The First Encounter
The First Encounter
Fortunately, the police hadn’t come looking for me to interrogate me about the monster-extermination and magical-girl-routing incident from earlier that morning.
There was nothing to pin on me to begin with. With no face, no fingerprints, no bloodstains—not a shred of evidence—how could they have tracked me down?
An alibi investigation might make them suspicious, but a probe that thorough couldn’t happen this fast.
In other words, the cops hadn’t shown up to arrest the guy who’d just been classified an S-rank monster yesterday.
“Er... I’m sorry, but, uh, student... this might be a bit of a sensitive question...”
They were here about the suicide attempt, not the transformation fiasco.
“You were... trying to commit suicide...?”
The motel owner had apparently found the suicide note and rope I hadn’t cleaned up. So they’d reported a suicide attempt here.
Damn it.
I’d been so out of it that I’d grabbed my wallet and nothing else. I should’ve at least tidied up. I felt sorry for the owner. How freaked out he must have been.
“...”
“Um...?”
Maybe because I’d been a suicide-risk case, the officer was treating me with extreme caution. Fair enough—nothing good comes from provoking a guy in that situation.
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Ah, I see... May I ask why...”
“The usual reasons. Orphan. No college degree. Failed the civil service exams. I wanted to throw my life away.”
That should all be in the note.
Had they not read it? If they hadn’t, lucky. The body’s original owner had written about his connection to Blue Sirius. A link between a magical girl and a suicide-risk case is no good.
Why hand free bait to the people who spend every day sniffing for gossip?
No need to dredge up the old rumors about Blue Sirius’s past relationship. Not for this body, not for her.
“We understand you weren’t in your room last night... What were you doing during that time?”
“Facing death kinda made me want to live again, you know? So I just wandered wherever my feet took me. Walked around.”
Adding more detail would only make things worse. I fed him the most plausible-sounding lie I could and gave short answers.
The Q&A only ended after a string of boilerplate questions and multiple pledges that I wouldn’t attempt suicide again.
‘Screw this...’
Irritation surged. I couldn’t even get a little rest because I’d botched one cleanup job.
[Your heart rate is currently elevated. Compose yourself.]
And whose fault is that? I clenched my teeth and choked back the curses.
A talking steel ball was floating around, yet none of the people nearby reacted. This thing seemed to be visible and audible only to me.
Wait—how did I know I was seeing it? Couldn’t the whole thing be just a hallucination? Maybe everything that had happened last night was nothing but a fantasy I’d dreamed up...
[Stop escaping reality. What you are experiencing is definitively real.]
I know, you bastard. Sometimes when life gets hard, people run away like this.
This thing could even read my thoughts.
I’d half-suspected it. Now I was sure.
This steel ball (a belt in disguise) was my mascot.
The kind of mascot magical girls often have.
It assists with transformations.
Only the person who transforms can perceive it.
You can communicate with it by thought, not only by speech.
Apart from the lack of a cute appearance, it ticked every box for the role of a mascot. From transforming via star power to the mascot’s presence to being called a Guardian.
Meaning my transformation and a magical girl’s transformation were fundamentally the same thing.
Then what exactly was I supposed to guard? Citizens? And why was I supposed to defeat magical girls? This was seriously convoluted...
“Excuse me.”
As the conversation was winding down, the officer carefully spoke up again.
“I’m sorry, but in cases of a suicide attempt, we’re required to contact a guardian. Could I trouble you for a number...”
“I don’t have one.”
“Pardon?”
“Like I said, I’m an orphan. I don’t even know if I have relatives. No friends, no significant other. I don’t even have a phone.”
My honest answers deepened the officer’s expression. He hurriedly pulled a business card from a drawer and handed it to me.
“Here’s the contact info for a suicide counseling center. Monster activity has been pretty high lately, so...”
Monsters are creatures that grow stronger by feeding on human negativity.
So people mired in depression, like this suicide-risk case, are prime prey for them.
It’s unavoidable that the government devotes more attention to suicide-risk cases now than before monsters appeared. It’s essential for maintaining public order. A monster drawn to a suicidal person doesn’t just kill that one individual and leave.
