90. Mari: Magic? Girl?
90. Mari: Magic? Girl?
Bored.
So bored I felt like dying.
A drug addict couldn't live without drugs.
Likewise, it was the first time I'd learned just how agonizing boredom could be for someone soaked in dopamine.
I was lying sideways on the club room sofa, observing the shapes of the clouds outside the window, when a cold sensation touched my lips.
I looked up to see Pia holding out a fork stabbed into an apple.
Too lazy to even move my hands, I just opened my mouth, and the apple slid right in.
Chewing idly, I resumed my cloud observation.
From above my head came the sound of Pia slicing an apple.
Scrape. Scrape.
Ever since I'd shown her that thread, properly used, could cut like a razor, Pia had started using thread to cut things every chance she got.
The first time, before she'd reined in its power, she'd sliced down an entire forest, and after that, she'd begun using thread in place of a knife in daily life to control its strength.
Even now, the tool peeling the apple above my head was a thread hooked between her two fingers.
Lately, she'd taken on the challenge of peeling the whole thing in one unbroken spiral, and as a result, what was currently flooding through my veins in lieu of blood was vitamin C.
As I opened my mouth and accepted another apple piece coming toward my lips, a question flew at me from Pia.
"Aren't you going back to the family estate, Allen?"
"Nope."
"Still, won't the Guardian Duke be disappointed...?"
"He told me not to come home and pull any weird crap. Said to get lost."
"..."
Why were you nodding in understanding? That wounded me.
That was what he'd said, but irrespective of my father's words, it was just that I didn't want to go.
Because even though some time had passed since Magical Mari wrapped up, I felt like I would lose my damn mind if I witnessed my mother still vigorously active as a Dina Knight.
For the record, Nikolai had stayed on the island even though he wasn't in the club room right now.
He didn't really want to go into work, but he also didn't want to see his own family parading around in magical girl outfits at the main house, so he'd holed up in his rented room.
The topic of conversation petered out, and silence returned to the club room.
Apparently finding the silence awkward, Pia brought another subject to the table.
"If you're bored, how about competing in Wrestle Kingdom again? It's been a while."
"No fun... and it's end-of-season, so jumping in now would just be a nuisance to the organizers."
"Hmm... in that case, how about we go see a movie toge—"
"Cough—ack, hack!"
"Oh my. I'm so sorry! I didn't realize you were still like that!"
"Nah. It's fine. It'll be fine... urgh..."
Pia's suggestion was a genuinely reasonable one, had my condition been sound.
After all, my only ways of soothing boredom were starring in a film or shooting a film. One or the other.
But at least right now, it wasn't the right answer.
Because the internal injuries from <Fairy Warrior> still hadn't subsided, and watching other movies would still bring on intermittent seizures.
It wasn't the foaming-blood-at-the-mouth kind like last time. I was more likely to foam at the mouth if I saw even the slightest scene in a film I didn't like.
The problem was that even films I'd acted in triggered these seizures without exception, so I was in no state to watch any film at all.
Since Pia had been sitting right beside me at the previous feature-film premiere and had seen me barely endure another seizure, I didn't need to explain my condition to her.
I accepted the water she had hurriedly fetched, drank it down, and settled my insides for a moment.
Then, just as I was about to flop back down on the sofa, I glimpsed the clouds outside the window, which reminded me of something I was supposed to be doing.
"Now's not the time for this."
"Is something the matter?"
"The thing is, an actor ought to learn a great deal from observation in daily life. But it occurred to me that since arriving on this island, I've never wandered around for any reason besides filming. And on top of that, my academy life was a bit removed from what's typical, wasn't it?"
"Ah... yes, I suppose so?"
"At this rate, I'm about to end up with 'student' completely excluded from my acting spectrum. So I figured I'd try to enjoy an ordinary student life."
"And what would the ordinary student life you have in mind look like, Allen?"
"Fighting with a friend?"
"That's not it."
"Getting shitfaced?"
"It's not that."
"Having no friends, eating lunch alone in a bathroom stall, enlisting without anyone noticing, mistaking the first attention you get there for the whole world, and applying to become an NCO?"
"...What's with that oddly specific description? And what does being a student have to do with enlisting, anyway?"
Ah. Right.
The Empire didn't have conscription.
I glossed it over by saying it was just a thing from somewhere.
After that, I laid out what I thought of as a normal student life, and every single item was shot down by Pia.
Evidently displeased with my answers, Pia let out a sigh and spoke to me.
"I'll show you. Meet me at the square tomorrow morning."
"Yessum."
*
The next day.
Pia arrived at the square in a combination of black bottoms and a white top, not vastly different from usual.
