The Dagger that Slices Fate
Hardgore Alice (Hatoda Ako)
The missing rabbit doll kept dangling from Ako’s chest.
On this gloomy rainy morning, Ako pulled on her shoes and asked her aunt carefully, “Will you look for the rabbit doll when you clean? Don’t worry, okay.”
Ako shook her head and gave a soft farewell. “I’ll be back, Aunt.”
“Yeah, go on!”
Leaving behind her aunt’s cheerful send-off, Ako stepped out the front door. Yesterday Snow White had handed her a single dagger.
“Always carry a weapon. Even when you’re not a magical girl.”
She couldn’t refuse the worried voice. She’d tucked the precious item—its origin unknown—into the deepest corner of her bag.
The school path was lined with fluttering yellow umbrellas. Walking the crowded street, her father’s final words suddenly resurfaced.
“Don’t come here.”
The sentence had echoed in her memory again and again, layered over Snow White’s cruel advice. “Don’t follow.”
When the ache in her chest grew too sharp, a figure cloaked in a yellow raincoat appeared through the rain.
The figure called her name in the smallest, clearest voice.
“…Hardgore Alice.”
She had to be in danger. Too many ordinary people surrounded her.
“If you let an ordinary person spot your identity, you lose your magical-girl status, pong!”
Fav’s warning flashed through her mind. She reached for the dagger in her bag, but transformation was impossible amid the crowd.
In that hesitation, a sharp blade sliced straight through the rain and opened her back.
The bag took the brunt, so the wound wasn’t fatal. But she couldn’t stay.
“Hey, my back…!”
Leaving the murmurs of the crowd behind, Ako ran. Even if fate never changed, she had to reach a place where Snow White could help her. Only there might she survive.
Beyond her running vision, the past flashed like a lighthouse beam.
“Auntie, can I buy a smartphone? I’ll use the savings… and when I get a part-time job, I’ll pay the bills…”
“Don’t worry about that! Ako’s a middle-schooler now—friends need to call each other too, right?”
That earnest request earned her the smartphone that started everything.
“Hatoda Ako has been judged by Fav to possess magical-girl aptitude, pong.”
Actually becoming a magical girl had felt like a dream.
“On the other hand, it’s pitch-black in a way that’s truly impressive, pong!”
“With this I can be Black with Snow White… it’ll look so pretty together…”
She reached the outer field where footsteps had fallen silent. Water pooled and Swim Swim revealed herself.
“Here, then….”
Transform. That was all she had to do. But Swim Swim showed no mercy. Before Ako could even shout the transformation phrase, the blade pierced straight through her.
The incoming call sounded loudly from the bag on the ground.
Snow White had given her the information, even a weapon. In the end, none of it had helped.
I’m sorry, Snow White… I’ve let you down again.
◇ Fuwa Kurei
On the road where the Calamity Mary incident had happened, Kurei picked up a creepy-looking rabbit doll.
No need to check whose it was—it was obvious. The one he’d hugged so carefully every time they met.
“Man, I’ll have to scold you tomorrow. If it’s something precious, don’t drop it on the floor and play with it.”
Kurei wiped the doll clean and dropped it into his shopping bag. He planned to deliver it tomorrow morning.
Recently his head had been bursting trying to learn the runemagic Shinomiya told him about before he went into the hospital. When asked the difference between magic and magecraft, the brother had only given an irresponsible answer: “That’s the difference.”
He had learned basic four-element magic, but the real wall was decoding the runes that looked like ancient script.
Fortunately, Shinomiya Gaku had personally etched the incision into Kurei’s body.
“It’s like a tattoo. But what happens if I do it this way?”
“Ever heard of the electric eel?”
“Yeah.”
“Think of it like temporarily experiencing the animal’s power.”
“That explanation is way too vague. It’s dangerous. If someone touches me, I’ll get shocked, right?”
“It only activates against malicious attacks. It’s like a ‘self-defense technique.’ Once used, the exhaustion will be brutal, but your survival chances will definitely rise.”
“Why do I have to learn this…?”
“Because your magical-girl magic doesn’t exist yet. Even a self-defense technique is the best you can manage right now.”
He had nothing to say. That nagging brother was lying in the hospital right now.
Kurei adjusted the shopping bag and sighed.
Daylight had come, but the sky poured cold rain instead of blessing.
In the middle of the school path, amid the chatter of students, a familiar red backpack and torn scraps of paper lay scattered in the mud.
And beside it, something completely out of place: Snow White’s dagger. Kurei’s trembling hand lifted it as he muttered, “Ako…?”
Ruthless whispers swept over like waves from all around.
“They say the girl in the white school swimsuit used a weapon to cut a girl’s back. Is she okay?”
“That chased girl… wasn’t it Hatoda Ako?”
“Turns out the daughter of a murderer really did get what she deserved.”
