Someone Slightly More Precious
Around the time the monsters were firming up the beliefs they had only vaguely recalled—
Sun, the root of all their headaches, had finished every last scrap of her annoying summer homework. As the proud owner of an air conditioner, she was spending her days sprawled indoors in pure, foot-stretching comfort, soaking up every bit of cool air she could get.
One o'clock in the afternoon—the hottest hour of a summer day. Ordinarily this was the time she would just lie around her room thinking of absolutely nothing. And yet, for some reason, Mari was getting ready to leave the house, rounding up Siyon and even the mascots.
She switched off the air conditioner that had been her summer lifeline. The brightly lit room went dark as the lights clicked off. Even so, sunlight poured in through the balcony window and flooded the house, making it abundantly clear just how blistering it was outside.
Before heading out, Mari gave Siyon one last check to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything.
"Got your bus card?"
"Got it!"
A strap ran from her left shoulder down to her right hip. Siyon proudly held out the pale-pink handbag attached there as she answered. Proud of her. Satisfied. And honestly just adorable.
Even on a sweltering summer day, the magical girls' regular meetup still happened. It was summer break for the students and peak vacation season for the working adults. There was no better excuse to gather than this.
The meeting place went without saying—Star Cafe, the same spot they always used. After a bus ride of a few stops they got off onto the street, and walking hand-in-hand with Siyon they soon spotted Star Cafe, its curtains drawn as if the shop were closed. It only looked closed, though. They knocked on the locked door and slipped in through the crack when it opened.
Inside, a warm, reassuring voice greeted them.
"Come on in. Sun and Moon, right?"
Only after confirming the door was properly shut and locked did they speak the transformation phrase and offer a polite greeting.
"Sun. Yes, hello."
"Moon Power! Hello there!"
They greeted the owner standing guard at the entrance, stepped into the bright interior that belied its outward appearance, and found seats. Mari took the mascots out of her pocket so they could chat among themselves, then headed for an empty place. The others already seated noticed them in their transformed states and welcomed them, even pulling out chairs as if to say, Sit down already!
"Sun and Moon! Welcome!"
Everyone transformed, catching up on each other's recent news, and pure girl-time simply flowed. In a gathering packed with girls like this, I alone felt like I was floating a little outside of it all. Of course I would. There wasn't a single case here of someone who used to be a guy and became a girl. No—more than that, there probably wasn't anyone living a second life at all.
"Hoo, hoo."
The moment the hot chocolates arrived, Siyon wrapped both hands around her cup and blew feeble little puffs across the surface to cool it. We were still too young for the coffee-sipping lifestyle, so of course two cups of hot chocolate had been set in front of us.
A warm cup of hot chocolate in a freezing room with the air conditioning blasting—that very mismatch was what I liked about it. It was like cranking the AC to the max and then burrowing under the blankets in bed.
"So how have you two been lately?"
"It's summer break, so we're playing!"
The magical girl with striking pink twin tails the same color as Siyon's handbag—Mars. To her question, Siyon spat out that one-dimensional, simple answer. I added a more detailed explanation from the side so it would actually make sense.
"Aside from school, same as usual—fighting monsters... and doing summer homework."
"Elementary school, so that's five periods a day, right? I'm jealous."
Mars casually brought up age, propping her chin on her hand as she took a sip of coffee. If she was envying the number of periods in a school day, she was probably a student herself.
This was her third year sitting in the magical girl seat. Without knowing the actual age she started, I couldn't say whether she was in middle or high school, but she was probably around middle-school age.
This gathering had working adults mixed in from the start, and these days, depending on how they grew, even middle schoolers could look like high schoolers.
When we canceled our transformations right before parting or leaving the building, it was hard to tell who was who. We didn't exactly hide our real ages from each other, but we didn't go around announcing them either.
Still envying the short five-period life, she seemed to think of another question, unpropping her chin to ask again.
"Come to think of it, that was a huge mess a little while ago, right? Are you two okay?"
"Huh?"
The big incident from a little while ago. Siyon tilted her head at those words, but as the one who'd been on the ground handling it that day, I knew exactly which incident she meant the second she said it.
The mass monster outbreak a while back—that had to be it. Just thinking about that day was enough to make me tired all over again. The exhaustion that suddenly hit me converted itself into words and spilled out like a complaint.
