"Grandmother Is Still Alive" — Part 1
"Hey. You asleep?"
"……."
Even after waking, I'd been replaying our last fight in my head, sweating cold the whole time.
The battle in front of the main gate had, in truth, amounted to nothing more than gritting my teeth behind a 3-star magical girl's raw physical specs, then scrambling to finish things off with an illusion. I should have used my thoroughly prepared illusion magic to lure him outside the warehouse or force him to disarm. Instead, panicked and impatient, I had thrown myself at him trusting nothing but my body.
"From your breathing, I'd say you're awake."
"……."
Yes, controlling my clone had split my focus — but to pick the worst option out of a list of bad ones.
And even after the gun went off, I couldn't commit to a single decisive move.
The preparation had been lacking, the thinking thinner, and above all, it had been reckless.
A 1-Star magical girl can go on a rampage across a battlefield at full power. What on earth did I do?
I had swung a blade that could cut through anything, all while lacking the resolve to hurt anyone with it.
I should have subdued him on the spot, even if it meant leaving him seriously wounded.
Boldness.
Decisiveness.
Both were absent in me.
Ichika, using the terrain to her advantage, had single-handedly taken down more than six guards in that corridor. Picking them off one by one. Swift and precise. The moment she learned a clone had her defense covered, she'd fought purely through attack, punching straight through everything in her path. While I was barely managing a scrappy brawl with five guards, she had gathered up the others and brought them safely up from tens of meters underground.
Let's be honest. I was afraid of hurting someone, so I handled it half-heartedly.
No matter how many scenarios you run in your head, no matter how firmly you resolve to fight, the real thing is nothing like the rehearsal. We had made it out in one piece, but it had been far too dangerous, far too close a call. To think I'd imagined facing down the apocalypse with this half-baked heart of mine.
"Can't tell if you're sleeping or just glaring with your eyes shut."
"I was lying there because I'm disgusted with myself."
"Oh, so you are awake."
"What about the others?"
"Still out cold. Ten days of never knowing when we'd get called out — nobody got any real sleep."
That would be because they'd run the experiments nonstop for twenty-four hours to get results fast, I figured.
The rescued girls lay scattered around the room, breathing tired sighs in their sleep.
"I see."
"What's got you so gloomy, anyway?"
"Even if I was out of my mind, I should have made better decisions in that fight."
"Everyone got out without a scratch. Isn't that good enough?"
"My mindset was wrong. I should have done better."
Pfft.
Ichika let out a wheezy, deflated laugh through her husky voice. Inside the facility she'd worn a sharp, bristling expression, but the instant she was out of danger, she'd transformed into this easygoing, big-hearted girl who laughed at nothing.
"Then just do better next time. Simple as that."
"……."
"You strut around like some all-knowing monster with that absurd power of yours, but you've got a cute side too, huh."
"……."
"Anyway — thank you. Really."
Tap, tap.
As she said it, Ichika gave my shoulder a couple of light knocks. Her hands were rough and callused. I found myself a little startled by the rock-hard skin.
Did she do some kind of serious training before they snatched her up?
We had escaped successfully that night. While my innate ability kept the confused guards off-balance, we'd slipped away, changed into clothes I'd hidden in the darkness in advance, and rewritten our appearances wholesale with illusion magic before returning to Shibuya.
Haruko and the other five girls, waiting back at the apartment, had stayed up past three in the morning worrying over us.
'Boss, welcome back!'
'Everyone's safe and sound!'
It had been a grueling night, so we'd all sprawled out and slept clear through to one in the afternoon — which was now.
The sight of a single six-tatami one-room packed to bursting with thirteen girls. It looked exactly like the aftermath of a university retreat, the morning after the senior who could really hold his liquor had finally stumbled off to bed. The only difference being that back then it was all guys, and now it was a pile of beautiful girls.
Thank god I never bought any furniture these past two years.
Haruko, shoved bodily against the far wall by a rampart of sleeping girls, was groaning in genuine misery.
"Hey, Shirogane."
"What?"
"Can you step outside with me for a minute?"
"Sure."
We rose quietly and picked our way over the sleeping girls like stepping stones. The moment we were out, we washed our faces at the tap and layered disguise magic over them.
Ichika was still in the denim shorts and loose-fit T-shirt she'd worn all night. It suited her perfectly — she had the look of a girl raised by the wild.
"So. What's the plan now?"
"That's why you dragged me out here, huh?"
"No point stirring up complicated feelings in the girls while they're sleeping."
"My feelings are still plenty complicated."
"That's a leader's burden, pal."
Leader, my foot.
Ichika kept sliding the "boss" title onto me like it was nothing, so I changed the subject.
"Let's eat something first. Then talk."
"Now you're talking."
She thumped my chest with a fist and grinned wide — then her face abruptly froze. Her gaze had locked onto my chest, where the heat of the sun had cast a shadow, making the two mounds stand out all the more.
Ichika stared for a long moment at those hills she'd never spared a glance for in the chaos, then muttered in a voice drained of its soul.
"Seeing them in daylight… they're seriously huge. What do you even eat to get like that?"
"Oh, come on."
