The Third Light - 3
"Once the training period for the fifty additional applicants concludes, we have decided to dispatch ten teams of six—including one senior Relief Corps member each—to conflict zones and regions left in medical blind spots."
With her golden hair and golden eyes marking her as a natural 2-Star, Himari, the Magical Girl of [Nursing], turned to the next page of her documents and continued calmly.
"We have produced a manual for basic healing techniques and distributed it to regional government facilities and libraries, and negotiations have been concluded for all overseas personnel to operate under the management and supervision of the Red Cross."
Having reported everything she had prepared, Himari gave a nod to Sumire, the interim chairwoman, and quietly returned to her seat.
"Wow, the Magical Girl of [Nursing] sure knows how to give a presentation. Superintendent Yamashita!"
"Team Leader, please observe silence during the proceedings."
Even if they weren't at the level of Himari, who had served as the head of the first officially recognized magical girl organization in history, the girls chosen for the council were each well-versed in their own fields of expertise.
Perhaps because they had all walked the ground alongside professionals, the presentations took shape and proceeded far more smoothly than anyone had expected.
'I figured this would turn into a class presentation or a flea market.'
Yamashita's memories of middle school and high school were nothing like this, so he was genuinely taken aback by the composed, seasoned atmosphere of the girls' assembly.
'Why does it feel like glitter of every color is floating around the conference hall?'
When Yamashita stole a glance at the ceiling, he saw that every time one of the girls finished presenting her achievements, an unseen energy rippled through the air and scattered shimmering motes of light.
"Thank you for your report. Next, the Team Leader of the MPD Magical Girl Response Team will present."
"Oh! Hello there! This is Ishikawa Tsugumi of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Magical Girl Countermeasures Team!"
"Do you have anything to report?"
"No, sir! All thirty members of the Security Corps are currently in training and standing by!"
In other words, our hastily assembled organization is sitting around doing nothing.
Yamashita listened to the one kind of presentation that must never be given during an achievements session, and barely restrained the urge to slap his own forehead, muttering under his breath.
'That's when you pivot to your future vision and smoothly change the subject, Team Leader!!'
"Thank you. Next—"
"May I present?"
Murmur, murmur...
When a single girl rose from the 'full' central table, everyone in the hall froze in disbelief.
"Wha—...!"
"[Beginning]?!"
"Since when?!"
She had been sitting there all along.
She had been sitting there all along.
'Fujimoto Sumire...'
Perhaps we had been bound together far longer than I knew.
Perhaps it began the day I arrived in this world and ate at Master's cafe.
Perhaps from the moment Hana looked up at me from her wheelchair and called me "Hikari-chan."
Perhaps from the moment Ichika and Kyoko thumped me on the back, saying thank you.
Perhaps from the moment I found myself thinking of the bonds in this world for as long as I used to spend thinking of my mother.
Step by step, I had walked a path diverging from the original story—
and all the while, a hesitation that had bloomed out of fear hid the truth from view.
No longer would I conceal the conviction buried deep in my heart—the conviction I had masked behind selfishness for the past two years, the belief that this was right.
"Our chairwoman candidate is quite late."
"Yes, the route was so complicated that I lost my way for a moment."
"...It is a relief that you have found your way here at last."
Fujimoto Sumire studied me for a long moment with an unreadable expression, then mouthed the words without a sound.
'While you still can.'
Was it a final warning from a girl who had not yet shouldered her father's ghost?
Or was it an illusion conjured by my own selfishness, urging me to turn tail and run while there was still time?
"I will not serve as chairwoman of the Magical Girl Alliance Council—"
"……."
"—because I intend to become King instead."
Murmur, murmur...
Behind the girls at the rear of the hall, the 'secretaries' standing in attendance all connected their radios at once to receive orders, and from the observers' seats came the urgent murmur of officials speaking into their phones.
Bzzt—
Even the cameraman who had been filming us from the corner of the hall could be felt urgently zooming in, his attention snapping to our exchange.
The world was watching our conversation.
"Then the Magical Girl of [Beginning], with regard to officially recognized magical girl organizations going forward—"
"In exchange."
Silence.
This was the moment that would decide the direction of the magical girls' era, hinging on how the suddenly revealed Magical Girl of [Beginning] chose to answer—so every soul in the room held their breath.
"I intend to become King."
"...?"
