Die Already!
"Grrraaah…."
The monster staggered back with a resentful groan, hesitating to charge. Even an undying beast, it seemed, still had pain and terror etched deep into its memory.
"Hmm. Seeing as you made such a noble effort to keep your promise… this time, I'll send you off as painlessly as I can."
"…! Y-You mean it…?!"
The monster's head, which had been slumped flat against the ground, lifted a fraction, its eyes going round in an instant. All it took was the promise of a painless end, and look how happy it got.
As expected—with undying monsters, pain and terror were the only proper way to handle them.
"Yeah. Let's get this over with."
"Khahaha! That's welcome news!"
At my nod, the hesitant monster planted its forepaws on the ground without a trace of fear and began to snarl like a real beast. It wasn't sarcasm—that was a genuine, full-throated roar, pure gratitude and good cheer. Was the promise of a less painful death really that wonderful a piece of news?
I gave the grip of the staff in both hands a slight twist until a metallic click rang out, and the heart ornament at the tip split cleanly in half. One side slid back into the shaft, leaving a perfect hook for snagging something.
Watching the wolf monster come barreling in from a distance, Siyeon—who only a few days ago would have been terrified—turned to me with a dazed look.
"What should I be doing…?"
"Uh…."
I considered what to give Siyeon. Part of the point was showing off our skill to the others, so hogging the whole fight myself would look pretty bad.
"You've got that freezing thing, right? Just shoot that."
"Oh, okay! Moon Shower—!"
With a lively answer and an incantation, Siyeon's staff—capped with a round moon ornament—swung toward the monster.
If I was Sun, symbol of the sun, then Siyeon was Moon, symbol of the moon. The sun was insanely hot; the moon, even at its warmest, bottomed out around negative forty degrees. In other words: insanely cold.
"Kh—ugh…?!"
The wolf monster's movements dulled for a beat—and in that instant I sprang up hard enough to crack the sidewalk tiles and swung the staff. "Swung" might not be quite the right word. I hooked the sharp tip into its flesh, spun a full turn in midair, and used the rotation to hurl the thing high into the sky.
The wolf shrank to a tiny speck overhead. To keep my promise of a painless, near-instant end, I gathered at the tip of my staff the extreme heat capable of incinerating any living thing. A pillar of blue fire—usable only about once a day—of the absolute highest temperature.
And the name of that glorious spell was….
"Die already—!"
Matching the roar I let out, a shaft of blue radiance erupted skyward in a single breath. It punched through the pure white clouds, carved a massive scar across the canvas of the sky, and vanished beyond it.
Past the point where the pillar of fire disappeared, the wolf monster that had been thrown up there resolved from a speck back into a shape as it fell toward the ground. A heavy thud of impact, and the sidewalk tiles at the landing site shattered, spraying chips of stone outward.
I ignored the flying debris and stepped in close for a look. The wolf monster was completely blackened, eyes not even properly shut. From that height, it should have come apart in pieces too grotesque to describe—and if that kind of thing happened in a magical girl story, the age rating would jump straight to eighteen-plus.
"Ah, situation resolved—"
The moment I announced it was over, Crystal—the oldest among us—clapped twice and smoothly ushered us into the next order of business.
"Wow, that was clean! Dismissed—meet back at the café!"
"Yes—"
In a quiet side alley we each released our transformations, then reconvened at the café. The owner hadn't even considered evacuating; she was still holding down the fort.
When someone asked if she wasn't going to take shelter, she just laughed it off with, With this many magical girls here?—and said evacuating would actually be more dangerous.
The conversation settled back into a peaceful gathering. After what had just happened, the topic naturally turned to our skill.
"Whoa, that thing Sun just did… isn't that the strongest out of all of us?"
"Right? No wonder the monsters haven't been showing up."
"Skill, skill, huh—"
"Did you see how completely terrified that wolf monster was?"
Without a single word from the person in question, the conversation rolled merrily along on its own. They had already settled into a conveniently flattering misunderstanding. No need to go out of my way and say, No? You just torture the hell out of them.
I switched back into food-focus mode, took a sip of the hot chocolate that had gone cold from neglect, and brought a piece of honey bread—now tough and hard in the meantime—to my mouth. I wanted to order another, but even so, there was such a thing as shame. Bread prices these days weren't cheap, either.
