Like Family (11)
Like Family (11)
Han Jae-jung opened his eyes.
“What... is this...”
Total darkness. He thought night had fallen, but the faint traces of sunlight bleeding through the sky above meant the clouds had simply swallowed the sun.
Dust clouds had risen and filled the sky. The land, already dark, took on an even dingier shade. The violet hue—ominous, yet beautiful—was gone. A bleak, silent wind blew.
This was a wasteland. A wasteland infinitely close to the word’s original meaning.
Ruined ground. A place where buildings and such had once existed.
Not a trace of the original structures remained. The ground itself was buried under a fine powder like ash, making its original features impossible to discern.
The devastation was far too complete for a single explosion. Han Jae-jung wondered how he had survived. He couldn’t possibly have endured a blast of this magnitude without being transformed.
He realized only then that he was alone. The smoke was thick and the surroundings were completely destroyed, making it impossible to pinpoint his current location.
Han Jae-jung spat out the grit in his mouth and got up. His body was battered all over, but not so badly that he couldn’t move.
The problem was his eye. His left eye, which had been seeing the past until moments ago, now showed him nothing. Darkness. Not smoke. Something more fundamental.
’...Am I blind?’
Han Jae-jung was eerily calm. He didn’t know if this was temporary or a disability he would suffer for the rest of his life.
Dragging a body that was, aside from this, strangely free of injury, he walked through the waste. The silence pressed down on him, sickening—had even sound been swallowed by the explosion?
“...Virgo?”
Virgo, who had always been noisy, was nowhere to be seen. Had the blast taken her? Had she vanished without a trace, like the countless buildings that once stood here?
No—she might have been dead before the explosion. Just before this place became a wasteland beyond even a ruined city, Virgo’s heart had been pierced by light.
Surviving was the stranger outcome.
Ptuh. Han Jae-jung spat again at the taste of dust and ash in his mouth.
She was definitely dead. Even as he felt certain of it, Han Jae-jung didn’t stop walking in search of Virgo.
Clank. His foot caught on something. He looked down. A scrap of metal. Some fragment of an unknown machine, its original shape unrecognizable.
Anyone who didn’t know the original would dismiss it as junk. But he had a sense of where this metal scrap had come from.
‘That thing Virgo had.’
The machine said to allow more delicate manipulation of starlight.
If it was this thoroughly shattered, it was useless now. He let out a bitter laugh. The item he’d thought was the key to controlling her rampage was destroyed.
A machine, at least, could be written off. But what about people? Yoon Seol-hwa and Haru—White Dabih—were still inside Dark Matter. They might have been caught in the explosion too.
And they might have encountered the monster that caused it.
Either way, the meaning was much the same.
Death.
If the monster possessed enough power to cause this, no magical girl could survive—no matter who they were. An explosion like a missile strike. Who could live through that?
Han Jae-jung questioned again how he had survived.
He let out a deep sigh and picked up the pathetic scrap of metal. Junk that wouldn’t fetch a good price even at a scrapyard. He shoved it roughly into his pocket.
He felt hollow. He was tired.
The past still flickered in his darkened left eye.
Red Spica, Virgo. A magical girl and a monster. Someone he had to protect and had to kill. Pitiable, yet unforgivable.
A person who lived a hollow life and left it hollowly.
Someone he never really knew.
The monster’s attack had overturned the conversation he had worked so hard to arrange.
Even though they had become so deeply entangled, all he had ever known of her was guesswork. Han Jae-jung groaned in pain.
“...Ah.”
Then, suddenly, Han Jae-jung glimpsed one hope. The quest he had been given—‘Ensure Virgo’s survival.’
If she were dead, the quest would be marked as failed and sanctions would have been applied.
But right now, the quest hadn’t reported success or failure.
The quest could still be completed.
“...She’s alive.”
Well, she had clashed with the monster responsible for this catastrophe before. Twice, even. And she had survived both times.
Having survived twice, why not a third?
She’d lost her left arm last time, yet reappeared later with her body intact. She must possess remarkable healing abilities.
Virgo was alive. He was sure of it.
