Toward Death (2)
“...We've confirmed that the Beta Ether reading in Sector 79 has dropped to 2.7%. Requesting clearance to lift the yellow alert.”
“Proceed.”
The dense yellow lighting that had bathed the Control Room softened into a faint, muted red. The low wail of the alarm fell silent at last.
“Instrument panels and communications are all functioning normally. The signals for Byeolmuri and the other two are drawing steadily closer to Bureau headquarters.”
“All dispatched units have been notified that the situation is resolved. We are lifting the evacuation order for the surrounding districts.”
“Damage assessment for the affected area is currently underway. Given the lack of any reports so far, it appears the losses were minimal.”
Agents moved briskly through their briefings. Ho-jun handled the aftermath with the ease of long practice, and before long every last detail had been closed out.
Only then did the throng of people who had been rushing about let out a collective breath of relief.
I simply sat there like a puppet, watching Ho-jun.
There was nothing I could do.
...Well. No need to, either.
Drawing unnecessary suspicion was the last thing I could afford. Once Ho-jun started looking at me sideways, things would get messy fast. Worst case, my true identity could come to light.
“Adjutant...”
“Yes, Director.”
So I simply held the Adjutant's hand tight and stared into space.
My body temperature was extremely low. Where an ordinary human ran at about thirty-five degrees, mine hovered between twenty-nine and thirty—low enough to tip a normal person past hypothermia and into death.
It was because certain organs inside me had been replaced with artificial ones that needed to stay cool at all times.
Exposed to normal human body heat, those artificial organs would fail within a day. So they had installed something like a built-in cooler, a temperature-regulation unit that kept everything chilled.
In a human body, the core temperature—heart, liver, lungs, and the rest—stays roughly uniform. People simply call that core temperature “body heat.”
Ian-na's body was different.
This body, which could no longer honestly be called human, had become a testing ground for the latest biotech. The temperature of each internal organ was different.
Thanks to highly advanced bioengineering, the drawbacks were almost nonexistent.
I carried antibodies for most diseases. I had never once slipped into hypothermia or lost consciousness in any serious way.
A slightly slower metabolism than normal, an endless drowsiness that made sleeping less than twelve hours a day a problem, frequent shivering, speech that ran a little slow... those counted as minor inconveniences.
The occasional fogging of awareness, the way excitement could jolt the artificial organs and leave me coughing blood in agony, the weekly checkups without which I would fall into a coma—none of that was a major issue either.
Left alone, I simply grew cold.
Tied to childhood memories of growing up unloved, Ian-na's body craved human warmth. Deep, genuine warmth.
Strangely enough, holding the Adjutant's hand brought a measure of calm.
...Adjutant.
A character barely mentioned in the novel. Not even a name. Even now, sitting here, I still did not know what he was called.
The protagonist had been the Magical Girl of the Scales, after all. Ian-na—fake villain, mid-story exit—had never been given much weight.
My personal theory was that the Bureau's leadership had assigned him to keep watch over Ian-na. Or not. Either way.
Needless to say, Ian-na had no allies. Magical girls hated and resented her; the Bureau treated her like a convenient doll.
There was nothing she could call a friend in arms.
Even with her mind fraying, Ian-na had trusted the people around her right up until the moment she died. She had forced herself to smile brightly and look after others, still believing she was the magical girl who protected everyone.
Even when her protests over the deaths of magical girls only got her pumped full of drugs until her self dissolved, she never lost that smile.
Of course, she had only been thoroughly used.
Still... even without allies, Ian-na had friends.
There was Oksana, who believed in her to the end and was killed by an Unknown. And there was the tattered white teddy bear she had treasured more than her own life since childhood.
In her memories, Ian-na had fallen asleep every night clutching that doll.
Holding the old, filthy thing that had gone gray with soot and dust.
Sniffling her way into sleep.
She would open her heart to that doll—which, like her, had been reduced to a wreck—while remembering golden days she could never return to, thrashing so she would not collapse, drowning in endless depression and despair.
Ian-na was an orphan.
More precisely, both parents existed, yet neither had wanted to raise her. They divorced before she turned one, and custody was foisted onto her mother.
Indifference.
Her entire childhood had been painted in parental indifference.
Left to waste away under her mother's neglect, the half-dead child found among the garbage heaps was nothing short of a miracle.
And then Ian-na was chosen by Remegeton.
No one knew why. Call it a natural miracle if you like. It was the greatest turning point of her short life.
As the Magical Girl of the Waning Moon, Ian-na had watched countless deaths. The death of a partner who had been like a sister. The horrific deaths of civilians. Magical girls slaughtering one another in pointless mutual destruction. Entire junior classes wiped out by Unknowns.
Through it all, the only thing that stayed by her side was that white teddy bear.
There had been a time when magical girls she could still call “comrades” had stood shoulder to shoulder with her.
Not anymore.
Nothing remained for Ian-na. The only thing that kept its place was the teddy bear. For a girl who had become the target of everyone's grief and hatred, the only thing that opened its heart to her completely was that doll.
Without it, she could not sleep. The dark terrified her. The fact that she could not see even an inch ahead filled her with dread.
Because it brought back the memories of the torture.
The memory of her eyes being gouged out in blinding agony, of the moment both eyes went completely dark, still scrambled her mind.
