Plucking Stars from the Sky (2)
Plucking Stars from the Sky (2)
Lightning connected the extremes in a single instant. A massive current of cold flowed along the path of Lion’s eye.
Lion’s body stiffened, and its enormous head collapsed downward.
Boom!
From where Lion fell, ice flowers bloomed in profusion. Ashes froze, dust froze. Even the moment itself seemed to freeze.
“Heh,” Virgo let out a laugh and seared the sight of the giant Lion collapsing into her eyes.
Lion had truly fallen. Even if he had awakened a new power, the difference in starlight alone was astronomical. Even with a weakness, reaching it was nearly impossible. And yet he had done it.
Of course, it might have been mere luck. For an instant, Lion had stopped moving as if entranced, and that opening had been exploited.
But even if it was accomplished through luck, the result did not change.
He had proven it.
A star from the sky.......
“Not yet.”
He quietly warned Virgo, who was staring blankly at where Lion had fallen.
“He isn’t dead yet.”
No sooner had he spoken than Lion’s leg convulsed. A living movement, wholly different from rigor mortis.
“There’s no way a monster that size would die without an explosion. Tough for no good reason.”
“Wh-what?! Why isn’t it dead! That’s cheating!”
“Monsters don’t die even when their hearts are pierced or their throats slit. No way that would kill it.”
Watcher stretched out his hand without a trace of fear. The axe embedded in Lion’s left eye flew back to him and attached to his hand as if magnetized.
Whoosh— He swung the axe, shaking off the blood that had clung to it.
“Can you take those two and run before we get started? Hmm, no. It’s fine.”
After eyeing the terrified Virgo, Watcher faced forward again. He raised the axe defiantly, as if challenging Lion.
Hot blood gushed like an active volcano from where the axe had been embedded. Lion’s mane was dyed with that blood. A crimson glare gathered in its remaining right eye.
“You don’t have to do anything. There’s no need to run. Just wait here. That will suffice.”
Rumble— The ground shook at the slightest movement. Its legs stopped convulsing and planted themselves to balance its massive body.
Its crimson mane gradually blazed up like flames. The flames of profound hue unfurled menacingly, flaunting their majesty, and coiled around its neck as mysteriously as the rotation of a galaxy.
“I’ll manage somehow.”
Virgo looked up at Lion with a pale face. It had merely been restraining its power until now.
That was not a star but akin to a galaxy. Not a fence made by gathering countable stars, but the inside of that fence—a space containing countless, uncountable stars made its own.
If the concept of power were made into a living being, would it look like that?
Kwaaaah! Lion firmly planted its feet on the earth and roared. A radiance so dazzling you couldn’t properly open your eyes surged in like a wave.
Inside the roaring beast’s jaws, those clusters of light gathered. The light sublimated into a colossal mass of energy that seethed, as if it would incinerate everything ahead at any moment.
Fear. That single emotion dominated Virgo’s heart now. The ferocious image of Lion blazing the road years ago resurfaced, and she saw the dead shrieking upon the crimson earth she had witnessed just before losing her mind.
Virgo recalled from oblivion.
The first reason she had gone mad.
No matter how the magical girls struggled, the world would end up like this. Destruction was a foretold future, and no one could escape it.
Thus there was no meaning. The satisfaction of protecting people who clamored without knowing gratitude would never be attained, not even in the future.
All efforts toward protection would ultimately converge into futility.
It would all be destroyed anyway, so what was the point.
Virgo gave up on her sanity. Remembering everything clearly only brought pain. Acting as she pleased, on a whim, was far more comfortable.
Therefore she chose oblivion, and chose madness.
Now she had even forgotten what she was hoping for from this starlight.
Virgo moved forward as if entranced. To be burned to death before witnessing that sight.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay still?”
Watcher—Han Jae-jung—blocked her path. Standing tall before Lion, the very manifestation of hellfire, he swung his axe as large as his own body and planted it firmly into the ground.
“I told you, didn’t I. That I’d pluck you a star, at least. But the one to receive it can’t disappear.”
A broad back, drastically different from when she first saw him. When had the little kid who used to run away trembling from a single low-rank monster grown so large?
At first, it had been a simple whim.
Even in the eyes of the psychologically unstable Virgo, he was an unstable person. For some reason, he seemed more pitiful than herself.
That was why she let him live even after he witnessed her crying. Let him live even when he insulted her. Whatever he did, it only looked laughable, not the slightest threat.
On top of that, his goal was to hunt monsters with that feeble body devoid of any starlight.
It was amusing. The same sensation as watching a wingless butterfly struggle to fly.
Whether for a sense of psychological superiority or because of an instinct she still hadn’t abandoned, Virgo kept him by her side for more than a day. Even knowing she might unknowingly hurt him in a hysteric fit at the slightest irritation, she kept him.
Days passed, and a month went by.
Only then did Virgo realize.
That she was hoping for something from him.
That something was likely the meaning of starlight she had already forgotten.
But Virgo could not allow that. She must not regain her sanity. The closer she came to lucidity, the more she writhed in madness. It was like a drug addict going through withdrawal. The more she tried to retrieve memories, the more pain wracked her body, and her body, craving oblivion, became sensitive and more violent.
