Limitless Time Stop (Somewhat Freely Translated)
"Me, befriend a magical girl? Fat chance. I'll just focus on making her stronger instead."
I had no idea exactly which nerve I'd struck, but this whole affair had taught me one thing for certain.
The kaiju Cloak and Magical Comet were never, ever going to be friends.
So what I should be doing wasn't chasing some hopeless buddy-buddy routine — it was growing stronger as a kaiju so I could push Comet to grow along with me.
'So, next event on the list...'
"...Might as well go take care of some kaiju first."
Skimming through my notes, there didn't seem to be any major events scheduled until Comet took her college entrance exams. Well — aside from the one that would inevitably blow up on exam day itself.
Of course, no big events didn't exactly mean peace and quiet. Magical Comet might be the only magical girl in the entire country of South Korea, but the kaiju count was climbing higher with every passing day.
Comet's mascot could detect most of them, sure, but its senses had limits — once a kaiju made up its mind to hide, flushing it out was no easy feat.
Which was exactly why I would be the one going to hunt them down.
"One nice thing about this job — I'll never run out of time."
Truly, the time-stop kaiju reigns supreme.
-Rustle!
"Gwaaaagh! H-how?! How did you—!"
"You don't need to know."
The very day after committing myself to kaiju hunting, I dove straight into frozen time and started tracking down the ones in hiding. Motion sensors, traps, security — inside stopped time, all of it meant absolutely nothing.
'The glasses kaiju — slain.'
'The vegan kaiju — slain.'
'The karma kaiju — slain.'
'The TS kaiju — slain.'
The hunt proceeded smoothly, and with every kill I could feel my own power swelling. It had to be the slaughter — one of the three conditions kaiju needed to grow stronger, alongside will and conviction.
Granted, the time-stop kaiju had come with such absurdly broken specs from the moment I possessed this body that the boost barely registered. But power was the kind of thing where more was always better.
And so, deep in another hunt through frozen time—
-Grkk... grk-grkk...
"Huh?"
A sound like a rusted machine grinding to life drifted through the air. And its source was... unbelievably, my own face.
I rushed into the bathroom of the kaiju's lair and checked myself in the mirror—
-Tick. Grkk. Ti-tick...
—and there was my clock hand, shuddering violently, unable to turn properly.
"...Am I screwed?"
This had never happened in the original novel, and the hand had been working flawlessly until now, so this was a first. Leaving it alone seemed like a terrible idea, so I placed my hand over the needle and tried to force it sideways when—
-Snap. Sn-snap.
"Uh-oh. This feels way more screwed."
The hand let out a strange crunch and froze solid on the spot. Then came the silence.
'...Am I okay?'
Nothing happened. I was just starting to breathe easy when—
-KRAKOOM!
Something tore loose from my face and obliterated the sink.
I looked down to see what had fallen, and the thing now demolishing my sink was...
'What the hell is this...'
The clock that had been embedded in my face.
...Hold on a second.
Then what's left of my face?
Cold sweat streaming down my back, I slowly raised my head — and what greeted me in the mirror was...
"KIIYAAAAAAAAGH!!"
My own skull, nestled snugly in the socket where the clock used to be.
"Ugh, SO annoying! You're a kaiju — what makes you think you know anything about me!"
-Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
It was six-thirty in the morning, barely half an hour since sunrise. The moment Magical Comet — Kim A-ri — woke up, she started passionately wailing on the long body pillow beside her.
Asté watched her antics with utter disdain, lazily licking a front paw. Then the mascot heaved a sigh and spoke up.
"Why are you doing this again, nya? You went at it for a whole three hours yesterday, nya! At this rate even the pillow's gonna turn into a kaiju, nya!"
"But it's infuriating! A kaiju, of all things, telling me not to sacrifice myself! Sacrifice is just part of being a magical girl!"
"Nyaaaaah..."
Asté pressed a paw to its forehead and shook its head back and forth. A-ri seized the moment to launch a surprise hug attack.
"Come here, you!"
"Nyaaack?!"
She scooped the mascot up and nuzzled it against her cheek, and Asté — as always — pushed her face away with its front paws.
"Nyaaack! How many times have I told you not to do that?!"
"Ehehe... but nothing in the world heals like this..."
Murmuring something about letting it slide just this once, A-ri stroked Asté's blue fur. Asté read the sorrow hidden beneath her sagging smile, sighed, and let itself melt into her touch.
