Chapter 17. Questions (1)
As the days went by, one thing had been weighing on my mind.
It was, if anything, the most obvious worry imaginable: the type of energy I drew on had flipped completely to its opposite.
I had never been wired for positive thinking to begin with, so I'd never once considered anything like how to summon hope.
Despairing was simple. All you had to do was compare yourself with other people. Picture what you couldn't do, what you couldn't have — that alone was more than enough.
There had been plenty of people better than me in my orbit. Hayun was the prime example, and most of the kids around her outclassed me too.
Getting into the same high school as Hayun had demanded an insane amount of studying, and even then I never managed first place. Fortunately, the donations flowing into the orphanage let me keep attending the same school as her.
But going to school on money I'd begged and scraped together from every corner, while watching kids stroll through that same school as if it were simply their due, needing nothing of the sort — that wasn't exactly a pleasant thing. Nor was the inferiority complex and jealousy that blazed furiously to life every time those kids drew near Hayun. Maybe the real reason I answered them so sharply was that only by doing so could I salvage a shred of self-respect.
…And yes, truthfully, I could have seen hope as well. That I had a friend named Hayun. That if I worked hard, I could produce grades like hers. That I was poor, but hardly starving.
Still, no matter how I turned it over, despairing was easier than embracing hope.
…
So I agonized over it. Just how was I supposed to get my hands on this thing called hope?
Thinking back on the battle, Hayun had played the biggest part. Apparently the way I kindled hope was by holding on to the thought that Hayun would stay by my side.
It was a reason so embarrassing that my face burned just admitting it to myself, but what could I do? That was how my head worked. The problem was that, right at this moment, Hayun actually wrapped around me was not producing that kind of energy at all.
"Um, could you let go of me for a second?"
Thank goodness I'd been awake since the small hours — the thought that I might have missed my window entirely made my blood run cold. I had teleported once before, so I'd assumed it would work the same way this time. Should I have run a proper experiment the day before?
"Why? I think charging up energy like this should be enough to move us, though?"
That was Hayun, hugging my waist tight from the side.
Well, that… might actually be true.
My wrist circuit was already beaming out a bright glow. The vibration running through it was fairly strong, but it gave no sign of building any further.
I gave it some thought. Could I possibly have… adapted?
Yes. That had to be it.
Despair had worked the same way. Once the despair became everyday life, at some point the shock dulled, and the circuit's output dulled along with it. Beyond that, the real problem was simply that one shocking thing after another kept happening to me.
What if hope was like that too? Hayun was my hope, and I did feel it in the simple fact that she stayed close — but because she was like this always, every single time, I had adapted far too completely.
Come to think of it, that held up. If Hayun hugging me could send my circuit into overdrive, I'd have been flung halfway across the country every time I woke up in the morning. Together with Hayun or Jua, no less. The description sounds a little off, but there's really no other way to put it, is there?
Right. That had to be it. Which meant the answer was…
While I stood there blankly, Jua — who had been keeping a careful distance — drifted up beside me and quietly took hold of my sleeve. Then, as if she did this every night, she pressed her forehead against me. My arm this time rather than my back, but still.
"J-Jua?"
"It's just that, when I do this, your circuit runs even harder. It did before, you see."
I simply shut my eyes. I couldn't bring myself to look at the other magical girls ringing the three of us — Rose's expression in particular was all too easy to imagine.
At least the kids weren't looking at us like we were freaks. True to magical girls' shining reputation for justice, they were open-minded in all sorts of ways, and they didn't regard what we were doing with anything like scorn. Well — they did look at us strangely in a different sense. Their gazes were disconcertingly warm for "strange looks," which was its own brand of mortifying and irritating.
…
But here was the thing: even with Jua clinging to me like this, what didn't work didn't work. For the same reason as with Hayun — if her pressing against me had been enough to throw me across space, I'd have been waking up somewhere distant every single night.
My words keep picking up loaded connotations, but what I'm saying is no metaphor. It's literal.
When Jihye had held me, it worked on the first try.
I opened my eyes a crack and looked at the circuit on my left wrist. It was still whirling away, shedding white light — energy intense enough that, used in a fight, I could aim for a single devastating blow. As fuel for tearing through space, though, it didn't seem nearly sufficient.
With Jihye — was it because it had been so long?
Jihye was the most ordinary girl I knew. Ironically, among the people I had any personal ties to — thanks to where my school sat, or the situation I now found myself in — there wasn't a single purely ordinary one. That was exactly why it gladdened me that Jihye, the ordinary one, stood up for me even in a moment like that.
