16. Magical Girl Business as Usual
16. Magical Girl Business as Usual
"Sniff... Allen... you're so mean..."
"I... I'm sorry, Ailey."
In the end, the protesters dispersed after my desperate excuse that we were in the middle of preparing for filming.
Only after the human who appeared to be the protesters' representative led the crowd away with a look that said he'd be watching me could we breathe a sigh of relief.
"Seriously, what kind of civilized people act like this over a commercial?"
"Well, maybe don't make your commercials with that level of obsessive dedication?"
Leon, who had shown up late, answered my grumbling.
"It wasn't entirely impossible. A few years ago, the theater club tried the radical approach of advertising through a street performance. Their club room was apparently flooded with complaints asking how they could cut the play off halfway."
"If something like that happened before, maybe you could've told me before we made it."
"Honestly, I never imagined anything like that would befall our club. Besides, you would've made it even if I told you not to."
"Tch. Well, true."
I scuffed the ground in front of the wrecked club room with my foot.
While I did, I whispered to Nikolai quietly enough that no one else could hear.
"Hey, what was that incident in your past life where people went nuts when that famous detective died?"
"You mean the protest in front of the author's house after Sherlock Holmes died?"
"Yeah, that. What year was that?"
"That would have been the nineteenth century."
Hearing that, I thought about all the humans I'd met so far.
I don't know much history, but at the very least, their average civic awareness seemed to sit around the fifteenth century, not the nineteenth.
"Okay, I'm convinced."
"Convinced of what?"
"That I'm not the weird one—it's just that the people of this world are barbaric."
Leon, the sovereign of those barbaric people, overheard and glared at me, but I paid him no mind.
He seemed to be asking whether I really had any right to say that, but my conscience was clear this time.
What. Was trashing someone else's club room like this the act of a civilized person?
Leon stared at me silently as if he had something to say, then simply chose to shut his mouth.
"Boss. No matter how I think about it, a five-minute commercial was way too full-scale. Who would think that was an ad?"
"Gah! There is no such thing as 'half-assed' in my dictionary!"
"Haah..."
Of course, even I was doing a bit of reflecting.
Originally, we only planned to film up to the moment Ailey and I clashed.
But we got excited, and Ailey and I fought for real, and in the process, the battle scene came out too damn delicious.
To cut it just because it was a commercial... wasn't that too much of a waste!
Besides, Nikolai, who was supposed to shout "cut," just kept watching too, so the blame wasn't solely on me.
"Anyway, we have to film to survive. Our <Bon Voyage>'s first work is a magical girl show."
"Hwaeeeeng...!! I don't want to! I'm not doing it!!"
"What are you talking about, Ailey?"
My neck tilted ninety degrees to the right as I looked at her.
Seeing that, she went "Hyaaek," but still, she was a girl who absolutely made sure to say her piece.
"You... you said it was just a commercial at first! You said we'd film just once and be done! Well, that one time is done and over! I made the sets and props, so asking me to act too is just impossible!"
"..."
"A-And I'm a Golden School wizard! I forced myself to stage the performance you wanted, but if this becomes a full-length series, I can't do anything beyond that!"
"... Well, it can't be helped then."
With a series of cracks, my neck returned to its original state.
Honestly, even I thought it seemed like too much to ask her to act as Magical Mari for various reasons.
She was originally in charge of prop production.
Even though Ailey somehow managed both acting and props for the commercial, she'd be the first to collapse if we started full-scale filming.
So for the sake of a healthy long-term production going forward, we had to find a lead actress to replace her.
"Still, the ad wasn't completely ineffective. We actually got flooded with applications. Now we just have to find a concept here that fits a magical girl."
I spread the club application forms out on the desk and began examining the candidates' concepts.
Nikolai also gathered up a chunk of the papers and examined the applicants.
The rest of the club members watched the two of us before slipping out of the club room one by one.
It wasn't a work slowdown.
A magical girl show was a genre only the two of us understood.
No matter how many others we had, they wouldn't be much help with the work.
The two of us went through the documents one by one, meticulously searching for a magical girl to sign with our company.
There were various concepts among the documents.
Most of the candidates, however, offered only standard knight or paladin concepts, or at best a John-like special agent. None matched what we needed.
On top of that, even those were mostly dull and dry beyond just being boring concepts, which clearly showed they were beginners.
Looking at those documents, my own past came to mind vaguely.
There was a time when I'd gone to see the priest carrying only a concept description for John Armstrong and two recommendation letters from Leon.
The result had been a huge success, but the memory of being incredibly nervous up until that point felt like it was just yesterday.
These people must have agonized over their applications and felt nervous too.
