Love and Peace (3)
“...”
Ian-na squeezed her eyes shut, her brow knitting faintly.
A splitting headache tore through her skull as if it meant to cleave her head in two. Bile churned at the back of her throat.
She fought the rising nausea and clung to the appearance of composure with everything she had.
The side effects of the overdosed sedative, of course.
Her limbs trembled with fine, continuous shivers. Cold sweat had already soaked through the back of her clothes. The only thing she could still manage was to keep her consciousness from slipping and to look, to the others, as though she were perfectly calm.
She did not let the drug’s aftereffects show.
She could not afford to become a burden to the people around her—not in a situation this critical.
She had no intention of collapsing to the floor in an ugly heap over a mere sedative.
And more than that—
She still could not fall.
Even as pain began to twist through her organs, Ian-na could not allow herself to lose consciousness. Not yet.
Because of Byeol-hwa.
Ho-jun had given her no clear answer about how Byeol-hwa would be treated. As long as the girl remained at her side, she would be safe for the moment—but if Ian-na blacked out, there was no telling what might happen to her.
She could die by Ho-jun’s hand.
Byeol-hwa needed her.
While Ian-na was forcing her mind into focus for Byeol-hwa’s sake alone—
Byeol-hwa, sitting blankly alone in a corner of the Control Room, was thinking only of Ian-na.
…Why?
Ian-na had clearly been forced by Han Ho-jun’s coercion to sacrifice her fellow magical girls. She had clearly been controlled. So how could she sit in the Director’s seat looking so detached?
Why was she stuck so close to Ho-jun’s side, watching the monitors with that peaceful expression?
…The sedative.
That was why. Because she had been injected with a sedative, she could sit calmly even in front of the man who had manipulated her so thoroughly.
If not that, then her mind was still being controlled. Han Ho-jun had to be steering her with subtle precision.
The Ian-na of this moment was nothing like her usual self. It was as if the Magical Girl of the Waning Moon from those old days had returned.
Byeol-hwa began to re-examine every part of her relationship with Ian-na. She placed Ian-na as absolute good and began recalibrating the entire situation around that axiom.
She was sinking into a private delusion of her own making.
Unfortunately, the sedative’s side effects lay outside the range of possibilities Byeol-hwa had considered. She did not know the proper daily dosage. The amount administered had looked considerable, but since Ian-na appeared fine, she concluded there would be no ill effects.
What Byeol-hwa hated even more than a villain—
—was a hypocrite.
Ian-na would never, under any circumstances, have committed hypocrisy. This was simply an unusual situation. Of that she was certain.
And yet.
The seed of doubt toward Ian-na was growing, thick and vigorous.
Even as Byeol-hwa herself repeated the delusion over and over.
“Ho-jun… stay calm…”
“I am perfectly calm, Director.”
With a trembling hand, Ian-na caught the sleeve of Ho-jun’s suit jacket. At the sight of her, Ho-jun forced a smile, trying to reassure her.
His large, thick hand came to rest on her white hair and stroked it gently—the same gesture as always.
He was telling her that he was fine.
Of course, the veins stood out hard along his neck.
Ho-jun, too, was watching Ian-na carefully after the excessive dose of sedative—but his primary attention remained fixed on the monitors.
[Skree-skree-skree-skree-skreech—]
On the screen, something pale and formless thrashed about in a frenzy. The interior of the abandoned building admitted not a single ray of light, so its shape could not be made out clearly—but it was not humanoid.
It was crawling like a snake.
“…Are we certain that is a magical girl?”
“That much is certain. The ether particle reaction is unmistakably that of a magical girl. Formula Unit 6 also confirmed, just before it was destroyed, that the entity is a magical girl.”
“Identify its code by any means necessary.”
“Understood!”
Ho-jun said nothing more. The hand that had been stroking Ian-na’s hair moved to his chin—his habitual gesture when tension ran high.
…
There were rare occasions when a magical girl’s rampage reached its absolute worst form.
Truly rare. Most of them died before they ever reached that state.
Whether they took their own lives or accepted Ian-na’s help.
The majority chose the latter. Of course, some tried to flee or fight back.
