What Comes to Mind When You Think of Magical Girls?
What comes to mind when someone says "magical girl anime"?
A sparkling, heart-shaped wand?
Pink flashes of light that swagger under the name of magic?
Cute little mascots that look like they could double as keychain charms?
Outfits drowning in frills and cutesy design?
Well, none of those are exactly wrong.
And of course, the friendship between girls—always hammered home as they take down whatever monsters show up.
If you're wondering why I'm thinking about all this right now…
Ah, hold on.
Let me have a little pity party first.
Haaah, fucking hell…
Why else?
Because that's exactly what I look like right now.
To explain how I ended up in this mess, I need to rewind the story a bit.
I'd always been the type who enjoyed comics and anime.
In that corner of media, this kind of story is so common it might as well be a cliché.
You died by accident, so blah blah.
I'll give you special powers, so blah blah.
It was all so unreal-sounding that coolly brushing it off like the protagonists in those comics—or just accepting it—wasn't something ordinary people could do.
I just let the drawn-out explanation in that childish voice go in one ear and out the other.
"I-In exchange, I'll make sure you never die in my world! Strong enough to be called the strongest!"
"Ah… yeah, yeah. Do whatever you want."
A god who looked like a little kid.
Apparently the setting in this neighborhood was that the world takes after the god's appearance and personality, or something like that.
Yeah.
To that immature, child-looking being called a god—
In that situation, I should never have said those words.
And back to the present.
From an adult man, I was instantly turned into a parentless little girl complete with a full magical package.
Even my name was Kim Mari—looked perfect for dunking in tteokbokki.
"Ha, mother—"
"Sun! You can't use bad words like that!"
The girl scolding me while calling me Sun is Lee Siyeon.
That "Sun" is the name we call each other by when we become magical girls.
Citizens all have face blindness anyway, so I could just brush it off, but…
Mother doesn't work, huh. What other words are there?
"Father—"
"That doesn't work either!"
At her ear-splitting, ironclad shout, I thought carefully.
This doesn't work either?
Why?
Ah, is it because of that?
Having deduced a brilliant reason, I proudly said it out loud.
"It's because I don't have a mom or a dad, so that's why I can't say them, right?"
"That's not it—!"
The silver-haired girl's short roar filled the entire apartment room.
This half-baked world has no sense of coherence.
That's why two elementary school kids can live in the corner of an apartment, isn't it?
Even if you call it something that couldn't happen by common sense—monsters popping out in the middle of the city, and kids who just barely look elementary-school age transforming with power from who-knows-where to beat them down.
Citizens basically have face blindness so bad that if you put a single mole on their cheek they won't recognize the person who was standing right in front of them a second ago.
And yet, somehow, the magical girls care about that.
"A magical girl always has to be cute! You can't use bad words like that!"
Siyeon striking a pose right in front of my eyes.
That kid is also a pitiful soul bound to the job of magical girl and forced into hard labor.
Her magical girl name is Moon or whatever—just the English word for the moon.
"That's right-pyo, it would be nice if Sun paid attention to that too-pyo!"
"Hey, didn't I tell you how you're supposed to talk?"
"I'm sorry. The speech pattern is ingrained in my body-pyo… I mean, yes."
This flying bear cub is a watcher under the name of Mascot, always stuck to a magical girl's side giving advice.
Every time it used that shitty speech pattern I smacked it a few times, so it's better lately, but when other kids are around it often reverts to its original way of talking and I have to correct it.
When I first met it, I should have just twisted its neck off without listening to a word.
"Poor thing…"
"Yeah…"
Siyeon and her mascot look at the bear cub with pity, but this kind of stupid speech pattern definitely needs correcting.
The other side's mascot is perfectly fine without any weird verbal tics.
Of all things, this bear cub assigned to me activates the "punch me" cells sleeping deep in the male cells of my distant past life every time it opens its mouth.
"Poor? Child labor exploitation is a straight-up crime, you criminals."
"Labor… exploitation…?"
Siyeon, not fully understanding the difficult words I used, asked back.
I put on a serious face and said solemnly that it was still too early.
"You don't need to know yet, young lady."
"You're the same age as me, Sun…"
I lightly ignore the minor challenge.
Anyway, taking out the monsters that show up as "beasts" is the girl's own role.
Even if this bear cub holds the contract, if she herself says "I won't!" these guys have no solution.
A relationship where each is both the boss and the subordinate of the other.
"Um, uh…"
"Go on. Spit it out."
"A monster… has appeared."