With strength, power, or money, you can shrug off other people's pressure. But without any of those things, she still thought of me as family and stood by me unwavering against all the pressure around us — that was what made me happy.
Ah. The circuit glowed a little brighter.
"Mmhm."
The sound came from beside me, and when I turned my head, Hayun was peering up at me through half-lidded eyes.
Hayun was not the kind of girl who made that face. If I had to pin it down, it was the look she only wore when I was toying with James — and somehow, she was wearing it right now.
Objectively speaking, her expression wasn't all that scary. It couldn't be. With that guilelessly beautiful face, pink hair on top of it, how terrifying could her anger possibly be? I'd almost never even seen her angry in the first place.
And yet, looking at that expression on her face made me just a little afraid.
"…I see."
What, exactly, was "I see"? It would be nice if she didn't just convince herself and actually told me what she'd concluded.
But before I could open my mouth, Hayun rose up onto her toes.
And then—
"Ah!?"
Who had made that sound? Jua, who'd been pressed to my side looking up at me just like Hayun? Or Rose, grinning ear to ear? Dalia? Delphinium?
It might well have come out of my own mouth too. My mouth wasn't "sealed," after all, so nothing stopped the sound from escaping loud and clear. But I felt, unmistakably, something soft brush across my cheek, just beside my lips.
Hayun's face, which had darted in, drew back. It was flushed a red about to burst at any second, and her eyes scattered everywhere — the girl who had kissed my cheek was evidently every bit as mortified as I was.
And yet somehow, some way, she managed to aim a beaming smile at me—
—and before I could think a single thing, white light swallowed the whole lot of us.
What on earth had just happened?
No — I think I understood the principle. Naturally, when someone who likes you does this and that, all sorts of things that look like affection, you're bound to start harboring exactly this kind of hope. Whether she truly meant to make use of my power, or whether she simply thought it was fine because we were such close friends…
…But there was no time for such agonizing. You'll recall that the place we were trying to reach was wherever the Noir Corporation chairman would appear, summoned before the prosecution. And sure enough, the whole length of his route had already been staked out by a staggering number of reporters.
And of all possible spots, I had materialized smack in the middle of their cameras.
If I had slipped in quietly, without any visible effects, it might have passed without much incident. But despair or hope, the circuit glows either way. And appearing there flanked by two beautiful girls — actual magical girls, no less — in a white dress baring a sliver of my upper chest, hammer in hand…
…I thought I might faint. All the more so because I was still addled from the kiss Hayun had planted on me moments before, and my heart was hammering hard enough to crack a rib. Beside me, Jua stood bug-eyed with her face blazing scarlet, and Hayun was staring at me through her own crimson blush.
For the record, the chairman hadn't arrived yet.
Click, click… no — there were so many shutters going off that it blurred into something like clackaclackaclack.
I stood there gaping, until I felt a finger poke me in the back. I turned, and there was Rose. Her face was flushed too, though I honestly couldn't tell whether that was secondhand embarrassment over Hayun's stunt or the strain of suffocating on suppressed laughter.
"You should probably say something, if you've got something to say."
Even so, her voice came out steady, without a break.
I let my gaze drift slowly back to the reporters. The place I stood was what's commonly called the photo line — where prosecutors step out to make announcements, or where people emerging from questioning pause briefly in the spotlight.
…
Why here, of all places?
Ah — come to think of it, I'd never actually set foot somewhere like this. The closest I'd ever come to a government institution was the police box and the community service center back in my neighborhood. Places like "the Prosecutors' Office" I knew only from internet articles. If I'd steered here on pure instinct, then I must have landed, inevitably, inside the very framing I'd seen all those times on my screen.
What do I do?
Should I pry Jua and Hayun off me first? But it wasn't as if I was the one holding them — if anything, they were holding me. Hayun had my right arm locked in a hug, and Jua had a grip near my wrist. Short of deliberately shaking them off, the two of them were pinned to my sides.
And forcibly tearing them away here would wreck our image beyond repair. It needed to be plainly obvious that all of us together meant to join hands and go after the chairman — and that would say the opposite.
In the end, unable to do either, I opened my mouth.
"…I have heard that the chairman of Noir Corporation is coming here today."
Another roar of shutters, still violent enough to knock me off balance.
