Let's Be Friends (6)
Let’s Be Friends (6)
The moment I powered down, guilt, doubt, and revulsion surged up. I gripped the toilet and emptied everything I’d tried to make myself into today.
As the dry heaving went on, the strength drained from my body, and disgust rushed back to fill the space it left.
My life hasn’t been especially long, but I had a strong premonition that today would rank among the worst days I’d ever have.
In the morning, I watched people I know collapse. At lunch, I fought a monster and was reduced to half a corpse. In the afternoon, I committed violence alongside other monsters.
Insane. Physically and mentally unwell—the behavior of a madman.
It had been barely a day since I’d renewed my resolve to protect the Guardians. So what the hell had I just done?
I was furious at the cruel reality heroes face, and then I became the cause of that cruel reality for one of them.
Trying to change someone’s mind through violence—how utterly barbaric.
And the person on the receiving end of that violence is still young.
She hasn’t lived half of half a life. Her mind hasn’t properly matured, and she’s never had a decent environment for that mind to grow in.
People consumed by a dream can’t see reality clearly. That’s a natural phenomenon. Not something that really deserves blame.
Everyone clings to what they believe is right with more conviction than necessary.
Changing someone’s worldview takes time.
We haven’t known each other very long. There’s no way her idea of heroism would change instantly.
There’s no way the disregard for her own life born from a lack of self-worth would just disappear overnight.
What you give a narrow-minded person is education. Not violence.
Like telling someone illiterate to read a book before you’ve taught them a single letter. Ridiculous. Insane.
Why didn’t I stop when I knew better?
I knew and did it anyway. No room for excuses. An unambiguous act of evil.
Like stars hidden behind clouds, all the regrets I couldn’t see while intoxicated by the monster’s body surfaced. Another wave of nausea hit. There was nothing left to bring up.
“Ue-eck! Urp!”
My throat was raw from stomach acid, but the retching wouldn’t stop. It felt like when the eye-contact trauma resurfaces. My body kept demanding self-destruction, and stopping it was hard.
Even if the quest coerced me, how could that possibly serve as an excuse?
‘The quests are nothing more than a process for achieving my ideals.’
I forced my breathing steady and looked at the Belt. It answered.
[Correct. Quests are issued to reflect the Guardian’s ideals.]
It always gives a straight answer, at least.
[Had the Guardian not acted, it would have been judged as quest noncompliance. You would have reached death.]
“So that makes what I just did okay?!”
The Belt didn’t reply. Just the silence of a machine, but it felt like affirmation.
The ideal I’d staked my life on that day.
The quests are a kind of system designed to achieve it.
Which means my subconscious might be wishing for this.
No—why didn’t I consider refusing, even after realizing the quests’ true nature?
Can I honestly swear I didn’t feel a faint sense of accomplishment when the quest was completed?
Did I actually believe that just because it’s called a quest, it would be like a game where you complete a task and collect a reward?
Death if I refuse? Does coercion make it rational?
Guilt came crashing in. I clutched my head and leaned back against the wall. Today, the smell of this apartment was horrific. The mold stench was nauseating. I thought about opening a window, but I didn’t have the strength to move my legs again, so I gave up.
I disgusted myself all over again, wallowing in misery like some kind of victim. I figured quietly sinking into self-loathing wasn’t the worst thing I could do, so I just watched in silence as my mind gnawed at my body.
Why didn’t I notice something was wrong? Even in pursuit of an ideal, there are lines a human being shouldn’t cross.
Ignoring ethics for the sake of one’s goal... like a monster.
I bit my trembling lip to steady it, then asked the Belt.
“Hey...”
[What is it.]
“Are there any side effects to transformation?”
A question I should have asked ages ago. It just hadn’t occurred to me.
“Like, if you’re overexposed to starlight... do you start thinking more like a monster?”
[I do not know.]
“...What?”
I couldn’t believe it.
Looking at how the quests work, it seems like it can even read the future. Does it honestly think “I don’t know” makes any sense?
“You can see the future. What kind of bullshit is that.”
[To be precise, I cannot be certain.]
The Belt answered matter-of-factly.
[The side effects from starlight overexposure differ from person to person. They range from death to no effect at all. I cannot be certain which case applies to the current Guardian.]
A future-reading entity claiming it can’t be certain—what bullshit. My imagination started feeding on the unease.
This transformation might not be safe.
Whether it destroys my body, affects my consciousness, or possibly both.
The problem is, I can’t exactly stop transforming now.
It’s not just the quests. My own will is in this too.
I need power to pursue my ideals.
Discarding that to look away from an uncertain fear would be foolish.
The path is already set. The momentum’s too strong. I can’t stop.
There was one more unease.
