When Despair Descends (5)
"Bark an apology. Say you're sorry to your dead comrades."
"..."
"Still not getting it, are you."
Bound hand and foot by Scales, Ian-na stared at Illusion with dead eyes.
To Illusion, the sight was almost comical.
Ian-na's eyes burned with defiance, but her body did not. It had already yielded to the violence. Submitted. Whenever Illusion raised a fist, Ian-na flinched without thinking, a pitiful spasm, and clutched at her bruised, blood-mottled belly.
She looked like little more than a rag doll left in the dirt.
Ian-na did not even realize she was trembling.
"Fifty-five."
Thud!!!
Illusion's fist slammed into Ian-na's abdomen again, and Ian-na's eyes could not keep pace with the speed of the blow.
She blacked out before she even registered that a fist had driven into her gut. There was no pain. After the endless cycle of torture and forced recovery, her body had begun to react in ways that were no longer normal.
Without further intervention, Ian-na would almost certainly be dead by the end of the day.
Her artificial organs were failing, one by one.
Illusion had no idea what was inside Ian-na's belly. As always, she restored her as if she were dealing with an ordinary human body.
It was a stopgap, not a cure. Ian-na's organs needed precise, specialized maintenance—something Illusion's power could never provide.
Ian-na's pale stomach.
No—her stomach, now mottled purple and red with contusions, had been ruined from within by Illusion's hand. That she was still alive at all bordered on a miracle.
Organs ruptured by the physical shock. Organs that necrotized when their blood supply was cut. Organs that melted because they could no longer hold the low, cool temperature they required.
Ian-na's body was one that could die at any moment without it being the least bit strange. The only reason she had lasted this long was the Bureau's post-mission support.
In other words, she had already been a wreck from head to toe.
And into that body, Illusion had driven the final, fatal wedge.
Whether she meant to or not.
Ian-na had no grasp of what was happening inside her own flesh.
With every blackout, her memories frayed a little more. She could no longer properly recall what had happened up to this point. After the Adjutant died, all she could just barely hold onto was the fact that she was being trampled without mercy by these two.
"Harsa, can I put her down now?"
"Fine. Set her down carefully on the floor."
Looking thoroughly bored, Scales deposited Ian-na in the middle of the room.
"Hurry up and finish. This is getting dull."
"Wait. It'll be over soon."
Illusion approached the figure twitching and shivering on the floorboards.
"Waning Moon."
"…Ha, Harsa."
There was no light left in Ian-na's eyes.
Her face held only despair. And yet, as if her heart still refused to break, she looked up at Illusion with pupils full of hatred.
Crack!
Illusion stomped down hard on Ian-na's head.
She put real force into it—enough that Ian-na would never look up at her again.
The marble floor cracked where Ian-na's jaw smashed into it head-on.
Her skull.
For an instant, Ian-na's skull shattered. Just one instant. In the breath before she lost consciousness completely, Illusion used her power and restored her.
What Illusion wanted was no longer Ian-na's death. Not anymore.
"Ah… ah… ah……."
Ian-na, whose jaw had been pulverized against the marble, fumbled at her own face with wide, round eyes.
"Well? Still don't feel like saying you're sorry? Think about Oksana, the one you killed. Remember your friend."
"…Friend."
Looking utterly lost, Ian-na clutched her head and collapsed face-down.
"F-friend… friend…… I'm sorry, I'm sorry…… sorry… sorry……."
Ian-na's body began to shake like a leaf in a storm.
The impact that had nearly crushed her skull had triggered a sudden, severe infantile regression.
She had held out a long time. She had done her best. She had tried, somehow, to stay sane and reason with the two of them—but no persuasion had worked.
Misunderstanding had met misunderstanding and birthed catastrophe. And Illusion and Scales were savoring that catastrophe.
Purely to feed their own appetites.
Ian-na's words went in one ear and out the other. What mattered to them was the satisfaction of their desires, not conversation with her.
The sadism peculiar to magical girls ruled them both.
It was madness. It was instinct.
No magical girl can escape madness and instinct. No one—except Ian-na.
Their original natures, braided together with a magical girl's madness and cruelty, had funneled every scrap of hatred and rage onto Ian-na alone.
Ian-na's vision began to blur. Death had drawn close enough to touch.
In those final moments, the brain of a woman in infantile regression held two things at once: crushing terror and stress toward the two before her—and a fragile joy, a relief, that her precious friends had come to see her.
"I'm… sorry…… I'm sorry…."
"I can't hear you."
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry……."
Only when a selfless Ian-na frantically apologized could Illusion finally feel satisfied.
Ian-na writhed on the floor like a worm. No strength remained anywhere in her body. The two of them had come all this way for her; she hated for them to see her looking so pathetic.
She tried somehow to push herself up and face them.
But her body had already served its purpose. Illusion's role had been decisive.
