Difference in Direction (2)
After warping my lips—which kept trying to curl into some strange smile—into something flatter, I buried the feeling and did what needed doing.
Six kaijin remained.
But the other magical girls' circuits were all burning at ferocious intensity. Whether they were drawing on my energy or on Hayun's, I decided I'd rather not think about it. That wasn't a simple question to untangle.
Thanks to Hayun and her eyes blazing like open flame, I managed to sort things out well enough—though there was no avoiding the hits I took along the way. What truly wore me down, however, wasn't the beating the kaijin gave me. It was that every time I swung my hammer into one of them, every time Hayun neutralized a kaijin's circuit, cheers rose from below. It even sounded like applause. Thankfully it wasn't quite like cheering on a football match, but honestly, people reacting that way to my every move left me thoroughly flustered.
"…Haa."
Only after we'd settled the last kaijin's circuit did the atmosphere around us finally cool a little. Not that the heat had entirely faded. Even as we dragged the fallen kaijin into a neat row across the ground, the police ringing us at a distance kept up their murmuring—like spectators at the debut of some brand-new hero. When, until only days ago, they'd been treating us as terrorists.
Once the final kaijin lay lined up beside Hayun's, I straightened my back, tipped my face to the sky, and let out a long breath. The sun hadn't set yet; the light pouring down on my head felt faintly warm. I watched the sky for a moment, then lowered my gaze to Hayun. Still transformed, she was watching my face with a soft, beaming smile.
What am I going to do about this.
If Hayun wore that expression every time I looked at her from now on, I'd never have the nerve to hold her gaze. Even now, I was angling my head away, sneaking my eyes elsewhere.
"Let's head back for now."
I murmured it to no one in particular. If anything, it was a word to myself. And then, out of pure habit, I made a black hole—
—or tried to.
…
Nothing happened.
"Huh?"
That was the sound I made, flustered. I gathered my focus again and tried to recall the sensation of conjuring a black hole. And instead of a black hole, I floated up into the air.
No, that was obviously not what I'd been going for. As if my body had forgotten how to handle its own magic, it had gone and cast a different spell.
The police murmuring swelled. To make matters worse, my hammer glowed even brighter, as if venting mana with nowhere left to go. …Could I use this thing like a wand, maybe? Come to think of it, there was a generator built into it, wasn't there? Dahlia and Delphinium used to swing their wands to conjure Magic Bullets, and Iris had pulled off similar tricks. So couldn't I produce something with this too? Something like, say, the black hole I'd once made with a heart full of escape?
I raised the hammer overhead and concentrated—but the only result was the light shining off it growing even more brilliant.
"Whoa!"
Someone shouted it from below, and applause rang out again.
"Huh?"
I looked down. The whole crowd was cheering. Hayun, swept up in the mood, was clapping right along with them, beaming up at me.
Wh… what.
Come to think of it, I was still— still dressed in white. The clothes were more worn than at first, smudged and scuffed and torn in places, but most of it remained white as fresh snow. A girl in a white dress, floating in the sky, one hand raising a glowing wand on high. Am I out of my mind?
As I stared down, my eyes met Iris's. For some reason, the moment our gazes locked, she curled a half-rotten smile onto her lips—the same grin she used to wear back when we fought, when I was still a combatant.
Point.
Her finger leveled straight at me. She didn't bother saying it out loud. She was far too sane for that. But I saw the shape of her mouth perfectly. A very concise, two-syllable word—
Panties.
—and the instant I read it, I dropped straight out of the sky.
I would honestly rather have fainted. I gave genuinely serious thought to pretending I had. But this Hope Circuit—what had been on my wrist was, admittedly, a Despair Circuit, but regardless—apparently operated in a way utterly unlike its counterpart, because it kept my mind successfully, infuriatingly intact right up until Hayun took my arm and pulled me upright.
As a result, I now had to travel to parts unknown while carrying, in pristine condition, the memory of soaring into the sky in a wedding dress woven from mana, striking a victory pose, and then plummeting in sheer mortification. The one small mercy was that the transformation itself came undone quickly. Apparently, once I grasped that I'd be carrying that horrific memory for the rest of my life, my heart managed to despair—just a little.
Truthfully, if we'd wanted to run, we could have. I and the other magical girls could all fly, after all. But even if we fled, we didn't actually know the exact location of the place we'd been living. Which meant running would have meant starting over from scratch. Because I couldn't make a black hole anymore. Because Iris didn't know our base's precise coordinates either. And in the first place, it was my own fault for refusing every GPS-style feature they'd offered.
And so, in the end, we… were "escorted."
"It'll be fine."
Hayun said it with total composure. Her smile was so brimming with confidence that I furrowed my brow without meaning to. Whether she read how would you know that? off my face or what, she only brightened further.
"You showed them you're really a magical girl. You showed them saving people. Who's going to say anything against that?"
Isn't that a little too much like a fairy tale?