The only departure from her norm, however, was that instead of formal attire, she wore a fluttering skirt and blouse—the ordinary clothes of a normal girl.
Having arrived an hour earlier than the appointed time, she sat down on a bench in the square and began reading a book.
The cover bore the title <The Priest's Garden>, a romance novel popular at the time.
However, the substance within the cover was not a saccharine pink romance that made hearts go fuzzy, but a history book filled with conspiracy and intrigue.
While she gleaned the wisdom of her ancestors from the book, people passed by, stealing glances and thinking, As expected of the Princess.
Around the time she had turned about fifty pages amid these misapprehensions, she sensed the presence she'd been waiting for.
Roughly thirty minutes before the appointed hour.
Apparently, Allen had been looking forward to this too.
Pia closed her book and greeted Allen with the bright face of an innocent girl.
"Allen, you're here—"
And her smile crumbled the instant she saw Allen's getup.
Navy trousers and a gray shirt. A straw hat.
And to top it off, alien sunglasses.
Concerned that something serious might have happened to him, she asked,
"What on earth is that...?"
"Oh, these? They were the only sunglasses I had at my place."
Barely steadying her reeling body from the vertigo, Pia seized Allen's wrist.
She would at least restore this man's sense of aesthetics.
That was the only thought in Pia's head.
*
Inside a flashy boutique—the sort of place popular kids shopped.
Having been dragged here by Pia, I was now serving as a dress-up doll.
The agreement had clearly been a light exploration of Hetairo Island, but the moment she'd laid eyes on me, she'd hauled me straight to a clothing store.
I knew.
I was aware that my fashion sense was catastrophic.
But what was I supposed to do when those were the only clothes I had?
The only things in my rented room were John's suits, a Riv costume set, my school uniform, and these clothes I wore for trips to the general store.
But when I'd explained this situation to Pia, the only thing I'd gotten back was a scolding.
"Then you could have worn your school uniform."
"I don't want to wear a uniform during break."
"Haah... fine, I get it. Just try this on."
By then, I'd been stuck on that street for two hours.
That was because no sooner had we spent about thirty minutes at one clothing store than she'd want to pop into the one right next door.
And what I'd learned so far, having visited a total of four clothing stores, was that clothes looked terrible on me and that Pia was surprisingly clueless about menswear.
Even Pia, who usually spoke with polished grace, was at a loss when she had to temper her words like this, so it was painfully awkward.
"Uh..."
"Just say it."
"It really doesn't fit you."
"Just say my build's the problem."
Pia was trying to dress me up at various boutiques, intent on salvaging my appearance.
The result: failure.
She still hadn't discovered a combination that satisfied her.
"Just that one last shop! You never know, right?"
"Hey. That's a women's clothing shop."
What was this? Was she about to make me do the manliest thing a man could do—cross-dress?
Or was she trying to use her expertise in women's clothes to, by any means necessary, concoct a combination that suited me?
I generously lobbied Pia with an expression full of distaste and refusal, but she'd plated her face in steel and was trying to drag me into that shop no matter what.
By now, I felt like her objective had warped slightly, so I was resisting her strength purely with arm power when a familiar figure appeared ahead of us.
"Huh? What are you doing here, Ceres?"
The magical girl elf, enjoying her shopping with platinum-blonde hair swaying, spotted us too and waved.
In one hand, the brightly smiling Ceres carried an armful of clothes as she greeted us.
I pointed at the bundle and asked Ceres if she was moving house or something.
In response to my joke, she gave a slightly abashed smile and answered,
"Lately, my clothes haven't been fitting properly."
She giggled sheepishly and pointed to her bust circumference.
That answer dumped a fresh dilemma onto my plate.
If I grinned and quipped back at that as is, did it count as sexual harassment, or was that within the bounds of acceptable behavior for a male friend?
Having been through the batshit gauntlet of all-boys middle school, all-boys high school, engineering college, the military, and war, I had absolutely no way of gauging where the permissible limits lay.
Thankfully, while I was agonizing with a grim expression, Ceres caught on to my dilemma and corrected the misunderstanding.
"Not fat—muscle, I mean. Back muscles included."
"Ah-ha."
So I could just speak freely, then.
Only then did I start firing back at her.
"So in the end, you never got your back muscles sorted out by the finale, huh."
Ever since the summer break of the first semester, the demon awakened in Ceres's back had turned garments into rags at every opportunity.
Each time, she'd discharged her mana in the shape of wings and managed to conceal it through to the finale somehow, but she'd never ultimately managed to control her back muscles without the wings.
The demon on her back, for reference.
