Toward Death (3)
The chocolate the Adjutant had bought for me.
It was a rectangular bar of dark chocolate from a premium brand you didn't see every day. It was fairly large, too—big enough that I had to hold it carefully with both hands or risk dropping it.
I peeled away the wrapping, set the chocolate on my tongue, and worked it slowly between my teeth. A bitter sweetness unlike any other chocolate bloomed at the tip of my tongue. The cacao content had to be quite high.
Bit by bit… bit by bit… I tried to let it melt as thoroughly as possible in my mouth, but the bar showed no sign of shrinking.
Still, I couldn't rush it.
I would die.
I wasn't joking. I would actually die. Ian-na's body could not handle a sudden, excessive intake of sugar—chocolate least of all.
It was like the body of a diabetic patient in critical condition. Ian-na had no pancreas. Artificial organs had been installed to take its place.
The pancreas is an essential organ for a human being. It distributes digestive enzymes and secretes the insulin that regulates blood sugar—vital work, all of it.
In Ian-na's body, artificial organs performed roughly the same functions in its stead.
They could never fully replace a real pancreas, though. Compatibility between Ian-na's body and the implants was poor. In other words, they never operated at a hundred percent.
Digestion itself was fine. Insulin regulation was not. Without regular insulin injections, staying alive was impossible.
Artificial organs outnumbered the natural ones in Ian-na's body. After countless surgeries, she was nothing more—and nothing less—than a corpse they had decided to keep breathing.
Side effects, of course, were everywhere. They had jammed the organs in while ignoring every rejection response.
The most representative of those side effects was exactly this situation right now.
Because her insulin levels ran a little lower than a normal person's, an overdose of sugar would kill her on the spot. It was diabetes without the usual symptoms.
The Adjutant.
He was smiling on the outside, but inside he had to be fretting himself sick. If I died, he would not walk away clean. This would not end with a civil-service slap on the wrist—a pay cut, a suspension, a reassignment.
Not in the Bureau that oversaw magical girls. Not in an organization that discarded even basic human decency, that stopped at nothing in the name of opposing the Unknowns.
Not in a place that wielded absolute power beyond the reach of any law.
They would never leave the Adjutant alone. They would hold him accountable for failing to manage the Waning Moon Magical Girl—and wipe out his entire family without a trace.
An ordinary death would be a mercy. They would do things to him so terrible that dying would look like a blessing. In Ian-na's memories, and in the novel itself, the Bureau of Magical Girl Correction and Surveillance had a great many dark corners.
They did not tolerate traitors or failures. They showed not a shred of mercy.
They bound people with terror.
It was simply the most efficient method.
They would make an example of him. The Adjutant's execution would be broadcast live to every agent under the Bureau.
The novel had shown a few such scenes already—agents who had made catastrophic mistakes, magical girls who had betrayed the Bureau. Those particular chapters had all been rated 19+.
…
The Adjutant knew all of this, and he had still bought me chocolate.
After spending roughly a month with him, one thing had become clear: he treated me like a child.
Ian-na was not a child.
Her body's growth and aging had stopped completely, but her mind was mature.
She had lived for more than several decades, after all.
Her legendary reputation had not been built for nothing. Magical girls turned over constantly; most of them were naturally replaced within about a decade. Ian-na had held her seat for decades.
It was thanks to the power of the Waning Moon.
True to its name, the power of the Waning Moon—tied to the moon itself—was among the strangest of any magical girl in history. That was why Ian-na had been able to keep her place.
Remegeton were often inherited. In most cases a magical girl simply took up the Remegeton of her predecessor; acquiring an entirely new one was rare.
On top of that, the number of magical girls who could obtain a Remegeton was limited.
Twelve.
Regardless of the era, the number of "natural" magical girls had always been twelve and only twelve. Only they could acquire a Remegeton and be "chosen" as magical girls.
There could be vacancies, but never more than twelve.
Of course, sealing every rift that opened across the world with only twelve people was impossible.
That was why artificial magical girls had been created.
The regional bureaus had originally intended them as auxiliary forces for the real magical girls. When they proved unexpectedly efficient, mass production began in earnest.
