Plucking Stars from the Sky (3)
Plucking Stars from the Sky (3)
A body that had lost its meaning while searching for life’s answer scattered into starlight. A monster’s life exists only to fulfill a single aim.
The moment the answer is found is always their end.
“Kill me.”
Han Jae-jung watched her in silence. The body that had kept its clear shape despite its wounds was growing faint. Like ink bleeding into water, the brilliant colors drained away.
“Selfish to the end.”
With a deep sigh and a shake of his head, Han Jae-jung glared at Virgo through the red lenses.
“You want me to put the final knife in your dying body? Is that punishment? That’s making me your euthanasia assistant.”
He didn’t sound especially shocked. For the briefest moment he had seen the future, so Virgo’s words had reached him before they left her lips.
He let out another sigh and continued.
“I won’t kill you. But...”
Virgo couldn’t read the future, yet somehow she knew what came next.
“I’ll stay with you to the end.”
Virgo smiled and nodded.
“...Yeah. That’s enough.”
Having heard her reply, Han Jae-jung stepped around Virgo and gathered the two fallen magical girls in his arms. The true victims of this incident, so to speak. Yoon Seol-hwa and Haru Otonashi.
“First, let’s get these two out of here.”
Han Jae-jung had been unconscious from the explosion until he awoke, so he couldn’t know exactly why they were here.
But he could guess.
According to Jo Ah-yoon, Jason had brought them to Dark Matter too. They couldn’t possibly have missed the commotion Lion was causing if they’d been in the area.
Any sane person would have avoided it. But a sudden surge of justice might have drawn them there. Or unavoidable circumstances might have pulled them in. Or perhaps they’d headed toward the center of the disturbance thinking they could find their comrades. Maybe they’d been there by coincidence before the chaos even started.
Countless plausible guesses were possible, but he didn’t know the exact truth. Having learned from experience what a disaster it was to settle for guesswork because of that woman right in front of him, Han Jae-jung wanted the facts.
“Now that I think about it, what were these two doing to get caught up with Lion?”
“Hey...”
Virgo frowned, clearly exasperated, and grumbled.
“I’m literally about to die, you know?! Is this really the time to be eyeing other women?! Unbelievable, right?! Ugh~!! So annoying, annoying, annnnoying!!!”
“Don’t scream. My ears hurt.”
Virgo was genuinely annoyed, and Han Jae-jung couldn’t understand it.
“Lion’s original targets were those two, okay?! But I ended up getting dragged in too... Ugh, seriously. Way to kill the mood.”
The question was resolved.
“I see. Thank you.”
“For what.”
“You protected the two of them while I was asleep, didn’t you.”
“...What are you even saying. I only did it to stay alive.”
Virgo tried to play it off, embarrassed, then gave in.
“Fine. I protected you. It’s what I wanted to do.”
She laughed lightly.
“I never used to feel any sense of reward... but now I do. Is this what it’s like? Like a mother watching her son return in glory?”
“Closer to an older sister than a mother. A stubborn older sister—not motherly, not kind.”
“What the heck are you even saying.”
Han Jae-jung turned his back to her and knelt.
“What are you doing.”
“My arms are already full. Get on.”
“You really can’t stand even a hint of a farewell atmosphere, can you.”
Virgo snorted and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning against him.
“You were talking like you’d do anything for me earlier. Is it really that hard to focus on just me at the end?”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be over soon.”
“I might vanish while you’re busy.”
“If I thought you would, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
The moment they touched, Virgo’s rate of dissolution slowed dramatically. For every bit of starlight that bled from her body and vanished, fresh starlight poured in to replace it.
The white lightning could have stopped, but it didn’t. It branched out, reaching Virgo, lengthening even slightly the time she could remain as a flower.
The cold lightning now felt nothing but warm.
“I plucked a star from the sky. How hard can it be to save one dying person?”
“Tch, all talk.”
“You’re cruel. I’ll have you know I’m quite shaken. You’re not the only one feeling hollow here...”
Laughing lightly, Han Jae-jung leaped high into the sky.
“Maybe neither of us can really grasp it. You or me.”