His steps quickened. He didn’t know where to go. He just ran blindly.
Endlessly running, the way he had when escaping Dark Matter before. Running and running.
Running down a road where he couldn’t see an inch ahead. This road was like that escape route. Not so different—the experience of running endlessly with only a vague hope.
It was like hell.
An unceasing hell of eternal suffering.
No matter how far he went, the smoke didn’t clear. Underfoot was ash and finely-ground concrete dust. The landscape never changed.
Han Jae-jung kept running. Find the others, escape this land. Endlessly, with only these goals.
‘Escape?’
Han Jae-jung was self-mocking.
‘Wasn’t my goal to protect?’
But survival left no choice. He had to live first to have a next step, didn’t he? Protecting anyone required staying alive right now.
Running would keep the others alive for now, too.
He could defeat it later. After he’d built up his strength.
‘The machine for controlling the rampage is gone—when is “later”?’
Han Jae-jung was puzzled even as he ran.
‘Is avoiding it like this really protecting anyone? Leaving the possibility that they’ll be in danger again later?’
Then what else could he do? He lacked the power right now.
‘I haven’t even met the monster yet. Why am I already terrified?’
Some things you could know without meeting it. That monster could split the earth and churn the sky just by walking. It could fire meteoric light and reduce an entire region to scorched earth.
That must be what Boötes had meant by a monster that transcended constellations.
His own power was pathetic in comparison. He still couldn’t control it properly, his starlight drained quickly, and he couldn’t fight for long. Fast and flashy, but hollow inside.
A form forced into being by the pursuit of power—and unsatisfactory.
It was easy to imagine defeat and death after battle.
Same as the old days.
Han Jae-jung mocked himself.
No different from when he’d charged blindly into Dark Matter on stubborn pride. No different from back then, fleeing in fear of the monster he’d meant to kill.
No different from the old days, always scared in advance and only ever running.
Red Spica, too. Scared for no reason, he hadn’t stopped her. Afraid that if he interfered, she’d turn on him too. He’d let how many people die?
Afraid that approaching her wounds would ruin their relationship. He’d stayed silent. He could have known, but he chose not to.
He’d come here to die—what was he so afraid of?
Where had the courage gone, the courage he’d had when he first set foot in this place? How could he be this calculating?
Now that he had things to lose, had he become afraid of dying again?
Nothing’s changed.
That monster was his sworn enemy, the one who killed his parents. And yet, rather than challenge it, he was trying to survive and run. Was his own life that precious? Or could he not even muster a desire for revenge against parents he had no memory of?
Was this endless road a punishment for fleeing?
Han Jae-jung realized this space wasn’t real. A dead man’s road—or a vision just before death.
He stopped briefly to catch his breath and thought.
Where did this darkness begin?
This horrible darkness—covering his eyes, stopping his ears, sealing his mouth, clouding his heart—where had it started?
Han Jae-jung pondered in silence.
Was it because his life was precious? Because he had too much to lose? Why hadn’t he tried to understand the girl’s wounds? Why had he held a vague hope that time would heal everything? What was the nature of that terrible hope?
Why had he been unable to control his star’s power until now? Why had he lost reason and emotion, and gone mad?
Virgo had said the cause of madness was oblivion. If you act even after forgetting what you must do—that, she said, is madness.
Han Jae-jung didn’t think she was wrong. He himself was proof.
He had forgotten everything, lived without knowing—yet still felt love, longing, happiness, all of it vague and undefined.
His ex-girlfriend was the clearest example.
He had loved Yoon Seol-hwa without knowing why. It had been a mad love.
Now he knew the reason.
He’d lost his parents to a monster. With no relatives to speak of and facing complete isolation—the one who reached out to him...
“Jae-jung... are you okay?”
...was none other than Yoon Seol-hwa.
His left eye—the eye that had been watching the past—now glimpsed reality. Her, looking down at him with a worried face.
Beside her, White Dabih lay collapsed. Yoon Seol-hwa herself was far from unharmed. Her whole body was covered in wounds, her eyes unfocused. She looked ready to collapse at any moment.