The result was a bloated population of magical girls—
and a quiet, thorough purge.
…In any case, Ian-na had used the power of the Waning Moon to its absolute limit. Only her formidable willpower and self-control had made it possible.
A magical girl continuously exposed to the power of ether eventually goes completely mad. No one was exempt.
Ian-na remembered watching previous generations of magical girls, her juniors, and countless artificial ones all lose their minds.
Their power would begin to run wild. The ether inside their bodies would twist beyond recovery.
The only way to stabilize ether was to take the life of an organic being—a human—and devour it.
When a single magical girl went mad, more than ten thousand lives were sacrificed. Thanks to the Bureau's ironclad media control and the close cooperation of every nation, the incidents were dressed up as "natural disasters." In truth, they were rampages.
Ian-na had taken the lives of rampaging magical girls more times than she could count. It aligned perfectly with her creed: no matter the situation, the lives of ordinary humans came first.
She had been doing that for decades.
Among every living magical girl, Ian-na was the oldest. Outwardly, she looked the youngest.
The Adjutant did not seem to have grasped Ian-na's true nature. He treated her more like a much younger little sister.
That was the impression a month of living with him had left me with.
He was almost certainly a watcher assigned by the higher-ups, but I liked him well enough. I didn't trust him completely, yet he was someone I could lean on without too much strain.
"…Here. This."
I finished peeling the last of the wrapper from the chocolate I had been working on, broke the bar in half, and held one piece out to the Adjutant.
"Director…?"
"I don't think I can finish it by myself……."
The Adjutant nodded as if deeply moved and accepted the chocolate.
Watcher or not, it was fine. For now I would keep him close and watch how things developed. He didn't seem to hate magical girls the way Ho-jun did, so earning a little goodwill couldn't hurt.
Even if the Adjutant reported my every move to his superiors, there was nothing I could do about it.
A transmitter was already embedded in my body. They knew when I was, where I was, and what I was doing. Even my thoughts were laid bare.
"…It's good."
The Adjutant and I kept moving, slowly chewing our chocolate.
"Do you think… the two of them would like this, too……?"
I asked half in earnest.
Isolated alone in pitch darkness, Ian-na had longed for a friend she could open her heart to and talk with. A mild regression had set in. Ian-na was starving for affection.
She wanted to speak freely again with the junior she had once been close to. She wanted to grow close to the protagonist—who had been a brand-new magical girl—and fight Unknowns at her side.
Of course, hunting Unknowns was a goal she could no longer achieve.
The sweet-bitter taste of the chocolate reached Ian-na, and her mind began to sink into that sharp, intense flavor.
She had started to register the chocolate she was chewing as something of greater value.
So if she gave this chocolate to those two as a gift…
Would they open their hearts to her? That was what she thought.
Because she was lonely.
Just once more, she wanted to make precious comrades—friends.
That was Ian-na's wish.
Even with her mind no longer whole, even with a body that was as good as dead—
Ian-na still yearned for love.
"…Of course. I'm sure they would both love it."
"Mm. Thank you…."
The Adjutant's eyes went impossibly wide. He was looking at me with such an absurdly proud expression that it was more than a little overwhelming.
I hurriedly looked away.
Click-click.
The wheelchair roamed the Bureau's corridors for a long while in a restless circuit.
I wanted a clearer map of the geography—wanted to know, for instance, where I might run if things went wrong.
"Shall we head back to your room now?"
"No… I want to go… to the lounge……."
"You're energetic today."
"…I-I'm in a good mood."
Ordinarily Ian-na did not wander the Bureau like this. The places she visited were quite limited.
Inside the Bureau she was granted a surprising degree of freedom. Aside from a few restricted facilities, she could go wherever she liked.
Was it guilt? Remorse over turning the magical girl who had once protected them into a living corpse?
Well. I didn't know the reason. I didn't need to.
Click-click-click.
After roaming the interior for a good stretch until I was exhausted, I finally headed for my room—
"Welcome back, Director."
"…Ho-jun?"
I came face-to-face with Ho-jun as he stepped out of my room.
Behind him stood doctors in surgical gowns.
I realized something had gone wrong.