I could understand the cop’s reaction.
But I pushed the card back toward him, signaling refusal.
“I’m sorry, but—“
“They say they offer basic financial support if you attend counseling.”
“I’ll gratefully accept.”
I slipped the card into my pocket.
This was also unavoidable.
Money is precious. Especially when I consider that I can’t hold down a proper job anymore.
Because of the Belt.
As soon as this thing detects a monster, it’ll recommend I leave work without permission regardless of what I’m doing.
Randomly triggered death events—how the hell am I supposed to hold down a job?
[Quest triggered.]
See. This. After three times, it provoked more irritation than tension.
“Thank you for your time.”
“Ah, let me escort you home—“
“I don’t have a home!”
I genuinely probably didn’t.
I remembered from the original: Blue Sirius had gone looking for Han Jae-jung’s place, but he’d already moved out.
He must have liquidated all his possessions and relationships the moment he decided to kill himself.
[Monster detected in the 7-o’-clock direction from this location.]
I stood up in a rush and, in a last hopeful thought, asked:
“Oh, right. This won’t end up in the news, will it?”
“Huh? Ah, no... a suicide case is common enough. No reporters were here either.”
“Good, that’s a relief.”
An article would be a problem. Not because I was worried about getting my identity exposed. It was because of the trauma this body carried.
[Transform.]
“Later, I’ll do it later. Ah, that wasn’t directed at you. I’ll be going now.”
With that, I rushed out of the police station.
Ugh, I’m so sleepy.
**
- A new mystery S-rank monster appears. Are magical girls still up to the task...?
The article on the smartphone screen laid out last night’s crushing defeat without glossing over a single detail.
- Things have gotten seriously grim around my neighborhood lately too
- Still, thank goodness our Red Vega was brave enough to step up. It’s a real relief there were no casualties.
The article’s comments section was topped by slightly sanitized remarks collecting lots of likes—probably thanks to the years-long “Magical Girl Positive Comment Campaign.”
But venture just a little into the sewers, and the reactions were much more vivid, raw, and fresh. Like staring into the entrails of a freshly gutted fish.
- rhed vega sure got her ego knocked down a peg this time lmaooo all that media play and now she must be so embarrassed
- tbh i’m not sure she was ever that promising a divinity... just kinda meh
- vega stans kept making a huge deal about her being a supernova lol serves them right lmaooo undefeated? heh... maybe think before you open your mouths
Posts deliberately using mangled search terms to dodge the “Red Vega” filter. This was actually the nicer stuff.
- Vega! since you lost, now you can go to Japan and shoot AVs! you were trash all along anyway lmaooo
└you crazy bastard lmaoooo
└even the Japanese wouldn’t want her
- anyone got pics of Vega rolling on the ground after getting wrecked? need urgently
└oh... bookmarking
└Vega ‘got wrecked’ so hard hnnggh
└god I can’t fucking hold it anymore blood’s rushing to my dick
Down here, no one even bothered to evade the search terms. After all, they’d written it all through a VPN, so they had no fear of getting sued.
“As expected.”
Magical Girl “Red Vega”—real name Baek A-hee—tossed her phone aside and collapsed onto the bed.
She’d considered checking the overseas reactions too, but gave up. Over there, interest would be focused more on the newly appeared S-rank monster than on Red Vega’s defeat.
People often told her that being a magical girl was a sweet gig—you make money, get loads of attention. They failed to realize that attention from a faceless crowd also meant becoming a target for every insecure person in it.
Money? That ends the moment a monster kills you.
There’s a reason magical girls retire faster than figure skaters.
Right now, though, what was grating on Baek A-hee’s nerves wasn’t any of that lowlife response.
“Aaaaaaargh!!!”
She thrashed across the bed and screamed.
“I lost!! I loooost!!!”
Only half a year since she’d become a magical girl. Undefeated record the whole time! Her goal was to retire undefeated! She’d said it at every single interview.
Undefeated.
A strength that permitted not a single loss.