Even if you cry out romance and promise to pluck a star from the sky, the moment a star that seemed like it would shine for eternity loses its light is always desolate.
The quest rang stubbornly in the corner of his mind. Keep them alive.
**
“...Jae-jung. Are you really going to be okay?”
After he’d contacted Jo Ah-yoon beforehand and handed Yoon Seol-hwa and Haru over to her, Han Jae-jung adjusted Virgo on his back and told her not to worry.
“Don’t worry too much. She’s not even a handful in this state.”
“Puhaha! Well, that’s definitely true.”
“Fucking hell, I’m losing my mind...”
Jo Ah-yoon rubbed her temple through her helmet as if she had a headache.
“My head’s killing me thinking about why that bitch is dying and why you’re the one looking after her... but whatever. You think you’d listen if I told you not to?”
Jo Ah-yoon grinned and raised her middle finger.
“If she croaks, just dump her somewhere shady like a maggot. ‘You were a pain in the ass to the last moment, let’s never see each other again, you late-autumn mosquito of a bitch.’”
Whoosh. A butterfly flew the instant the words left her lips, and Jo Ah-yoon vanished.
“Wow~ what a foul-mouthed little sister. Takes after her oppa, maybe?”
“Her mouth might be like that, but she’s not really a bad person. The bad part isn’t our personalities—it’s your conduct.”
“Oh? Is that why I’m being punished like this? Dying?”
“Compared to everything you’ve done, you’re getting a peaceful end.”
The two chuckled as they walked through the street. The avenue Lion had ravaged was silent, desolate, and eerie.
The breeze carried ash and tickled their feet. It felt like walking along a sandy beach. The only fire left was the dying sun and the white lightning flowing over Han Jae-jung’s body.
“Yeah. A peaceful end. But what can I do? What’s the point of living any longer like this.”
Virgo took in the scene through narrowed eyes. With her madness gone, the world had grown so bright it was terrifying.
“Do I look fine to you? No way. Look at everything I’ve done. In the end, people are animals of oblivion. Time passes and we forget and go mad again. We forget, live shamelessly again, then remember and spew the same bullshit all over again.”
Virgo had no breath. No heartbeat. Nothing but her body itself. Yet even that body was crumbling away. Because along with breath and heartbeat, she had let go of her attachments.
“I hate this world. I hate people. And I hate myself for hating them. Even without me, someone else will commit slaughter. Someone else will pour out resentment. Someone will burn with inferiority, and someone else will slowly go mad from that inferiority. Everyone is bound to go mad. What meaning could there possibly be in a world like that?”
She laughed softly and whispered playfully.
“But there is.”
The evening glow began to spread across the street. The sky gradually reddened, and as if brushing new pigment over it, the white lightning grew brighter.
“In a world not worth protecting, there was still something worth protecting.”
Han Jae-jung’s steps faltered for an instant, then resumed.
“...Virgo.”
“Yeah, what?”
Han Jae-jung, who had been listening silently to Virgo, finally spoke.
“Don’t run away.”
“Run? Me? Kyahaha, what’s that supposed to mean? Where do you think I could possibly go right now.”
“Don’t use death as an escape.”
The ending must not be an escape. The ending must be a knot. It must never remain a cut thread.
“Don’t run away into death. Stay alive and suffer. Live in a hell on earth. You don’t deserve to die. Live and suffer, and wander for the rest of your life to the sound of resentment.”
“That’s seriously too cruel.”
“You’re getting off easy.”
“Hmm~” Virgo hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“You’re right. It’s running. Running. Because it’s hard, and I’m running from everything. But you know what?”
Virgo ran her fingers over the left lens of Han Jae-jung’s helmet as she continued.
“Escaping from a set fate is a kind of running too. Just like the ancient kings who tried to break free of the cycle of life and death, or the figures in myths. Didn’t every single one of them end in ruin? It’s no different now.”
He didn’t so much as flinch even as she touched his eye.
“No matter where I go, I’m setting out on a path of escape, and the end will be ruin. The two branches of fate I’m facing right now—neither one of them can ever be tied off.”
“Then what do you intend to do.”
