What Is a Magical Girl, Really? (6)
The explanation about the Root had wrapped up roughly. I’d expected the kids to get lost since the concept was so abstract and difficult, but they followed along surprisingly well. I was genuinely impressed. Maybe it was because they hadn’t yet developed any fixed ideas about magical girls, so their learning speed was faster.
“Still, I don’t think I’ve really grasped it yet.”
They understood it intellectually, but since they hadn’t felt it for themselves, they still seemed uneasy. The class president asked carefully,
“I get that understanding the Root is important, but we still don’t even fully know the basics of the Kernel. Don’t you think this might be a little early for us…?”
“Think of it as advanced preparation. If you properly understand what I’ve taught you so far, you won’t get confused in the first place.”
“R-right. Got it.”
“Right now, the important thing isn’t how to handle the Root. It’s simply recognizing that the concept of a Root exists for every magical girl, and that someday you all need to reach it.”
“And that means we should keep thinking about why we became magical girls in order to reach our Root someday, right, sis?”
“Yeah. As expected, the little one’s pretty sharp…”
“Hehe.”
Even though she couldn’t get a praise sticker because of her older sisters’ opposition, being praised like this seemed to satisfy her. Her face brightened up much more than before. When I first met her she’d seemed like a hedgehog, but maybe that had just been a defense mechanism. The little one now looked like nothing more than a puppy starved for compliments.
Even though she was fourteen and taller than me, I reached up and gently patted her head. The soft purring sound that followed made me wonder if my earlier thought about her being a puppy had been a mistake after all.
“Huaaam. This seems like a good place to stop while I’m still moderately tired. Keep thinking about your own Root from now on. You’ll naturally come to understand the changes in your Unique Weapon, and eventually even awaken your Unique Magic. Let’s call it a day here.”
“Okay. Thanks for your hard work.”
“Thank you, sis.”
It had been quite a long session. Root this, Unique Weapon that, Unique Magic… There had been so many concepts to teach that my throat felt scratchy from talking so much. Even though I’d only been speaking, the full-body exhaustion I felt wasn’t something I could get used to. Still, the greater the sense of depletion, the more it proved I’d done my best, so the feeling wasn’t entirely bad.
This should be enough. If I kept this up, I probably wouldn’t have that same nightmare for a while.
“U-um… J-Jihye.”
“Yeah?”
I had been about to wrap things up and head home. It was almost time for Jiah to come pick me up, and I didn’t want to stay in this damp training hall any longer. I was tired, too. But since it was rare for my friend Miju to ask me a question, I decided to listen.
“What is it, Miju?”
“Y-you’ve definitely reached your Root, right…?”
“Of course. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have survived. Huaaam.”
“Then… what is your Unique Magic?”
When I had explained Unique Magic to the kids earlier, I had said this with complete confidence:
‘Any magical girl who has reached her Root will possess a Unique Magic.’
I had declared it without the slightest hesitation. Because any magical girl who becomes aware of her Root will naturally become aware of her own Unique Magic. After all, Unique Magic is simply magic that expresses a magical girl’s Root. If there is no Root, there can be no Unique Magic, and manifesting an already-realized Root as magic is an incredibly simple task.
But that simple task… wasn’t simple for me.
Even though I had embraced my Root, even though I had reached it, my Unique Magic refused to activate. It was as if Unique Magic simply didn’t exist for me alone.
That was why the words I gave Miju probably sounded a little hollow.
“I don’t have one.”
“H-huh? But earlier you definitely said that any magical girl who realizes her Root can use Unique Magic…”
“Looks like I’m the exception. Anyway, I should get going now. I’m getting pretty sleepy.”
“O-okay… I understand…”
With those words, my friend Miju walked off in the opposite direction from me—toward the dorms where the class president and the little one were headed. Since I had to go home, I turned toward the parking lot. I walked alone with heavy steps.
At the training hall exit, there was an umbrella stand. I pulled out a dull black umbrella and headed outside. It was an old umbrella I used to carry around in my previous life, so it didn’t match my current body at all. The umbrella was heavy and large enough to cover my entire body. Thanks to that, I didn’t get wet from the rain.
“The Root, huh… I still don’t really get it.”
