Murphy's Law
Murphy’s Law
I threw up everything Red Vega had bought me the night before, then kept retching even after there was nothing left. The act of emptying itself held meaning.
Only after I’d thrown up for a long while could I finally calm down.
After that, I went to the bank as planned.
Learning from last time’s failure, I went somewhere a bit farther from the area I’d rampaged through, and luckily it was still open.
When I checked my accounts, there were three under my name. One was definitely linked to my card: a beggar’s account with a balance of 38 won. The other two held some money, but using either left a really bad taste.
‘Looking at the transaction history, is this my parents’ insurance payout...?’
I remembered Han Jae-jung’s past—how he’d lost his parents to a monster.
He probably couldn’t touch a single won of it until now out of guilt.
But I can’t help it anymore. No time for sentiment or circumstance. I decided to break into that precious money.
‘Later on I ought to donate it to some group for children victimized by monsters.’
To earn money, first I have to survive, don’t I? Grinding my teeth against the guilt, I withdrew cash from that account.
The remaining one had a balance even larger than the insurance payout, but the source of the money was unknown.
Someone had been wiring the exact same large sum every month without fail. It felt almost obsessive.
Creepy, so I decided to keep it sealed off.
Money from an unknown source isn’t something you touch.
Next, I activated a cheap burner phone that couldn’t even browse the internet properly.
Device specs were utterly useless to me, so as long as it made calls, I didn’t care. Since I couldn’t even look at the internet, I actually preferred it.
I meant to go sign a lease on a place afterward, but I was too exhausted—just brutally tired—so I walked into a jjimjilbang and slept.
That night my fever spiked, and I ended up in the ER.
**
“Screwed....”
I rubbed the IV mark on my arm and muttered. The ER’s expensive.
The money took a real hit. It’s the insurance money—I shouldn’t be throwing it around. Dammit.
Now I get it. I understand why the Belt kept warning me. Even in a transformed state that’s vastly superior to an ordinary body, if you push too hard, the recoil hits just as hard.
The reality of that sank in deeper when I looked at my leg, caked in bandages and medical tape.
From the encounter with Dilemma, all the way to the magical girls.
How many times had I even used the Seven-Star Step Kick when the recoil is already this brutal? The pain’s only getting worse as time passes. My head still aches pretty badly, too.
Maybe it was because the pain kept me from sleeping. Even sitting in the hospital chair, waiting, my eyes kept drooping shut.
My vision was hazy, like the moon through fog, and beside me I saw the Belt floating. Quite a while had passed since morning, and it was staying quiet. No quest notifications, no transformation demands—that part was a relief.
Does the quest system only run at an intensity the user can handle?
When my body’s wrecked, the Belt seems to hold back, as if judging I lack the capacity to take on a quest.
‘If you’re capable of that kind of consideration, then hold back a little the rest of the time, too.’
Thinking back to quests that blared at night and wouldn’t even let me sleep, my stomach turned.
‘I’m losing it....’
It’s only my third day since coming to the world of Magical Girl Golden Age. No—another day had passed, so was it the fourth? No home yet, no job. Hostile relations with every magical girl and Dilemma member. And on the third night, the ER.
It’s miserable.
I leaned back and pressed down the injustice and the futility of it all. In just four days, I’d pushed through deadly danger more times than I could count.
I might as well be a soldier deployed to a damn war zone.
My situation left me with nothing but sighs, so I decided to laugh instead. At least if you laugh, good fortune will follow.
“Libra....”
According to Contradiction, Libra is beginning operations. A golden monster roaming the world in search of a sacrifice that can be justified.
It means the real ordeal’s starting now.
In the original work, Libra was the one who kicked off Dilemma’s activities in earnest, so there’s nothing particularly strange about it.
But since I’m here, he’ll obviously prepare more thoroughly. He might have included me as a test subject alongside the magical girls.
‘It’s complicated.’
Anyway, these are things you can’t know until the situation actually hits. I stopped thinking useless thoughts. I tapped my forehead a couple of times to pull myself together.
My eyes drifted up. At the edge of my vision, a small box came into sight.
A box that spews the fruits of civilization without restraint, always kindly delivering the world’s news even to the outskirts. Right now, to me, a box that holds something more horrific than Pandora’s box.
It was a TV.
I was sick of myself for having to make such a fuss over a stupid thing like that, but at the same time I was just so fed up. What the hell is that thing, that I have to suffer this much?
To become an individual unconquered by civilization, I forced my eyes to stay on it.
[The S-rank monster that appeared downtown yesterday....]
News about me was on.
Dizziness hit me instantly. My hands and feet shook like someone with hypothermia, and my sweat ran opposite—like lava. Not mere fear; a phobia that needs to be classified as a medical condition.
But I faced it. Living in modern society, avoiding the media forever is impossible. A sensation I’d have to confront someday—so I faced it while I still could.
My body’s already broken. Even if it hurts more, it’s not going to find words to dress me up as anything worse than a wreck. Better to hurt all at once when you’re already hurting.
[Citizens voice growing anxiety....]
The news was exceedingly simple.
It was about how the magical girls’ defeat by the monster had been broadcast live, in full, and how public anxiety had swelled. It was the obvious story.
People can lose sometimes—do they have to win every single day?
There was hardly any mention of the desperate fight they’d put up—the kind where you can lose your life. It was just the usual array of useless sound bites, half-baked countermeasures coughed up, gossip material stirred up, and pundits pontificating without real plans.
Destroyed buildings, photos of them collapsed, interviews with anxious citizens, and panelists billed as experts tearing into the magical girls. It all made me sick.