I could no longer comfortably call the Belt an ally.
Who made this Belt in the first place?
“Who made you?”
[I cannot answer. The current Guardian’s memories are not activated. Once the memories are recovered later, a response will become possible.]
Those damn memories again.
The one I got before was a parallel world memory. Me, reading a webtoon.
Given that, this Belt probably isn’t a simple product of science.
Is it connected to the creator of Magical Girl Golden Age—Polaris, the author of that webtoon?
I don’t know.
My head hurt.
How does this Belt predict the future to issue quests, anyway?
The coercion itself—I understand that I sowed the seeds and must reap them—but the content of the quests is deeply unsettling.
A pattern of completely ignoring ethical principles, fixated only on achieving the ideal.
Exactly like a monster.
‘Are the Belt’s directives the actions required of me as a monster?’
Not as the Guardians’ Guardian, Watcher—but as the Big Dipper Monster, Ursa Major.
A creature that acts without hesitation toward its goal, no matter the method, having strayed from any human path.
Human in appearance, yet indistinguishable from a monster within. A grotesque—a true monster.
All this time, I’d been so fixated on the fear of death and my ideals that I accepted the quests’ instructions without question.
I shouldn’t have done that.
What can you achieve by acting without fear? You have to move forward with enough fear—fear of what results your actions will bring, of what sacrifices will occur in that unknown future.
I regret it. But there’s no turning back. The deed is already done.
After remorse comes only one thing: better conduct.
I forced my drained body upright. I was exhausted, but not sleepy. I wasn’t in the mood to sleep. My heart was still pounding, like it had witnessed the disaster all over again.
Even knowing it was irreversible, my body refused to accept it. The agitation of unprocessed shock wouldn’t fade.
‘Disgusting.’
Self-loathing flooded back in.
I wanted to empty my brain by doing something.
‘The person who really took the worst of it is someone else. What am I carrying on about.’
I opened the window.
The evening held pleasant moonlight. Seeing it cleared my head a little.
What I kept circling back to look at was light pretending to be a star.
The stale detritus of miserable days past hung thick in the room. The faint trace of vomit left over from the retching, and underneath it, an overpowering reek of mold and caked dust. The monster-specific stench of fishiness and blood drifting in through the window.
None of it was a particularly pleasant fragrance.
I let the blue moonlight fall across my face and thought about what I could do with this night.
The hour when people’s eyes are veiled—and so the things that have strayed from the human path run rampant.
The hour when madmen who devour people prowl.
Perfect for killing monsters. I stared blankly out the window and locked eyes with some beast-like thing. It licked its chops, as if sizing up an appetizing meal.
A man-eating monster. Then it giggled. Almost like mockery. Old memories came trickling back.
Other people’s stares, even from a monster, were unpleasant. Mockery was worse. But I didn’t retch this time, the way I had moments before. There was nothing left to bring up.
I moved my body toward the front door.
I’d decided what I was going to do with this night.
“Huh?”
When I opened the front door, a black bag was dangling from the outside handle. A Post-it note was stuck to it, and on it was written:
-I heard all the retching sounds. This is medicine. There’s a drink too. And jelly. Please go to the hospital.
Slightly awkward sentences and handwriting.
Inside the bag were some food items that would help with dehydration, plus medicine.
The neighbor. I’d pegged her as a noisy, crazy woman, but turns out she’s surprisingly warm-hearted.
The kind of kindness wholly out of place in this cold modern world. I felt a slight ache in my chest.
‘Even toward a stranger, a person can show kindness like this... and what did I just do.’
And then the self-loathing came again. It was obvious it’d torment me for days, maybe years.
I brought the bag inside, then moved my feet again. Leaving a monster be when I’ve got a neighbor that kind—that wouldn’t be right. With my rationale for action nicely reinforced, I hurried my steps.
It didn’t take long.
Whether it had been drawn to me or not, I found the beast monster closer than I’d expected.
I grabbed the Belt. For a moment, a slight discomfort crept in.
‘Side effects of transformation... there have to be some.’
The rule is to always assume the worst.
A normal human body overexposed to starlight—there’s no way it’d have no side effects. Unlike magical girls, I can’t even use magic.
Magical girls purify starlight with magical power before using it.
The fact that the term “purification” exists means there’s definitely some kind of harmful effect.
But as I decided earlier, I need power to pursue my ideals.
I took the Belt and fastened it around my waist.
“At last we meet.”
A voice came from behind the beast monster. A man? A civilian? He showed no panic despite the monster’s presence.
“My comrade!”
The figure, cloaked in the night’s shadows, began running toward me.
“Pursuit!”
[Pursue the truth.]
A bright light rose from his body.
And in that light, I saw his form—bearing the constellation of the compass.