Fate was truly merciless. The tragedy of losing family, the story of a friend dying, none of it received gentle welcome in this world.
Kurei rolled his eyes and grabbed someone arguing nearby, shouting, “Where did the chased girl go? Tell me right now!”
“Th-that way… the outer field…!”
He ignored the strange stares. Kurei started running. The clear trail of blood washed away by rain became his only guide. Compared to the ordinary morning of school or the gaze of some nameless stranger, only Hato da Ako’s life mattered now.
Stepping through rainwater puddles, he tried calling, but only a cold dial tone answered.
“Damn, damn, damn…! Damn it!”
When he reached the field, Ako lay there. The bleeding was so severe the rain couldn’t wash it all away.
“Ako….”
There was no time to grieve. A white-swimsuit magical girl cut through the rain, knife dripping blood, and looked at Kurei with emotionless eyes.
“…A magical girl I couldn’t see?”
Swim Swim glanced at the scythe in Kurei’s hand and the runes, then whispered to the empty air, “I still haven’t finished you, Minael.”
Who she was speaking to and why she was doing this no longer mattered.
Only one clear thought remained in Kurei’s head: I will kill this magical girl with my own hands.
Swim Swim’s blade shot toward his forehead through the rain. Kurei instinctively raised the scythe’s handle to block.
Ka-clang!
Flames erupted with the sound of tearing metal. The weight of the blade traveled through Kurei’s wrist like a hammer.
Swim Swim twisted the blade in her hands, sliding along the handle to target his fingers.
Instead of letting go, Kurei spun his body and swung the scythe’s tip into Swim Swim’s side. Just before impact, her body flowed like liquid and the attack slipped off.
“…!”
Using the moment her balance broke from the centrifugal force, Swim Swim’s kick slammed into Kurei’s stomach.
Thud!
Kurei was driven back, gasping. Even in the pain of being unable to breathe, he rolled across the ground and swept his scythe to deflect the blade’s trajectory.
Over the muddy field, the two weapons clashed dozens of times, spraying flames and raindrops everywhere.
Swim Swim closed the distance and brought the blade down in a vertical chop.
Kurei rolled aside to dodge, then drove a fist into her at close range.
At that moment the fabric wrapping his arm ignited, and the runes tattooed on his skin glowed white.
Just as Swim Swim’s blade grazed Kurei’s shoulder, the Auto Defense Technique activated, detecting malice and exploding.
Crack!
Before Swim Swim’s fist could reach her abdomen, lightning shot from Kurei’s knuckles and struck her directly. The liquid form she tried to defend with solidified in an instant, limbs twisting in agony. High-voltage current raced through her body via the rainwater.
“A…!”
Swim Swim’s knee buckled.
Kurei didn’t miss the opening. He lifted her chin with the scythe handle and followed with a powerful low kick that shattered her center of balance.
Toward Swim Swim who had been slammed onto the mud, Kurei gripped the scythe upside-down and drove it down like a stake.
Swim Swim twisted to avoid the blade, but the skin near her shoulder burned where it scraped.
She hadn’t fully liquefied because the lightning hadn’t passed completely.
Kurei panted heavily and snatched the dagger from the bag.
He charged Swim Swim, who was barely standing with the blade as a crutch. Left hand’s dagger and right hand’s scythe struck in a storm of continuous attacks.
He pinned the blade with the scythe, then drove his left fist straight into the gap in Swim Swim’s chest.
Kwarrl!
The remaining power of the technique poured through the dagger into her chest.
Swim Swim burned and the rain evaporated, white steam rising.
The magical girl’s body flew and slammed into the concrete wall at the edge of the field. The wall cracked like spiderwebs and dust exploded.
Kurei staggered with his torn arm dangling, walking through the smoke. The magical girl’s form against the wall flickered, then the transformation faded and her original appearance was revealed.
There lay an elementary-school-aged girl, barely any trace of adulthood left.
But Kurei’s eyes held no guilt.
Anger had burned away any moral hesitation long ago. He raised the dagger without hesitation.
Slash!
The dagger blade pierced the girl’s heart straight through. An act of mercyless execution.
At that moment, the magic and memories of the dead magical girl poured into Kurei’s brain like a waterfall.
The feeling was worse than expected.
The transformation faded and he returned to his boy’s form.
The pain of a soul losing ten years of life crushed his entire body together with the mental agony he had never experienced before.
One of the twelve limited memory slots filled with Swim Swim’s material-phase magic.
Kurei’s gaze, still chewing over the disgusting scene of the murder, turned to the blade on the ground.
It didn’t take long to realize the weapon wasn’t ordinary iron—it was the form Minael, Swim Swim’s companion, had taken.
Kwack!
Kurei stomped the blade’s handle into the ground without mercy.
“Aaaaargh──!”