It had been a fight where they gave their absolute best, where they even put their lives on the line trying to protect the citizens. The reason they couldn’t focus on me immediately—wasn’t that because they’d split their concentration to help civilians evacuate?
“Hoo....”
Focusing on the TV any longer seemed bad for my body and mind, so I lowered my head. Dizzy. Nauseous, too. I guess overcoming the media is still too much for me.
“Um... are you all right?”
Just how bad had my expression looked? Enough to make a total stranger feel pity? Well, given how haggard and worn I look right now, it’s only natural to be concerned.
I waved a hand, telling the kind stranger not to worry.
“I’m all right... it’s just a brief panic attack—huh?”
When I turned my head, I saw a face I truly hadn’t expected.
An embarrassed expression clear even behind a mask. Pink eyes slightly creased beyond the sunglasses. Two-tone hair—black and pink—glossy, bleached or dyed, spilling from under a cap. Flashy piercings decorating the ears, and heavy makeup, too. Despite that strong impression, her height was quite short and petite.
There was no doubt.
“Pink Deneb—mmmph!”
“Shh! Don’t say the name! You see how I look, right?”
Pink Deneb. One of the magical girls I fought yesterday.
Startled, she clamped my mouth shut and looked around. Cap, mask, sunglasses. Right—so she’s hiding her identity. I nodded.
A shock went through me. My body froze like a mouse before a lion. Why did she, of all people, have to be here?
As if that news hadn’t already left me sick with unease.
My heart felt like it was crumpling up. Partly guilt, and partly because my own conscience was stabbing me.
Acting casual in front of someone you beat the crap out of yesterday takes a surprising amount of nerve.
Middle school had been like that, too. Ah, nothing but bad memories.
“So, are you really all right? Want me to get a doctor?”
“No. Really, I’m fine. If I just stay still, it gets better on its own.”
We ended up murmuring, as if we were sharing a secret.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve gone through something like this, or the second... so I’m really fine.”
“Yeah? That’s a relief.”
An odd speech pattern that mingled casual and polite as she pleased. Maybe it was because I was a stranger—she’d started off polite, but once she saw my face and I looked young, she seemed to waver and drop to casual speech. A kind of confusion.
“Speak however you’re comfortable.”
“Yeah? Then you drop the formal stuff, too, old man.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that....”
“What, you want to make me the only one with no manners?”
“Fine. I’ll use casual speech.”
She’s younger, and casual speech is no big deal. I chuckled softly and lowered my head. Thinking back to that news content, I couldn’t bring myself to look up.
“...Pathetic, right?”
“What do you mean? No. What?”
“Pfft... you don’t have to fix it. Just... you saw the news earlier. Us getting totally wrecked.”
Is this what sitting on pins and needles feels like?
Right now, I desperately wanted to escape this place. I’m the one who got them subjected to public blame—what face am I supposed to make while listening to her?
I was sorry. Still, I had no regrets.
If I hadn’t acted then, I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. The short-term defeat that tanked their reputation—it was an action I absolutely had to take. And so I have no regrets. I have to have no regrets.
“One of our juniors got really torn up inside... lost again... she was practically crying.... Ah, I’m not quite that bad. I’m used to losing, so....”
Suddenly, Pink Deneb cut herself off with an awkward laugh.
“Haha, sorry. Talking nonsense to a total stranger. You kind of remind me of someone I know, and... I was feeling all messed up myself, so... What a crazy bitch, babbling to a sick person.”
“....”
“...You’re anxious too, aren’t you, old man?”
She stood up from the chair and looked down at me.
She asked if I was anxious, but the person asking looked anxious herself. It sounded like a question she was asking to confirm it.
“Still, don’t worry. No matter what happens, we’ll stop them from laying a single finger on you citizens. Well... there is a chance we might lose again, I guess. If you can’t trust that, it can’t be helped.”
“I trust you.”
The anxiety wasn’t only the citizens’.
The heroes were in anguish too.
She was a person, too—one of the citizens herself. Just a human, a little special.
“You’ll definitely protect us.”
“Oh... you’re a pretty unexpected guy yourself, old man. That’s a really kind thing to say. Makes me feel good.”
She chuckled as she left. Maybe it’s a magical-girl thing? No trouble at all talking to a complete stranger. Though in this case it was less a conversation and more her venting....
Considering what I’d done, and that I’m a fan, this much is a reward.
Luckily, she was the one to leave first. With this, I could say my connection to Pink Deneb was definitively over.
Nothing could be better.
It was just a fleeting conversation—you couldn’t even call it getting involved. Thinking a couple of words exchanged at a hospital would build any lasting connection—that’d be indulging a truly absurd excess of self-importance.
—Mr. Han Jae-jung.
“Yes.”
I stood up when I heard the counter calling.
“...Han Jae-jung?”
“Oh shit, it really was him! I was wondering who the hell—!”
I was forced to think.
Why had Pink Deneb been at this hospital? Even if it was for treating injuries from the last battle, magical girls and I heal up with a few bandages. Not the kind of serious wounds that need treatment in the ER.
In that case, who had she been waiting for?
Among the magical girls, who makes frequent hospital visits?
Who was the one person Blue Sirius relied on, practically alone among all the magical girls?
“Jae-jung... huh?”
Life is both fleeting and terribly, painfully strange.
How is it that I only run into the people I least want to meet, one after another?
[Quest generated.]
...And even the words I least want to hear.
Could Murphy’s Law actually be real? Misfortune orbits and returns like the diurnal motion of a star.
To some, it’s just a composite of selective memory, but when you’ve suffered unbroken misfortune for four days straight—for me, at least—doesn’t that make it a proven truth?
Behind me, a familiar, beautiful voice rang out, but I ignored it as best I could and silently finished paying.