It felt as if her fate had run its course.
Ian-na knew it by instinct.
That this was the end.
And in that last moment, what filled her mind was not regret or resignation.
One last time—truly, one last time—she wanted to give a gift to the two people who had come to visit her.
The Adjutant's death had already faded into a distant haze. She had forgotten what had been done to her. Her brain was drowning in the joy that the two of them had come.
She had been lonely. So terribly lonely. No one had wanted to stay with her. She never showed it, but for Ian-na those years had been nearly unbearable.
She would rather have died. She felt no attachment to clinging uselessly to life. She knew her role as a magical girl was finished. She knew she had already missed her chance to leave the stage.
And the only reason that same Ian-na had not taken her own life, and instead sat like a puppet in the Bureau Director's chair, was this one thing:
Maybe I can still be of some use to the juniors.
She had not wanted other magical girls to go through what she had. She had hoped her experience might help them.
Ian-na's nature was kinder than anyone's. A magical girl who barely even knew how to be properly angry—gentle, and full of quiet grace.
…Ah.
Memories of the past flickered before her eyes. Fellow magical girls long dead. Illusion as she had looked when she was first "chosen." The faces of countless people Ian-na had saved.
A lantern of a life, flashing past.
There were so many people she would never see again. From the fraying scraps of memory, the faces of forgotten comrades rose one by one, vivid and new.
She missed them.
The partner who had first taught her what it meant to be a magical girl. The countless comrades who had burned their lives for peace, for stability, for tomorrow. She wanted to see them.
Just once more—even once would be enough—she wanted to reclaim the glory of those days. She would not mind dying, if only she did not have to be alone.
What Ian-na felt now was not hatred, or anxiety, or fear. Not anymore.
Longing, and yearning, and loneliness alone filled the body that was growing cold.
And then.
In the final moment.
Looking up at the two people looking down at her, Ian-na smiled brightly.
She thought they had come to see her off. That only they, of everyone, had come to comfort her as she made her lonely exit.
She could die with a smile. She held no grudge. Because she remembered nothing. Because she had tried so hard to forget everything. Because she had decided not to blame them.
"H-hey……."
Somehow, her body felt strangely light. She felt no pain, no dizziness.
"Th-this… t-take… it……."
What Ian-na held out was chocolate. With a violently trembling arm, she offered the two pieces that had been sitting on the low table.
Slap!
Illusion struck her hand away hard, sending the chocolate clattering to the floor.
"……."
Ian-na perceived none of it. Her eyes no longer worked. Endless darkness unfurled before her.
A darkness at whose far edge a faint light shimmered.
She thought she could see her comrades.
There was so much she wanted to say. A single month would not have been enough to unburden decades of accumulated feeling.
Ian-na wondered, inwardly, which story to tell first.
…Yes.
She decided to speak of the magical girl she had met in the slums a few years before her own death—the one who had become her partner.
Her name was Harsa.
A clever child, one who knew how to care for others. A warm-hearted child who would have gone through fire and water for a fellow magical girl.
The days spent with Harsa, Magical Girl of Illusion, had been genuinely happy. She had turned a barren routine into something noisy and alive.
That child she had cherished like a little sister—please, let her be well.
Praying fervently, silently, for Harsa's happiness, Ian-na
slowly closed her eyes.
It felt as if she were departing for the three thousand worlds of the magical girls—a place from which no one ever returned.
"Harsa. Her."
"W-wait… just wait……."
Harsa's face had gone deathly pale. Only when Ian-na, throat still in her grip, showed no response at all did she understand what she had done.
Swept up in a magical girl's madness, she had put Ian-na's life in danger.
She was still alive. For now. It could still be undone. She was not dead. Illusion forced herself to believe it.
Shit…….
This had not been the plan. At first it had been anger; after that, simple amusement. The thought of killing her had vanished the moment they entered the room.
She had only meant to toy with her a little and stop. To break body and mind, and leave it at that.
Breaking body and mind—by her standards—was still a perfectly reasonable, perfectly ordinary line.
Affection.
Harsa harbored a twisted affection for Ian-na. The woman who had practically raised her. Her idol. She had wanted to force that Ian-na to submit, and keep her underfoot.
That was all it was supposed to be….
"…What do we do."
"J-just hold on…."
Scales looked thoroughly rattled as well.
No one said anything about killing her….
Even if she was the Bureau's whore who had driven fellow magical girls into the jaws of death—she was still the Director.
This was open treason.
Treason.
When word of a magical girl's rebellion or rampage got out, a red alert sounded and every magical girl the Bureau could call was summoned.
In short, every magical girl under the Bureau would come hunting them.
Probably even Entreaty.
The two of them were still staring at each other in helpless panic when—
Clack!
"So the Deputy Director was telling the truth. You two—pick up Waning Moon. Right now."
The Magical Girl of the Star Cluster stepped into Ian-na's room.