The Story That Began (5)
Bewilderment.
That was the first emotion she felt toward the Waning Moon, who had been left half-dead. Not rage. Not triumph. Bewilderment.
She hadn't meant to kill her.
Of course, that wasn't entirely true. At the beginning, she had fully intended to kill the Waning Moon. She had thought of her as something that could not be allowed to live.
She had meant to make her pay.
Payment for weighing her life, the Scales', Star Cluster's, and every other magical girl's life on a set of scales. Vengeance for manufacturing artificial Unknowns and murdering Oksana. And beyond that, she had meant to exact retribution on behalf of the countless magical girls who had died under the Bureau's rotten orders.
A magical girl must never spare a life. Not once. Not ever.
She had fully intended to put into practice the words Ian-na had always drilled into her.
If this one life of hers could erase Ian-na, she would have given it without hesitation.
She had wanted to punish Ian-na's ugliness. Like two faces of the same coin, surface and substance utterly at odds—she had wanted to butcher the Bureau's whore, Ian-na, with meticulous care.
That, she believed, would have been the highest honor she could pay the Magical Girl of the Waning Moon, Ian-na—the woman she had once admired more than anyone alive.
Ian-na had been doing exactly as she preached: never sparing a life.
Other magical girls' lives.
…
It had been unbearable.
That squalid spectacle of a woman licking monkeys' feet just to stay alive—she could not forgive it.
The Magical Girl of the Waning Moon.
The one Ian-na ought to fawn over, the one whose feet she ought to lick, the one for whom she ought to spread her legs and satisfy every desire—that person was not some pack of monkeys.
It was a magical girl who stood above them all.
And among those, the finest of them: herself.
Ian-na should have been licking her feet. No matter what, she should have stood on her side. She should have attached herself to her, not to those creatures.
She, too, could have given Ian-na anything she wanted. She could have taught her far more than Ian-na had ever taught her.
Just as Ian-na had once taken in an orphan and raised her, she could have raised a legless Ian-na in turn.
Everything had been Ian-na's fault.
Ian-na had brought it on herself.
Whatever became of Ian-na, it was only natural that she no longer felt a shred of guilt.
It was the price of not choosing her.
How much longer was she supposed to wait? She couldn't even begin to guess.
How many more magical girls did she have to watch die meaningless deaths?
What value did those deaths even hold for Ian-na and the Bureau?
Illusion possessed an exceptional mind. From the construction of a plan to its execution, from situational judgment to improvisation—she handled nearly all of it to perfection.
She could even sail through the Bureau's psychiatric evaluations with a performance of perfect "normalcy."
And even she, Illusion, could not properly grasp what Ian-na and the Bureau intended.
Were they planning a purge of the magical girls? If so, there was nothing left to deliberate. Cull the inferior monkeys and make it unmistakably clear who ruled them.
Every circumstance pointed toward a purge of magical girls.
That was why Illusion had recruited the Scales and the other magical girls—so that, if the moment came, they could rise in open revolt against the slaughter.
But.
If the purge plan was truly real—
then the monkeys had no path to salvation. Within half a century at the latest, they would fight among themselves and destroy themselves. She had no desire to keep alive creatures that stupid and that inferior.
It was an imbecilic plan. Whether it was a limited purge of magical girls or a total one, she couldn't say—but the risk was far too great.
Yes, magical girl organizations had swollen in size, but only after the production of artificial girls had hit its stride. Considering the need to disperse magical girls across the world and sortie them in an emergency, the current numbers were if anything still insufficient.
The magical girl command bodies around the globe were far too complacent.
The Magical Crusade had not ended in victory. That was only what they had announced to the outside world.
What the Magical Crusade actually did was barely seal the colossal dimensional rift that had opened over Herzl Hill in Jerusalem—her own hometown—and then declare victory out of nowhere.
The truth of that "holy war," so proudly trumpeted by the command bodies both at home and abroad, was this: they had overridden Ian-na's objections, ordered an unconditional advance into the dimensional rift, and sent countless magical girls who never came back.
All they had done was enter the interior, fight the Unknowns to the death, and seal the rift. That the frequency of Unknown appearances had dropped so sharply afterward still made no sense to her.
Something was there. Something she didn't know.
The Unknowns were preparing a large-scale assault. She was certain of it.
And in a situation like this, they were drawing blades on the magical girls.
