I'm Going to Change the Genre of This Novel - 3
Haruko and I watched her Blooming ability in action from the empty lot of the apartment complex. Naturally, the first order of business was stringing up an illusion barrier so that no outsider could see a thing.
Oral Storytelling — Kōen Dōwa
"M-Mr. Wolf! Grab the d-drums and give me t-ten squats!"
Scratch, scratch. Dirt-colored starlight flowed like ink from the nib of Haruko's unique weapon—a soil-hued quill—letting her leave words written in the empty air.
The little stories she scribbled across the sky became reality through the labor of her familiars. A two-meter paper werewolf, crumpled as though someone had gone to town with origami, groaned low as it hoisted oil drums onto both shoulders and performed awkward squats, its rear jutting way out in a comical posture. With such a shoddy paper body, executing stiff, mechanical movements at a crawl was about the best it could manage.
Clang!
The moment the wolf finished its tenth squat, it flung the drums away as if it had been waiting for the command, then slackened every muscle and reverted to its default standing pose.
"N-no! You don't just s-stand up the second the command ends!"
"Ugly Jizo-chan, it looks like the sheep got hit by what Mr. Wolf threw."
"Aaaaagh! Mr. Pig, heal!!"
Shff-shff. The order Haruko frantically scrawled into the air flared with light. The handwriting was an illegible mess, closer to graffiti than script, but the familiars understood. The instant the paper pig touched its molars to the paper sheep—crumpled from taking a drum to the face—the sheep bounced right back to its original, paper-balloon springiness.
Even without written orders, the familiars read Haruko's mood and did their best to behave naturally on their own.
It's not a powerhouse ability, but familiars that move entirely under their own initiative like this are genuinely unique.
A magical girl who completed her Bloom had even her basic magic reshaped by the nature of her unique skill. But a type whose basic magic itself transformed into summon creatures was exceedingly rare even in the original story.
The protagonist, Sakishima Yuki, only ever manifested her basic magic as shapes of flame.
The magic of the [Fairy Tale] Magical Girl sat at a level of uniqueness that only the [Machine Gun] Magical Girl—who performed every spell through a machine gun—could rival. My own magic, which carried the trait of [Deception] and thus bore the properties of illusion, was unusual in its own right, but Haruko's magic, whose activation condition itself had changed, grew more fascinating the longer I watched.
Then again, there were hardly any Blooming magical girls in the original to begin with.
Shff-shff. Haruko, who had begun with careful, upright characters, had shifted to a loose scrawl that conveyed intent and nothing more—and the familiars moved all the more smoothly to match it.
The order: each familiar was to show off its ability, properly, one by one.
The wolf, carrying the trait of psychokinesis, exerted physical force.
The moment the wolf bent both arms overhead into a front double-biceps pose, the oil drums sprawled across the lot rose at tremendous speed. Its chest swelled, and from that chest—puffed out until it rivaled the paper sheep's—dirt-colored starlight burst forth with its breath.
Whoooosh—
Clang! Clang! Clang!
At an ever-faster pace, the drums were caught up in the starlight and stacked in neat rows. The lot, perfectly tidied.
"All right, Ugly Jizo-chan, shall we try Blink again?"
"Hehe! Y-yes, ma'am!"
Shff-shff.
Maaah— The paper sheep bounded over and lunged at us in a spread-eagle pose, and with a sensation of being tugged somewhere, we went from standing facing the apartment building to the rusty iron staircase at its foot.
"No matter how many times I see it, it's bizarre."
"Hee hee. M-me neither. I never dreamed I'd be able to use something like this."
"That's what it means to be a magical girl. You were always capable."
We were still far earlier in the timeline than the prologue mentioned in the original. Most magical girls hadn't come within a mile of Blooming—at best, they were only beginning to wrestle with basic telekinesis. But if nothing changed, a few months from now the average level of magical girls would climb, and the day would arrive when Blooming magical girls appeared across every outlet in the mass media. From that point on, the allied factions' research into magical girl abilities could be considered complete—which meant right now was still far too early.
"B-but, Ms. Shirogane, I have a question."
"What is it?"
"You always commute by train, right?"
"Yeah."
"W-wouldn't it be e-easier to just teleport everywhere?"
"Shibuya to Yokohama is out of the question."
"N-no, that's not what I mean…"
Haruko wiggled two fingers, mimicking someone reappearing in stages.
"L-like this—zoom! Zoom! Zoom! You'd s-save on t-transport costs too. It's great, right?"
"Then why don't you stop walking everywhere and just sprint all the time, Ugly Jizo-chan? Save you plenty of time, too."
"Ah…"
Whether she'd caught the unspoken this is a hassle, Haruko squirmed and twisted where she stood.
I took a slow look over Haruko's Blooming magical girl outfit. Aside from myself—the very first Blooming magical girl—this was the first other Bloomer's outfit I had seen in two years: a modest ensemble of a traditional dress in green linen, like some European mountain girl, paired with hiking boots.
The original often described Bloomers' hair changing color under the influence of starlight, but Haruko's brown-tinted black braids were exactly as they had always been.
She really does look plain.