“I’m sorry... just wait a little. I’ll go back and...”
Her transformation had been released. The shock had probably forced it to cancel on its own.
A massive shadow fell over her from behind. Han Jae-jung knew what that shadow was.
The monster that had attacked the road in the past and killed his parents. The monster that had directly set the stage for Red Spica’s retirement. The monster that, now, had given him another reason to run.
The most monstrous of monsters.
Leo.
It had almost no human features—only a savage, beast-like exterior.
A crimson mane and black hide. Its tail was a snake, and its mouth breathed heat like the sun. Its body was as large as a house, inspiring a shrinking terror in anyone who saw it.
Through his half-blind vision, the monster kept coming.
“...I’ll go back and take it down.”
Still, Yoon Seol-hwa’s eyes hadn’t died. Muttering that toward Han Jae-jung where he lay, she adjusted her grip on her ribbon. Her hands were trembling violently.
The monster let out a great roar and the ground shook. Yoon Seol-hwa swallowed dryly and began to transform. She knew how much strain transforming again right after powering down would put on her body. She acted anyway.
Blue starlight wrapped around her, and Yoon Seol-hwa became a magical girl. She charged at Leo once more.
Beside her, Virgo flew in and threw herself at the monster. She moved despite injuries so severe a human would certainly be dead.
“GET AWAYYYYY!!!!”
Just as the two of them reached Leo’s mane together, the monster roared again.
That alone was enough. This roar was laced with starlight—sound that delivered a distinct physical impact, and heat besides.
Both of them crashed to the ground in an instant. Blue Sirius lost consciousness. Virgo, blood bursting from her entire body, rose again.
No heart. One eye crushed. A leg broken. An arm burned away. Horrific wounds.
Starlight scattered from those wounds. She looked about to die. No—she was already as good as dead.
She was burning the last of her life to resist him.
Han Jae-jung’s other half of vision remained in darkness.
Why, of all people, had he chosen magical girls to protect? Why had he felt compassion only for them?
He hadn’t started with such grand intentions. He’d never had such a noble mission in mind.
He hadn’t decided to protect them because they were magical girls. He hadn’t decided to protect them because they were something special.
He hadn’t wanted to protect them because they were magical girls. The people he wanted to protect just happened to be magical girls.
There was only the desire to protect people who were, to him, like family.
That was the most primal feeling.
Han Jae-jung examined the smoke surrounding him.
Endless darkness—and therefore offering the hope that you could walk forever. And while walking, offering the vague happiness that something was being resolved.
Its name was desire.
The moment he understood what the darkness was, a cluster of white stars shone in the distance.
Most were hidden by the darkness and invisible, but he knew—there was light there. The scrap of metal in his pocket glowed as if resonating with it.
He knew why he had to move. He understood what was blocking his way.
This darkness was his enemy and, at the same time, his own—so he had to tear it away with his own hands.
[All Star activation procedures complete.]
All of this darkness was part of him—so he could control it.
He didn’t need the power of a machine. He didn’t need anyone’s help.
[All Stars observed.]
He moved his hand and the darkness transformed into brilliant lightning.
Blinding lightning gathered in his hand—then shifted into a mechanical device. A dial-shaped tool, similar to one he had seen before.
The key to controlling himself had been in this hand from the beginning.
Reason.
He clenched it.
Han Jae-jung rose.
His physical body planted both feet firmly on the earth. A belt fastened around his waist.
He attached the device he had grasped in the vision to that belt.
The crude dial gradually took on a clear form. A bear-like shape with an open mouth surrounded the lens.
The Big Dipper was no longer drawn on the lens.
[ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATION.]
His body was enveloped in pure white light.
No lightning gnawing at his body.
Soon, the armor that had been hidden beneath the lightning until now emerged.
“...Jae-jung?”
Virgo murmured, looking at him.
[I obey my fate.]
He follows fate. Not a fate assigned by someone else—but the mission he found for himself.
[URSA MAJOR.]
Primal as a beast.
And, at the same time, a startlingly cold reason.
His black-stained eyes recovered their true light.
He unleashed a beautiful and pure lightning.