Just Read the Script
In the end, the problem that had kept me clutching my head for days on end resolved itself as quickly as a call to the phone company over a lagging internet connection.
A virtual name and resident registration number, delivered by text.
A person who did not exist in reality—yet who, on paper, most certainly did.
All those things I hadn't been able to do, simply for want of a few letters of a name and a string of digits.
And once that piece of the puzzle slotted cleanly into place, my mind went blank as to what I should even start with. That was just the bonus.
The messenger apps that had always sat empty and forlorn.
The "guardian consent required" prompts I could now confidently hit Yes on, punching in the personal details of my imaginary parents.
It was so simple once I could get past it that I almost felt wronged for having been stuck for so long.
I installed mobile games I'd never been able to try.
I signed up for online games I'd never been able to join.
Feeling a strange gratitude toward parents who existed only on paperwork, I got an indirect taste of adult life.
And what I did the moment I got home from school was sit straight down at the computer and boot up an online game.
"Oh, for fuck's sake. How is this even possible."
Just another ordinary day of spinning a loot box and cursing under my breath.
Eighty attempts at a five-percent drop rate without a single hit—on the one hand, swearing and half-convinced the odds were rigged.
"Mari, I wanna play toooo."
"Hang on a second. This is a critical moment."
A small friction that had cropped up between Siyeon and me ever since we acquired our virtual parents.
One computer. Two people who wanted to use it.
Especially once I started using it in earnest, Siyeon's share—which had mostly been watching videos—got squeezed a little thinner.
Even if I handed her my phone and let her watch magical girl anime, she soon enough wanted to copy whatever I was doing.
I didn't want to drag her into an RPG full of thrashing, killing, and wall-to-wall swearing, and if I found her a game that actually suited her, that was the end of my computer time for the day.
Buying a second computer wasn't an option either—we were short on space, and the recent expenses had already been massive.
Hmm…
Still, no parent ever wins against their kid. Today, as usual, I lost the computer to Siyeon—who might as well have been my daughter—and ended up on the top bunk, fiddling with my smartphone.
Even the phone games were on a cooldown while I waited for energy to refill.
Figuring I'd leave my time to the algorithm and see what nonsense was on offer, I headed for a search engine stuffed with news.
Even the animal groups are losing their minds now.
Looking over the usual parade of inflammatory headlines, I let out a flat, incredulous sigh.
If they'd just stick to treating dogs and cats as animals, that would be fine—but there was never any shortage of people sticking their noses in.
If it really looked like abuse, why not go talk to the monsters yourselves instead of ranting at us?
The second an evacuation siren went off, they'd be bolting for the hills without a second thought about "dialogue."
Not like there's anything we can do if they want to throw a fit.
I snorted and flicked my thumb to scroll, privately mocking the civic group for its absurd claims.
If they hated it that much, they could always do what some vegan groups did—plant themselves in front of a monster with signs reading Monster Extermination Is Violence! until a magical girl showed up.
And if they got caught in an attack? That would just be natural causes, wouldn't it?
Of course, a civic group whose real purpose was siphoning off tax money would never have the guts for that.
I was still scrolling with a thoroughly dim view of society when a sudden call screen flooded the entire phone.
If someone was calling me like this, there was only one person it could be.
I slid the green button and, for form's sake, spoke first.
"Hello?"
"Sun? How about coming up to Seoul this weekend? Think of it as a little sightseeing trip, hmm?"
The Minister, opening the call by asking if I felt like coming up to Seoul.
"Huh? No thanks."
My face twisted on reflex, and the refusal came out of my mouth automatically.
She'd gone to the trouble of calling just to casually invite me up for sightseeing?
This was not a woman who handed out honeyed words for free.
She definitely had an angle. What was it?
In that instant, one of the headlines I'd just read flashed through my mind.
Ah.
I wasn't certain, but I was fairly sure.
That "please wait" in response to demands for an explanation—was she planning to put me in front of a press conference?
"I'm not doing a press conference."
"No, no… we'll write you a full script! All you have to do is transform and read it! And while you're up here, you and Siyeon can see a bit of Seoul, too?"
Caught out immediately, the veteran auntie smoothly rebranded her "sightseeing" pretext into "it won't take long."
Apparently she'd meant to rope Siyeon into the conversation from the start, because on the other end of the line the Minister started shouting at full volume.
I mashed the volume buttons down until the call was barely audible at a single bar.
"Siyeon! Siyeon! Don't you want to go sightseeing in Seoul this weekend?"
"I turned the volume all the way down."
No matter how loud she yelled, her voice wasn't reaching Siyeon, who was absorbed in her magical girl anime.
I lay on the bed with the sound cut and the phone pressed to my ear, and an irritated voice started coming through from the other end.
"This kid has no cute bone in her body!"