A legendary achievement no magical girl had ever recorded. A dream every magical girl harbored at least once. She might have been the first to actually pull it off.
As of yesterday, that dream of an undefeated record was shattered.
“This is so fucking embarrassing!!!!”
She rolled around on the bed, spitting out profanities she’d never utter in her transformed form.
If she’d at least put up a decent fight, she wouldn’t be like this.
A single blow. Without inflicting the slightest damage, she’d been swatted aside like a bug by a single attack.
Unbelievable.
One Path. Flame Roar—that was her finishing move, a technique she’d developed continuously alongside her own growth. The technique that symbolized her progress and her narrative had been stopped by a single hand.
A total defeat.
A perfect loss, the kind that leaves no room for second-guessing.
Her seniors had consoled her, telling her that’s just how S-rank monsters are, that she was lucky to be in one piece. That S-rank monsters were like natural disasters.
Then what was the point of magical girls, who existed to stop those natural disasters?
Their comfort didn’t move Red Vega’s heart in the slightest.
The monster’s voice from yesterday was still ringing in her head.
‘Weak.’
‘Don’t take it as a humiliation. It’s only natural.’
‘How pitiful.’
Every word ignited a fury that felt like her heart was being crushed. They’d barely exchanged a few sentences, but his words had sunk deep into her chest and butchered Baek A-hee’s dream.
‘Sorry I was too weak! Don’t take it as a humiliation? You said yourself that I was pitiful because I was weak, so what am I supposed to not take as a humiliation?!’
After a thorough rampage like that, she finally managed to calm down.
“Hoo...”
[A-are you okay now?]
Her mascot—a tiny puffball of a cat-shaped thing that hovered near her—asked worriedly.
“Thanks for worrying, Ribbon.”
Addressing the mascot she’d named Ribbon because it turned into a ribbon during transformations, Baek A-hee pushed herself upright.
Sitting on the bed, she composed her breathing and reordered her thoughts.
“I have to accept it. I lost.”
Reading those sewer posts earlier—the deliberate stress—had been her self-imposed punishment for that defeat.
Raw reactions were useful bitter medicine to jolt her awake. Even if they came from a minority, they were a real response nonetheless.
“My dream—it ended like this.”
But.
“Now I’ll dream a new dream.”
Red Vega erased “undefeated” and painted a new dream over it.
“I will get my revenge...!”
She heard her own teeth grind.
‘I’ll make damn sure you can never spit out words like weak, natural, pitiful at me ever again!’
Having steeled her resolve and pulled her mentality together, she changed clothes and packed her bag.
“Now then, let’s get going!”
The mental training was over. Time to work.
**
Monsters that feed on human negativity to grow stronger.
Magical girls, in complete contrast, can amplify their starlight through love and peace.
The power of love is fairly dangerous and not recommended. Peace, on the other hand, is different.
Contributing to the preservation of peace can safely increase one’s power without side effects.
This is why magical girls frequently engage in public-service activities.
Red Vega, a magical girl with half a year of experience, had done her share of them.
This volunteer shift at the suicide counseling center was for the same reason.
“Hm-hm~”
Red Vega hummed to herself in her transformed form—the one she often showed to the media.
Since advertising her appearance in advance would’ve drawn crowds of non-suicidal people, this event had been designed as a complete surprise.
How stunned would the person on the other side of this door look?
‘Sure, I lost, but the still divine Red Vega is here now!’
Riding a wave of bolstered self-esteem, she energetically flung the door open.
“Hello! Like a comet into your heart! The red star, Red Vega, has arrived— huh?”
Zzzzzz.
What reached her ears wasn’t a startled scream or a flustered, breathless gasp.
Instead, what stood before her was avant-garde art that rendered comfort as sound.
So singular and unconventional it almost felt like a one-person stage play—
A tall man sprawled across the desk, an information pamphlet draped over his eyes as a makeshift blindfold, enjoying a quick nap.
A nametag dangled limply from the desk edge alongside a slack arm.
Three characters written on it.
Han Jae-jung.
That was the name of her first client that day.