Han Jae-jung’s steps slowed. The lightning intensified. Like a candle burning fiercest just before it goes out, it flared with its own brilliance.
“Don’t let me destroy your life too. You’re the only act of goodness I ever left behind.”
Virgo scraped up some of his lightning and gathered it on her fingers. It was red starlight, like the sunset.
“You’ve already reached your limit, haven’t you.”
Han Jae-jung stopped walking. The lightning did not go out. It blazed with stubborn attachment.
“That’s impossible.”
“So much bluster.”
The lightning, having burned to the very end, seeped into Virgo’s body, and Han Jae-jung, having exhausted every trace of his own light, powered down.
He had wrung out his starlight to the limit to prolong Virgo’s life, but a stopgap measure could only go so far. The body that had been holding its shape moments before began to rapidly fade.
“Stubborn to the end.”
Han Jae-jung collapsed to his knees, and from behind him Virgo gently wrapped her arms around him.
“...There has to be another way.”
He murmured. His voice was hollow. Virgo laughed and leaned her weight against him. She was terribly light. A weight far too slight to be called a human body.
“You’re pretty selfish too, you know.”
Virgo suddenly giggled by his ear, then waved her hand in front of his face. Even before his bare eyes, now that the transformation was gone, he showed no reaction.
“You’ve burned through all your starlight so you can’t even move a finger, and you’ve lost your left eye besides. Is there really anything left for you to give me here? Isn’t this too much? How much of a bitch are you trying to make me? You never gave me anything, and now you’re just telling me to take?”
Still smiling playfully, Virgo moved around in front of him and placed her hand on his forehead.
“Now that I think about it, you’ve never seen my magic, have you?”
From her fingertips, red starlight welled up.
“I should repay you for showing me a star.”
It was Red Spica’s magic. The miracle that had allowed her to record the fewest casualties in magical girl history. The power of a girl who, once wounded, had gained the strength of transformation.
“Jae-jung. I’ll shoulder one of my two fates. The death half, of course. But I’ll accept your goodwill, and I’ll let you take responsibility for the other fate.”
The miracle of healing.
The warm red light seeped into his skin, and his clouded eye gradually cleared.
“Look at the stars with my eye.”
At the same moment, Virgo’s body grew fainter. As if blending into the evening glow.
She shone red, and crumbled red.
“So that no one like me ever comes again. So that you don’t make the same mistakes I did. Share this fate of mine.”
Virgo smiled bitterly.
“You can do that much, right?”
Han Jae-jung grasped her hand and nodded firmly.
“Your life had countless mistakes, but I will not remain one of them.”
Virgo nodded, satisfied.
“With thorough reason I will remember you, and with emotion I will cherish your memory. I won’t let the madness of oblivion defile you. I will remember your magic, remember that you were a girl, remember your life. I will remember your sins.”
Virgo’s hand, gripped firmly until now, vanished into nothingness.
“I will not forget.”
His hand, which had been clutching the empty air, dropped limply.
“Ah. Guess you can see now.”
Light swirled again in his left eye. The eye, restored and filled with Red Spica’s magical power, turned first to a sight identical to what it now held within: the same light.
An Su-chae met his left eye with her own and grinned, as if teasing.
“Hm? It’s not like this is the first time you’ve seen my face. Why so surprised? What, because I’m as pretty as a star?”
With those words, An Su-chae disappeared. Han Jae-jung let out a short laugh.
“You could’ve at least waited for an answer.”
The process had been miserable, but her final moments had been a star.
In that case, he had plucked a star from the sky and given it to a star.
[Hidden Quest, ‘Save Them,’ completed.]
[Quest ‘Keep Them Alive’ determined to be unfulfilled. However, due to the success of the Hidden Quest, no penalty will be incurred.]
The life of the girl who had spent her whole life trapped in a purple-tinted day came to its end here today. It had been a long road.
With his star-bearing left eye, he looked up at the sky. A single comet drew a shining arc and vanished.
Before he knew it, the sky was dyed in a happy purple.
[Error. Error.]
[Intruder detected in the System!]
The lens inside the Belt, too, held a similar shade of purple.