A Successful Debut
My debut as the monster Hemoregia had been a success far beyond anything I had expected.
Type my name into any search portal and the posts came pouring out in a flood. Television stations and internet streams alike were running wall-to-wall coverage of me; how much attention I was getting hardly needed saying.
And it made sense. What I had done was unusual for a monster. I had not gone around smashing everything in sight, and for someone who attacked magical girls, I had also attacked other monsters. A monster who calmly gave orders to the magical girl hunting her—and even linked arms with her—was not exactly a common sight.
Was I flustered by it? Not in the slightest. If anything, I was delighted. Everywhere I looked, sunlit world or underworld, people were talking about nothing but me—how could I not be happy?
I had set out to draw attention, and I had drawn it properly. Even lying still and just reading the posts, I could feel the corners of my mouth twitching upward.
…Well. The attention from the darker corners of the net was, to be honest, pretty repulsive.
These were people who would make the kind of material that could get you arrested even when the subject was a real, living magical girl under the protection of the law, so of course they would churn out the same garbage about a pretty female monster. Still—it left a bad taste.
They did not know anything, so they just made whatever their urges demanded. From the perspective of someone who used to be a man, though, it went past absurd into outright laughable.
What? “Shove it in and she can’t move”? Ha. I was so speechless I almost wanted to go find them myself and check whether they could still say that after I tore them out by the roots.
…Hunting them down in person was one option, but even I had to admit that the image of me personally catching every one of those worthless insects was not a pretty one. So I settled for reporting the whole lot to the specialized agency. Rotting in a cell had to beat having your neck snapped clean through, right?
I had no idea how many of them would actually get hauled away, but watching that kind of thing, I thought I finally understood why the veteran magical girls always looked so hollowed out inside. They would know, behind the scenes, that people were making this garbage. They could not show it, though—they just had to keep smiling. Enough to drive anyone insane.
Even if you kept locking them up, the lust-demons would crawl out of the woodwork faster than you could put them away. It was enough to make me wonder if that was what had finally broken Shining White.
What the real truth was, I would not know until I recovered every last memory.
Handing the body over to Shining White entirely was another option, I supposed—but even setting aside the fact that I did not know how, I had a feeling that doing so would end in genuine disaster. After watching her forcibly seize control from a vampire and digest a human whole, who knew what worse she might do?
And the things she said were vicious enough as it was.
“I genuinely do not understand what has been so amusing to you since yesterday,” Na-rae said, voice thick with irritation as she looked at me still sprawled on the sofa. “You tore a city to absolute pieces and got your face plastered all over the world—so what exactly is so funny that you keep snickering like that?”
I could understand why she was so annoyed. She wanted a quiet life, and I had just flipped the entire world on its head. Of course her temper had finally snapped.
“I’m happy because my face is plastered all over the world. And anyway, nobody even knows you’re my subordinate. What are you so worried about?”
I had no particular desire to protect Na-rae. Living with her had made it clear she was not an especially good person. I kept her around because she was useful—not because I liked her.
Which, paradoxically, meant she was safe. If something happened to me, she could simply dust off her hands and walk away as if we had never been connected at all.
As for her face being known to the vampires… well. That was her problem to handle.
How had I drifted onto this subject? Right—the news. That was it.
The whole world was not talking about me alone. Stories were also circulating, here and there, about the premier monster organization Zodiacs—making their first official appearance the same as I had—and about the two brave, formidable magical girls who had stood against them.
But none of that came close to the disappearance of Radiant White.
She was Shining White’s younger sister; she had inherited the White name, even the constellation. There was no way her vanishing would be treated lightly. It was a smaller story than mine, but she, too, was being discussed everywhere—the girl who had last been heard of flying toward Incheon before all contact cut out.
Is she even alive? I hope she’s okay. Going alone was reckless no matter how you look at it. I always knew she’d get crushed someday.
Opinions clashed and tangled, and people started fights often enough. Whenever a scrap looked entertaining, I tossed a little fuel on the fire and watched the board grow. The occasional “right-thinking” user would try to break it up, saying this was no time to be fighting when they should be worrying—but I was not worried in the slightest.
I had planted her, quite directly, at Su-hyeok’s house. A man who would save a life without demanding any price in return would naturally take care of a pure-white magical girl who dropped out of the sky. By now the treatment was probably finished, and he and a barely conscious Radiant White were murmuring quietly to each other.