As a subculture work, the original's typical design language tuned Blooming magical girls' exposure and costume concepts squarely to otaku tastes. Against that backdrop, a design that looked plucked straight from a Swiss documentary actually felt refreshingly novel.
My own outfit isn't exactly modest either—it's just that it hides less cleavage than it shows off, but…
A business suit that emphasized a full chest in contrast with a slim waist, unmistakably feminine at a glance—and above all, the trousers clung so tightly they were practically stockings. It was closer to a concept costume than an actual suit. When I first Bloomed, even the skin-tight outfit took getting used to, and I had fidgeted and squirmed my legs as I walked; now it was simply second nature.
"Anyway, Ugly Jizo-chan, that's it for practice today. I'll be back."
"Aww. Y-yes, ma'am!"
Listening to Haruko's bravely cheerful reply, I transformed.
Colorless starlight. A kaleidoscope of light wrapping around my entire body.
Transformed into a magical girl, I was a magician who deceived the eyes of the people. The starlight that lingered after the transformation became a white mask covering my face. A smooth white mask worthy of a Phantom of the Opera stage—a crystallization of gathered [Deception] starlight, it kept onlookers from perceiving my true nature.
With everything I intended to do, being recognized was not an option, so the mask would have to stay on at all times.
Tokyo Port, where the maritime cargo of Japan's foremost city came to gather. Here stood the logistics warehouse of Fujimoto Heavy Industries, the core enterprise of the Fujimoto Group.
Japan's foremost city. Japan's foremost port. Japan's foremost corporation. Among them all, the warehouses of Fujimoto Heavy Industries—lungs that breathed for the entire Japanese economy—boasted overwhelming scale to match their reputation. Dozens of colossal cranes, tens of meters tall, hoisted hundreds of thousands of items of cargo up and down every single day. Beneath them, workers shouting to move freight and an endless river of vehicles. The place was always drowning in noise.
It was more than enough noise to bury the voices of a few innocent girls.
"Hah… hah…"
"Test Subject No. 11: psychic manifestation count, twenty-one. Third test complete."
This should make fine material to send to the Planning Director.
Muttering, the lab worker jotted something on the paper in his hand. The girl, spent from repeating her psychic power only moments before, glared at him and shouted.
"Nnnh—! I went past twenty, like you promised! Now hurry up—!"
The worker in his white coat regarded her with cold eyes, then shortly jerked his chin at one of the guards standing watch beside him.
Thud.
What fell to the floor was a single cheap loaf of bread. The kind you could buy with pocket change at any convenience store. But to the girl, that bread was precious beyond measure. Or rather, it was the people who had caged her who had built an environment where even such bread would be treasured.
The girl, drained to her last dreg until a moment ago, snatched the fallen bread bag desperately into her arms.
"Now go and wait."
"……"
She felt wretched, so her eyes stayed fixed on the bread alone. Having confirmed the girl walking off into the darkness, the worker bent back over his paper and recorded something more.
Trudge. Trudge.
A week had passed since her confinement began in the warehouse basement, where not a single ray of sunlight reached. She was already growing numb to this wretched existence. The thunder of the cranes above pounding through her skull. Confinement to the cramped cell assigned as her quarters. Oppression that forbade even a peaceful night's sleep. Somewhere around the week mark, all of it had dulled into apathy.
Only one thing had failed to become familiar.
Grrrowl.
"……"
For the first three days, they had been given nothing at all but water, driven through endless repetition of training and pressed to raise their numbers to a set benchmark.
'You don't eat unless you produce results here.'
The girls who had wept and begged to be let out broke under the ravages of starvation; three days in, they gulped down the first meal of their captivity through tears. Over those first days, the eleven experimental magical girls who had chatted idly during breaks about the world outside to keep their minds off their hunger discovered what they all had in common.
"You were orphans too?"
"Y-you too?!"
Damn it.
It was always like this. This godforsaken world was obsessed with wringing dry the powerless—people exactly like them.
"Damn it."
Gripping the bread bag, the girl scanned her route back to the quarters. Cameras whirred at intervals along the corridor, and the lone passage was watched around the clock by armed guards with eyes wide open.
The quarters themselves are probably under surveillance twenty-four seven, too.
In the midst of confinement and mindless, repeated training, some of the children had awakened abilities beyond merely moving objects—powers that could heal others. But healing couldn't fill a stomach, so the watchers kept the girls caged, cowed by guns and bread alike.
Even so, I'm getting out of here. I swear it.
Freedom. The instant she murmured that desperate word, a green light flickered in the girl's eyes—then vanished.
Not yet. The time isn't right.
For now, at least, it seemed like a story far too distant. The girl finished the thought and returned to reality, then walked wearily on, cradling the bread she would share with her friends waiting in the quarters, clutching their hungry stomachs.
When she had been abandoned at the orphanage as an infant, a single flower had rested atop the blanket wrapped around her. From that flower, she had been given her name: Ichika.
A girl who would one day lead the magical girls' rebel organization Flag; a Natural 2-Star, destined to Bloom into the Magical Girl of [Freedom] while fighting against the alliance led by the Magical Girl of [Guardian].
The corridor Ichika walked down held only silence. Had she torn her eyes from the bread bag, she might have noticed—in a corner of that corridor—a faint starlight flicker, and vanish.