And three plates by myself is a bit….
With that thought, I reached out my small hand, picked up an empty plate, and stacked it on another with a soft clatter, wiping the corners of my lips sticky with sugar. Eating something this sweet without feeling sick or bloated almost made me a little sad. Being young really was nice.
At any rate, talk went on and on, and before I knew it the hour was right before evening. How women managed to keep a conversation going this long was beyond me. I was bored out of my mind.
"Aigoo, look at the time already. I'll pass word about the next meetup along to the partners."
Crystal glanced between the outside and the clock on her phone, then rose in a hurry—
"Yes—"
"Thank you for your hard work—"
—and the other magical girls stood up after her like junior staff following their most senior seniors out after a meal. Ah. "Partners," here, meant the mascots.
The mascots seemed to share some kind of common knowledge network; news like this always found its way around. Another one of those loose ends in the magical girl worldbuilding, maybe.
We boarded the bus home. I carefully steered a clearly sleepy Siyeon along, and after ten stops, as the light was fading, we finally made it back to our shabby, reassuring apartment.
"Hwaaah…."
"Go wash up and sleep first."
"Mmngh…."
I sent Siyeon—who had yawned hugely the second we walked in—into the bathroom, then headed for the living room with a big yawn of my own. At the end of that yawn, a sea snake drifting through the air came into view.
"We're back."
"Mm. Siyeon's going to wash up and go straight to bed."
A light greeting for Siyeon's mascot, who welcomed us casually. And for the bear standing on its head with its legs stretched straight toward the ceiling, I accepted a proper, crisp bow.
"Welcome home!"
"Yeah, we're home. Anything happen?"
"No, sir! Nothing out of the ordinary!"
"Good. At ease."
"Pwah!"
Permission granted, the bear cub dropped out of its handstand and collapsed onto the floor. That belly heaving up and down as it panted sometimes looked so genuinely alive that it gave me a weird sense of disconnect.
"You little… you're nothing but stuffing anyway. It's not even hard for you."
I pointed out the truth to the bear pretending to be out of breath, and it turned its head toward me, stopped the labored breathing cold, and said with perfect calm:
"Ah. Was this kind of performance not to your liking, ma'am?"
"Oh… so you can manage it after all?"
It was putting on such an air of leisure, as if it had been doing the reaction on purpose for me, that I rounded my lips and shot back with a jab. Only then did the little guy freeze, bean-sized eyes and mouth going still as if realizing the mistake.
"Ah—no. That's not what I—"
"From now on, let's practice walking while standing on your head."
The usual teasing. But the words that followed, the ones that couldn't be tossed off as a joke, snapped me serious again.
"This fucking…."
"Hey. What did you just say?"
"Ah."
A little later.
"Hwaaam…."
Around the time Siyeon came out of the bathroom still yawning, looking half-asleep, I was counting how many times I'd kicked the teddy bear—keeping it aloft without letting it hit the ground. First time doing hacky sack with a teddy bear. Aside from the way it bounced in completely random directions, it was doable enough.
"Twenty-one, twenty-twooo, twenty-threeee, fourrr…."
"M-My brain is shaking—aaagh!"
And so, listening to those delightfully pained screams, I managed to chase the sleep away. Siyeon's blinking eyes drifted toward us, and a drowsy voice followed.
"What are you doing…."
"Just playing. Don't worry about it."
"S-Siyeon-nim! Please save me!"
The bear cub had finally resorted to begging Siyeon for help. Normally, seeing something like this, Siyeon would have stepped in hard to stop me—but she happened to be extremely sleepy. Instead of intervening, she headed for the bed first.
"Don't overdo it and go to sleep, Mari. Night…."
"Yeah. Night, Siyeon."
"Siyeon-nim?!"
Not stop bullying it, but don't overdo it, plus a goodnight. After casually wishing her a good night, I tossed the temporarily resting hacky sack back into the air. For an instant, the teddy bear's face was painted a deep shade of despair. It didn't take long for that expression to settle into resignation.
As I recall, once the count climbed past three hundred, even the sound of the kicks started to disappear.