It was impossible. Something Jieun's "despair" could never, ever accomplish was unfolding right before their eyes. Something only someone who bore hope could do—and Jieun was doing it. Could it be because this hope had surged up from a despair so deep, so dark? Jieun looked as though her entire body were made of light.
Dressed like a bride at a wedding, Jieun's face went red. It was an odd expression to wear in the middle of all this—but precisely because of that, Hayun felt herself relax instead.
"A new... magical girl...?"
Yes. Right now, Hayun was witnessing it: the birth of the sixth magical girl, right before her eyes. People had looked at Jieun and called her the black magical girl, or the sixth magical girl—but Hayun thought that, for the girl standing here now, those names had never fit so well.
What would work as her name as a magical girl? Maybe "Blossom" would do, Hayun caught herself thinking, half in jest. If pink cherry blossoms existed, then white ones had to as well—though really, flowers had always come in every color even within a single kind.
Watching Jieun soar away as if fleeing, Hayun flew up after her. And watching Jieun swing her hammer with all her might at the Kaijin the others were fighting, as though to hide her embarrassment, Hayun steeled herself. Jieun's name as a magical girl would be—yes. How about Lily? That outfit was dressed in a color that suited the lily perfectly.
The moment I flew up to help the others, every one of their gazes snapped to me. Still, it beat the stares of the people down below. If I had to be embarrassed in front of anyone, far better people I knew than total strangers.
I decided to pin the blame for all of this rage and humiliation on the Kaijin. Circumstantially speaking, they were rather pitiable creatures—but, tragically enough, the only beings I could legally beat up right now were the Kaijin. Besides, in a sense, they were the ones who had driven things to this state in the first place. I'd ended up in this outfit fighting them, so it was entirely their fault. Thinking that, I brought the hammer down from overhead with everything I had, rage and all.
CLANG!
The hammer struck the Kaijin square on the crown of its head, and it plummeted like something fired straight into the earth.
WHAM!
Watching its head bury itself in the asphalt, I flinched—even I thought that was going too far. Then the body twitched and pushed itself up on its hands, and I relaxed a little. Grotesque in every possible way, sure. But at least it wasn't dead.
"What are you doing!?"
I shouted at Iris and Dahlia, who were still staring at me blankly. "There are Kaijin all over the place! We have to take down every last one of them!"
The two of them snapped out of it at last and began unleashing magic on the surrounding Kaijin in a flurry. For some reason, Rose took one look at me and burst out laughing, while Delphinium shook her head and heaved a deep sigh. Well, at least those two pulled themselves together on their own. Rose clenched her gauntlets and hurled herself at the Kaijin, and Delphinium conjured a mass of mana even bigger than she was. Every single one of their circuits was shining bright, without exception.
...What on earth was happening? But there was one thing to be grateful for: the grim faces the girls had worn inside that building had all regained their ease. If the magical girls despaired in a moment like this, who would be left to fight? And though I truly hated to admit it—that category of "magical girls" now included me, too.
I tightened my grip on the hammer. Perhaps it had judged me the most dangerous one present, because a Kaijin shrugged off the magical barrage from Dahlia and Iris and came flying straight at me. I raised the hammer, glowing with a holiness so intense it was almost unsettling, and was on the point of batting the creature away like a baseball when—
WHAM!
Something like a meteor arcing up from the ground into the sky slammed full force into the Kaijin's chest—or, to be precise, its circuit. Strange way to put it, maybe, but that was exactly what it looked like. The pink sword in Hayun's hand had carved a trajectory identical to its own blade through the creature's flying body.
"Hyaaah!"
As if to declare she would protect me with everything she had, Hayun shouted and drove her sword into the Kaijin's chest. Her body climbed higher and higher, until the pink light swallowed it from view. Once more, black light seeped out in every direction—and once more, the pink erased it. The Kaijin's body drifted gently downward, as if riding the wind. That, too, must have been Hayun's doing; an unprotected fall from this height might have torn the creature's body to pieces.
And then that pink-haired girl—barely half the height of the Kaijin she had just felled—stood proudly with the sun at her back, looking at me.
...Honestly. My childhood friend did love an excuse to show off.
But why did she have to look so damn dependable doing it? I didn't like it one bit—and yet, in the end, I couldn't stop a small smile from creeping onto my lips.