Prologue - This Is For You, Mister
A very familiar dark room.
Inside that darkness, I was being held captive with my hands and feet bound by rings of light.
And there was a girl watching me with eyes that had lost all spark of life.
“...Mister, are you awake? How does your body feel? Are your injuries okay?”
The girl who called me “Mister”—the protagonist of this world, the magical girl who protected it.
Magical Girl Estia. Yeorum whispered my name in a low voice.
“Hey, Yeorum? Um… what exactly is… this?”
I played dumb, feigning as much panic as I could while stretching out my bound hands.
Yeorum stared at them for a long moment before speaking in a flat, lifeless tone that didn’t suit her at all.
“Mister. I know everything now. That you’re a Gwoein.”
I tried to move at her words, but it was pointless resistance. Yeorum had grown far stronger than me; the restraints she had placed on me were now impossible to break.
“I know how terrifying a Gwoein you are. How highly the other Gwoein regard you. How powerful you truly are. All of it.”
Further resistance was meaningless. Accepting that, I let every ounce of strength drain from my body.
Yes, I had always known this day would come.
In the original story I was the Gwoein who would violate Yeorum and then be killed by her. That was simply how this world had been written.
So… I suppose it was time for me to die.
Yet I felt no regret. Because I had watched that girl, Yeorum, grow into something magnificent.
Though I couldn’t stop her from becoming a magical girl, I had made sure her path was smooth. She had grown strong enough to protect this entire world.
Resigned to my fate, I closed my eyes and made one final request to the magical girl I had raised.
“Yeorum, if you’re going to do it, please make it painless. I may be a Gwoein, someone capable of terrible things… but I still raised you. If even a little affection remains—”
“Mister, what are you talking about?”
Startled by her reply, I lifted my head. Yeorum had drawn even closer.
Her eyes were damp, murky, and unbearably dark—nothing like the gaze of the girl known as the Magical Girl of Light.
“Mister, you’re too reckless. Even though you’re weaker than me now, you keep trying to protect me. That’s why…”
Her chilling voice only deepened my confusion.
How had it come to this? When had Yeorum’s eyes turned so terribly dark?
Just where had I gone wrong?
As my consciousness slowly faded, I retraced every choice I had made, searching desperately for the moment my mistake had begun.