The Girls' Débutante
The corridor rang with the sound of a smartphone.
There stood a small, slight girl. Sharp-eyed, dressed in a men's suit that clung tightly to her frame, she was making her way toward the studio where the broadcast was being filmed — toward the observation deck of the broadcasting station.
"……"
The Fujimoto family possessed two swords. One of them was an unnamed, fixed-rank kunoichi tasked with rooting out traitors within and striking down the family's sworn enemies. Kaede, by the matriarch's first command, was hunting the magical girl from the photograph.
For some reason, the face in the picture had been blurred beyond recognition, so she could not track her quarry by appearance — but she could predict where the girl would appear next, simply by following the trail of her deeds.
She used her power not to invade Fujimoto territory, but only to rescue the test subjects — and then vanished.
A human infatuated with humanitarian ideals. A human who felt solidarity with magical girls. Anyone who thought that way would appear wherever magical girls gathered.
And sure enough, there she was.
"Hey, you shouldn't look at your phone while you're walking."
Kaede looked up from her smartphone. Blocking the corridor stood a girl in a sailor uniform, a green scarf knotted strikingly at her collar. The girl flashed a brash, confident smile.
"Fujimoto's side, huh? No smell of blood on you — you must be a rookie."
"……"
Kaede knew that face. Yamanaka Ichika. A girl who had been held in the Fujimoto research facility.
"I had a feeling one of Fujimoto's lackeys would come sneaking after our leader, so I switched shifts with the broadcast room — and I called it, huh?"
"……"
Shk.
In Kaede's hand, hidden behind her back, a chain-sickle was already coiled. Moonlight caught the cold blue edge of the blade, glinting with a frigid sheen.
Killing intent.
Yet Ichika's smile, reflected in that honed steel, did not waver. She simply extended her right fist toward Kaede, square and steady. Both feet planted hard against the floor, her body sunk so low her thighs trembled with tension — a stability like Mount Tai braced against a cutting wind. Raise the left fist to her chest, lock it in place, and the stance would be complete: one ready to answer attacks from all four corners of heaven and earth.
Six Harmonies Fist, opening stance.
"I can't let you take one step past me. Fujimoto's hound."
"……"
Shk!
The chain-sickle flew, and the battle began.
Ichika — Bloomed, Natural 2-Star, the [Freedom] Magical Girl
Kaede — Unawakened, Natural 2-Star, Magical Girl
All at once, the staff froze. A chill, absolute silence swallowed the studio.
"A-A magical girl?"
"Yes. I, too, am a magical girl."
I said it with an elegant wave toward the camera.
"Taking advantage of today's stage, there is something I would like the people of this nation to hear."
Flit.
From my coat I drew the documents I had recovered from the Fujimoto research facility — pages brimming with the clear intention of wringing the test-subject magical girls dry. I lifted them into the air with psychokinesis, and they expanded through my prism veil until they blanketed the entire back wall of the studio.
"Psychic… weaponization… project…?"
"W… weapons?! Soldiers?!"
"Is this real…?"
The magical girls appearing as today's guests gasped as they read, horror climbing into their voices. And I answered them in kind.
"That is exactly right."
Tap.
"The honorable Fujimoto family, who play at being masters of this country, have been abducting magical girls with no guardians to protect them — scheming to seize the power of magical girls through brutal training and experimentation."
"Fu… Fuji…?!"
"Shh!!"
"You mustn't say that name in front of everyone! You'll bring ruin—!"
Behind the studio, the illusion veil unfurled in sequence: the lodging where Ichika and the others had been confined, the merciless training regimen, and armed guards with guns chasing after them, menacing and relentless. A veil of static obscured the faces of the girls in the illusions, hiding their expressions — but the pain they had endured poured off the screen so vividly that it reached beyond it.
"Was this — was all of this — truly what should have been done to girls who, until only days ago, had been living perfectly ordinary lives?"
The girls fell silent.
Crack!
I slammed my staff down and swept the illusions from the back of the studio away.
"To those of you laboring under a grave misunderstanding, allow me to make one thing clear. A magical girl is not a thing to be used, not a tool to be wielded by another. They, too, are simply ordinary girls — girls who can shine of their own light."
"And I—"
"—have come here today to prove it."
Snap!
With a crisp snap of my fingers, the studio within the spherical observation deck began to transform.
Unique Skill of the [Deception] Magical Girl
⟨ Dreamland ⟩
Sunlight. Warm, gentle sunlight.
A clear sky stretching to the horizon, and fields of roses upon fields of roses. Thousands upon tens of thousands of blossoms unfurled from fresh green stems, wrapping the girls in their embrace. A colossal rose garden.
"On a joyful day like today, I'd say beautiful roses suit us far better than documents stuffed with nasty adult greed, don't you?"
I plucked a single rose and offered it to one of the girls, who was gazing around her in rapturous wonder.
"Miss Shizuku."
"Y-ye— what?!"
The girl flushed as red as the rose itself, utterly flustered.
"Tell me — your dream. What is true happiness to you?"
"A dr… a dream, ma'am?"
Unable to take the rose, the girl hesitated, frozen in place.
"Uh… g-going on TV and… getting famous, and… um…"
"Not the dream the adults chose for you."
I encouraged her with a soft voice.
"The dream that would truly make you happy — the one rising from the very bottom of your heart…"
"A dream…"
As Shizuku murmured, her voice cracked, tears welling beneath the words. The truth burst out of her.