"Hard to exploit. In a cutthroat society, I'll take that as the highest compliment. Thank you."
"But this time it isn't about like or dislike… you really have to come. If this keeps getting louder, it's bad for both of us. Let's just brush it off and put it to bed, okay?"
"…"
At the Minister's unusually serious, lowered tone, I hesitated for a moment.
If the noise didn't stop like this, it wouldn't be good for either of us.
That wasn't wrong, either. How long could it take, anyway? With that thought, I reluctantly agreed.
"You are writing me a script, right?"
"Oh, of course! I'll send it over with those two from last time. Familiar faces are better, aren't they?"
"Sure."
I answered half-heartedly, then, with the weekend not far off, called down from the top bunk to Siyeon, who was still glued to her magical girl anime.
"Siyeon. Siyeon?"
"Yeah?"
Absorbed in her show, Siyeon tipped her head up toward me.
Looking down at that faintly puzzled face, I set my phone on the bed and said,
"This weekend, we're going to Seoul with those uncles we met last time."
"Seoul? Where's that?"
"Mm… the neighborhood where rich people live?"
Siyeon still didn't know most place names, so I cobbled together whatever words floated into my head and left it at that.
It might not be true in practice, but that was how people thought of it, right?
Time flowed on like water, and the weekend arrived.
Somehow looking even more hollow-eyed than before, the two civil servant uncles showed up at our house again.
Well, nobody likes a weekend business trip. Maybe I should have asked for someone else.
Though they had bought us free fried chicken last time.
"Oh my, come in, come in! First time seeing the two of you in person, isn't it?"
We headed for Seoul in the same official vehicle as before.
Magical girl and Minister, meeting each other face-to-face for the first time.
Looking at her like this, she seemed like a warm, people-loving auntie—but I couldn't forget she was a seasoned snake who had survived the political arena.
"Hello!"
"Oh my, so you're Siyeon?"
"Yep!"
At Siyeon's bright greeting, the Minister beamed that world-class people-person smile and squished her cheeks.
Siyeon had no idea why she'd been summoned; she was just delighted to have ridden a car a long way.
Cutting through the cozy atmosphere, I spoke to the Minister.
"So. How are we doing this?"
"Right, right! Mari, you just read this script as written…"
She handed me a script she'd prepared in advance and launched into a series of tips.
Don't try to answer the reporters' questions too seriously. If something's awkward, just deflect. Ignore any over-the-line questions designed to fish for a de-transformation chant. Basically: look at the script and say only what you're supposed to say.
"Please look after Siyeon."
"Ah, of course."
This obviously wasn't a job for Siyeon, so it was decided that only I would go into the press conference.
I left her with the two civil servants and skimmed through the script.
Then came the grand entrance into the press conference hall—a tense landscape of blindingly bright lights trained on the podium.
Click-click-click. Camera shutters fired in rapid succession, flashes so dense they nearly blotted out my vision.
Magical Girl Sun
Could Monsters Truly Communicate?
"Hello. I'm Sun."
The first section of the script was the core of the conference.
Could monsters truly communicate?
I denied it flatly, in a grown-up register, looking between the script and the reporters as I explained—and after every segment, I took questions. The cycle repeated.
"I'll take the next question," I said briefly, and a forest of straight arms shot up from the press corps in unison.
"Yes—Reporter Kim Mi-seon from X Daily."
"Kim Mi-seon, X Daily. You just said monsters are incapable of dialogue. In that case, how do you explain the sentence written on the metal plate in that photograph?"
My eyes dropped to the script.
She'd even written answers for the expected questions, so all I had to do was read them out.
Even from the perspective of a magical girl on the ground, the excuses were surprisingly plausible.
"It's possible that information from Earth is reaching them through some channel at random. It was clear they didn't understand the meaning of the writing either."
After several more rounds of questions and the rest of the script, we moved into free Q&A.
No longer the polite few from the start—now it was the red-eyed pack of reporters desperate to scrape together a scoop, and their free-for-all questions erupted alongside the camera shutters.
"Is the magical girl de-transformation chant standardized?"
"Lee Hyun-chang, Mugung News. What is your actual age?"
"Ah, that's confiden—"
"There's public opinion that monster extermination is animal abuse. How do you respond to that?"
"Animal abuse? Monsters attack peop—"
"Do you agree with the view that magical girls amount to child abuse and extortion?"
"How exactly do you locate monsters and appear on-site?"
The press conference had become a complete free-for-all.
There were too many people cutting in before anyone finished speaking; I couldn't get a single answer out no matter what I tried.
Flash—
Just as I looked straight ahead, about to answer one of them, a camera flash hit me square in the eyes.
"Ah, shit…"
My brain was still yelling at me not to say it, but my foul mouth had already moved.
"Did these bastards home-school their manners?"