"Yeah, it was a huge mess..."
"How did you handle it? Tell us, in case it happens to us too."
As I said it had been a huge mess in a distant voice and shifted my gaze to the drawn curtains, Mars didn't even give me time for a sip of hot chocolate before firing off the next question. Honestly, I wasn't sure you could even call it "handling" it. It was a crude method that barely qualified as a solution.
"I just went around wiping them all out. They probably went back to normal because... they figured there was no point anymore."
If you left out the torture, the pain, the desperate screams, and the chase sequences, that was pretty much it.
"Ugh, so we just have to tough it out, then..."
Hearing the answer, Mars slumped forward and plastered her face against the table. Her full, voluminous pale-pink hair spilled across the surface along with her. Seeing her worry about a situation that hadn't even happened yet, I lightly wrote it off as, Ah, so she's the type who frets over unnecessary things too...
After that, "that incident" came up a few more times with questions going back and forth. Around the time I was bringing the completely cooled hot chocolate to my parched lips—
"Whaaat?! What do you mean by that?!"
"...!"
A sudden loud shout from one of the tables made me jump so hard the hot chocolate I'd been drinking caught in my throat.
"Ghk, koff..."
While I was pounding my chest with my fist and coughing in short bursts, everyone's eyes inside the cafe had naturally turned toward the direction of the shout. Once I'd gotten the irregular coughing somewhat under control, I shifted my gaze the same way everyone else had. As the atmosphere of mixed conversations fell quiet, the voices from that table alone began to come through clearly.
"My power's not what it used to be, so I'm thinking of quitting."
"That's way too sudden..."
A magical girl's retirement. It was only natural as you got older—and for some people, it was a problem they weren't thinking about at all just yet. The average age of a magical girl was in the twenties.
Considering that students made up the majority and dragged that average down, you could technically hold onto this job into your thirties at the longest.
But this role of fighting monsters and protecting the city, wrapped in the romance of a young girl—had anyone ever stopped to consider the position of the people who were entering their thirties, or older?
"Sorry, sorry. I just figured I'd keep being a distraction if I stayed..."
Venus scratched her yellow bob with a youthful voice as she offered a short apology to Stella, who was saying it was too sudden. Funds from sources she couldn't disclose, and a job she couldn't openly tell the people around her about.
Friends around her age had, one by one, set down the name of magical girl. The generations kept changing, and she alone was growing old in that place. That feeling must have sunk in deeper the more frequent the meetups became, the longer her time alone stretched out.
"I've got someone who's going to be my husband now, and I can't stay stuck in girl-mode forever at this age. I need a job I can talk about openly, too."
As her words continued, the surroundings grew solemn. In the quiet atmosphere where only silence remained—
"...What about your memories?"
The word "memories" and the question Stella brought up. It might not seem related to the conversation just now, but it wasn't unrelated either. A magical girl's retirement meant, one way or another, that an ordinary person who knew the truth about magical girls was entering society. Here, the options split into two.
First option: like the owner of this very Star Cafe, take on the work of helping them while keeping your memories of the magical girls.
Second option: replace every memory related to magical girls with ordinary ones, and live as just another regular person among the masses.
Venus opened her mouth as if she had already decided that in her heart as well.
"I'm going to erase them."
"Why?! Why..."
Stella cried out in a voice that seemed to be sinking underwater as she asked her. Venus, who had been active long before I ever became a magical girl. Roughly over ten years, if I remembered right? Deciding to rewrite more than ten years of memories wholesale couldn't have been an easy decision for her either.
"This might sound a little harsh, but..."
The girl holding her coffee cup suddenly led with an apology. Outwardly she looked like a girl with a yellow bob who didn't seem much older than Siyon. A mature, wistful smile that was miles away from that youthful appearance.
"It's just that someone a little... just a tiny bit more precious than you all has come into my life."
No one was tactless enough to shout "Don't retire!" to a smile like that. Even Siyon, who didn't fully understand the situation, just tilted her head and followed the quiet atmosphere by shutting her mouth and taking another gulp of hot chocolate. Following her lead, I took a sip of my completely cooled hot chocolate.
Given how it was made, that hot chocolate should have been nothing but sweet. But maybe it was because of the heavy atmosphere? Somehow, the bitterness within the sweetness came through especially strong.