The Third Light - 1
"Under the Third Light, I, the Magical Girl of [War], declare."
"To all who dwell upon the soil where the Goddess's remains have fallen."
"To you worms who fight on, dragging the infinite down into the finite."
"Kill and be killed forever, beneath the destiny of eternal struggle and destruction."
"Let filthy desire and hideous lust for conquest become the virtues of this land."
“I… don't really understand.”
“That's all right. You don't have to, Sumire.”
Anyone who had ever stood before Fujimoto Eiji—or merely witnessed his words and deeds—would have been stunned by how soft and gentle that voice was. It was the kind of warm whisper a father might offer a little girl who couldn't understand why the sky was blue, spoken by a madman with blood on both hands.
“Why you wish to elevate the Magical Girl of [Beginning] as the representative of all espers, I cannot easily guess your intent, Father.”
Could there be some meaning she herself had failed to grasp? Sumire hesitated a moment, then chose her next words with care.
“Unlike a prime minister or a prosecutor general, who move through the machinery of power, that person wields the might of a thousand banners single-handedly.”
Was such a person truly one Eiji could place beneath Fujimoto's shadow? He did not brush aside his daughter's blunt counsel; he simply smiled, all warmth and patience, silently urging her to go on.
“You already sent an assassin after that person once. That you would now seek to keep them close is… difficult to fathom.”
“That person cannot kill me.”
Sumire flinched, her clasped hands jerking, but she recovered her composure almost at once. Eiji did not rebuke the lapse. It belonged not to what was broken, but to what was merely young.
“Because that person is bound by honor, and bound by a just cause.”
“A just… cause, you say.”
“Sumire. Do you not find it strange?”
This time Sumire quietly bowed her head, an apology for being unable to give the answer her father wanted.
“Why did the one who first granted us this power behave so ambiguously—as if lying in wait for a blunder committed in ignorance?”
“…….”
“Why, when a blind man cast his coin to find his way, did a prophet appear and reveal the path?”
“…….”
“The one who shared this power seems to be waiting for a mistake. And [Beginning] seems to stand against it, as if to ensure that mistake never comes to pass.”
Whenever a new era dawned, mistakes were always committed in the course of blazing trails no one had walked before. That was simply how history flowed, how humanity advanced—correcting each error as it went, developing through them. History had always carved its road forward through blood.
“But what if what follows that mistake is something beyond all retrieving?”
“Are you saying [Beginning] appeared with that as their justification?”
Eiji lifted his teacup and drank. A finest-grade tea, bitter, yet rich with deep fragrance. Truly tasting that aroma, too, was something one only learned after hundreds of failures—from drinking the one cup that had finally been brewed properly.
“If Fujimoto had been unnecessary to the new era, that person would have appeared out of thin air and taken my head with supernatural power.”
“…….”
Click.
The moment the cup touched its saucer, Eiji's eyes flashed.
“Espers. Magical girls. The Red Broadcast. Somewhere in that whole current there was a correct road to walk—and there is something that warps the moment the old order is shattered.”
“And.”
“That thing is the just cause that person can never, ever abandon.”
An era in which the old order trembled, yet the new one could not yet be trusted.
“Keep that person close and bind them with the cause. If they refuse, strip them of their honor. If they accept, shackle them to the order of the old world.”
And in that age of chaos, Fujimoto gained everything, and grew.
“Evil deeds and good deeds alike—all of it must be done beneath a single master, the lord of Fujimoto. So long as the name Fujimoto endures, even our mistakes become history.”
Eiji murmured the words as he savored the bitterness lingering on his tongue.
“That is why I killed the brother who tried to divide Fujimoto, and cast our father out to the back rooms.”
“…….”
Deep within Sumire, an old pain she had buried came back to life and throbbed.
“Daughter of a murderer! I'll kill every last one of you! Die!!”
The scream of the cousin who had cursed her. Director Takahashi's final moments. Kaede, her whole body's bones ground to fragments. The scenes flickered past one after another, each one setting her chest aching anew.
Was this truly right? Was the Fujimoto way something absolute, something that could never change?
'Evil deeds and good deeds and mistakes alike—all of it beneath the name of Fujimoto…'
“The power of dreams that the stars possess is something you can never have…”
'If that is something the name of Fujimoto can never obtain—then what am I supposed to do?'
The girl who had spent her whole life watching her father's side, learning nothing but the Fujimoto way, found herself a little afraid of that answer.
'Perhaps, if it were her…'
'Fujimoto Eiji, you miserable bastard.'
This kind of gloomy, middle-aged-man-scented maneuvering was one hundred percent Eiji's handiwork. The Sumire depicted in the novel was a soldier type more than a politician one.
'In the latter half of volume one, Sumire gets nearly killed by [War], stubbornly wailing about her father the whole time—then, in his place, she goes on leading the people.'
