Like a Comet Into Your Heart (4)
Like a Comet Into Your Heart (4)
The feeling resembled the discomfort of being proselytized to on the street.
Or worse, the kind of evangelism that threatened hell if you didn’t believe.
It was a trust that treated doubt—a rational function—as an unnecessary process, a form of compulsion.
That was where the unpleasantness came from.
“Why should I...”
“You.”
Boötes cut him off.
“You only realized your purpose recently, didn’t you?”
That was accurate. It hadn’t even been a week since he had become aware of his ideal.
“We joke among ourselves that the scariest monsters are the ones who’ve just grasped their purpose. Someone like that is terrifying. Once they decide something will help realize their ideal, the hesitation vanishes and they’ll push any number of reckless moves. Ha-ha-ha, I’m embarrassed to say I made plenty of mistakes back then myself.”
Boötes laughed as if she understood everything. There was an inclusiveness to it, like advice from an older sibling or family member, a mentor in life.
“Holding back just now when you wanted to kill me—that was well done. I don’t mind, but... who knows what the children at your side might think. It’s unfair to expect human intelligence from little balls of fluff who haven’t even become lambs yet, is it?”
He’d never hidden his bloodlust. Boötes must have known about the killing intent he had carried before sitting down on this mat.
And so did the livestock roaming this vast natural expanse.
He cast his attention toward the presences he had been ignoring for a while. Multiple beasts glaring viciously in this direction.
Monsters covered in wool, but not soft—ferocious.
Boötes waved at them leisurely in greeting.
“The fact that you held that back shows you’re remarkably docile for a monster who’s grasped his purpose. Ah... of course! You’re human when you power down. Ha-ha, sorry. Anyway, I wanted to tell you not to worry too much. You’re acting correctly. Don’t doubt yourself.”
It was kindness, but it was a kindness Han Jae-jung could not accept.
“Because even if you think right now that you’re making a mistake, in the end it won’t turn out to be one.”
Ultimately, that too must be a statement rooted in faith that the Belt would guide him down the right path.
It was close to fanaticism.
Sick of listening to Boötes extol the Belt, Han Jae-jung cut her off.
“Sounds like it’ll only make me more defiant. Have you fallen in love with the machine or something, to be singing its praises like that? A blazing hot love, is it.”
“Are you angry? That’s all just low blood sugar. Want me to mix you some honey even now?”
“Not necessary.”
Right now he felt like dumping the liquid in this cup all over his face. Since it was the same liquid he’d drunk earlier, he’d probably drink this down nicely too.
But if he did that, not only would this cease to be a “friendly chat,” but the flock of furious monsters glaring at him would also become a problem.
Han Jae-jung swallowed a sigh and asked,
“Look, why are you so insistent on telling me to trust the Belt? Knowing my purpose shouldn’t do you any favors.”
Boötes smiled.
“Because I’m on the side of all lambs. All of them. Even if conflicts break out now and then, you mustn’t deny that dream.”
Lambs—his word for monsters.
“Ah-ha, I see.”
Only then did Han Jae-jung realize why he lauded the Belt that guided people toward their ideal.
There were two reasons he had been invited into this space.
One was to buy time for the monster rampaging outside.
The other was to determine whether he was a lamb or a wolf.
“You want me to become a monster.”
The Belt presented the path with the greatest likelihood of realizing one’s ideal.
The path of a monster, where the process mattered not at all as long as the ideal was realized.
Boötes’s goal was to make him believe that path was right.
So that, gradually, his body and mind would draw closer to being a monster.
So that he would become a lamb who knew where to go but not how to get there—and wandered.
“So that I’ll become a lamb who comes into your fold... is that it?”
Han Jae-jung recalled the moment he had used violence to instill fear in Red Vega.
According to him, that was not a sin. It was a path toward realizing an ideal.
But he could not accept it that way.
“I refuse. Stop running your useless game and just keep sucking on your milk.”
Boötes laughed loudly.
**
Red Vega was thinking only of killing the monster.
No other thoughts were necessary. In a frantic battlefield where a single second could decide victory or defeat, there was no room for anything else.
Anguish was a luxury.
“Aldebaran-unnie!”
The moment Red Vega shouted, a solid line was carved across the monster’s neck again. But this time it was different. Multiple lines drawn over a single line—dozens of slashes.
Kakagagak!!!
The unpleasant noise scraped at the ears. Red Vega paid it no mind and gathered flames into both fists. Using her characteristic thermal force as thrust, she drove her fist into the area where the lines had just been drawn.
Bang! Bang! Tadadadadang!
Not just one or two strikes, but dozens. Each one was a powerful attack capable of tearing through rock and melting steel with ease. Dozens of them. Focused on a single point.
And still it wasn’t enough. The monster’s body still showed no sign of injury. Shhhhh, steam rose from the point of impact. Just heat, not a scar.
