Seoul Incident (4)
I had more or less figured that Shining White was out of her mind.
…But I never imagined it would be this bad.
Even if she wasn’t in her right mind, I never thought she’d casually punch a hole through a junior magical girl’s stomach like it was nothing.
The moment I reclaimed my body from Shining White, the first thing I saw was Sparkling Blue in the middle of a raw, unmistakable panic.
“Sky! Sky! Stay with me! Sky!!”
“Blue, focus! It’s not over—here they come!”
Sparkling Blue had caught the Sky that Shining White had flung aside. She was cradling Scanning Sky—unconscious, her midsection dyed a deep red—and calling her name over and over.
Sky’s stomach was red.
…As if my hand had punched straight through it.
I looked down at my right arm, barely hanging on by a thread. Radiant White’s beam had punched through the elbow; it was dangling by nothing more than a strip of skin.
…Had I done that with this hand?
Was the blood on it mine—or Sky’s?
I was sure of one thing: when it went through, there had been no sensation of parting flesh. I knew that feeling. I had put my hand through a human stomach before. That was exactly why I couldn’t accept this.
That sensation had absolutely not been the feeling of piercing a person’s belly. The red on Sky’s midsection was probably just my liquefied arm smeared lightly across her clothes.
What Shining White had drawn out of her wasn’t blood—it was something else. Something like starlight, maybe.
My head understood. My heart, though, refused to accept the situation in front of me.
If it wasn’t a hole through her stomach, then what the hell was it?
How was I supposed to explain any of this?
I stood there frozen, unable to process it—and then something went pop right beside my head.
Something had burst. Blood. A spear of blood had come apart.
The blood spear Shining White had been about to launch at Sparkling Blue had lost its form and collapsed. The spray painted my right side red.
…Look, I had never meant for any of this. All I’d wanted was—
“How dare you attack Sky—!!”
Just as I was finally trying to sort the mess into something I could live with, a leg wreathed in Blazing Red’s flames came screaming toward me.
I raised my right arm on pure instinct to block—and the arm that had already been hanging by a thread was sheared clean off.
There was no pain. But watching my severed arm sail past my face made my blood run ice-cold.
At this rate, I might actually die.
The gazes of the magical girls—ones I had never once found intimidating—felt heavy for the first time. Heavy, and… frightening.
…Whatever else was true, I had to run first.
The situation had twisted itself into a knot, and there was no walking this back into a laughing, lighthearted prank. I had only come to mess with them a little. So why had everything gone this catastrophically wrong?
I felt like I might cry.
As the kick sent me flying, I stretched a ribbon of blood toward my severed arm and hauled it back. I restored it in the nick of time as I slammed into the ground, then knitted the smaller wounds scattered across my body. Acceleration—loosened when my consciousness had switched—snapped back into place, and I just barely slipped the pure-white beam that came crashing down on the crater I’d made.
Radiant White’s face was blank. Completely blank.
That was the look she got when she was so furious her eyes had gone empty. In other words, Shining White’s little stunt had blown Radiant White’s lid clean off.
The woman who claimed to do everything for her little sister had just sent that same sister into a blind rage. It would have been funny if it weren’t so completely unfunny.
I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in the irony. Flame and lightning came hammering down from above an instant later. My Acceleration still edged theirs by a hair, so I managed to dodge—barely. But against magical girls enraged over a wounded comrade, with nothing around them left to protect, I couldn’t slip every strike. I scraped past some, tanked others with my body, and forced a path through their barrage toward the place where the Tiger’s husk had been left.
If I was going to run, I needed blood first.
Shining White had burned through Blood Manipulation and Acceleration with reckless abandon—and in parallel—so the reserves I’d carefully stockpiled were about to hit empty. I needed to drain every last drop from the monsters abandoned on the ground. Then dump all of it into Acceleration and bolt at top speed. That was the plan I’d just cobbled together.
When I reached the spot where I’d left the Tiger, there was nothing left.
Why? The answer hit me a second later.
The Rat’s power. They slipped out.
I looked for the Ox as well and found nothing. The ones who still had their heads attached had clearly been extracted somehow by the Rat.
Which left only the Pig.
…Would one Pig be enough?
Anxiety outran confidence. Even with that generous bulk and those still-plump cheeks, I doubted the Pig could give me what I needed. But I didn’t have another option.
