A Sky with Hidden Stars
A Sky with Hidden Stars
Blue Sirius and Han Jae-jung were lovers.
Past tense: they aren’t anymore.
And not just the two of them—years ago, anyone who used the internet knew about their relationship.
Their romance sent such enormous ripples that you could call it the event that made the public active participants in magical-girl love lives.
The backlash boiled down to two main causes.
One was Han Jae-jung’s past.
He’d been a serious troublemaker who caused a major violent incident in middle school.
The truth was that he hadn’t been bullying anyone—he’d personally punished someone who was bullying others—but the public had no interest in the truth.
Still, the people who made an issue of it at first were just the usual overprotective die-hard magical-girl fans. The kind you’d expect.
That past might have stayed buried, known only to those who dug deep into magical-girl fandom.
But then a certain incident unearthed it and got him thoroughly buried in society.
That incident was the fundamental reason their relationship fell apart.
And it was the reason magical-girl dating became taboo.
The summary is simple.
When a monster attacked their school, a camera happened to catch Blue Sirius prioritizing Han Jae-jung’s rescue over other civilians.
A hero who was supposed to be equal to everyone had abandoned other victims to save her boyfriend first...
It blew up into a massive social controversy.
Heroes are human too. Of course you’d look after the person you care about first.
Didn’t Confucius himself say to start with the people close to you? It was absurd that a nation built on Confucianism to the bone would erupt over something like that, but at the time, it was a huge scandal.
A violation of equality.
That talking point was enough to enrage the public.
Once Blue Sirius’s favoritism controversy broke, attention naturally turned to her boyfriend, Han Jae-jung.
And that was how his violent incident became known to everyone.
Internet sleuths dug up his past, played up how vicious he’d been in middle school, and used that as a pretext to agitate that Blue Sirius must have terrible character too if she’d date someone like him.
Some did it just for fun. Others were fans of different magical girls who had ulterior motives to tear her down. Eventually the heated public opinion spread to the broader public, and people who barely knew the details started piling on alongside the frenzy.
The ultimate punk bastard Han Jae-jung, and Blue Sirius—birds of a feather flock together. Done.
Go outside without covering his face and he’d get his picture taken and turned into a meme. Strangers came to his school to hurl insults. Sometimes he got eggs thrown at him.
Saying a piece of shit like him was ruining magical girls.
If real life was that bad, the internet goes without saying.
In the end, unable to endure this nationwide ostracism, Han Jae-jung declared a breakup to Blue Sirius.
Alongside it, he issued a false statement claiming he’d threatened her—so that Blue Sirius could resume her magical-girl activities normally.
It’s impressive I didn’t kill myself back then.
Although if I had, it would’ve genuinely broken Blue Sirius’s mind, so even if I’d tried, the guilt probably would’ve stopped me.
Given all that history, I find Blue Sirius—that woman—deeply uncomfortable.
Just looking her in the face makes my head ache.
A guilt embedded deep in this body, and an aversion acquired afterward.
Even without the quest, I would’ve tried to get away from her as fast as possible.
“Sorry, but I have no desire to hang around with you.”
[MEGREZ.]
Even if Alkaid was sealed, I still have Megrez. The green armor shifted into a form with black gloves and spikes bristling from the shoulders, like a biker thug out of a 90s manga.
Dark-green starlight coalesced into a bike. I climbed on without hesitation.
“I’ve been up all night. I’m seriously drowsy.”
I started the engine and moved to launch into the sky.
Crrrack.
Ice bloomed across the wheels and the ignition, seizing the bike. I almost had my hand frozen to it and yanked it off fast.
“Well.”
“Sorry, but I do have to hang around with you. I’ve been up all night too. Looking for you.”
Crrrrrack—!
A massive ice wall rose behind me. The wall looked harder than most steel, more than enough to restrict my movement radius for a moment.
I could smash it by force if I wanted to, but...
“Running away is a problem.”
With her interfering, that wasn’t easy.
