There Are Too Many Magical Girls
If you asked what symbolizes a woman, the answer would be her breasts, and then her hips. Emblems of abundance, of fertility—that sort of thing. And I happen to be very fond of both. A generous bosom and a sturdy set of hips are the object of every man's longing, after all.
When they happen to belong to my own body, however, that is a different story.
The world does not run on a fifty-fifty split. Nothing is that simple.
Just as the ratio of men to women is not an even half, neither is the ratio of good to evil. Even so, if a perfect fifty-fifty is impossible, the balance still needs to come reasonably close.
And the reason I have to do what I am doing is that everything, in the end, must be in balance.
—Or so the black cat who has since become my mascot informed me.
"There are too many magical girls."
It was an ordinary evening on my way home from work. I was just another salaryman, planning to stop at the convenience store, crack a beer, and go to sleep. That was when a pitch-black cat came flying out of the sky, appeared in front of me, and dropped that line without any preamble.
"What?"
There are too many magical girls. It wasn't, if I was being honest, a statement I couldn't understand.
This world has magical girls. And there is a reason they came to exist.
More than ten years ago, an evil organization calling itself Mogumogu appeared in this world.
No amount of modern military force—not the army, not the full weight of contemporary science—could so much as scratch them. They sent out wave after wave of Mains and attacked humanity. I nearly died more than once back then. But I was a child, and those memories have grown hazy with time.
In those days, a woman who called herself the leader of Mogumogu-dan would appear on television again and again, urging the world to surrender. If we didn't feel like it, she would say, we were welcome to resist even harder. She was taunting the entire planet.
I remember how beautiful she was. Black hair, a black dress—something like that. She was so stunning that, ironically, she had a fair number of fans. There were even lunatics who argued we should just surrender already and live under Her Majesty's rule.
The war that wasn't quite a war dragged on. How anyone managed to resist an enemy the military couldn't touch is still a mystery to me, but I remember that we held out for years.
Even that resistance, though, had an end. Just as the news and the papers began to seriously suggest that surrender might be the wiser course, magical girls started to appear.
One, two, three, four, five... Magical girls emerged one after another and began beating Mogumogu into the dirt, and the people cheered.
Mogumogu, the evil organization that attacked human beings. The Mogumogu Mains fell one by one to the magical girls, and Mogumogu-dan's momentum deflated like a punctured balloon.
And yet the magical girls did not decrease. They kept appearing. Even after Mogumogu-dan had all but collapsed—even after its prestige had been reduced to nothing—new magical girls kept showing up to attack what was left of Mogumogu.
And so, by now, Mogumogu-dan has all but vanished. There has never been an official announcement of its complete destruction, so it probably isn't entirely gone, but news of a Mogumogu-dan appearance has become almost impossible to find.
The magical girls, left with nothing to do, had become a serious threat to public security. They were affiliated with government agencies, the way civil servants are, but they were a force of arms with none of the loyalty to nation and people, and none of the chain of command, that you would expect from a military.
Mogumogu-dan wasn't even showing up anymore, and the magical girls who already existed decided among themselves that they were the reason Mogumogu had been defeated. They formed their own association, and now they were happily collecting every kind of subsidy and magical-girl-exclusive benefit they could get their hands on.
"That's what I'm saying. There are too many magical girls. Don't you think so?"
The black cat had followed me all the way into my apartment. I decided I didn't care what the cat did. It wasn't that remarkable, and if I cracked open a can of something for it, it would probably eat and wander off.
Judging by the atmosphere, it seemed to be considering settling in. Fat chance. I'm not particularly fond of cats.
I pulled a beer from the fridge, cracked it open, and dropped onto the floor. This wage-slave studio of mine does not contain luxurious furniture like a sofa.
Hiss. The can opened. A chill that went beyond mere coolness climbed the tips of my fingers. I took a swallow, and my throat filled with the scent of alcohol and the clean bite of carbonation.
"Ahhh."
I set the can back down on the floor and met the cat's eyes.
"So. What are you, exactly?"
"Mogumogu's mascot."
An instant answer. Not a second of hesitation.