Hadn't I looked passably like a magical girl all this time? I'd transformed, cast spells, brought down kaijin. The last time I saved people, the thanks I got was a net thrown over my head and guns in my face. If all it took was this one display to earn magical girl treatment, wouldn't they have granted it ages ago?
Well—it was an "escort," but for now the treatment seemed passably decent. No shackles had been slapped on, and nobody had confiscated our circuits. We'd simply been loaded onto the bus that came for us and were traveling in reasonable comfort. It wasn't one of those barred buses you see parked near protest sites, though… you know the "minibus," right? The kind that ferries soldiers back from leave? That was what we were riding. For transporting magical girls it felt a little… excessively ordinary, but if you asked me what vehicle they were supposed to use instead, I wouldn't have had an answer. Armored cars were apparently more cramped inside than you'd think, and for a comfortable trip, this was probably the better option anyway.
"And the circuits…?"
"Considering what happened the last time someone tried to rip the circuits out of us, I doubt they'll manage it easily again."
Rose said it with tremendous confidence.
Ah—is she talking about the incident where Jihye was taken hostage?
The magical girls certainly had been slow to arrive back then. If not for me, the whole thing might have ballooned into something enormous. Jihye might not have come out of it unscathed either. …No. Judged by the standards of an ordinary person's life, things had arguably already been "not unscathed" back then. Ordinary people don't get swept into life-or-death hostage standoffs, or threatened by people who come to do them harm.
"Besides, wherever we're headed is somewhere else entirely. At the very least, it doesn't appear to be a Federation building. Could it be the government's people, I wonder?"
Iris speculated in her own fashion.
"What reason would people who've kept their mouths shut all this time have to suddenly move?"
Dahlia wondered aloud.
"…Or maybe it's precisely because they stayed quiet that they're only moving now."
Something had happened inside the Company. I was the one who blew open that wall, but what came pouring out after were kaijin—and unlike any before them, kaijin that unmistakably wore the shape of Earthlings. …No, "unmistakably" might be a stretch. There probably aren't any Earthlings three meters tall. But looks aside, the fact that they could operate circuits directly meant they couldn't be aliens.
Aliens wield magic directly. It's admittedly a far cry from the "fantasy" we imagine—there's immensely complicated equipment that amplifies their mana, and apparently specially trained individuals who can gather and store the stuff on its own. Lifeforms on Earth, humans included, can't move mana at all, but on other planets, living creatures are often born carrying at least a trace of it, and it frequently concentrates in fossils hundreds of years old. Just as we once burned coal and oil, they power their starships with "fossil fuel"—fuel steeped in mana. Or should that be mana-stone fuel? Seeing as those fossils carry magic in them.
If the Company made Earthling Kaijin because of "fuel," then they had quite literally created a living, walking oil field. Beings with circuits that generate mana from human emotion—and at output levels nearly on par with a magical girl's. Though given that we'd beaten kaijin who outnumbered us, "nearly on par" was probably the ceiling: a possibility of parity, not yet something you could call "beyond."
…
With me gone quiet, the magical girls seemed to sink into their own thoughts and said nothing more. Only after about an hour of driving did we finally reach our destination.
"Where is this?"
"No idea. It's not a building we know."
Hayun answered my question. Just in case, I checked the others' faces; they all shook their heads. Even having lived in Seoul a good while, we didn't know every street in it. We could glance at what stood along the major roads the way tourists read landmarks, but from the scenery sliding past, we couldn't tell exactly where we'd been brought.
Truthfully, I wasn't paying much attention to the view anyway. Honestly, I was a little scared. Last time the government got tangled up with me, I'd nearly become a research subject. I still didn't know whether they'd meant to have me arrested, or whether they'd truly meant to shuffle me into a hospital and do something to me. Maybe one of the kaijin we felled today had me mixed up in its origins.
…
I looked at James.
James sat in the seat beside mine—or rather, across the aisle that ran down the middle of the bus. The seat was honestly too large for one hamster to occupy alone, but I didn't want to perch him on my hand, either. James wouldn't care for it. And with Cherry sitting in the next seat over, it seemed the police were at least extending each of them the courtesy of counting as "one person" apiece.
He seemed to notice me staring, but didn't bother to speak. Because he had nothing to say? Or because he was so stunned by this whole situation that he had nothing to say? Since I had nothing to say to James at the moment either, the silence suited me fine.
Even after the bus came to a stop, it sat there for a long while without letting us off. The driver's seat at the very front was hard to make out; they seemed to be discussing something, but the murmuring was too low to catch. Maybe ten minutes passed? Only then did the front door hiss open, and the man seated in the first row rose. He was still in his bulletproof vest, an officer with guards strapped over his elbows and knees—the tactical pouches on that vest were probably still stocked with magazines. He'd at least removed his riot helmet, leaving the squashed imprint on his hair plainly visible. Early forties, perhaps. Men dressed like that tend to see plenty of sun, and factoring in how that weathers the skin, he might only have been in his mid-to-late thirties.