"Just this once, nya."
"Thank youuu..."
And so she kept petting the mascot for a good long while.
"A-ri! Come out and have breakfast!"
"O-oh, coming!"
Her little slice of happiness ended right there, courtesy of her mother calling from the kitchen.
A-ri scrambled off the bed and headed for the door. Behind her, Asté floated up and settled onto her shoulder.
"Oh! Breakfast today is your mother's blueberry jam sandwiches — you know, your favorite, nya!"
"Really?!"
Still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, A-ri broke into a beaming grin and dashed to the table. Her father was already seated in front of the TV, and her mother was setting down a plate of blueberry jam sandwiches, just as Asté had promised.
Gazing at the plate placed before her, A-ri pressed her palms together and shouted—
"Thank you for the meal!"
"Heh heh, eat up, sweetie."
"Eat well, kiddo."
Bathed in her parents' warm gazes, A-ri picked up a sandwich with a blissful smile—
-KWOOOOM!
"KYAAAH?!"
"A-Ari!"
"A-ri!"
A thunderous boom like an explosion ripped through the air, and the apartment building where her family lived shook violently. Her parents threw themselves over her, shielding her with their bodies.
"H-honey..."
"Don't worry. Even if it's a kaiju, the magical girl will show up any minute now."
When her mother spoke up, voice trembling with worry, her father wrapped both her and A-ri in his arms and assured them it would be all right.
But A-ri couldn't feel safe at all.
'I AM the magical girl?!'
A magical girl had, in fact, appeared. She was just a little preoccupied being hugged by her parents at the moment.
The instant her identity got exposed, her parents would inevitably start spouting the same garbage Cloak had — all that nonsense about not sacrificing herself — which meant she was now in the most awkward bind of her life.
'Please, let it not be a kaiju. Please!'
A-ri squeezed her eyes shut and prayed with all her might. And much to her misfortune—
"N-nyaack! Two kaiju just showed up, nya! And they both look insanely strong, nya!"
'No...!'
Asté's announcement was unmistakable: kaiju had appeared. Two of them, no less.
'I guess... I have to transform?'
A-ri bit down hard on her lower lip, agonizing over the decision — and right then, the TV that had been left on switched to a news broadcast.
Emergency news: kaiju detected. The family huddled together, eyes glued to the screen as the broadcast cut to footage from the scene.
The front of the apartment complex where A-ri's family lived. And there, framed by the camera, two kaiju were locked in a ferocious battle.
One of them had fireworks — the kind used for celebrations — sprouting from the spots where its head and hands should have been. And its opponent... was a presence A-ri knew all too well.
"Cloak?!"
"You mean that kaiju that's been showing up everywhere lately?"
"Oh, no..."
While A-ri internally screamed what are YOU doing there?! in shock, her parents' reactions were nothing short of despairing.
From the look of things, that firework-headed freak was the one who'd shaken the whole apartment building — and to make matters worse, standing right beside it was Cloak, the clock-headed kaiju whose strength could not be measured.
It was a hopeless situation even from Magical Comet's perspective. For her ordinary civilian parents, it was beyond hopeless.
'Cloak... don't tell me you planned this too, all for the sake of your goal?'
There was no way that suspicious clock-head had come all this way without a reason. He'd claimed he'd been watching her for ages — but had he really tracked down her identity and her home?
'...Even if you did, I'm not moving according to your script.'
But even so, A-ri — Magical Comet — had no intention of giving up on sacrifice. This life had been bought with someone else's. She would live it in a way that would never shame him.
Steeled by that silent vow, she waited for her moment to transform.
"KIIIYOOOOOOT! It's party tiiiime!!"
-Fwooooosh! Fweee!
Three fireworks came screaming from the firework kaiju's twin hands. Despite how innocuous they looked, each one carried the explosive power of a small bomb — that was this freak's ability.
Once again I used my palm-blades to slice them cleanly out of the air. That made more than a dozen repetitions of the same routine.
"You just pop up outta nowhere and now what do you waaant?! Weren't you here to take this precious life of miiine?"
"...Correct."
"Then hurry up and show me that famous clock-head power of yours! KIIIYOOOOOOT!"
Watching the fireworks spray chaotically from the freak's arms, I thought to myself:
'This ability is fucking unhelpful.'
Why didn't anybody tell me my time stop had a limit?