To buy a few seconds of quiet under the bombardment, I hurled a few abandoned civilian cars skyward, then arrived at the Pig’s body—still pumping blood. Its split head had already reattached, regenerating even now. The sight alone was enough to turn my stomach.
How was it still alive with its brain gone and its skull cracked open?
I didn’t have time to dwell on the disgust. The cars I’d thrown were already raining back down as scrap metal, so I went soft and liquid and sank straight into the Pig’s body. I drank with my whole self. Turning that plump monster into a withered husk took less than five seconds.
The Pig’s entire life unfurled through my mind until my brain felt fever-hot—but even through the pounding headache, I could tell the blood still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t a precise calculation. Instinct was simply screaming that this wouldn’t cut it.
Not nearly enough to shake them and make it all the way to Incheon.
Was there really no other way?
The Pig’s hardened shell was already shattering under Red and Blue’s combined assault, peeling away to expose me—and I still couldn’t think of a next move. Attack a magical girl for blood? No. Same logic ruled out civilians. Hunting for an actual villain was even more absurd.
There was nothing.
What do I do? What the hell do I actually do?
Should I just do what Shining White did—put every magical girl down, then run? If I fought the way she had, I could drop them without much trouble. But emotionally, it was impossible. All I wanted was to harass them a little, mess with them. I had never once intended to seriously hurt them, much less kill them.
But if I didn’t… I was the one who was going to die.
Do I really have to? Me? Maybe I should just call Shining White back again…
No. Absolutely not.
If I brought her out a second time, she might try to punch holes through the rest of them as well. I did not want that. Not for anything.
So what, then? What was I supposed to—
I was still wringing my mind for ideas when a memory surfaced, almost too perfectly timed.
—Chomp… chomp. Gulp. So how do you actually use starlight, then?
—I already told you, didn’t I? It’s already inside your heart. You needn’t think of “using” it. Simply desire it with everything you have. The rest will make itself understood.
One of the Pig’s memories—asking the Rabbit how to wield starlight—played back at exactly the right moment.
Desire it with everything you have, huh.
…I doubted anything good would come of it. But I was out of options, so I might as well try.
I had already topped up my starlight from the monsters and from Scanning Sky. At least I wouldn’t run dry.
I smashed through the Pig’s husk with my own hands and launched into the air. Red and Blue saw me and wore matching expressions of of course you would, then poured their signature finishing moves toward me.
I didn’t dodge. I closed my eyes instead.
Please. Whatever you are—let starlight be the key that breaks this impossible situation open.
I wished it without even knowing the name of the star I was contracted to.
…And the demon’s star answered.
Starlight that until now had been good for nothing but Acceleration gathered into my hand and took the shape of a greatsword—dark crimson, heavy and broad. That was all it did. And yet, somehow, I was certain it would be enough.
Without knowing what would happen, I swung the dark-red blade.
A vast, flat slash of the same deep crimson shot outward.
“Red, look ou—!”
The slash crossed the horizon before either of them could react.
“…Huh? Why didn’t anything happen?”
It hadn’t touched Red or Blue at all. At first I had no idea what I’d even done. But it didn’t take long to understand what the slash had affected.
It was the magical girls and civilians standing behind them.
From the backs of several magical girls the dark-crimson slash had swept across, something formless was beginning to seep free, writhing its way out.
I didn’t understand what it was—until the second I did, and the instant I did, I scattered the starlight.
Before it was too late.
Mercifully—truly, miraculously—the moment the starlight dispersed, whatever had been pulling free of their bodies sank back into place. The shock, though, was real. The magical girls who had nearly had something extracted from their spines went limp and began to fall.
“Girls?! Pink! Yellow! Stay with me!”
While Red and Blue reeled in panic, I dumped every last drop of remaining blood into Acceleration and tore myself free of that place.
…No one followed.
Of course they didn’t. That single strike had already left the city a ruin.
The wicked. The unqualified. The worthless.
If those caught in the slash fell into any of those categories, it stripped them of everything they possessed—the blow of a Demon King.
That was the absurd power Shining White had gained by becoming a monster. The ultimate crowd-clearer. A sieve.
In other words, if I hadn’t scattered the starlight in time…
It could have turned into a massacre on the spot.
Shining White. What the hell were you thinking?
Why did you make Selection your Principle?
I threw the question inward, knowing I would never get an answer, and staggered away toward Incheon.