A flying, talking cat is not that surprising. I've seen plenty of cat-like things hanging around magical girls, and I've seen plenty of them talk. Besides, even now, if you turn on the television, you can watch magical girls on variety shows showing off their mascots as if they were prize possessions.
The only real difference is that those ones are white or pink. This one is pitch black.
"Mogumogu? Didn't that thing get wiped out?"
"It didn't get wiped out. It's just in hiding because it has no Mother."
"That so..."
"Which is why I'm asking. You interested in becoming the Mother?"
"The Mother?"
"Yeah. Mogumogu's Mother."
Now that was a curious proposition. It wanted me to become Mogumogu's Mother. And before that—what exactly was a Mogumogu Mother supposed to be?
"Mogumogu has to rise again, or there's no way to keep the magical girls in check. Think about it. What happens to power when nothing exists to restrain it?"
"Hold on, since when does a cat talk like that..."
"Mikhail Bakunin once said—"
"Yeah, no, skip that. Just tell me what you actually want."
It was about to launch into some pretentious nonsense, so I cut it off. I would rather not look like I have less common sense than a cat.
"Anyway, the point is that power has to be in balance. When Mogumogu first appeared, it was evil, right?"
"It was. Wait—it still is evil."
"Let's just go with that for now. Back then, the magical girls were the good guys. So when they smashed Mogumogu, everyone cheered, right?"
"Well... yeah?"
"And now that Mogumogu is gone, what do we have?"
"You said it wasn't gone."
"You know what I mean."
The cat casually dragged over the plate of jerky sitting in front of me, settled in, and started tearing into it.
"The magical girls are going to become the villains if this keeps up. So what I'm saying is: become Mogumogu's Mother, so that we can be the force that keeps the magical girls in check. We can't generate Mains without a Mother. That's how Mogumogu works."
Is that how it is? So right now there's no Mother? That's why Mogumogu hasn't been appearing?
"Mogumogu's Mother, huh..."
I don't have a chuunibyou streak, exactly, but I have to admit it was a little tempting. The problem was, I'd have to quit my job, and then where would the money come from—
Monthly salary: 6,000,000 won
Private lodging and meals provided
Five-day work week guaranteed
Overtime pay for any extra hours
"I'll do it."
Looking at the terms alone, it was a far better deal than my current company.
I'd figured that being called the Mother of evil wouldn't amount to anything particularly impressive. I was wrong about the reflection, though. The person in the mirror was impressive.
Impressive, or incredible, or—what was the word—enormous.
Red irises. Vertical pupils, though. They had a faintly reptilian quality at first glance, but they suited the face so well that, looking closer, even the slit pupils weren't bad at all.
Hair that had grown enormously long, and black. A tall, slender frame. And a chest that was, well... "ample" didn't begin to cover it. At this size, the only honest word was heavy.
I pointed at the mirror and asked the cat, who was fluttering around beside me.
"...You never said I'd turn into a woman."
"I said Mother, didn't I?"
"I thought it was a figure of speech...?"
"Mother means Mother. Nobody looks at a man and calls him Mom."
The logic held up, but she still should have warned me I'd be becoming a woman.
Not that I was particularly attached to a dick that had never been good for much. And my current appearance was far more striking than the one I'd had as a man. A merely handsome face—handsome by my own standards, anyway—is nowhere near as useful in this world as the face of a beautiful woman.
"So what am I supposed to do now?"
"Hmm... not much, really. You just have to exist. Once the Mother is in place, we can start producing Mains. You'll go to the production room and inject a bit of magic power... and looking at you right now, you're overflowing with the stuff. You could probably handle a few dozen magical girls all by yourself..."
The cat circled around me, looking me up and down.
"First things first, let's do a Mogumogu revival broadcast. We'll announce Mogumogu's return, then start production."
"When you say broadcast, you don't mean a livestream, do you?"
"What do you take Mogumogu for?"
I learned in that moment that a cat can scowl.
"Fine, I get it. But can I actually do this? For real?"
"You can. I'll help, so don't worry."
The cat hovered directly in front of my face and smiled at me. It sounds strange to say a cat smiled, but that is exactly what it did.
"Uh, yeah, okay..."
"Do well, Mother."