"I want to be a baker who makes other people happy… just like my Mama…!"
What a beautiful, precious dream. Like a rose whose thorns sting at the touch — the dream Shizuku finally spoke aloud was aching and lovely all at once.
"Not a celebrity…! I… I want to be a baker…! *sob*…"
I gave her the rose.
And when Shizuku received it with a face streaked with tears, the blossom transformed in a warm, gentle glow.
A croissant. The rich, buttery scent. Memories of her mother. Everyday life.
The girl who had confessed her heart with honest tears bloomed like a rose in full flower.
A true magical girl.
Blooming.
"Wha—?! Wh-what is this?!"
I turned my gaze from the astonished, newly transformed Shizuku to the girls behind her.
"All of you, too! Come join me — what are your dreams?"
"Huh?! Mine's a restaurant…!"
"I want my grandfather's used bookstore…!"
"I want to be a newspaper reporter, like Dad…!"
"I want to run a bike shop…!"
Perhaps it was the magic of the scene itself. As if the past month had pressed down on them like a held breath, the girls tumbled over one another to spill their dreams aloud. The frozen expressions melted away, and before anyone noticed, their cheeks had flushed rose-red with excitement.
The sight of those girls, chattering brightly about their dreams, was more beautiful than ten thousand roses.
The [Baking] Magical Girl.
The [Gourmet] Magical Girl.
The [Book-Love] Magical Girl.
The [Reporting] Magical Girl.
The [Silver Wheel] Magical Girl.
The blooming of Natural 1-Star magical girls. It was a concrete manifestation of that metaphysical concept called a "dream" — the resonance of brilliant lights long buried and forgotten in their hearts.
A dream.
Through the shape of those dreams, I could feel the longing and fascination of girls somewhere beyond the camera lens. The powerful gravitational pull of destiny that 2-Star magical girls possess was drawing toward me, gathering and concentrating.
Not all of them, but quite a lot. Time to move on to the final stage.
I glanced at Haruko, who had been weaving the camera this way and that with the paper sheep and pig in tow, and she fixed the camera in place, scooped up the paper sheep, and slipped away somewhere.
"A beautiful girls' débutante like today's deserves a finish worthy of it, wouldn't you say?"
Whoosh!
From the rose fields blanketing the space around us, the petals rose all at once into flight. A rain of fragrance and petals embroidered across the blue sky. They were fireworks celebrating the second birth of magical girls — and a grand ballroom for the girls who had shed the costumes stitched with adult greed and donned, at last, the magical girl outfits shaped by their own dreams.
"Wow…"
"It's beautiful…"
"…It's like a dream."
Leaving the girls gazing up at the endlessly falling petals, I walked toward the back of the observation deck.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
On the far side of the studio, hurried footsteps were closing in from beyond a distant door.
Bang!
"Freeze! This is Yamashita of the Metropolitan Police!!"
Dozens of armed officers. I smiled as they came charging in.
Kyoko and Ichika sealed the door behind them — I trust they made it out safely?
The officers, pistols leveled as they advanced on me, looked thoroughly disoriented by the scenery around them.
"Wh… what?!"
"Why is there a flower field in here?!"
"Well then, now that our uninvited guests have arrived, let us bring today's stage to a close."
I spoke toward the camera — toward Fujimoto, who would be watching me from beyond it.
"If you would sacrifice girls to satisfy your greed, then I shall wake the stars hidden in the darkness with dreams."
"The power of the dreams those stars carry is something you will never possess…"
I gazed out over today's stage and declared:
"To all magical girls — your second birth this day, your début as magical girls…"
"I, the [Beginning] Magical Girl, bless it!"
A lie, of course.
My true epithet is the [Deception] Magical Girl. But if I can deceive this world's destiny itself, then I may as well deceive my own epithet while I'm at it.
And with that, I slipped out through the observation deck's glass wall with a Blink. The police stood frozen against the window, staring in dumbfounded horror as I fell away in slow descent.
"Leader!!"
"Miss Shirogane!!"
"WaaAAAH?!"
"I'm back."
I touched down safely on Haruko's paper sheep, swollen huge and gliding through the air. Aboard it, Ichika, Haruko, and Kyoko had all made it out unharmed.
"Heheh — one of Fujimoto's lackeys came looking, so I smashed 'em flat!"
"Magnificent work, boss!!"
"Wh-where do we go now?!"
Beneath the Odaiba broadcasting station, crowds of onlookers were staring up at us in wonder.
"It wouldn't do to neglect an audience that came all this way to see us, now would it?"
"Huh?"
I extended the Dreamland of the spherical observation deck outward, letting the rose petals drift down to reach the people below. They gazed up at the blossoms settling on their heads, one after another, and smiled.
"…Let's head home across the bridge. Right this way."
"Yes!"
Girls riding a giant paper sheep across the bridge. Not a war, but girls who had bloomed amid a rain of roses.
The original story had been well and truly bent off its course. What remained to me now was…
"Hey, Leader."
"Hm?"
"That was fun."
Ichika said it with a wide, easy grin.
"Counting on you from here on out, too."
"Right back at you!"
"Heh… heheh…"
"Hehe… hehehe…!"
"Pfft…"
"AHAHAHA!!"
What on earth was so funny, these children?
And why was I laughing too?
I couldn't say why. But somehow — I wasn't frightened anymore.