After trading that round of nonsense, we headed out and had a meal at a family restaurant.
The news playing in the corner of the restaurant touched on the previous night's incident. Astonishingly, the event at the Fujimoto Heavy Industries logistics center had been buried without a ripple.
When the Fujimoto Group's spokesperson said so, then so it was. Not a single one of these antisocial journalists thought to question the obvious lie, and after that one exchange — the spokesperson bowing his way back into headquarters — the broadcast moved on to the next bulletin.
"Wow. That's it? Ridiculously simple."
"Well, everyone probably suspects there's more to it."
"They're all keeping their heads down and watching the old man Fujimoto's mood, that's what this is."
Irritated, Ichika jabbed her fork into the pancakes in front of her, stabbing at them from every angle. I watched her do it for a while, then took a sip of black coffee and opened the newspaper I'd picked up in front of the subway station on the way here.
It's astonishingly quiet out there.
Out of pure caution, Ichika and I had come all this way from Shibuya to eat a belated lunch somewhere far from home. We'd passed any number of papers and broadcasts along the way, and not one of them so much as mentioned what had happened at the Fujimoto Heavy Industries logistics center last night.
"So?"
"Hm?"
"What's the plan now, leader?"
"Hold on — why am I the leader?"
"You saved them, so take responsibility for them."
She said it in a teasing tone, but I could feel the sincerity seeping out from underneath it, and it left me flustered.
"Speaking of which — leader, would you kindly start explaining why we saved them in the first place, and what exactly we're going to do from here?"
"……."
I stared at the grinning Ichika savoring my reaction for a good long moment, then sighed.
Starting from how Haruko and I had become entangled in all this, I explained how I'd come to learn what the Fujimoto Group was planning — and that the very premise underlying the group's understanding of magical girls was wrong from the ground up.
"Huh. I heard stuff like that at the orphanage too, but didn't the 'Red Broadcast' tell everyone to go out and take from each other?"
"It did."
Ichika dredged up the memory, scratching at her head with the fork still in her mouth.
"Filthy bastards, seriously."
"Well. Either way, that researcher at the facility was planning to use us like soldiers."
"Soldiers?"
"Yeah. Fujimoto's daughter is a magical girl. So we'd be her textbook, her fertilizer, and her personal guard — all the raw material she needs to get stronger."
In the original story, the stars of children rendered useless by the drugs had presumably been ground down into exactly that: "fertilizer."
"Survival of the fittest, right? Resources are finite, and the ones on top always want the good stuff for themselves."
"……."
Ichika turned her gaze to the window and looked out at the street. People were passing by, sweating under the sweltering early-summer sun. A busy crowd, hurrying along, indifferent to everyone around them.
"If it's about taking — orphans like us, with not even one parent to miss us, are the easiest marks. We'd be first in line."
"…That's what I'm trying to tell you. That resource isn't actually finite."
Ichika jerked around to look at me, visibly startled.
"Branch Chief Takahashi."
"Sir! Councilman!"
"Branch Chief Takahashi."
"Sir! Head of House!"
"Branch Chief Takahashi."
"……."
Takahashi, branch chief of the Fujimoto Security logistics center, was living a private hell. No — hell was about to end, along with everything else.
Fujimoto Security was one of the two swords held by the Fujimoto family. In the old days, it had been formed from the family's personal soldiers — and from among them, only those who owed their loyalty to the Head of House alone. Men trusted enough to be permitted to stand at the master's side as his guard. A corps of loyalty that had left behind legendary anecdotes: standing three days and nights at his door on a single command, or hurling themselves bravely into a burning mansion without hesitation.
The honor of guarding the Head of House, purchased at the price of this: failure is never forgiven.
Atop the Fujimoto headquarters stood a penthouse built like a traditional Japanese estate, laid out atop the vast building with genuine soil and a lake sculpted into a private park.
The air inside it held nothing but a bone-deep silence.
"It has been an honor to serve you."
"……."
After bowing low from his seat, Takahashi withdrew — and two women followed him out at his back.
One of the Fujimoto family's two swords existed to cut down external enemies.
The other existed to punish traitors.
And a blade that failed to perform its appointed duty was, by definition, a betrayal of its master. Even if the order had been unreasonable. Even if the task had lain beyond any mortal capability.
For an executive of Fujimoto Security — a man who knew the family's countless secrets and weaknesses — no failure of any kind could be tolerated.
Because what they guarded was the ruler of Japan.
"……."
Eiji Fujimoto never spared Takahashi so much as a glance, even at the end. What he was looking at was a single photograph.
A magical girl, captured in grainy blur on a Fujimoto Security employee's bodycam. Eiji Fujimoto had been trying to identify the unknown ability she wielded — a power presumed to be psychic in nature. And, perhaps, he had allowed himself a measure of anticipation toward this opponent who had dared challenge the house of Fujimoto so boldly.
We had ourselves a promising piece of talent. A fine touchstone.
He handed the photograph to the small girl standing behind him and spoke.
"Kaede."
"Yes, sir."
"If you find this one — cut her down."
"Yes, sir."
The girl named Kaede answered without a flicker of hesitation. And deep within her dark green Glass Star, two points of starlight were shimmering.