"We've arrived."
"This isn't where I live."
I said it on purpose, just to see. I'd tossed the remark out wondering whether he'd snap at me, but the answer came back remarkably courteous.
"Yes, I'm truly sorry, but… it appears there are people who wish to speak with you."
"Are we under arrest?"
He couldn't quite bring himself to answer that one. I chose to read it as nothing has been decided yet. Fair enough, really—if they tried to restrain us the moment we stepped inside, they'd be the ones in danger. My circuit doubled as a Despair Circuit, after all. It was only because I was currently feeling "hope" that things were calm; the instant I despaired, a black hole would burst out and spring us free. Besides, they surely didn't understand the principle behind any of it. To them, I probably just looked like a girl who glowed and made black holes. And so I nursed that very faint hope.
When I rested my hand lightly on the circuit, I felt a subtle vibration. …Had the design really been rewritten?
In the end, we decided to comply meekly with the policeman's instructions—for now.
Where they took us was not, as it happened, an interrogation room. It looked more like an office break room. The space was reasonably open, and the tables—grimy and worn as they were—were arranged more or less café-style. In one corner sat a shelf for snacks and instant coffee, and it really was cluttered with this and that.
We claimed the largest round table, sat in silence, and waited until the break room door opened again and someone entered. Braced for some terrifying figure, I found instead a middle-aged man with the air of a civil servant worn down to the bone.
"Hello."
He seemed to be aiming for a gentle tone, but the exhaustion saturating his voice kept it from sounding especially kind. In his hands was a fairly thick file folder. He moved to take a seat, flinched upon realizing we'd occupied all six chairs at the table, dragged a smaller one over from nearby, and sat down at that instead. Then he carefully set the file he'd brought down in front of his seat.
It was an awkward arrangement by any measure, but having no intention of abandoning his duty, the man picked the conversation back up with all the courtesy he could muster.
"My name is Kim Suhyun. I've come to… walk you all through a number of things. I hope we can get along."
I had no idea whether that was his real name. He hadn't even said which organization he belonged to. With no one answering and every eye fixed on him, this Kim Suhyun got straight to the point.
"I'm not sure whether you're aware of how the current situation is unfolding."
"The Company's been running strange operations behind this country's back, and the Federation has schemes of its own, doesn't it?"
At my words, the man blinked.
"And the government is cooking something up as well. Isn't that why you hustled us straight here?"
It might have come off as rude, but I didn't feel much guilt about it. I had no idea how high up this man was. How involved he'd been in what was done to me—whether he'd been involved at all—was impossible to know. That didn't mean I felt like chatting pleasantly with a government man out to win me over, though. The only reason we were here at all was that I'd failed to make a black hole.
"…Yes. If we don't dig into the details, you could put it that way."
"We know the Federation is joining hands with the Company for something ugly, and we can feel the government letting it happen."
"That's right. But if you dig a little finer, you'll find that in the end, all three groups are competing with one another."
…
They didn't look much like competitors to me at the moment.
"I understand if you can't believe it. Which is precisely why we'd like to make you an offer."
"An offer."
"Yes. Might you… consider entering into a partnership with the government?"
…
Um. What. Honestly, of the three groups, the government looked the most helpless and dim-witted. What had they even accomplished so far? Short of parking police nearby to wait us out, everything they'd done had only made my life worse.
"Ahem."
Reading my expression, the man cleared his throat, looking a touch embarrassed. The other girls all kept their mouths shut. I couldn't tell whether they were deliberately leaving the whole conversation to me, but at least none of them seemed inclined to contradict what I said.
"…Fine. I'll hear you out."
"We call it a partnership, but we don't mean for you to place yourselves beneath us. To put it more precisely… we're proposing a kind of service contract."
"A contract?"
"Yes. The government provides benefits, and you provide a certain level of assistance in return. That's the relationship we have in mind."
"…And what exactly could the government give us?"
"Services the Federation and the Company could never provide you."
Judging that his pitch was landing, the man began to speak a little more freely.
"For instance, we can send you back to school. We can arrange for you to live in comfort, free of any threat of arrest, and provide dedicated facilities for magical girls."
"…So you drag us all the way out here without a word, and what you're saying is, sign a contract first? On those terms?"
"I'm not asking you to sign anything today."
The man hurried to add.
"We know about the injustices you've endured. A formal reckoning for those comes first, naturally. A contract takes time to arrange, so to begin with, we'd simply like to talk—refine the details together, and if the result pleases you, then we sign."
Well. It did tangle together the Federation and the Company. The circuits the other magical girls used were Federation technology; mine belonged to the Company. This conversation was going to be a headache if it ran long.
I rested my hand atop the circuit and thought. …I really ought to be having despairing thoughts right about now.
Could I put this man to use?