"My apologies to those who intend to question him — but we intend to face him in our own way."
Somehow, clinging to my wits however I could, I got the words out, and a voice with them. What, exactly, was a person supposed to say at a moment like this to keep her head on straight? Thinking anything at all, whatever worked, I slowly hunted down my reason.
"I do not trust this country's government."
That was what I said. Too provocative, perhaps? But it was the truth.
"When I was hospitalized under the false label of terrorist, the people who tried to move me somewhere else were people sent by the government. Or no — it would be strange even if they hadn't been. The hospital I lay in was a national hospital, was it not? Whether it was Federation operatives coming in to take me, or corporate agents coming to carry me off — whether or not it was all arranged with the government — I cannot possibly trust this government."
The reporters' eyes locked onto me. Flashes burst again; shutters chattered. Clusters of several smartphones taped together were shoved even closer to my face.
Were any of them broadcasting live right now? The cameras, initially trained not on me but on the lane where the cars would arrive, swung around toward us in a hurry. Even if nothing was live, at the very least they had to be recording by now.
No one interrupted me. Did they think each syllable was a headline? Or were they following their own reporting guidelines?
"The people who came after me right after that were police officers. I was hit with live rounds and capture wires again and again, knocked down, and barely managed to crawl away. If I had been taken there, I might have met the same end as those kaijin you all saw the other day. Could someone like me possibly trust the government?"
No one moved to stop me. Was that because I was a magical girl? No — I could feel the girls planted firmly at my back. Rose, Dalia, and Delphinium stood watching over us. If anyone so much as lunged at me, those three would cut them off without fail. My heart settled. With Hayun and Jua at my sides, I could feel that I was not alone. The circuit steadied — but that didn't mean the energy was draining. If anything, it drew power out all the more smoothly and lent me its strength.
"I cannot stop him from speaking with the government. I have no intention of disregarding the people of this country. But before that, I wanted to meet him face to face. Before whoever sits in the high seats can cook up a cozy deal and purchase themselves an indulgence, I wanted to stand in front of him myself and ask."
The reporters held their breath. Maybe it was my imagination, but the flashes and the shutters seemed to thin out a little.
"Why they treated me the way they did. Why they are doing these things here. What exactly it is they have been doing to people."
Flashes again. Shutters again.
"I want to ask him, one question at a time — face to face, so that no excuse will save him. Because—"
My mind was fully clear now. I spoke, staring almost straight through the wall of lenses in front of me.
"—because until now, that was something I could never do."
That's right. I couldn't. For an ordinary employee at a giant corporation, coming face to face with the chairman was all but impossible.
And yet. If a company had truly wronged the people beneath it — if it had ever regarded their lives as no more than flies — shouldn't it at least come to that person itself and explain why? Ours was a world where money could buy even human beings; then shouldn't it have to present a proper price?
Being wounded while fighting as a combatant, I could accept. I had signed myself up for the donations. But trying to brand me — to remake me — as a terrorist for things I had never done, that I could not comprehend at all. Not that comprehension would have meant forgiveness. And yet, well. Who knew. If we met. If he laid the situation out properly, if there was a reason that actually held water, if he apologized to me with genuine sincerity… then perhaps I could forgive him in exchange for nothing more than a few punches.
"I have a question!"
Apparently deciding I'd finished, a reporter near me — holding a smartphone as close as it would go — shouted with one hand thrust high. When I turned toward him, he pressed on.
"If the Noir Corporation chairman saw this scene, we believe there's every chance he'd simply turn his car around and flee. How do you respond?"
Probably. I'd considered that possibility too. I'd even considered that he might not show at all.
"Driving from Noir Corporation headquarters to this spot takes time. And that much, naturally, we accounted for."
We had not spent the past week lounging around. We confirmed when the chairman would be summoned, and calculated how long the drive from headquarters would take. In truth, figuring out how I would get here had eaten a little extra time, so the timing had slipped slightly out of joint.
Which meant that by now, the chairman had traveled a little farther than our estimate. If he turned his car around this very second, it was already too late.
"So, starting now, we will go and find him."
That was what I said.
The odds were high that nothing special waited at headquarters. For all I knew, the chairman wouldn't be there either. But, well — nice if he was; no great loss if not. That was what this operation had been from the very start, hadn't it?
All I wanted, in the end, was for the man they called chairman to please, please wet himself and tremble in terror.
To hand back to him, in full measure, that very emotion I had felt that day. Nothing more than that.