“This is maddening....”
“B-but if we keep attacking, an opening will present itself.”
“An opening, huh—you’ve been studying some difficult vocabulary.”
“What? No, what do you take me for...?”
“Kids, move aside!”
The moment Blue Sirius’s voice rang out from behind, the two shot through the sky and cleared the area. Instantly a thick ice spear flew in and struck the monster’s neck.
It was a maximum-power attack, compressed with magical energy alongside her clone. The ice spear, flying at bullet-like speed, easily pushed the monster backward.
Under normal circumstances, the neck should have been blown off on contact.
The monster’s overwhelming durability forbade that outcome.
Chijijijik!
The sound of frictional heat as the monster’s feet were dragged across the ground.
“Ha... hahahaha!”
With a spear the size of a building lodged in its neck, it still laughed in perfect health. It was grotesque.
“Tch.”
Blue Sirius clicked her tongue. If it had simply been strong, she could have rationalized it away with a sense of futility, but this monster was merely tough.
Its attacks were simple and its speed not especially great. Only its defensive power was on an entirely different dimension from any monster they had fought before.
It was frustrating. Every attack landed the moment it was launched, yet none got through. The frustration soon became irritation.
It was the same for Red Vega. She could quickly push the fear from her mind with the adrenaline and endorphins released during combat.
As a result, her easily excited body grew irritated with the present lack of results.
Irritation became impatience, and impatience became immediate action.
Red Vega gathered flames beneath her feet and used them as propellant. The speed she gained was enough to momentarily generate a sonic boom. She caught up to the monster as it was driven backward by the ice spear’s attack.
She blasted fire in the opposite direction to brake, then spun around.
Her target was the back of the monster’s head. She released the magical power she had been compressing inside her fist during the flight. Flames that pulsed like a living organism.
The fire drew a line, and it moved like a beating heart.
One Path. Flame Roar.
The finishing move she had created, the finishing move that embodied her ideal.
A technique infused with the desire to respect and chase after the one she had taken as her ideal.
The fist of her purest aspiration flew toward the monster.
Kwadeudeudeuk!
She hammered the monster like a mallet. But the nail was not the monster—it was the ice spear in front of it.
A bizarre tactic, like hammering a wooden board to drive a nail rather than hammering the nail itself.
The monster pressed toward the spear, and the spear pressed back against the monster.
Both jaws were fixed in place.
Kkigigigik!
That horrible sound, like fingernails scraping glass, rang in the ears once more. It was the sound of something scraping against that hard body. It’s working. Red Vega was certain.
She kept blasting fire without pause. She felt the monster sink forward just a little more than before.
‘I can do this!’
It was possible. Red Vega gathered flames behind her elbows and fired them. She increased the thrust further.
Kkigigik!
The monster gradually moved forward. It thrashed as if trying to escape, but hemmed in so tightly from front and back, escape was impossible.
‘Just a little more...!’
Kwajangchang!
The ice shattered. Instantly the monster hid its limbs inside its shell and spun like a top.
“Wha—?!”
Red Vega, who was within range, took the hit squarely. Her body locked up for a moment from the dizzying impact. She was thrown off. She knew how hard the ice Blue Sirius created was. Knew how enormous and powerful that all-out strike had been.
There was no way it could break so easily.
At the end of that thought, Red Vega arrived at the answer immediately.
Her own flames—hot enough to turn steel into molten metal in an instant—and the ice had met at close range. Melting had been inevitable. Their elemental compatibility was poor for a coordinated attack.
It should have worked....
‘Was it because of me...?’
If her power weren’t fire, could they have succeeded? Guilt and helplessness sapped her strength.
She was flying through the air, having forgotten even to break her fall, when she felt a soft sensation against her back.
“Vega!”
“Th-thank you.”
“Personally, I think what you just did was good. The problem is... that thing is simply too tough.”
Golden Aldebaran had caught her. Red Vega rose, guided by her hands, still looking dazed.
With every moment critical, Golden Aldebaran charged at the monster first. Her body gradually began to turn transparent. She was attempting stealth once more.
Red Vega steadied her trembling legs to move again. She must have only lost strength for a moment from exerting herself too much all at once.
“Hoo... that was scary.”
She muttered it absently while righting herself.
‘Huh? Scary?’
Red Vega covered her mouth. She was horrified. What nonsense. A hero should never say such a thing. Would Sky Polaris say something like this after being struck by a monster and surviving? Not a chance.
She would burn with fighting spirit and the desire for revenge and throw herself back into the fight.
Even without going as far as the great senior, the other magical girls were no different.
Not one of them ever spoke of fear in the middle of a monster battle. What they really felt might be different. But the fact that they never spoke it aloud did not change.
‘That could have crushed morale....’
