Holding Onto Hope (1)
“Ho-jun, this isn’t what we agreed on.”
Ho-jun’s personal quarters boasted security so tight it bordered on the absolute. Inside the Bureau, where everything was monitored and wiretapped in real time, this was the only place where a secret stood any chance of staying buried.
“The two of you have left quite a vacuum these past few weeks. This reassignment is unavoidable. We have no way of knowing when an Unknown might appear.”
“…Fine. I accept it.”
Illusion spoke in a voice of extreme calm. After her brief encounter with Ian-na, she had recovered her cold, clear judgment. She had not used her Remegeton or her abilities in some time.
The ether energy that accumulated in a magical girl’s body dwindled at a glacial pace, much like radiation toxicity that takes centuries to fade. It simply leaked outward, little by little.
It stood to reason, then, that if a magical girl went decades or even centuries without ever using her Remegeton, she would eventually be freed from madness and return to a normal state.
Of course, no such magical girl had ever existed. They were ageless, but they were not immortal.
A magical girl’s lifespan varied wildly. Some died within a few years. Others, like Ian-na, were rare cases who lived for decades. Medical staff estimated that if a magical girl never used her Remegeton and simply lived an ordinary life, she might reach roughly one hundred and fifty years of age.
Yet not a single magical girl had ever enjoyed that full span.
Every last one of them had followed in the footsteps of their predecessors. They had fulfilled their duty and protected the world and the weak. As a result, magical girls met every kind of death imaginable.
They took their own lives before they could run amok. They were put down by other magical girls after they did. They were devoured by Unknowns, assassinated, or met any number of other colorful ends. Not once had any of them died of natural causes.
Illusion’s only goal was to raise Scales and awaken her second Remegeton. If anything, she decided Ho-jun had been considerate—giving her a quiet, out-of-the-way place where she could cultivate Scales in peace and build her own power base.
Her mind was clearer than it had been in years. She felt almost buoyant. She had finally sated the hunger she had suppressed for so long, and the present situation was not entirely unfavorable.
Her gaze settled on Han Ho-jun. She looked straight up into the face of the man who seemed twice her size—an inscrutable, sly face that, like her own, was plotting something.
Usurpation, for instance.
Ho-jun was an ambitious little monkey who wanted to climb higher still.
Illusion was certain of it. He was the same sort of creature she was. He carried ambition of his own.
“Did you destroy the files?”
“Yes, of course. Surveillance on both of you has been completely dismantled. Every scrap of material we had collected has been disposed of.”
“Good. I’ll trust you on that.”
The terms of their deal with Ho-jun were simple. In exchange for letting the “punishment” she and Scales had inflicted on Ian-na vanish without a whisper, Illusion would help Ho-jun once—with whatever he asked, no matter what it was. In return, he would hand her the Bureau’s sprawling web of informants and neutralize every surveillance line that reached her and Scales. As a bonus, he had also smoothed over the complete wrecking of the Bureau’s internal communications network.
By any measure, it was a profitable bargain. Ho-jun was conceding far more than he needed to.
…Why?
It could not be simple goodwill. This was a man who would throw even his own daughter, Han Byeol-hwa, into the jaws of death and leave her there. For someone as sharp as Ho-jun to lower himself this far before her…
To make me drop my guard.
They looked as if they were in the same boat, but their destinations were utterly different. What Illusion wanted was singular: to stand above the monkeys and rewrite the hierarchy. To seize every scrap of power so that other magical girls would never again die empty, meaningless deaths. To become a magical girl who commanded the respect of all, the way Ian-na once had.
Ho-jun, however, seemed to have no interest in power for its own sake. He was staring at something farther away, something vastly more distant. He was one of those rare monkeys who was mad at the root.
At the perfect moment, he would strike. Once their cooperation ended, he would move to eliminate her first—by any means necessary.
Of course, she would never fall for such a cheap trick. Scales was with her, after all.
For a monkey’s thrashing, it was almost cute. They had enough in common that she rather liked him. As long as he did not bare his fangs, she was even willing to leave him in the Deputy Director’s chair.
In her heart she held him in fairly high regard. Like the Adjutant, he remained loyal to Ian-na even in her current ruined state, and he was willing to join her in purging the other magical girls.