Shnnng. With the menacing sound of steel, a hoarfrost-laden slash erupted where I’d been standing. A pure-white mist bloomed wherever the strike passed, freezing even the water vapor in the air.
The ghost-white vapor quickly began to take shape. It slowly formed human arms, legs, a torso, and finally a face. It wasn’t an unfamiliar face. It was identical to the person rushing at me right now.
A Blue Sirius figure that looked woven from gleaming blue-white threads materialized.
Like the original, she held a silver rapier and thrust it at me. A beam shot from the tip of the blade that would freeze everything in its path.
Sirius looks like a single star, but it’s actually a binary system.
One of the binary’s traits is Multiple Magic.
She can use two spells in two places simultaneously.
A technique unique to Blue Sirius, built around that ability.
Phantom Frost Sword.
A seamless blade-dance of illusion and ice magic. With its distinctive white frost-mist included, she could seize an overwhelming visual advantage over her opponent.
Crrrack-crunch! It sounded less like a slash and more like something being ground apart. And it wasn’t far off. Everything on that trajectory was freezing under the frost wind and being torn to shreds.
Even in this body, taking a hit like that was obviously bad. I evaded fast to the left. Even without the bike, the Megrez form boasts my best acceleration. An attack on that level wouldn’t—
At that moment, my foot slipped.
...Ice?
It wasn’t the dry floor of a construction site. It was an ice rink, right where I’d stepped. No—not just here. Most of the floor had already been turned to ice.
Blue Sirius had formed skate-like ice blades on her shoes so she could move fluidly across her own ice.
Back in high school she used to train at the ice rink all the time. So she mastered it.
I laughed as I read Han Jae-jung’s memories.
“Impressive.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
Crunch! I blocked Blue Sirius’s rapier with my forearm as she glided comfortably across the ice.
It seemed I couldn’t avoid a direct clash. The snow-crystal starlight fluttering around her was so beautiful it was almost blinding.
Fitting for the woman said to produce the strongest starlight of all active magical girls. Even if she’s a binary, she’s officially treated as a single star, but that starlight output—there’s no way it counts as one. Even the force I just took head-on...
[Judging from the starlight output, it is estimated she can produce power equivalent to at least a triple-star class. At full strength, the possibility of exceeding even that is detected.]
Yeah, I know, you piece of junk.
Feeling slowly faded from my arm. Blue ice spread from the spot where the rapier had touched me.
“Hey. Let me ask you one thing.”
I looked her straight in the eye and asked.
“Have you ever seen the stars?”
Blue Sirius laughed softly and answered.
“How could I, when you people darken the sky?”
The freezing spread past my arm, climbing toward my shoulder.
“When you people erase the stars and block the light. When it’s you people killing us magical girls.”
Cold fury climbed my arm. Her eyes were shot through with countless flecks of blue starlight. Starlight that, being in her own eyes, she couldn’t see.
Blue Sirius was furious at me right now. More precisely, at the monsters I represented. At the society teeming with those monsters.
At this terrifying reality where someone’s starlight could be devoured by the darkness and vanish at any moment.
“...Yeah. That figures. That’s a good fury.”
If we stayed locked like this, my whole body would freeze solid. I shoved her stomach with my foot. The pain of the broken lock forced Blue Sirius back.
“Nngh!”
“But you’re directing that fury at the wrong target. I don’t particularly intend to block your light.”
Even talking with her wasn’t pleasant.
I put my hand to the Belt and turned the buckle.
“And I have nothing more to say to you, either.”
[ALIOTH.]
Alioth.
The fifth star of the Big Dipper.
The star governing the domain of the Flame Nail—the star that symbolizes the madman, the swindler, and the perpetrator of atrocities.
Flame Nail: the star, and the nail of flame.
The star magic granted to me is the nail of fire.
My body flared white-hot and the armor blazed red.
The intense heat melted the ice on my arm, raising steam.
In my right hand formed a rapier that looked like a nail: a red grip matching the armor’s color and a black blade.
“The things I wanted to say, I finished saying them a long time ago. Move. I have no business with you.”
“Even if you don’t, I do...!”