In the chaos, to keep the civilians in line, she burned through magical girl after magical girl, forcing their awakening, and trampled Flag into the dirt. A supporting character who repeated that one simple principle until she died a pointless death at the hands of a 3-star magical girl.
'And she probably just stubbornly said whatever her father told her to say this time, too.'
A girl with the heart to protect something, but no idea how. The move Eiji had pulled out on her behalf hurt in its own particular way.
I leaned against the apartment railing, legs jittering, trying to calm the anxiety churning in my gut.
So they were playing the drowning-man gambit—dragging someone down with them.
'If we accept, [Beginning]'s prestige becomes the Alliance's pretty little ornament. If we refuse, they run their "restoration of legitimacy" with Sumire at the center.'
[Beginning] was loved because they carried a cause meant for everyone. If [Beginning] refused to follow their own declared principles and sit upon the throne so thoughtfully prepared, that moral perfection of theirs would be tarnished.
“What, so the Magical Girl of [Beginning] is all talk after all?”
That was the kind of thing people would say. While watching the Alliance twist magical girls to suit corporate appetites. While insisting that overworking a few magical girls at a research facility was hardly a crime at all. While blacking out entirely the memory of drug experiments that had never even happened.
'Maybe I should just vanish somewhere.'
It already ached to think of the camps I'd spent two grueling years preparing turning to waste. After going through Fujimoto's scheme, slipping back into life as an ordinary civilian was starting to sound pretty good.
'Don't be ridiculous.'
Strip the adults' greed away from the magical girls—still it clung. Reveal the girls' true strength—still it clung. Turn back the magical girls who rose with grudges against society—still it clung, slimy and tenacious, this world's malice.
'Should I have taken Fujimoto Eiji's head after all?'
Then a second villain would have appeared. And a third after that.
'Should I have pretended not to see Haruko?'
Then there would have been more victims.
'Should I have left Ichika unsaved?'
Then those kids who laughed and joked together would have ended up as hollow shells.
'Should I have waited for the Magical Girl of [War] to appear?'
While watching Master and the Sato couple die, no less.
“Haaah…”
No answer came. Well—one answer existed. I just hated the thought of choosing it. Because if I did, there would truly be no going back.
“What's with all the sighing in the middle of the night?”
Ichika, freshly woken, came shuffling down the apartment corridor where I'd been pacing. We'd all listened to the evening news together, reeled in shock, concluded that worrying ourselves sick wouldn't produce an answer, and gone to bed.
“Just got a lot going on in my head.”
“That's your whole problem, Leader. You always think too much.”
Whoosh, whoosh. She threw a few punches at the air and flashed a toothy grin.
“That's why you ended up flat on the pavement while going 'aaah' at those rent-a-cop goons.”
“When was that, exactly?”
“A whole two months ago?”
“I won that fight!”
“With your spec, taking that long means you lost.”
Her flat assessment stung my pride, but since she wasn't exactly wrong, all I could do was fumble out an excuse.
“I wasn't used to fighting back then.”
“And now you are?”
“Obviously.”
“Then what are you so scared of?”
“…….”
Every once in a while, Ichika landed a strike dead center like this.
“Don't think, Feel!”
“That's a movie line.”
Ichika gave me a that's-the-one! look, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, and struck a dramatic wataaah! pose. Her everyday speech was rough enough to smell of old-school martial arts dojos, and apparently her taste in movies ran in exactly that direction, too.
Pup-pup-pup. Watching her ham it up with a sloppy imitation of mantis fists, an involuntary laugh escaped me.
“And here I wondered what you were always watching on your phone. Turns out it's movies from before you were even born.”
“Wanna watch one with me, Leader? They're great!”
“Ha… I'll pass.”
Trading nonsense back and forth, I could feel my head clearing, little by little.
“Ichika.”
“Yeah?”
“Do I look like an idiot to you?”
“Yep. Why else would you still be walking around with a newspaper under your arm, using a phone that belongs in a museum?”
“…It's more like—I act like I've got it all figured out, I make my moves, and then when the moment actually arrives, I get scared.”
“Do you? At the logistics warehouse, at Odaiba, at Kabukicho—in the end, you made the best choice every time, didn't you?”
The best choice. All I'd ever done was flail around, hoping things would turn out better than the original story I knew.
“Ichika.”
“What.”
“What would you do if a path felt right, deep down in your gut—but it was so hard, so punishing, that you couldn't see the end of it? …Even when there was another road that led to the same place you had to go?”
“Yeah. Leader really is an idiot.”
She spat it out with brutal bluntness—and then, with the confident look of someone utterly certain of her answer, she drove it home.
“The Leader I know picked the hard path ages ago. That's a question you only ask when you're in the mood to whine. And anyway, whatever this 'other road' is, there's no way it's an easy one either.”
“…….”
“So I'll fight alongside you. That's all.”
Ichika rose up on her toes just enough to throw an arm around my shoulders.
“Leave your back to me.”
“…Thank you.”
At the very least, I was no longer alone.