Red Vega kept running forward, continuing to berate herself.
It was an exaggerated reaction, an over-interpretation.
A very small remark.
But she was at an age when even a small remark could easily shift her emotions. She was still a girl.
Her psyche was still unstable. The self-esteem she had built through her magical girl activities was crumbling like a sandcastle, and the heroic ideals she had cultivated were shaking.
It was an intolerable state of affairs.
To correct it, she became stricter with herself, and that strictness shook her psyche again.
She whipped herself to remain the magical girl she had taken as her ideal, and that whipping broke her down and pushed her further from the magical girl she aspired to be.
It was a vicious cycle.
And it was also growing pains.
Red Vega erased the fear from her awareness once more. She tried not to feel it.
The monster’s rotation, which had been charging in random directions, came to a stop.
The monster emerged, extending its limbs from its turtle shell.
Golden Aldebaran, who had been concealing herself nearby, shouted.
“There’s a wound!”
It had worked. The attack they had just executed had not been in vain.
Hope lay right there.
Red Vega even felt a thrilling surge of elation.
“Yesss!!”
Her cheerfulness restored, Red Vega launched her fist toward the monster’s neck again.
There was no fear.
As the distance closed, a slightly cracked wound near the monster’s neck became visible.
“Let’s coordinate!”
The invisible slash also flew toward the monster’s neck.
“Ha... ha....”
Both attacks struck the monster’s neck simultaneously.
Jjeojeok!
The hard shell encasing the neck split open, revealing something like pitch-black leather underneath.
They had succeeded.
Neither of them stopped. They poured in fists and slashes once more. With the shell gone, the next hits were sure to be more lethal.
“Ha!!!”
Tung!
They bounced off. Blade and fist alike.
“...Huh?”
Red Vega realized.
Inside the hard shell, there—
An even harder, unbreakable armor was in place.
“Hahahaha!!!”
The first laugh they had heard since arriving here replayed.
Laughing loudly, the monster seized the leg of Golden Aldebaran, who had been knocked backward. She was stealthed, but the direction of her last attack plus her presence and other clues were enough to estimate her position.
It swung her around just as it had grabbed her and hurled her at Red Vega.
“Kgh!”
“Aah!”
A body hurled with centrifugal force was a sufficient weapon. Red Vega, already in an unstable stance, was in no position to catch a person any more than Golden Aldebaran had been moments ago. In the end, the two simply collapsed to the ground together.
The monster’s body descended over them. Its shell, spinning like a top, was now lined all over with sharp blades that hadn’t been there moments before.
If it hit them, their bodies would be shredded to pieces and their transformations would clearly be broken. If the assault continued after that... they would die.
The gaze between monster and magical girls had been inverted.
When a flying magical girl first took a monster into her field of vision, she was almost always looking down. Then, looking at it eye to eye.
Almost never from below.
Because the moment you looked up at a monster from below, it meant defeat.
You died, or if you were lucky you survived.
She knew statistically that most met the former result.
She knew it, but she had never felt it.
Red Vega pulled up a memory. Days ago, the one-sided violence she had suffered from a monster.
The pain and terror of that moment, the helplessness, the weakness.
Her hands and feet trembled like bells that had just been rung, and her mouth forgot language. She couldn’t even scream. Couldn’t even expel air.
But her body sounded alarms without ceasing.
Run away.
It was a reflex, nearly. Instinct.
Red Vega wrapped her arms around Golden Aldebaran and condensed magical power beneath her feet. There was no directional setting and no speed control. She just wanted to escape this spot, right now.
The magic she had practiced in order to charge at monsters—now she blasted fire to flee from a monster farther than anyone.
Kwang!
Dust and shards of ice scattered as the two flew backward. The vicious rotating attack of the monster struck where they had just been.
Kwajijijik!
The ground was gouged and torn into a hideous shape.
Having preserved that sight vividly in both eyes, Baek A-hee gripped the magical girl senior in her arms even tighter. She resembled a girl clutching a doll to forget a nightmare.
“V-Vega? How far are we going?!”
Even after escaping that spot, Baek A-hee did not stop. Only after flying for a long while did Red Vega set herself down on the rooftop of a quiet building.
“Thank you. Now let’s go back...”
“No.”
The instant the high-speed flight stopped, Golden Aldebaran tried to rise. Red Vega stopped her.
Even after fleeing, her heart was still pounding violently. It felt like her internal organs might leap out of her mouth.
“You can’t... go....”
Right now, Red Vega had gained fear.
She couldn’t even turn her eyes away. Light that was too vivid could be felt even with your eyes closed.
No matter how much you avoided it and tried to forget, once you observed it, you couldn’t help but know.
The terror of losing your life.
Red Vega knew fear now.
“You mustn’t... go... you mustn’t....”
The halting, trembling voice was like that of a small child fighting back tears.