Blue Sirius cut across the ice, and I melted the ice she had created as we charged at each other.
[SET. FALLING STARFIRE PATH.]
A ring of starlight formed on each of our blades, rotating, scattering stellar particles, and igniting starlight that wouldn’t die even in the morning sun.
Two slender blade-tips, smaller than fists. They met exactly, without the slightest deviation, piercing each other’s points.
The Path of Glittering Snow.
A single road where snow glittered radiantly.
The Falling Starfire Path.
A road where a star burned and fell.
Her path and my path collided.
KWA-BOOOOOM!!
Extreme cold met extreme heat. The high-density magical forces clashed with an ear-splitting roar, and the ice melted in the heat, generating a dense white fog like dry-ice smoke.
The fog was as immense as the magical forces that had met.
[FALLING STARFIRE PATH manifestation successful. Replication rate: 40%.]
Neither of us won or lost.
I didn’t want to lose deliberately, and I didn’t want to wound that body, either.
She and I were both swallowed in the white veil. At last, we had equal visibility. The result was that we’d both lost it.
At least we were on equal footing.
A perfect ending.
The fog cleared, and Blue Sirius looked around. Because I had vanished from in front of her.
“Where...”
“Over here.”
Like a stonecutter, I drove the nail into the wall, splitting cracks into it. The Flame Nail melted the ice wall. Once the path was open, I climbed onto the bike and waved.
“Take care. Let’s never meet again.”
Blue Sirius rushed to catch me, but I ignored her and started the bike.
How do you catch a bike that runs by folding the heavens using the Heaven-Folding Art? Unless you’ve got the same Heaven-Folding Art yourself.
The engine caught, and the bike warped across the sky.
**
Maybe mentioning the Heaven-Folding Art had been foreshadowing. No—since the quest completion notification hadn’t popped up, maybe this was the intended sequence all along.
“Hi.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
A petite pink magical girl flew casually alongside my bike. Pink Deneb.
On her back, wings resembling a swan’s had unfurled, larger than she was tall.
The difference from a swan’s wings was that hers weren’t made of feathers but of countless tiny crows. And those crows had black bellies but pink plumage.
“Looks more like a flamingo than a swan.”
“Thanks. Way hipper—I like it!”
She was holding a leisurely conversation beside a bike that folded the heavens as it ran. Her acceleration was genuinely incredible. I had thought I could escape comfortably, but I had run into an obstacle I had never expected.
I nearly wiped away sweat that wasn’t there.
“I see. So you’re the one who sicced Blue Sirius on me.”
“Yep. Do you have any idea how hard I worked? Trying to track down one specific monster in this huge city with nothing but starlight detection.”
The Crimson-Winged Crows that made up her wings could sense magical energy.
Since I’d been demonstrating various techniques to those low-level monsters at dawn, it was inevitable she’d be drawn to me.
Why, of all days, did she have to be out on a detection patrol on the exact day I was experimenting on monsters?
Well—detecting a recently discovered S-rank monster was only natural, wasn’t it.
“I was up the whole damn night thanks to you. And here you are, taking a nice little aerial joyride? Are you fucking kidding me.”
“I’m not relaxed at all.”
“Looks that way to me, so what.”
Deneb.
The star that symbolizes the magpie bridge connecting the Weaver Girl, Vega, and the Cowherd, Altair.
Of course, the Cowherd’s star is Dabih, not Altair, but Deneb’s fixed symbolism doesn’t change easily.
And so, Pink Deneb’s ability is—
“The sky is our territory, you goddamn monster bastard!”
A bridge connecting magical girls to one another.
A massive flock of birds blocked the bike’s path, and a bridge woven from Crimson-Winged Crows spread out around it.
From beyond that bridge, starlight that wouldn’t die even directly beneath the sun welled up.
Red and blue starlight.
“A red comet to your heart!!”
“Did you think you could get away?”
Ah, goddammit.
“Red Vega, here!”
“I still have a lot to say to you.”
Two more magical girls appeared, pink plumage streaking their flight paths.
Both were people I’d seen recently, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled.