The Auction of the Fallen Fairy
The sky above the auction house hung heavy with dark clouds, ready to unleash rain at any moment. Gray backdrop against the yellowish ground. The whole damn world just looked miserable. Every step I took made the plastic bag in my hand crinkle loudly. When I left the market, I spotted the middle-aged man and Pania in the distance. They must have been having a great time; the girl who had been laughing while talking with him quickly wiped the smile from her face and turned away the moment she saw me approaching. The hand holding the bag of apples was trembling badly.
“Convey your sincerity in any way possible...?” I recalled the godmother’s advice and shook my head. Apples my ass. It takes two hands to clap, doesn’t it? When the other person reacts like that, what the hell am I supposed to do? Anything I say would just be stepping on a landmine.
“Enough chatter. Let’s get moving. Looks like it’s about to rain.”
“Understood. Where shall I escort you, Lady Xena?”
The man answered quickly, even though he couldn’t possibly have missed the awkward tension flowing between me and Pania. He really did have the guts to bet his life on a magical girl.
“Somewhere that deals in rare goods or information would be good.”
“Could you be more specific about the kind of goods and information you seek? If it makes you uncomfortable, you need not answer, but a clearer direction would allow me to provide more precise guidance. That is why I ask.”
I couldn’t exactly tell him I was planning to challenge the mayor of Hespina City. I shut the man’s words down with a single phrase.
“It’s uncomfortable.”
“I see… Rare goods and information that satisfy both conditions… In that case, how about the auction house?”
The man flinched for a moment but quickly offered the answer. The auction house. That massive tent I’d seen while entering the slums. Just as he said, it was definitely a place where rare items gathered. The problem was that it was the slums’ auction house. What kind of valuables could poor people possibly have? It was hard to trust. A single pig? A bundle of firewood? Things like that?
The man seemed to read my thoughts and shook his head.
“Lady Xena, are you familiar with explorers?”
“I know them.”
Wanderers dressed up with the fancy title of explorer. Idiots who roam the wasteland hoping to strike it rich, scavenging trash. Most of them either starve to death in the wilderness or end up sold as slaves to bandit gangs, as far as I knew.
“Is that so…?”
He looked surprised by my answer. That made sense. Most magical girls had no interest in the desperate struggles of the poor trying to escape rock bottom.
“Since you already know, I will explain directly. At the auction house, quite a few valuable items that explorers have picked up while wandering the wasteland appear. It is extremely rare, but magical tools have been auctioned before as well.”
When the man finished speaking, Pania’s eyes widened.
“What…?”
And my reaction was no different from hers.
“Magical tools have been put up for auction?”
“Yes. It wasn’t anything particularly impressive from what I recall. Still, it supposedly set a new record for the highest price.”
Ordinary people weren’t completely unaware of magical tools. They could even use them, after a fashion. The sight of a normal human waving one around like they’d become a god, only to have their head chopped off by a magical girl, was an annual event that came up often enough to be almost routine.
The problem was that you had to pour mana into an object to determine whether it was a real magical tool. Anyone who wasn’t a magical girl couldn’t tell the difference. For that reason, most magical tools were treated as mysterious junk with unknown purposes and quietly disappeared.
I swallowed hard without realizing it.
“When does the auction start? No, never mind… that doesn’t matter. Guide us to the auction house.”
I sometimes forgot the fact that I was a magical girl. In this world, if a magical girl told an auction to open immediately, it opened. When the other party was human, nothing was impossible for a magical girl.
“There is no need for concern. Since it is still morning, the auction should begin after a short wait. In that case, allow me to escort you to the auction house.”
A massive tent striped with red and yellow. It had looked bizarre even from afar, but up close the sense of wrongness was even stronger. Something that belonged in a fairy-tale traveling circus was sitting right in the middle of a slum. Pania was actually poking the tent with her finger. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who felt the alienation.
“It looks pretty weird…”
“I heard it was something discarded by Hespina City.”
This tent came from the city? The feeling of confusion only grew stronger. Just what kind of place was Hespina City to have imported something this grotesque? I didn’t know what kind of woman ruled it, but I could at least tell that the mayor had terrible taste.
“Please wait a moment. To enter, you must purchase admission tickets. It is a measure to prevent spectators from crowding in and disrupting the auction. As you know, this is a slum, so…”
“Is that so?”
I glanced at the guard blocking the entrance while pretending not to know. The guard who met my gaze carefully stepped back and made way. I walked past him as if it were the most natural thing in the world and entered.
The interior of the auction house was structured like a theater. It had originally been a circus tent, so that made sense. Sticky, humid air different from the cool air outside clung to my skin. Damp and warm—it felt unpleasant. Exactly like being inside a jungle.