“Still, are you sure it’s wise to lift the surveillance? You can’t even begin to imagine what we’re planning.”
“I couldn’t stop you anyway. Better to ride the current than drown fighting it. Besides, the two of you still have duties to fulfill.”
A lie. In Ho-jun’s hand rested that button—the one that could summon every magical girl without question or delay. He was watching her reaction.
“…All right. I understand.”
A brief silence settled between them.
“Harsa, let’s go already. I’m bored.”
“Scales, I told you to use magical-girl names while we’re inside the Bureau.”
“…I like the name Harsa better.”
Scales cut in, seizing Illusion’s hand tightly as she spoke. Ho-jun instinctively stepped back. Something told him he must not draw any closer.
The same feeling he always got from his own daughter was pouring off Scales in overwhelming waves.
“We’re leaving.”
“…Understood. The helicopter is standing by.”
“No need. Just put a monitor up. We’ll get there with my power.”
In an instant, the atmosphere radiating from Scales subsided.
…Just my imagination?
It felt too strange to dismiss so easily. Illusion had not noticed, but there was something about Scales that Ho-jun did not understand.
Well…
It was none of his concern. The two of them had already stepped onto the board as his pieces.
“…I feel like I might live.”
“Heh. Is that so, Director?”
Several large injection marks dotted her neck—every one of them from a dose of sedative. When the orange fluid squelched into her throat, the swelling chaos in her heart quieted at once. Reason returned, and she could make proper judgments again.
This was already the fourth one today.
Lately she had been wandering the Bureau with the Adjutant. She was on leave, after all.
Looking back, a great deal had happened in that short span—more than Ian-na could reasonably bear. Her head had throbbed as if it would split. Nothing made sense. Every day had been terrifying.
Until the sedatives.
Her body had adapted until three or four doses a day barely registered. Overuse dulled the effect, of course, but this much was still enough to let her function.
“We’ve arrived.”
“…Oh.”
A heavy iron door swung open, and three enormous screens filled her vision—almost identical to a real-world SCREENX theater.
Click-click-click.
The moment she sat, the footage began. Nothing extraordinary: a mother and daughter laughing as they held hands, children racing around a playground, office workers hurrying through the streets, and other ordinary slices of daily life, one after another.
All of it was the ordinary life magical girls had protected. The screens displayed the devotion of those who had kept the weak from dying senseless, unjust deaths.
She could not hide her tears.
The knowledge that her actions had not been meaningless, that innocent people had not died in vain, that ordinary days still continued without end—filled Ian-na’s body with quiet joy. Her heart settled. Simply watching a child’s smiling face was enough to make her happy. A magical girl’s sacrifice was neither repaid nor remembered, yet at least the evidence remained.
The lives those people lived were that evidence.
She had wanted to open a better future for everyone. Not an absurd, fleeting death at the hands of an Unknown, but a meaningful, peaceful end in the arms of family. Dying in the arms of family—the most precious thing of all—would be happiness.
Surely.
With a body like this she could do nothing more.
Still, she wanted to prove it.
That she had not been wrong. That her sacrifice had not been meaningless. That the deaths of magical girls had not been in vain.
Ian-na simply wanted to prove it. To be proven right. To be acknowledged.
Because the only thing that had ever filled her emptied heart was the existence of magical girls themselves.
…
The screening was quite short.
Click-click-click.
She began drifting aimlessly through the Bureau once more. Being alone in a room was worse than this limited wandering. And if she stayed alone, she half-feared Illusion and Scales might come looking for her.
Ian-na’s body wanted to draw closer to those two, but I did not. After what they had done, I could not simply pretend nothing had happened. Keep a measured distance—hostile enough to stay wary, never so close that the past vanished. That was the best I could manage.
The misunderstandings had been more or less cleared, yet many mountains still lay ahead. The novel had only just begun.
…Even so.
Holding hands might be all right.
Click-click-click-click.
“Director.”
“…Yes.”
The Adjutant turned to face me. With both hands he gently wiped the tears from my eyes, then spoke in a soft whisper.
“Would you like to go outside today?”
For a moment it looked as though a halo shone behind him.