"The Grandmother Is Still Alive" — 3
Yamashita was a young elite officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.
At that moment, he was standing in the station lobby restroom, staring at the sink.
Shaaaaa—
The water poured down and swirled away into the dark drain, just like his sorry self.
To curry favor with the Superintendent General, he had cashed in every connection a man his age could muster, brushed convention aside, and rammed through the operation to arrest Haruko Busujima. And it had failed.
"......"
A reckless move always drags its inevitable risk behind it. The blame for failure. Every favor he had pulled for the operation had turned its back on him at once.
Director Mori had screamed at him in genuine fury for the first time in Yamashita's career, and he had been transferred out of Investigation Division 1 to serve as the temporary commander of the MPD's mobile task force.
Officially, he was the stand-in for the previous task force commander, who had disgraced himself at an illegal entertainment establishment in front of reporters. The commander, along with several director-level executives who had been at the scene, had submitted their resignations, declaring that they "took full responsibility for failing to restrain their subordinates" — and Yamashita had been slotted into the vacancy, on the understanding that he would hold the post only until a new commander was appointed.
It's over.
He was not so foolish as to miss the fact that he was nothing but a scarecrow on a cushion.
There hadn't even been time to introduce himself before he was rushed out to the Odaiba site to command security duty.
"......"
Even a seat-warming scarecrow has an established chain of reporting. The radio issued to Yamashita was supposed to buzz constantly with reports from the five companies under his command.
But aside from the shared channel, the channel reserved for his direct command was filled with nothing but a cold, dead silence.
The company captains must know, too. That he was only keeping the seat warm for a little while before being exiled to some small-town precinct in the countryside.
Chasing magical girl cases, getting demoted for it, and now I'm providing security for a magical girl talk show. The irony.
Yamashita looked at himself in the restroom mirror and let out a hollow laugh. The mediocrity in the mirror was laughing right back at him.
"Sir, I'm sorry, but it's time for us to close the floor—"
"Uwaaah~ But I still gotta look around some more!"
"I'm truly sorry, but we moved the closing time up because of today's broadcast. My apologies."
"Juuust a little looonger, c'mon~"
Outside the restroom, a girl with a distinctly dim voice and a staff member were locked in a tug-of-war.
"O-Ono-san! I-if you cause trouble, we're done for."
"How many times I gotta tell ya, don't call me by my last name! I swore it the moment I joined the Captain's side!"
"M-ma'am, please don't shout in here...!"
And then a second girl — presumably a companion — meekly trying to break it up.
Look at these two. Throwing a tantrum just to gawk at magical girls.
No doubt about it: the first magical girl idol group's debut talk show was scheduled for today, and they were making a scene because they wanted to see it.
An idol group was never something you whipped up like instant curry — it took years of planning and meetings to birth one properly. But this group had been thrown together in a single month to ride the unprecedented magical girl craze.
Every member had center-of-the-group looks — no, supermodel looks — and they were a magical girl unit with genuine supernatural abilities. The investors must have decided they'd sell, because the money had poured in without hesitation.
So the plan is to prop up amateurs who can't dance or sing, let them kill time gabbing on variety TV, then quietly cherry-pick the real gems and debut only those. Classic.
A transparent, sleazy little scheme. The business strategies of a vulgar capitalist market were as legible to Yamashita as the lines on his own palm.
"Then lemme see Busujima or whatever her name is! Ain't like I've seen 'em all yet!"
"I-it's too late to go up now, they'll stop us."
"So whaddaya want, just give up?!"
A strange surname. Yet somehow a familiar one.
Busujima...?
The instant he heard it, Yamashita bolted out into the lobby. But the two girls who'd been making the fuss were nowhere to be seen.
He scanned the area through the windows in a hurry, but all he could spot were staff members cordoning off the escalators up to the fifth floor.
Yamashita decided to trust an instinct that bordered on certainty and switched on his radio. Something was going to happen. He was sure of it.
While Haruko and Kyoko disguised themselves with glamour magic and scouted the interior of the station, Hikari and Ichika were keeping watch on the perimeter.
"Man, there's a crazy amount of people out here~"
A sea of humanity, packed shoulder to shoulder.
The area was a famous tourist spot even on ordinary days, so it was always bustling. But today was the landmark occasion when those rumored magical girls would make their television debut as a group, and the crowds had swelled to another level entirely.
The main entrance on the first floor was sealed shut, with what looked like police officers and station security guards standing watch in an iron wall.
"They're already inside prepping anyway. What's the point of standing out here gawking?"
"They probably just want to catch a glimpse of them leaving."
"Does looking at their faces put money on the table or rice in the pot?"
"Quit grumbling."
"Aye, aye."