It seemed rain had started pouring outside by then; the sound of raindrops hitting the vinyl layered over the tent came through faintly. Me, Pania, and the man called Kwak Seong-heum sat side by side in the front row, on seats at the very edge. The people who had been sitting there first gave up their spots before we even opened our mouths. They willingly handed over the best seats just because I looked at them. What a generous village.
While I was thinking that, a man in a black suit and bow tie stepped up onto the platform. At the same time, the buzzing audience fell silent in an instant. Was it starting?
“Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for visiting our auction house in the small city of Hespina.”
The host bowed politely. So they called it the small city of Hespina. Well, it would be a bit much to call the place you live a slum. Meanwhile, the host continued speaking.
“Everyone who has come today can only be described as truly fortunate. Because just last night! The renowned explorer, Choi Jae-jun, completed his investigation of a newly discovered ruin in the southern region and returned to our small city of Hespina!”
“Choi Jae-jun…?”
“He was still alive?”
It was a name I’d never heard before. Sellers attaching stories to their goods and inventing fictional characters was a common trick, so I let it slide.
“Among the items he brought back, there appear to be quite a few that are believed to be magical tools! Now, allow me to show you the first auction item!”
Along with the host’s booming voice, an employee approached carrying a small case with both hands. The host opened the small case toward the audience. Inside lay a green lump the size of a fingernail.
“The very first item brought by the esteemed explorer Choi Jae-jun! A bean that will grow all the way to the sky if planted in the ground!! Starting at two million magica.”
“......?”
What the hell? What was he relying on to spout such nonsense in front of all these people? But the audience’s reaction was completely different.
“Three million magica!”
“Three hundred and fifty thousand!”
“You cheap bastards! Five million!!”
I turned my head to look at the spectators. The seats were already tangled up in excitement and greed. Were there really that many idiots who would believe something like that? Or were they just throwing money at it like buying lottery tickets because the world was so bleak? They had said a real magical tool had appeared before, after all.
“It’s obviously a scam operation.”
A single voice rang out unusually loud amid the frenzy of excitement. It was Pania, who had been quietly watching the auction. The host, who had been frowning and reaching for the bell, froze. He had probably been about to call the guards, but the moment he recognized Pania’s outfit faintly visible in the darkness, his hand stiffened.
“S-scam, you say? That is absolutely not the case… Our auction house only handles the finest items with complete honesty in order to repay our customers’ trust…”
Pania stood up from her seat at his desperate, stuttering excuses and pointed straight at the host. Her face was even more distorted.
“Like hell it isn’t! You swindling bastard!”
It was an excessively strong reaction. I squeezed my eyes shut at the sight. I knew exactly why she was acting like this.
It was because of me. The trust that had been dismantled piece by piece, and the cold war that had followed. Kwak Seong-heum’s appearance had put it in a temporary lull, but it had always been a precarious situation that could explode at any time. The stress she had been suppressing had finally detonated with the babbling host as the fuse.
“U-understood, Magical Girl! Please calm down! In that case, we will skip the first auction item! We will now show you the second auction item!”
Despite the awkward situation, the host’s handling was skillful. The moment he urgently cut off the flow, Pania sat back down, still fuming.
“I am sure everyone here has heard the name! The fairy who came from the magical world to assist Serafina, the president of the Magical Girl Association! It is Porim!”
Wait. Did I hear that wrong? It was an incredibly vulgar thing to do, but I couldn’t understand the situation at all and dug at my ear.
The host’s words continued.
“She was once a fairy who raised countless magical girls! However, after peace was restored, Porim lost her way and reached out toward power! In the end, Association President Serafina had no choice but to make a grave decision! And so the corrupted mentor of the magical girls has stepped foot into this auction house!”
The host shouted dramatically with exaggerated gestures and movements like he was performing in a play, while the employee opened the cage he had brought. Inside the iron bars was a black poodle curled up and trembling. Its eyes were even bright red. It really did look like me.
Let’s see.
Name: Porim
Type: Dog
True Name: Black Beauty
...... No, that’s not Porim, that’s Black Beauty...
For a slum, the scale was decent, so I had let my guard down. But a slum was still a slum. Was scamming just everyday business for these people?
“She is currently pretending to be an ordinary dog to avoid people’s attention! But there is no doubt that this is the fairy Porim! It is said that if you boil her thoroughly in hot water and eat her, you can obtain the power of a magical girl! We will start the bidding at 1.7 billion magica!”
They kept saying Porim, Porim over and over. It was starting to make me feel embarrassed. Like I was the one standing naked on the platform. I didn’t want to show my increasingly flushed face, so I hung my head low.
At that moment, a figure shot onto the platform like lightning.
“You fucking bitch!”
Pania leaped onto the platform in a rush. She snatched the black poodle, generated an axe, tore through the tent, and ran out. Through the gap in the ripped tent, a downpour was raging. Pania’s back grew smaller and smaller between the sheets of rain.