…Are they in their right minds? Truly?
Weakening the magical girls would naturally resolve into a victory for the Unknowns.
And if that happened—
every living organism on Earth would die. Not a single one left.
Illusion found herself clenching her teeth without realizing it.
What she intended was not a massacre. It was dominion. Superior magical girls would lead the vast majority of monkeys toward a better future.
She was only putting a reversed hierarchy back the way it belonged.
The "preciousness of life" that Ian-na had taught her had moved her deeply.
But.
Then why.
Why on earth…
Ian-na was trying to weaken the magical girls for the sake of her own life. Even knowing the result would tip toward annihilation, she was throwing reckless gambits just to preserve that single life of hers a little longer—just to scrape out a few more days.
The virtuous weak.
They were never virtuous. They were repulsive monkeys packed solid with arrogance and greed.
Ian-na, who had always sworn she would lay down her life for them, was now selling off their future just to keep breathing.
It was grotesque.
Enough to make her retch.
And so—
it was justified.
Everything Illusion had done.
For her precious comrades.
For the friendship Ian-na herself had carved into her.
Even if it meant shouldering infamy, she would pry Ian-na free of the monkeys' hands and thoroughly "save" her.
She had simply failed to master the pleasure.
That was all. The magical-girl madness Illusion had always kept suppressed had merely surfaced.
She had not lost her reason. On the contrary—when she "gently stroked" Ian-na's belly, she had been calmer than at any other moment in her life.
It had been rapturous.
…If I kill her like this, I won't get to enjoy her anymore.
That was the thought that had risen in Illusion's mind at the time.
There had been other reasons she hadn't killed Ian-na.
Rebellion.
She was not yet ready to raise a rebellion. The plans she had laid in advance were certain to fail, and she had no proper cause to put forward.
At the decisive moment, she needed Ian-na to condemn herself with her own mouth.
To declare that they intended to purge every magical girl, beginning with the entire Far East.
When Ian-na stopped breathing, she had regretted it with a violence that bordered on panic.
Because the plan had fallen into chaos.
Because if Ian-na actually died, it would almost certainly be treated as treason.
And when she thought she would never again feel that crackling sensation from Ian-na—that overwhelming pleasure—she had felt as if the sky itself had collapsed.
It had been humiliating.
Unable to master a moment's pleasure, she had nearly killed Ian-na and walked herself into the luxurious cage the monkeys had prepared for her. The regret was searing.
Of course—
when, about two weeks later, she heard that Ian-na's condition had improved, a laugh escaped her along with a long breath of relief.
When she met the Waning Moon again, she wanted to apologize.
Given the Waning Moon's temperament as she had come to know it over their years together, she was certain her apology would be accepted without resistance.
Not killing the Adjutant had been the right decision. Had she done that, there would have been no going back.
Restore their relationship to normal. Forge a deep bond with the Waning Moon.
And then—
she wanted to see the Waning Moon afraid of her.
She wanted to watch the Waning Moon, when she approached, put every last scrap of strength into acting as if she were fine, as if nothing were wrong.
She wanted to see the Waning Moon, on a day she so much as raised her voice, tremble so hard she couldn't even meet her eyes.
She wanted to see the Waning Moon, when she merely clenched a fist, clutch her stomach, foam at the mouth, and collapse.
She wanted to see the Waning Moon, if she happened to close a hand around her throat, wet the floor on pure reflex.
She wanted to see the Waning Moon terrified.
The carrot and the stick.
She had already swung the stick. Now it was time to hold out the carrot and watch how the Waning Moon reacted.
Illusion's magical-girl instinct was running hotter than it ever had.
Just as the Waning Moon had once reformed a girl who was little better than a street rat—just as she had been parent, teacher, and older sister all at once—she, too, wanted to show the Waning Moon the "right path."
In other words—
she wanted to train her. To her own tastes.
She wanted to uncover everything the Waning Moon was hiding. What plan she had built in collaboration with the monkeys. Why she was trying to purge the magical girls. What she was truly after.
Han Ho-jun.
The voice of a monkey who stood, more or less, on equal footing with the Waning Moon reached her ears.
"Let's go."
"Mm."
The corner of Harsa's mouth curled high.
She felt not a shred of guilt.
Because everything was Ian-na's fault.
Because she had failed to choose her.