Ichika kept up a certain gravity in front of the girls who followed her — Kyoko among them — but whenever it was just the two of them alone like this, her tongue mysteriously loosened and her chatter multiplied. Just as the two of them were waiting there together, Haruko and Kyoko came back.
"First floor's crawling with cops and security, and they've blocked the elevators too."
"Th-they shut down the escalators as well."
"What now, Shirogane?"
"Hmm."
Hikari tilted his head back and looked up at the peculiar building — a structure like a sphere resting on a cradle of jungle gym steel. The station's observation deck. He'd heard that today's broadcast would be filmed in the enormous dome at the very top.
"Ah! Oh, oh right — there's a big staircase that goes straight up to the seventh floor."
"And that's swimming with cops too!"
Either way, reaching the observation deck meant taking the elevator on the seventh floor. They could have crawled up the outside of the building and infiltrated through the glass, but if they cracked a panel and tripped an alarm, everything would be ruined in an instant.
"Let's put on glamour disguises, take the stairs up to seven, and ride the elevator straight to the deck."
"Okay."
"Got it!"
"Yes."
"Haruko and I will need masks. Ichika, Kyoko — want masks too?"
Ichika shook her head.
"Fujimoto's already got my face on file, and if I'm tagging along with you, he's probably figured that out by now too."
"Same here!"
Haruko, who had no history with Fujimoto, slipped her mask on with a careful, self-conscious air.
"Then let's go!"
The temporary studio set up inside the observation deck was every bit as frenzied as the crowds mobbing the outside of the building.
A famous live weekend talk show was hosting the debut of a magical girl group — a massive production by any measure — so more staff than usual bustled back and forth, pushing the broadcast along.
Today's guests, the magical girls, were amateurs so green it felt generous to call them broadcasters at all. Which was precisely why everything hinged on exhaustive rehearsal and memorized scripts, with a seasoned variety MC steering the program forward.
"Haha, so Shizuku-san, your hobbies are listening to classical music and reading, is that right?"
"Y-yes! Auuu..."
It was a lie.
Shizuku's real hobby was staying in her room eating snacks her mother made and watching late-night anime.
How did it come to this?
A month ago, Shizuku had been out having fun in Shibuya with her friends when she saw the Red Broadcast — and she became a magical girl.
— Huh?! When did this get in my bag?
— Whoa, I don't know what it is, but it's pretty.
— What do you even do with this?
She didn't know what it was, only that it was special — a Glass Star. After that, Shizuku went around showing it off to everyone she knew.
And then, before she knew what was happening, she had somehow become a regular guest on a radio program, reading the morning traffic report.
Mama, I'm scared.
Shizuku had been nothing more than an ordinary baker's daughter. All of this change was nothing but strange and frightening to her.
"You'll make so much money." "You'll be on TV." "You'll be famous." Swayed by the agency president's suffocating, relentless pressure, she had somehow ended up here.
[NO "AUUU" SOUNDS!]
Because it was a live broadcast, her manager was directing her from outside the camera's view, holding up a large sketchpad with the words scrawled across it.
Whenever she strayed from the script or broke character, the manager would appear with that frightening expression and issue his instructions. He was a man lying in wait, ready to "correct" the dim-witted noises the group's designated pure-and-lovely literary girl kept letting slip.
Haah... how on earth did it come to this?
Honestly, the work suited neither her timid nature nor her talents. She wanted to chuck the whole broadcaster act — the dieting, the banned snacks, all of it. But crushed beneath her parents' expectant eyes and her manager's razor-edged barbs, here she was, a month deep into playing a clumsy clown.
"Right, and that's why—"
Silence.
"Hm?"
"......"
"......"
Every single person in the room had gone quiet.
Wh-what...?
Startled by the studio's sudden hush, Shizuku froze and frantically tried to figure out what mistake she'd made. Even the magical girls beside her from the same group were glancing around in confusion.
The entire set had stopped as if time itself had frozen — every member of the staff locked mid-motion. And within that stillness, only the girls remained, bewildered and alone.
"Good afternoon, ladies. Magical girls, I mean."
"Hyii?!""
"Kyaah?!"
Behind the guest seats where the five magical girls sat, another girl had appeared at some point and was sitting there, smiling.
A blindingly white blouse above black tailored slacks. A mysterious masked girl with a cape draped over her shoulders.
A m-magician...?
The girls were pinned in place by the unfathomable pressure the masked girl radiated — frozen solid, unable to move.
Click, click.
The masked girl rose and walked out into the very center of the frozen studio, where she stopped. With one hand resting lightly over her heart and the other swept high, she bent at the waist in an elegant bow.
"Good evening, citizens of the nation."
"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"I am the one who, today, shall host these girls' débutante—"
"A single magical girl, with no name of her own."