Chapter 67
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 67
Chapter Title: The Director is Tired
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The Magical Girl Management Bureau headquarters stood empty, save for a handful of employees pulling all-nighters.
In one office on the topmost floor of the headquarters building, the lights remained on.
"Haa..."
Chae-yoon hadn't slept a wink since the night before.
"Once I finish this... I can finally lie down and rest..."
A mountain of paperwork loomed before her with no end in sight,
but after pounding away at the keyboard for over twenty hours, the finish line was finally coming into view.
Without the caffeine- and sugar-packed energy drinks,
she probably would have collapsed face-first onto her desk by now, fast asleep.
The problem was... she'd downed five cans of the stuff.
This grueling overtime was due partly to the bureau's chronic staff shortage,
and partly to resolve a personal investigation she was conducting on her own.
'What is this guy's scheming...? I'll uncover it for sure.'
A few days earlier, while reviewing footage of the magical girls in action for work,
Chae-yoon had felt an odd sense of familiarity from one particular magical girl.
But on the surface, she looked no different from the others,
and quietly summoning her manager for questioning had yielded nothing.
So she'd tasked Selene—her former colleague and current secretary—with the investigation,
and was now sifting through the evidence based on the data Selene had gathered.
"If only we had surveillance cameras... but that's not such a simple issue."
If there had been CCTV inside the bureau offices,
it would have been easy to expose exactly what Jae-hyun was doing with his assigned magical girls.
From fellatio to desk sex, it'd be easier to list what wasn't happening in there.
But installing cameras inside was impractical due to privacy concerns,
so for security reasons, CCTV was limited to the headquarters entrances and hallways.
"There's seriously nothing worth using as evidence?"
Every bit of info in the towering stack of documents was useless.
Not just Jae-hyun, but even investigating the magical girls under his management turned up nothing suspicious.
"At this rate, I'll collapse from exhaustion first."
Despite staying up all night for days on end to dig into the background,
she was right back where she started.
She was starting to doubt if that eerie hunch and ominous vibe had been genuine suspicion at all,
or if even she could no longer trust her own instincts.
Selene had suggested it might just be fatigue playing tricks on her.
Her face twisted in irritation as she glared at yet another document with Jae-hyun's photo,
then finally stood up, deciding it was pointless.
'Just a quick nap... I'll sleep a bit and get back up.'
A power nap meant flopping onto the desk, but waking up like that always left her back and neck aching.
That's why she'd prepared this cot a few months ago.
No one around to see anyway, so she unbuttoned her shirt freely,
tossed her stockings aside, and stretched out comfortably.
"Things used to be so much better back then..."
Lying still, staring at the ceiling in silence,
vivid memories from her days as the magical girl Hestia came flooding back.
She wielded scorching flames hot enough to melt metal in seconds,
reducing even the toughest, sturdiest monsters to ash with ease.
Clad in a beautiful, glamorous costume, her fiery hair whipping like flames,
she'd smile proudly amid the citizens' cheers.
But now, instead of a magical girl's costume, she wore a drab suit,
and instead of a dazzling battlefield, she catnapped in this dreary office.
Her once-bright, passionate eyes had dulled to the dead stare of an office drone,
dark circles heavy under them from fatigue even her magical girl mana couldn't fend off.
'I never wanted to be Director...'
Back when Hestia was at the peak as the strongest magical girl, riding high on fame,
the previous director had abruptly retired, leaving the position vacant.
Amid debates among the top brass over the successor,
the prevailing opinion was to appoint a veteran magical girl familiar with field operations.
Among the veterans, Chae-yoon stood out as the symbol of ultimate strength,
and she was the only one who hadn't firmly refused.
Thus, half-willing, half-reluctant, she'd been appointed director three years ago.
"Hmmm..."
She pulled her phone from her pocket and stared at her reflection on the screen.
She didn't bother dolling up since no one saw her much anyway,
but her looks hadn't changed much from her Hestia days.
The dark circles from overtime and her disheveled hair were the issues;
thanks to her magical girl mana, she still maintained her stunning beauty and figure.
'Marriage? I haven't even dated once... How did my life end up like this?'
As a magical girl, she rarely interacted closely with men outside her manager.
And her manager back then had been a married man with a wife and daughter.
Besides, she hadn't cared much about romance at the time.
Just transforming into her beautiful form, vanquishing monsters,
and waving confidently to the cheering crowds—that was joy enough.
But now in her thirties, she regretted never dating even a little when she was younger.
If she'd dated and married, she wouldn't be in this position,
nor napping so pathetically like this.
'Why do these thoughts keep popping up lately...?'
Until recently, she hadn't given mirrors or romantic regrets a second thought.
She'd been too swamped for such trivial nonsense.
She tried to shake them off, but they wouldn't budge easily.
'Why...? Am I just lonely...?'
Chae-yoon began pondering the root of these thoughts.
Was it a real desire to meet a man,
or simply exhaustion making her lose her mind, as Selene suggested?
If the former, it tied to loneliness and lust;
if the latter, plenty of rest was the fix.
But the latter was nearly impossible.
She planned to nap briefly then dive back into evidence hunting at dawn.
So the only cause she could test was the first: loneliness or lust.
There were many ways to relieve those,
but only one simple method she could try right now.
'No one's here... so it should be fine, right...?'
She lifted her head briefly to confirm the silent stillness once more,
then relaxed, placing her index and middle fingers over her panties.
-Swish... Swish...
And began moving her fingers very slowly.
"Hnnngh... Hnnght...♥"
Just timidly rubbing over her underwear—that was all,
but for Chae-yoon, masturbation was a rare deviance, countable on one hand.
Her mind questioned if she should really be doing this,
but if it cleared her stray thoughts, so be it.
'It's been so long... feels more sensitive than before...♥'
Whether from months since last time, her senses felt acutely sharpened.
Just sliding her fingers up and down a few times,
and lewd sounds kept slipping from her lips.
"Ahng...♥ Haahng...♥"
Her voice grew louder, zeroing in on an especially sensitive spot.
Lying on the cot, fiddling with her crotch for a few minutes,
those pointless thoughts of marriage and dating vanished.
Sweat beaded on her once-dry skin,
and from lips that had only sighed and grumbled came soft, feminine moans.
'My fingers... they're getting slick...♥'
Naughty juices seeping gently from inside her rubbed panties.
Seeing the thin thread stretching from her fingertips confirmed it—lust was the culprit.
"Chuuup...♥"
She absentmindedly sucked her sticky fingers,
tasting just a faint saltiness... nothing else.
After diligently working her fingers a few more times,
she suddenly sat up and grabbed a wet wipe from the table.
"What am I even doing...?"
The director overseeing the entire Magical Girl Management Bureau—the strongest magical girl herself—
resorting to this in her office just to banish idle thoughts.
A wave of post-nut clarity crashed over her abruptly.
She wanted to erase the memory of turning into a needy female beast,
but like before, trying to forget only made it more vivid.
"It's all that guy's fault.
My head's already killing me... and now he won't even let me sleep."
She wiped her fingers clean with the tissue, lay back on the cot,
and blamed it all on Jae-hyun for making her suspicious in the first place.
That suspicion had her agonizing over solutions for days,
and kept her awake for two straight days now.
"Ugh... This is so damn frustrating..."
Biting her lip and grumbling a few more times,
she finally succumbed to overwhelming sleepiness and drifted off into a brief slumber with closed eyes.