"King?"
"A king? What on earth does she—?!"
"Does she mean to demand the Chrysanthemum Throne? But the imperial line already—?!"
Sweep—
Sumire extended her hand and silenced the rising panic, then turned her steady gaze back to me.
"This is an official proceeding. Kindly refrain from jokes or any statement whose intent can be questioned."
I raised the Colorless Glass Star.
Three starlights, drawn by the pull of my heart, blazed brilliantly to life.
Never once in the past two years—neither in Odaiba, nor in Kabukicho—had they shone this bright.
This was the radiance granted only to one who would truly deceive the world.
To protect what I believed to be right, I would deceive this world's predestined fate.
I would deceive Magical Girl HAZARD, forged by three evil gods who deceive humanity itself.
Not by the decree of any evil god, but in the voice of a human—my own—the era of the magical girls would begin.
Peeling my consciousness into layers, I proclaimed it to both the world and humanity at once.
In that instant, the world answered my sincerity.
7,381 First Lights resonated and poured into the star, becoming the dream that forms the world.
67 Second Lights resonated and poured into the star, becoming the destiny that guides it.
And I hurled the one and only Third Light up into the sky above this land.
Fwaah!
The colorless light that ignited at the very center of the hall rose as a single pillar, shooting straight up into the heavens.
Piercing the blue sky and climbing until it touched the first fringe of dark space, the light spread wide and wrapped itself around the land where magical girls were born.
"Wh-what is that?!"
"It's all light—there's nothing but light out there?!"
"What on earth is happening?!"
Chaos.
Shock.
When the light erupting from the center of the hall punched clean through the roof, the crowd descended into utter panic.
Some scrambled desperately for the exits.
Others simply stood rooted, eyes wide, determined to witness the turning of the age with their own eyes.
"Guh—the veil of light... I can't get through."
"Miss! Please, get down!"
The bodyguards who had rushed forward to shield their VIPs from the unprecedented crisis found themselves blocked by the shimmering curtain of light surrounding the central table, able only to shout uselessly from a distance.
Tap!
I rapped my staff against the floor and began composing the domain that would become mine.
What I imagined was a paradise for every girl.
A place where dreams could grow.
A place where all dreams begin.
"Any adults in the way, kindly excuse yourselves for a while."
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
One after another, every adult standing behind the girls at the central tables was caught up in dazzling light and ushered out of the hall.
I smiled at the girls who were panicking amid the confusion, some on the verge of tears.
"Welcome. To the Garden of Dreams."
"The... Garden?"
Himari, who alone had watched everything unfold with an eerily calm expression, looked around—and went pale with shock.
The drab tables and chairs that had filled the hall had all been replaced by glass that gave off a soft, iridescent rainbow glow.
"Huh? Where are we?"
"Trees... trees?!"
Where her gaze landed, carried on a fresh breeze, countless trees and flowers stretched as far as the eye could see.
"We're in the middle of Tokyo?!"
"This was the conference hall—why is there a botanical garden?!"
A garden.
It was an enormous garden.
Vast enough that the hundreds of girls from the hall and the observers' seats could not have filled it even if they all sat down at once.
Brilliant sunlight streamed down through a faint rainbow-glass canopy, and upon each beautiful glass table where the girls now sat rested a single cup of tea.
"What... what is all this...?"
Sumire could barely force the words out through her shock, both eyes trembling without restraint.
Because—
the garden was floating in the sky.
Enclosed within a colossal glass sphere, the garden drifted high above Tokyo.
Beyond the spherical barrier, the skies of Japan gleamed down below—the kind of view one only ever saw on science channels.
For a brief moment, we had slipped free of the bonds of the land we lived on, rising into a space where only the sovereign of this world could linger.
"Superintendent Yamashita!! There's some kind of membrane over all of Japan?!"
Just as Tsugumi said—unconsciously reaching for the one adult who wasn't there—a curtain gleaming like the surface of a prism now covered the skies of the entire nation.
Like an aurora, it hung over every corner of Japan, spreading across the once-pure blue sky as though painting it over with every color of paint imaginable.
Tap, tap.
I rapped my staff once more, drawing the attention of the girls—some on the verge of fainting from shock, others frantically gawping at their surroundings.
"Everyone."
"Let us begin."
"A conference for magical girls, by magical girls."
"The Walpurgis Dream."