With a fatherly smile, I carefully set aside a few documents.
Even if they did not suit this production, I intended to offer other projects to the promising ones.
Hours of wrestling with the pile of documents passed like that.
After filtering and filtering again, we finally discovered a usable gem.
The conditions for a magical girl were as follows.
Appearance didn't matter, but her figure at least needed to be midway between a girl and a mature woman, suitable for a magical girl.
She needed experience in combat as well as talent for magic.
Additionally, if she had a summon or something similar to carry around as a mascot, that would be ideal.
And there was a race that satisfied all these conditions.
A long-lived species, so physical development was relatively slow; they had so much time that they could master both magic and martial arts; and due to their racial traits, they could easily commune with spirits.
Elves.
I showed the name of the candidate I'd found to Nikolai.
- Celestia Claudius Diabolos
Nikolai looked at her specs too and nodded with satisfaction.
But just before he handed the paper back, his gaze fixed on something.
"Ssss... Boss."
"What."
"She's great in every way, but one thing bothers me."
"What's the problem."
His finger pointed to a corner of the paper.
Where my eyes landed following his finger, there was the age field.
- 89
"What do you think, Boss?"
"...Couldn't we just count her heart as eighteen?"
"Even you think that's a stretch, right?"
"Ah, shit. Then do we have someone else?"
"No..."
"Alright. It can't be helped. By long-lived species standards, she's probably around eighteen anyway, isn't she?"
"Probably... right?"
"Fine. Let's go pick her up for now."
"Okay."
*
Shortly after, guided by me, the Elf 'made her entrance.'
As expected of a pointy-ears, convincing her was an ordeal.
Had she simply demanded an exorbitant fee without knowing her place, I could have tried burying the problem in cash. What she wanted, however, was not money.
For an Elf living an endlessly long life, money held little value.
After all, Elves are a breed that can become rich just by accumulating interest.
So what they wanted varied from individual to individual, but the general direction was to make a name for themselves.
And what Celestia wanted was preposterous.
<The character Magical Mari will appear as the transformed figure of Celestia Claudius.>
Even I had trouble understanding what she meant for a moment when I heard that condition.
I could barely grasp it only after hearing her explanation.
She wanted the pre-transformation state of Magical Mari to appear not using an avatar, but as the person Celestia Claudius herself.
Certainly, that way, the person Celestia Claudius wouldn't just be an actor playing a magical girl; she could widely spread her name through the film.
Furthermore, there was an added effect: if we ever had a falling out, since her face was already known, we wouldn't be able to swap out the actress playing the protagonist.
Coincidentally, because we'd cut the commercial right before Mari could cancel her transformation, there would be no problem at all naming the protagonist living her daily life as Celestia.
The only problem was...
"Boss. Shouldn't we correct her misunderstanding?"
"What's the big deal? She's choosing to drink the poison of her own free will.
"A magical-girl show isn't an easy genre to perform in under your real face.
"Well. She'll figure it out."
She would never know.
That the hardest part of negotiating with her was, in fact, trying not to laugh.
*
"Next is the monsters."
Casting the magical girl was difficult, but so was finding performers for all the monsters.
Isn't that the nature of the magical girl genre?
A genre where various monsters get chewed up and spat out practically every other day.
Unless they were executive-class, low- and mid-level monsters weren't supposed to last more than an episode.
My acting range might be wide, but it wasn't wide enough to play all those countless villains.
But if we hired a number of actors equal to the number of monsters, the production cost would skyrocket exponentially.
How to resolve these two contradictions.
Conveniently, I possessed the ideal solution to that contradiction.
"I've already thought of all the monsters, so don't worry."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Coincidentally, I'm scheduled to talk with them this weekend, so let's go together with the whole filming team."
"Are we going far?"
"Not that far. It's quick if we use a Portal."
"Wow. You really are rich. Using Portals so casually like that."
I merely shrugged my shoulders.
As the son of a baronial house from a small city, he seemed not to know, but using Portals in the capital was an everyday affair.
Not just the nobles, even commoners could use them if needed.
The saying "economy of scale" existed for a reason.
Besides, if you paid a monthly subscription fee to the Portal Management Bureau, you could use them even cheaper.
There was no need to mention that, so I simply handed him an admission ticket.
Along with a promise to meet on the weekend morning.
*
Weekend.
Passing through a Portal, the place they headed to was the Sanctuary located next to the Imperial Capital.
Waiting for the group who arrived at their destination guided by Allen was a massive stadium located at the heart of the Sanctuary.
Standing before it and looking up, Nikolai read the sign in an ecstatic voice.
"Wrestle Kingdom...!"
For the first time, Nikolai looked at Allen with eyes of respect.