No matter how hard she tried, she could not forget.
For Ian-na to sleep in peace she needed sedatives, the teddy bear, and sleeping pills. She could manage without the pills, but then the nightmares always came.
It felt like wandering a maze with no exit. Even if she could not remember the dreams clearly, they were always unpleasant, always left a foul aftertaste.
That was why, lately, I had also started sleeping with the teddy bear in my arms.
Strictly so I could rest properly. No other reason.
...
Now all that remained was to wait for the two of them to return. Even if I could not meet them right away, an opportunity would come.
I might never make them completely mine, but I had to maintain at least a friendly relationship.
If I wanted to avoid dying at their hands.
...In that case.
I needed to prepare in advance.
A way to win their hearts for certain—and, beyond that, to turn them into allies.
“Um... excuse me...”
I summoned my courage and called out to Ho-jun. My voice was so small I worried it had not reached him.
“What is it?”
“...May I... go in now...?”
“...Yes. Go ahead. You have worked hard today, Director.”
“Mm...”
Once Ho-jun gave permission, the Adjutant lifted me into the wheelchair.
Whirr-rrk.
We left the stifling Control Room and began moving through the broad underground corridor.
“...Am I heavy?”
“Not at all, Director.”
The Adjutant's expression had eased; he smiled lightly. The air felt far freer than the oppressive Control Room.
The Magical Girl Bureau, and every oversight organization around the world, was busy weaving its own sinister schemes—the various plots tied to Pest Control, the central theme of the novel's midsection.
But not everyone was involved. The majority of agents burned themselves out day after day for the sake of humanity, for the sake of the world. Most of the people in the Control Room had simply been doing their assigned jobs to the best of their ability.
A solemn atmosphere was inevitable.
The Adjutant did not seem used to that undercurrent.
Whirr. Whirr-rrk.
Bright lights different from those of the Control Room shone down the wide hallway. Translucent glass panels lined both sides, revealing the Bureau's internal facilities one after another.
The first place that caught my eye was the medical bay.
I visited it often.
Whenever the craving for something sweet hit, I would stop by, scoop up a handful of the magical-girl-only candies and chocolates left on the table, and eat them.
Of course.
Not me—Ian-na.
The doctors were kind, and sedatives and sleeping pills were easy to obtain. The medical bay was one of the few places where Ian-na could still feel somewhat at ease.
Past the medical bay came the laboratories, the morgue, the fabrication rooms, the interrogation chambers—all classified at the highest security level, places my feet were not even allowed to enter.
Whirr-rrk. Whirr-rk.
Continuing forward, we eventually reached an unmanned canteen where snack vending machines had been casually arranged.
The Magical Girl Project was top secret in every respect.
The massive social upheaval that would follow if the existence of Unknowns and magical girls ever surfaced...
the production of “artificial magical girls” that completely ignored ethical norms...
the public outcry over human experimentation that no society would tolerate...
For all those reasons, the number of people who knew about the project was vanishingly small.
Unless you were a high-ranking government official of one nation or another, you did not even know magical girls existed. Oversight organizations worldwide eliminated anyone who tried to dig into their identities, by any means necessary.
So of course there was no civilian-style PX or convenience store inside the Bureau.
Whirr-rk.
The wheelchair stopped right in front of a vending machine.
“Director, is there anything you would like?”
The Adjutant pointed into the machine. It was a simple unit stocked with chocolate, snacks, drinks, and the like.
“...I don't have any money.”
“I'll buy it for you. Don't worry.”
I did not have a single coin to my name.
My family register had been erased long ago.
The moment she became a magical girl, “Ian-na” had been completely cut off from society.
The Bureau, which saw me as a test subject and a disposable tool, was never going to hand out something as civilized as a salary.
A proper magical girl might have been different. I was not even that anymore.
“Then... chocolate...”
“Of course.”
This place sat in the deepest mountain folds of Gangwon Province, the least populated region in Korea.
The remotest of remote hinterlands, without so much as a paved road.
A place as isolated as an island, where ordinary people could enter or leave only by helicopter.
A nest of steel buried a hundred meters underground, armored on every side by sixty-centimeter-thick reinforced concrete.
Naturally, supplies were never plentiful. Luxury goods even less so.
The budget for every magical-girl oversight organization came from the host nation's treasury. And this country had allocated the Bureau—one of those organizations—a smaller budget than any other.
“...Is the price okay?”
“Don't worry about it.”
The Adjutant slid his ID card into the machine.
“Um...”
“Yes?”
“Two more... please...”
The Magical Girl of the Scales and Illusion were both magical girls.
Given how strongly ether influenced them, they were bound to have a sweet tooth.
From what I remembered... Illusion would eat anything her senior offered her, and with obvious delight.
Ian-na herself had found that habit rather cute, so whenever she came across snacks she would bring some for Illusion.
I was taking a bit of a gamble, hoping that stirring those old memories might deepen our connection.
“...If you eat that much, you'll get cavities.”
“Ah—no... it's not for me...”
The mild scolding in his tone made me instinctively shrink in on myself.
“Then why do you want two more?”
The Adjutant understood me deeply.
He stepped back a pace so I would not feel pressured, and spoke in a gentle voice.
I told him the truth.
“I wanted to... give them as gifts... They worked hard today...”