Along with the honorifics flowing from the bear cub's clumsy, hesitant snout, a screech fills the apartment room.
Beeeeeep—
It's the alert that a monster has suddenly appeared in the middle of the city.
That damn alarm that goes off whenever it feels like it, with no warning or anything.
"Ah, fucking hell, I told you not to do this."
Spitting a curse, I picked up my staff like a five-minute-ready unit in midsummer that has to grab its gun.
"It's an automatic alert, so there's nothing I can…"
"Then do something about it, you shitty teddy bear bastard."
If it were midday it wouldn't matter much, but on a night when this alarm goes off while we're sound asleep…
The pure annoyance is beyond words.
I opened the closet drawer and took out a black balaclava full of holes.
A magical girl's essential item! A slick black balaclava for hiding your identity!
And if you turn it inside out, it becomes white!
"Ready."
"Sun, do you really have to take that…?"
"Of course, Moon."
With a solemn, stern expression, I left the apartment.
Even if that noisy alarm goes off, there's no one to complain anyway.
That's just how this slapdash worldbuilding works.
If a magical girl is involved, most things just get waved through.
How amazing is that?
Collapsed streets and buildings get restored in a single day without any workers gathering!
Even when a monster suddenly appears, by the time people arrive, everyone has somehow already finished evacuating!
Monsters that just stand around waiting for a magical girl to show up, without even thinking of attacking a single person!
Thanks to that, there's no need to hurry, and there's even enough time to grab a snack from the fridge before leaving.
Yesterday's leftover dried squid is rolling around inside the fridge with the seal already broken.
Today it's this.
"Sun! We have to hurry, you know?!"
"Ah, it's fine, I said."
Chew, chew. A decent saltiness and chewy texture swirled around in my mouth.
A child's mouth is honest about strong stimuli—that's nice.
Even if we walk slowly from the apartment, the monster will be waiting for us and us alone with bated breath, same as always.
When we arrive, only then will it greet us with a rough laugh like it just got there.
"Stop right there!"
"Kahahaha! So you've appeared, magical gi—"
The monster, for a moment, doubted the eyes it had never questioned before.
At the bold voice it turned its head, and up through the first one it was shouting with a voice full of power because she had the form of a magical girl—but the second.
That something that only looked like a magical girl by its clothes was wearing a pitch-black balaclava with only the eyes cut out, chewing something with the part that looked like a mouth.
"…rl?"
"What, you fucker, got a problem?"
The muffled pronunciation of the balaclava girl made it clear that her chewing something was no illusion.
Thud, thud. She struck the ground with the staff that had a heart-shaped ornament on the end, spitting rough words.
At the very least, this was no ordinary girl. The monster sensed that.
Even so, at the same time, rage boiled up at her for facing him looking like that.
No matter how much she was a powerhouse that existed to exterminate them, she was still a child.
Hadn't its roar alone made five magical girls crumple to their knees?! Thinking that, it let out a roar.
"I'll chew you up and swallow you, brat—!"
The monster's presence was as fierce as ever.
At that sight, at least the magical girl called Moon might have been startled.
"M-Moon Power—!"
"What's for lunch today—? Drumroll, drumroll, meat meat, wolf meat—♪"
But in the eyes of the one who had been him, now called Sun, it felt less intimidating than a wild boar encountered on a mountain hike.
Along with the refreshingly ringing, spine-chilling singing voice, and the flashing magic staff, an impromptu thrashing show began.
The power of the sun.
The warm power contained in her magic staff, fitting for the magical girl title of Sun.
But that warm power that should have been used to save someone had long since been corrupted into a tool for post-cleanup torture.
A bipedal wolf-form monster, thoroughly beaten and sprawled on the ground.
A girl casually sitting on its back with her legs crossed was clearly using that cute-looking staff for purposes it was not meant for.
"Grrrrrrgh…!"
"You've got a lot of fur, so this isn't working well."
"I-I'll never…"
After a long stretch of only pained groans, I lifted the branding iron—wait, no, the staff—that I'd been pressing down, to hear what the monster was trying to say.
"Hm?"
Those pleading eyes looking this way looked just like the eyes of the dog I'd raised in my past life after it had an accident on the bed, so I decided to at least hear it out.
"I will never come to this place again! So please, have mercy…!"
"You little shit, stating the obvious and then collapsing."
Acting all dramatic when you can't even die anyway.
I pressed the staff I'd lifted just to listen back against it.
"Graaaah!"
"Sun…? Let's stop now…"