Seyeol lay blankly on her dorm bed, lost in thought. The rain had seemed to let up a little in the afternoon, but after dinner it was pouring down again even harder. Normally she would have been training hard with Miju and Yuri in the indoor training hall right now, but today everyone had suggested taking a break. It wasn’t because of the weather—it was because of what Jihye had told them earlier.
—What kind of magical girl do you want to become?
Jihye had said that was the most crucial question for reaching one’s Root. She explained that most Roots were heavily influenced by the mindset one had when deciding to become a magical girl.
“In front of Jihye I said I wanted to protect people like Lady Red Star, but…”
A sigh escaped her. When the monster disaster struck nine years ago, she probably had felt that way. Seyeol had only been eight at the time, so even if she couldn’t remember the details, she could tell she must have held similar feelings back then.
But she had actually awakened as a magical girl quite some time after that. It had only been very recently. At most one or two years ago. The reason Seyeol awakened as a magical girl had been completely out of the blue, and even now she still didn’t understand why. When she came to her senses, she was already in the Magical Girl Basic Mandatory Education Facility. After working hard there, she had earned the qualifications to enter the Academy.
Even when kids her age at the facility—commonly called “Mandatory Edu”—had asked her the same question, Seyeol had given the same answer she just had. And every time, the responses she received were things like:
Every time she felt the children’s respectful gazes, Seyeol couldn’t help but feel an inexplicable sense of shame.
“What really made me become a magical girl?”
Her thoughts were tangled in a mess, making her chest feel tight. She wondered if she was the only one like this, but she was sure Miju was wrestling with the same worries. Even at dinner, her expression hadn’t been particularly bright.
Wishing to sort out her complicated feelings, Seyeol rolled around on the bed. She even kicked her legs in the air. But no matter how much she thought, the answer didn’t come easily.
“Haa… I don’t know.”
In resignation, she glanced at the wall—and saw a sticky note.
‘Get into the Magical Girl Association!’
It was a memo she had confidently written right after moving into the dorm and unpacking. But now it felt incredibly awkward.
She jumped up and tore the sticky note off the wall. Because the adhesive was weak, it came off far too easily.
“Didn’t she say the original intention was important? Then is this my original intention? This pathetic-looking goal…?”
A dream forced on her by others. The person who had been most excited when Seyeol first awakened as a magical girl was none other than her parents.
“They say working at the Association headquarters pays really well.”
“I’m not sure about the branch offices, but joining the main headquarters means you won’t run into many monsters. It’s stable.”
“Our Seyeol is definitely going to get into the Association headquarters, right?”
Crinkle.
She had squeezed the note too hard and it crumpled in her hand.
“If I hadn’t met Jihye… I probably would’ve desperately tried to get a job at the Association no matter what. Looking back now, that’s pretty funny.”
A laugh slipped out. It was a dry, hollow laugh.
“There’s Miju and Yuri too… There’s no way I could’ve taken first place and pushed them aside.”
To enter the Magical Girl Association, you had to graduate at the top of your year. You needed to dominate the sparring exams held every semester, ace all the Academy’s tests and evaluations, and win the favor of the faculty. Just like how Lee Eunji had complained to Kim Jihye after losing a sparring match, coming in second place was completely meaningless in this process. Only the top student—the number one—could catch the Association’s attention.
It was something that no longer held any interest for Seyeol, who was now broadening her understanding of magic after meeting Jihye.
She tossed the already-crumpled paper into the trash can. It was a goal that no longer had anything to do with her.
Then what were Seyeol’s current dreams and goals? What kind of magical girl did she want to become? What was the Root that lay within her heart?
Seyeol tore off a fresh sticky note from the pad on her desk. She opened the cap of a black marker and brought it to the paper.
“…It’s true that protecting people in Yeouido made me proud. I gave everything I had and saved countless lives. But that’s not why I’m a magical girl.”
The marker refused to touch the paper for a long time.
“The reason I became a magical girl, the motivation that keeps me learning magic and shouting my transformation phrase, the reason I train until late every night is…”
Scritch.
Seyeol’s hand moved quickly, and a single sentence was completed on the sticky note.
“For now… this should be enough.”
If the heart she had from the beginning and the goal she had set were wrong, she could simply set a new one. And so, on the wall above Seyeol’s desk, a new goal was engraved.