At least, that was how it went in the original work. It should be the same now.
I was almost jealous. Some of us called a name once to draw a little attention and got a gun barrel pressed to our skulls. Others could half-demolish a house and still sit down for a peaceful conversation. The world really was unfair. Grumbling inwardly, I pictured the romantic first meeting of the protagonist and the heroine.
…
……
Hmm. Something about it was… how to put it… nagging at me.
It was not that I was worried Radiant White would start hitting on Su-hyeok from their very first meeting. In the original, she was the one who fell for him first—not the other way around.
What worried me was something else entirely.
What if I had thrown her too hard and completely wrecked Su-hyeok’s house? When I sent her crashing into the ground at the end, I had used my blades—what if those had cut through her transformation and actually hurt her…?
Things like that.
She had not fallen from exhaustion; I had spiked her into the ground. The plot could have diverged from the original. For all I knew, I had accidentally planted her right on top of the bed where Su-hyeok was sleeping and injured him too.
Once I started fretting about it, I could not stop. Were they really all right? I had scraped her up so badly before throwing her that I was genuinely worried she would try to take off again the moment she woke, insisting there was no time to rest.
Going to see them in person felt a little too bold… but checking by phone whether everything was fine should not be a big problem, right?
Yeah. That much was fine. Something about it still felt off, but I told myself it was just the guilt of interrupting their quiet little moment together, and I dialed his number.
I listened to the ringing with restless nerves, waiting for him to pick up. Before long, his voice came through the receiver.
"You called at a rather poor time. What is it? Another commission?"
The moment I heard that voice, relief washed over me. At least he had not been crushed under the White I had thrown and gotten hurt.
I steadied myself for a moment, then told him it was not exactly that—though I did plan to give him one soon.
“I like the enthusiasm, but not yet. I’ll have something for you before long, so don’t push.”
"If it is not a commission, then what is your business? I doubt you simply had nothing better to do than make small talk."
Still as bleak as ever.
“If you want to call it small talk, fine. Depends how you take it, I guess. Night before last—or was it the night before that?—our mother paid you a visit, didn’t she? I was just wondering if anything happened.”
I asked as if I were a daughter naturally fretting over her mother. He murmured something like, “Hemoregia, was that the name?” and let out a short sigh.
"If you mean something serious, then yes… my house was blown away."
Whew. Thank goodness. At least I had aimed for the right house. I had been a little uneasy even as I threw her, but apparently I had remembered correctly.
“Your house?”
I prompted him to go on, half hoping Radiant White’s story would come out. He told me everything that had happened, as if he had nothing in particular to hide from me.
Out of nowhere, something had flashed in the sky, and a glowing girl had come crashing down and destroyed his house. He could not exactly leave her there, so he had dragged her to a temporary place nearby and been looking after her—though she still had not woken up.
"That is about all. I have nothing further to say."
It was a concise explanation in true Su-hyeok fashion—which only made it more of a headache. Wasn’t a lot missing? Like the fact that she was a magical girl, or her actual condition?
“…You said she fell from the sky. She must have been badly hurt, then. Are you really able to look after her wherever you are?”
Wondering if he might not even know she was a magical girl, I asked in a roundabout way whether he had any idea who she was. He answered that she seemed to be a magical girl, so she had not been seriously injured.
…Whew. At least he knew. That was a relief. If he had been taking care of her without even realizing she was a magical girl… no. Better not think about that.
“A magical girl… oh, right—Radiant White, was it? I heard she went missing. Might be her. You said she wasn’t badly hurt? Can you give me more details on her condition?”
"Why are you asking?"
“Come on. We’re practically family. I can ask that much, can’t I?”
He asked why I wanted to know, but I brushed it off with a vague we-are-basically-family, so how about a little favor. Fortunately it worked; he answered without fuss.
"Aside from being unconscious, nothing seriously wrong. Occasionally she mutters ‘unnie’ in her sleep—or whatever you call it."
Unnie… was it.
That niggled at me a little, but at least she did not seem badly hurt. That was a relief.
“Well, as long as you and she are both fine, that’s enough. Doesn’t sound like it’ll turn into anything serious. You handle her however you want—talk later!”
"Then I will hang up."
Aside from still being unconscious, nothing major seemed wrong. Whatever unease lingered in my chest, I decided it was just because I had thrown White a little too hard—and went back to stirring up trouble online.
It was not yet time to show myself again. For now, I would keep working from the shadows.