They all died.
Without exception.
When Gamma Ether accumulated in the body past a certain threshold, the flesh began to transform.
It evolved.
At that stage, the ego vanished completely. The human form vanished with it.
Ether was a dangerous energy whose origin remained unknown. Even the reinforced bodies of magical girls could not withstand its sheer volume.
It was not unlike slowly accumulating radiation in the body—except the ether energy magical girls carried was far more hazardous than radiation.
An evolving magical girl’s appearance continued to change. Flesh and muscle and everything else twisted little by little, reshaping itself into whatever form the subject had long dreamed of, had yearned for.
Of course, nothing about it was normal. Everything warped into something grotesque. Most became beast-like things that could no longer be called human.
Even Ian-na had seen that transformation only twice in her entire life.
Ian-na, who went into the field in person, had seen it only twice. Ho-jun had never seen it at all.
And—
After encountering those Evolved, Ian-na had completely disposed of every record. Thoroughly. So that no one would ever find them.
Because they were too dangerous.
Evolution did not merely change one’s appearance.
It granted endless power. The output of Gamma Ether could be raised higher than at any other time. The bodies of Evolved magical girls had zero resistance to Gamma Ether. Input ten, and the full ten emerged as output.
If—though it would never happen—
If the magical girls already steeped in Madness, the ones who hungered for boundless power—
ever learned of the existence of the Evolved.
If they learned how easily one could become an Evolved—
Something unmanageable would certainly follow.
That was why, at the time, Ian-na had ordered every document related to the Evolved destroyed.
Back then, most rampaging magical girls could still be handled by her own hand.
…
The magical girls currently deployed to the site would not be able to stand against an Evolved.
The concrete ruin filling the screen—
That entire structure was the Evolved’s dimensional domain.
The artificial girls had, in effect, walked straight into the Evolved’s stomach of their own free will.
It was dangerous.
Extremely so.
“Director! The identification code of the entity, transmitted by Formula Unit 14! It has been confirmed as a magical girl!”
“Put it on the screen at once.”
The moment the identification code appeared, the agents hammered at their keyboards in a frenzy, launching every search protocol they had.
When an artificial girl went into rampage, identifying which model had lost control took priority over simply stopping her.
Artificial girls carried identification codes separate from their unit designations. Mass production of artificial girls occurred only once per quarter; those born in the same production cycle were assigned codes of the same series.
Their call signs might be standardized as Formula Unit 14 or Formula Unit 6, but the identification codes differed by quarter—except among girls born in the same batch.
The code on the screen meant the fourth unit among the artificial girls of the production cycle designated SLET.
Because every unit of the same quarter was built to identical specifications with identical components, if one artificial girl rampaged, the others of her batch were highly likely to follow.
Their bodies simply could not withstand the pressure of the Gamma Ether.
When that happened, the Bureau placed the entire production cycle under close watch. Sometimes they “disposed” of them preemptively.
“D-Deputy Director…”
“Speak quickly.”
An agent with a face drained of color called out to Ho-jun; Ho-jun snapped at him to get on with it.
“No such identification code exists in the Bureau’s database. Th-that thing… is not a magical girl belonging to the Bureau…!”
“...”
For a moment the Control Room fell silent. No one could open their mouth. The implication was too shocking.
Depending on how one interpreted it, inter-agency conflict, terrorism—even open war—could all be imagined.
Deploying a magical girl into another oversight organization’s territory without a formal request was an act of provocation, pure and simple.
Every institution operated under the umbrella title of “Magical Girl Oversight Organization,” yet each harbored its own agenda.
Some used magical girls privately to line their own pockets; others worshipped them with fanatical devotion and threw them against the Unknowns.
The Bureau under Ho-jun’s leadership ranked among the better ones.
Whatever the case—
Ho-jun said nothing and sat down in the seat directly beside her.
The lenses of his glasses looked fogged, as though he had breathed on them on a winter day.
The red emergency lights reflected off the glass, hiding his eyes completely.
Even so—
She could tell that Ho-jun was smiling.
He had figured it out.
He now knew, with certainty, where the magical girl rampaging in that grotesque form truly belonged.