Chapter 91
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 91
Chapter Title: A Story for a Short Break
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"Goddamn it, this is hopeless. Fuck."
Choi Nayun, from the Magical Detective Agency, suddenly spat out a curse and clutched her head.
"Hey!!! I told you not to curse every time I work!!!"
"No, this is impossible not to curse about!"
It was driving her truly insane.
Or maybe she was already half-mad.
The situation was just that utterly hopeless.
It all stemmed from a single request handed to her by Lee Seobin—once her Magical senior back when Nayun was a Magical Girl herself, and now a Magical Major General.
Choi Nayun let out a sigh and buried her face in her hands.
'Senior Seobin, what the hell is this?!'
The request itself wasn't anything major. Honestly, it was so simple it barely qualified as a request.
The task was to find records on two people who had gone missing after the Monster invasion.
And the targets were just two ordinary civilians, no less.
'They said they were the parents of some guy named Kim Siyul.'
Even if records had been wiped out after the Monster invasion, that didn't mean everything was completely gone.
You could dig them up if you tried hard enough.
The only reason people didn't was the cost.
That's what gave birth to the new profession of Magical Detective Agency.
The "Magical" prefix wasn't for any fancy reason. It was just because the first person to pioneer this field had been a Magical Girl.
Like special forces veterans selling tactical manuals as books after discharge, these ex-Magical Girls were squeezing every drop of info they'd gathered during their service to carve out new jobs.
As more and more such Magical Girls piled in, Magical Detective Agencies became an established line of work.
Anyway.
So, the main business of a Magical Detective Agency was tracking down records of missing people.
It was something Choi Nayun excelled at.
On top of that, Lee Seobin had even provided data compiled from what Kim Siyul himself had said.
It was too easy to even call a request.
Practically a Magical Baby submission.
So when she first got the job, Nayun was certain: This'll be over quick.
But.
'This is maddening, seriously.'
That naive thought had been shelved ages ago.
Now she was just muttering curses under her breath.
'Fuck.'
She'd poured in a decent amount of time, but hadn't gotten a single solid Magical result.
'Nothing fucking matches.'
The names existed, sure—but nothing lined up perfectly.
Age, education, hometown, residence—whenever one piece seemed to fit, the rest fell completely apart.
And that's not all. Trying to link them as parents? No matching records existed at all.
They rarely even had any connection to each other.
Not family, not even relatives most of the time, and living in the same area was rare enough to count on one hand.
The closest match was one running a tteokbokki joint and the other a short-term part-timer. Go figure.
Of course, no combos like that turned up any hits.
Not a single proper match.
Like a Magical exam paper where she'd deliberately picked all the wrong answers for a perfect zero.
Choi Nayun rubbed her throbbing temples.
"Hah."
She'd never doubted her skills before.
After all, she'd been the one relentlessly chasing down Magical materials on Magical arch-criminals—the natural nemeses of Magical Girls.
She had every confidence in her abilities. And she was damn good at it.
Even those who looked down on her had to admit her talent. Enough said.
Yet.
Today, for the first time, Choi Nayun had no choice but to question herself.
It felt like hitting a wall.
A limit named impossibility, one she couldn't overcome.
'Couldn't she just do this herself?'
She's way better at it than me. Nayun grumbled quietly to herself.
Whether as a Magical Girl or now in retirement, her senior had a knack for pushing people to their absolute limits.
"Fuck."
Still, Choi Nayun spat another curse and forced her brain into gear. If she couldn't find them, she at least had to report back with some plausible reasons.
In cases like this, there were usually three possible causes.
First off.
Lee Seobin had compiled the data wrong.
'No.'
Rejected immediately.
Lee Seobin was the worst boss during their Magical senior-junior days—not because she sucked at her job, but because she was too good at it.
Of course the data was flawless. Nayun couldn't match it even after years of effort.
So data quality was not the issue.
Then, second.
Kim Siyul had lied.
'Nah.'
Not impossible, but the odds were low. She leaned toward no.
'No gain in it.'
There was no benefit to lying.
Magical Detective Agency fees were steep. Even going through Lee Seobin just bumped up priority—price stayed the same.
Plus, with Seobin footing the bill personally, she'd likely paid some other massive price in its place.
'No idea what, but...'
No one torches that much for a shitty prank, so she ruled this out too.
Which left the last one, third.
