Let's Collect Magical Candy
Fifteen magical girls had gathered in the chat room. Every one of them was reeling from Fav's words.
Down to half — eight of you, pong.
Snow White and La Pucelle raced across the rooftops, hunting for the voices of people in trouble. La Pucelle could barely keep up.
A fire had broken out in Nabukashi. The flames were spreading fast, and the only people inside the house were an elderly couple. Anyone looking at that inferno would have assumed no one could survive it.
"Sou-chan… I hear a voice from the room on the upper right."
Snow White went in without a second's hesitation. La Pucelle shouted after her.
"…That's dangerous! You can't just go in first!"
From the roof, Snow White kicked through a wooden panel and dropped straight into the blaze. Whether it was from fighting magical girls who wielded fire, or from the old habit of carrying a fire extinguisher as a sidearm, the inside of a burning building had become a familiar environment to her.
She grabbed the extinguisher from the room and bought as much time as she could, beating the flames back. Then she guided the grandmother and grandfather each to safety.
"The fire shouldn't spread any further… I'll leave the rest to you, La Pucelle."
La Pucelle scanned the surroundings and called out.
"Someone, please help! There are people down over here!"
With that, the two of them slipped away from the scene.
They arrived at the tallest steel tower near Kubegahama — perhaps the place Snow White had visited more than any other. Coming here always left her dazed, staring at nothing.
Still… this isn't a dream.
"Looking at how much Magical Candy we got, those people must be all right…"
La Pucelle's face flushed as she spoke.
"More importantly… we agreed you wouldn't call me Sou-chan during magical girl work."
Snow White managed a bitter smile — an expression caught halfway between happiness and sorrow, belonging to neither.
"…Sorry."
La Pucelle sounded put out, but she changed the subject soon enough.
"Anyway, your candy count has to be number one by a mile. You keep pulling off rescues even when you're alone — I can't keep up."
Snow White couldn't remember what her past self had said in reply. So this time, she simply spoke from the heart.
"I just… want to stay a magical girl. And I want to keep being with you, too, La Pucelle…"
She meant every word. But beneath it ran a quiet dread — the fear that La Pucelle might be dragged into the Magical Kingdom along with her. She didn't want to expose her to that kind of danger.
La Pucelle's face went even redder. It took her a long moment to find her voice.
"…Thanks to you, I probably won't end up at the bottom either. Thank you."
"…Yeah. Thanks to you, Sou-cha—"
She'd used the wrong name again. La Pucelle's expression soured.
"Nngh…"
"Sorry. Let me correct that… thanks to you, La Pucelle."
Habits really were a terrifying thing. Snow White had no idea how to put into words the tangle of grief and joy twisting inside her.
She went home. Her phone still had the compilation site open. There was no sighting information on Nemuring — only stories about Snow White, page after page of them.
In the end, the fact that Nemuring sat at the very bottom hadn't changed. Snow White had warned her more than enough, but she hadn't listened. Nemuring never left the chat room.
A memory surfaced — of chatting with her in the past, swapping stories about rescuing people from a fire.
…
No one but Snow White knew the truth yet. That "elimination" as a magical girl, on this cruel stage, meant death.
And that nearly everything Fav had said about "magic" was a lie.
Every time they gathered in the chat room, it felt no different from waiting on a death sentence. If Nemuring had made the ruthless choice to kill others just to survive, she never would have died. Perhaps this cruel fate was never meant to change at all.
Even so, Snow White's prediction held true.
This week's top is Snow White, pong.
She felt no joy at all. She knew better than anyone that every person here was being toyed with by the Magical Girl Selection examiners.
But Snow White said nothing.
This week's eliminated magical girl is… Nemuring, pong.
No matter how hard she struggled, a girl who only ever operated inside dreams could never accumulate Magical Candy. Snow White had proposed teaming up any number of times, but Nemuring had always refused, saying she had no interest in candy.
Messages flew back and forth, but none of them truly registered.
Nemuring has been deleted.
La Pucelle spoke up, sounding shocked.
But no matter how hard they protested, Snow White held no expectation that Fav would ever move according to their wishes.
As for Nemuring — that water had already been spilled. And if nothing changed despite all these efforts, it was painfully clear they would simply arrive at that same miserable ending all over again.
Even having regressed, all she'd brought back were the knowledge in her head and a handful of combat instincts. Those memories would not fade easily.
Even if Nemuring had died… it wasn't as though there was no way to meet her again. Nemuring might die in the real world, but she did not die in her own world — the world of dreams.
Snow White knew this because of her magic. Originally, her power let her hear the "voices of the heart" of people in trouble. But after that incident, it had changed — she could hear any human heart, no matter what. That magic had preserved even the memories of Nemuring's dream world in vivid, living detail.
"If she doesn't want it herself… there's nothing I can say."
"What was that just now?"
La Pucelle had caught her muttering and asked. Snow White shook her head.
"It's nothing, La Pucelle."
The Snow White of now was not the Magical Girl Hunter. Her purpose on the stage of the Selection Exam was to save two people — and she wanted to save Ripple completely as well, the one who would lose an arm and an eye in the future.
Starting out like this, it was hard not to feel crushed. Even so, Snow White did not tell La Pucelle the truth. …If she had been her past self, she might have poured everything out.
Leaving the steel tower behind, she prepared her next move.
"Hey, La Pucelle… exams start this week, so before it gets hard to go out on missions — there's someone I want to meet. Is that all right?"
"I want to meet a magical girl named Ripple."
Snow White sent Ripple a message. Through Top Speed, arranging a meeting turned out to be relatively easy.
"…What do you want?"
Twin tails crowned with shuriken-shaped ornaments. A magical girl dressed as a kunoichi — Ripple. Beside her stood Top Speed in her witch's attire.
"Nothing major… I just thought, since we're all here, it might be nice to have lunch together."
"Tch… what a pain."
Ripple clicked her tongue, clearly annoyed. But as long as Top Speed was with her, she wouldn't walk away. For all her attitude, the two of them made a good team. Ripple had always said as much.
The Ripple of this period clicked her tongue with unusual frequency. If she could see herself now, she'd probably throw a fit and demand no one look at her.
"…Pff."
A laugh slipped out before Snow White could stop it. Top Speed grinned.
"Hey now, we didn't say anything funny."
In everyone else's eyes, Snow White and Ripple were nothing more than magical girls from the same cohort. But even now, Ripple was a precious friend. They had been pulled into incident after incident and drifted further and further apart — yet seeing Ripple alive like this filled her with a longing so sharp it was almost unbearable.
After the regression, the traces of Ripple that had lingered inside her seemed to have vanished somewhere entirely.