At this rate, she felt she might inadvertently harm even him.
Thus, Virgo increased the things she wanted to forget. Because the stronger the will, the more desire answers.
Fortunately, there were many people in Dark Matter. The memories she wanted to commit and forget gradually swelled. When the memories of murder reached their limit, her brain erased them to defend her.
Thanks to that, Virgo gained oblivion, and lost him.
That should have been the case, yet for some reason he was standing before her again. This time, to protect Virgo.
The back of the boy she had always protected had, before she knew it, become so gallant.
‘Ah.’
Watching his back, Virgo salvaged one memory from oblivion again.
It was a trivial scene. Around the time Lion had burned the road and leisurely departed. The body of a child she had seen while trudging weakly among half-destroyed cars.
A small child, not even a boy yet, cradled in the arms of corpses presumed to be its parents.
A life with a still-beating heart, found among countless corpses.
Red Spica held the child and wept for a long time. The reason An Su-chae had been there that day was cradled in her arms.
Why was that scene surfacing now, of all times?
“You wouldn’t know, but I lost my parents to that beast. I can’t lose more here.”
Virgo realized everything. The child she had been able to save, the boy she had protected, and now the young man who was in turn protecting her.
What these three had in common.
“If you’re going to die, at least settle your accounts first.”
At that moment, the light gathered in Lion’s mouth erupted. Flames resembling hellfire dragged everything within its path into a world of nothingness. Amidst the conflagration that burned even ashes, embers, and ice.
A colossal axe with a blade shaped like Ursa Major stood in its way. He drove the shaft straight into the ground and supported the blade with his hand.
Crackle!!! The flames struck not in an instant but in a sustained moment. The floor cracked centered around the shaft and his feet, which endured the impact. The axe blade kept shaking like a window in a typhoon, and the hand supporting the blade continued to tremble under the weight of the flames.
An unbroken onslaught of violence so intense it was hard to even open one’s eyes. Watcher wavered but did not retreat. He could not.
Slowly, lightning-fire gathered upon the axe blade that was enduring the hellfire.
“No one will forgive your sins. Forgiveness is not done by the heavens nor by someone else, but by the victims themselves. The only ones who could forgive you, Virgo, you’ve already eliminated with your own hands. Many will revile you.”
“So, even if you cannot beg for forgiveness, at least allow me to grant you understanding.”
The cold lightning-fire, like the sky itself, soon coiled around the hellfire and froze it. Hellfire burned ice, and lightning-fire froze fire.
“I’ve spoken too long. What I’m trying to say is this.”
Their repetition stretched on like eternity and concluded within an instant.
“I will pluck a star and prove it to you. So give me a testament to remember you by.”
All the flames froze stark white and shot upward, branching out like lightning.
It was the victory of lightning.
“That to someone, you were magic, and you were a girl. Give that to me.”
When the trails of frozen flame reached the sky, a clear sky came into view.
The clouds had retreated.
Virgo stared up blankly at the sky. There was not a single cloud to blur the peaceful, tranquil blue sky.
All she could see was his form, backlit by the sun.
There was no destruction here. No anxiety.
Where the flames had vanished, there was no beast.
Only pure light remained.
“It ran. Leaves a bad aftertaste.”
Clicking his tongue, Watcher turned and looked at Virgo.
“Sorry. I talked big and then let it get away. I didn’t think about this, but... Huh?”
He, who had never shown surprise until now, was surprised.
“Why are you crying?”
Because none other than Virgo was shedding tears.
“Shut up... I’m not crying....”
“Aren’t you crying right now? Is it because I couldn’t keep my promise? I’m sorry. How was I supposed to know that house-sized bastard would run? This is problematic. Then I won’t get the starlight.....”
Watcher, who had been glancing around, chuckled quietly.
“...No. Still, I can keep the promise.”
A crimson point rose from the ice flower. A tiny light with a faint radiance like a firefly. A reward so small compared to what had happened.
Watcher caught that small starlight and offered it to Virgo. The star drifted along the air.
“This is the star I promised.”
That star drifted and drifted until it reached Virgo.
“I succeeded in protecting you, Virgo.”
Grasping that tiny starlight, Virgo wept loudly, like that day when everything burned. Not tears of loss, but tears of proof.
A world that would someday be destroyed.
A meaningless world.
A world where sanity and memories were agony, and madness and oblivion were far happier.
In a world not worth protecting.
Here, there was meaning.
He was the meaning of her guardianship.
Not the destruction of the world, but the reason she had to protect the world was explained.
It was proven that her protection had not been in vain.
Virgo’s starlight was proven here. Her answer was here.
After crying for a long time while holding the starlight, Virgo eventually rose and spoke to him.
“...You said my sins would not be forgiven, didn’t you?”
Guessing what would come, Han Jae-jung nodded solemnly.
“Then, it would be all right if I chose who punishes me, wouldn’t it?”
From the hollow vacancy of her pierced heart, violet starlight scattered.
Her body, having lost its reason for being, turned into starlight and scattered, crumbling. For one who had found her answer, life was no longer required. The ending of a long, long life—its conclusion—began.
“Kill me,” Virgo whispered.