The info was wrong from the ground up.
'This has the most weight.'
If the info Kim Siyul believed was true was actually false, things would line up somewhat.
'Or rather...'
More accurately, Kim Siyul was out of his mind and clinging to corrupted data.
'Yeah, possible.'
Judging from Lee Seobin's data, Kim Siyul was definitely not all there.
A Magical deserter who evaded capture even during the Monster crisis.
A Magical concept nut who'd spent 10 years in another world.
A Magical lunatic claiming to be the Hero of the Moon.
And that's not all—he stubbornly insisted his old unit had already discharged him.
'What the hell is a Gorani Unit anyway?'
Obviously, no such unit had ever existed here, nor would it.
A true psychotic among psychos.
No way the info from a nutjob like that was straight.
Absolutely not.
'So the Magical root cause is that guy after all.'
With that conclusion, Choi Nayun closed the file.
'Huh?'
Then flipped it open again.
'Weird.'
A sense of incongruity hit her.
Kim Siyul's own records were relatively solid.
At least up to enlistment and right before desertion.
'The Monster incident definitely happened after he deserted.'
Timeline went roughly like this:
Enlistment → Desertion → Monster outbreak → Mass Magical Girl awakening → Monster crisis resolution and reconstruction → Captured and re-enlisted as Magical Girl.
Simple enough. He got careless once the world stabilized and got nabbed.
But.
'...It doesn't add up.'
This contradicted Kim Siyul's statements.
'He definitely said 10 years in the other world.'
There was a slight discrepancy between his desertion period and the time he claimed to have spent there.
Of course, that didn't mean he was right. She still leaned toward him lying.
Another world? Please.
Those 10 years were probably just his time on the run.
However.
Kim Siyul was 33 now, and he'd said 10 years dodging capture—so backtracking, he should've deserted at 23.
'He said he was discharged too.'
But records showed he'd bolted right after assignment post his 21-year-old enlistment.
In other words, a Magical discrepancy.
'Maybe look into this...'
Choi Nayun's eyes gleamed.
Kim Siyul might've miscounted his flight time. To a deserter, 10 or 12 years probably felt the same.
A guy whose head wasn't right anyway—fat chance he calculated properly.
Plus, if no one else had poked at this, there had to be a reason. Maybe her hunch was just a fluke.
But.
It piqued her interest more than it should.
Felt like something was there.
And the bit about Kim Siyul becoming a Magical Girl nagged at her too.
'Why the hell?'
He was useless as a Magical Girl. Guy couldn't even use magic.
Why bother making him one?
Plenty of other ways to use him.
'Senior seems to have her reasons.'
Well, once Lee Seobin started paying close attention, the odds of her pulling strings to make him a Magical Girl shot up.
Nayun knew that well.
Impossible not to.
Heck, Nayun herself had fallen for Seobin's silver Magical tongue and extended her service like she was bewitched.
Not that she could blame Seobin for it.
She'd stamped her own Magical mark in the end.
'Fuck, I was such a crazy bitch back then.'
But.
From what Nayun could tell based on Seobin's data, the momentum for making Kim Siyul a Magical Girl had been building even before Seobin's decision.
It boiled down to this:
Which Magical unit Kim Siyul went to? That had Seobin's Magical fingerprints all over it.
But becoming a Magical Girl? That started from the moment of capture.
It felt like there'd been this subtle intent to turn him into one.
She couldn't be sure.
Just a gut feeling that hit her.
'Well, might as well cool my head and check it out.'
Her listless eyes suddenly sparked with drive again.
Of course, it had zero direct relation to the request.
Basically slacking off.
'But.'
If she played it right, she could wrap up the request neatly with this. Magical self-justification complete.
And so, Choi Nayun hammered away at her Magical monitor and keyboard late into the night.
To uncover the life of this Kim Siyul guy.
"Th-that bitch is pulling another side gig for Magical overtime pay again."
Oblivious to how her own life was unfolding.
"That fucker's really gunning for top Magical performance review."
The Magical Detective Agency was peaceful as ever today.
And meanwhile.
Kim Siyul, whose life was being unraveled by someone else, was currently...
"Hey, you scrap-heap rejects. Step aside. Just do it like they taught us in training earlier."
Putting out a Magical fire.
"Kim Siyul, you fucking bastard!!!"
With the help of his Magical Captain.