Like a Comet Into Your Heart (5)
Like a Comet Into Your Heart (5)
“What? What do you... Vega!”
Golden Aldebaran was bewildered.
“I-I mean it. Don’t go, sis... don’t go....”
Red Vega was frantically trying to hold her back, to stop Golden Aldebaran from joining the battle.
She was worried, yes.
But it was closer to an attempt to add an ally to her side, to get validation for what she’d just done.
A child digging in her heels.
“Vega!”
“I said I mean it!”
Golden Aldebaran tried to calm her, but it wasn’t enough.
Red Vega was clearly in a panic. Something every magical girl goes through. But most go through it right after debut—it was unprecedented to see a case this extreme more than half a year in.
Golden Aldebaran had lived her own fair share of years as a magical girl.
She’d often seen magical girls who’d nearly lost their lives lapse into panic.
The sight was always much the same.
“A-hee-ya....”
The brilliant clothes, the hair, the ornaments—none of it registered.
That radiant, starlight-splendid appearance, so far removed from an ordinary person’s, was nowhere to be found.
No matter how extraordinary the exterior, inside was the same.
No matter how much magic you wrapped yourself in, in the end you were still a girl.
A child still young, afraid to die, unwilling to fight, sick of soiling her body with filthy dust.
[It’s all right.]
Blue Sirius’s voice came through the mascot. She’d patched through an emergency comm link.
[Take A-hee and run. I’ll handle this alone.]
“But...”
[I really will be all right. Don’t you trust me?]
Golden Aldebaran considered briefly, then answered.
“...I’ll trust you.”
[Good. Let A-hee rest well today.]
Golden Aldebaran took Red Vega by the arm and pulled.
Red Vega staggered to her feet. Clinging tightly to Golden Aldebaran’s hand, she asked,
“Do you... do you think going back was the right call after all?”
She was visibly anxious.
She’d fled the battlefield. That posture spurred a magical girl’s self-loathing and the anxiety of having run away and left someone behind.
“N-no! Let’s go back! Going back is definitely the right thing, I think.”
“Cut the bullshit.”
“B-bullshit...”
Golden Aldebaran dismissed it casually.
“I ran away because I was scared of the monster...”
“Everyone does that.”
Red Vega tilted her head.
“Everyone hates fighting monsters. Everyone wants to run. In that respect, what you just did could be seen as an act of tremendous courage. You actually tried something everyone only dreams about and never dares to do.”
Golden Aldebaran let out a small laugh, as if she’d amused herself.
“Running away... is courageous?”
“Haha, you’re still new enough not to know. For today, let’s go with rest.”
“B-but Sirius is still—“
“It’s fine.”
A magical girl facing off alone against an S-rank monster—it was a dangerous situation, yet Golden Aldebaran wore an oddly serene expression.
“She conjured ice sculptures that size several times just now and showed no sign of fatigue.”
This was beyond the limits Golden Aldebaran knew.
Blue Sirius hadn’t yet revealed her floor.
“She’s gotten stronger.”
They’d been advised to retire.
It seemed, somehow, that it wasn’t time to step back quite yet.
**
“Senior, I’m thinking maybe it’s time I retired.”
It was Pink Deneb who said it.
Right after she woke up in the hospital room, a quiet remark offered to Blue Sirius, who was lying beside her.
“Mm... when I think about my powers it does feel like a waste. Still, nothing to be done about it.”
She was smiling. She often forced a smile. Or forced a cheerful irritation, or got angry on someone else’s behalf.
“Honestly, we’re past the age you can really call us girls, right? Huh? What’s the legal age for youth these days anyway? Can I still be called a girl? Anyway, we’re more witches than magical girls. Kind of embarrassing; I wonder if they’ll ever come up with a separate name for adult magical girls.”
After all her joking, she let her real feelings show.
“Or honestly, I wish they’d just let everyone quit once they hit a certain age.”
Silence hung for a moment.
“Senior, let’s do just a little more and then stop.”
“Dilemma’s about to make its move, you know.”
“That’s exactly why I’m saying it. We’ll probably die fighting them anyway.”
Painfully blunt words.
“While other kids are studying normally or trying to figure out their paths... we’ve been fighting for our lives, literally, no metaphor, fighting to the death. And for what.”
She looked wronged. Though her face wore a smile, not the faintest trace of mirth touched it. All she had was bitterness.
“...Can’t we just have an easy life for once too?”
She had every right to feel wronged.
The first retirement recommendation they’d ever received was far more brutal than they’d imagined.
Blue Sirius looked ahead.
A monster rampaging without hesitation. A creature charging recklessly, knowing it wouldn’t be hurt.
By contrast, she felt utterly wretched, with her frail, soft flesh.
They had no one they needed to protect, while this side had tens of thousands of people, easily more.
A single moment’s defeat would leave countless people plunged into grief.
She’d repeated this absurd fight until she was sick of it, and she’d have to keep repeating it.
Of course she had to feel wronged.
There was immense praise and honor, yes, but what accompanied them was responsibility and the duty to shoulder someone else’s crushing inferiority.
She’d never wanted it. Blue Sirius had never, not for one moment, thought she wanted any of this.
She didn’t need attention. She didn’t need money.
All she’d wanted was an ordinary life with one person.
What was magic, what was a star.
Did having one mean you were obliged to sacrifice yourself?
Did it furnish a just cause for tormenting someone this badly?
“Hhuuu...”
Blue Sirius exhaled. In every season, her sighs trailed long plumes of breath. A contrail of sorrow.
The battlefield grew quieter once the two girls were gone. The only sound left was the monster’s grinding, spinning rasp as it gnawed at the barrier.
Those two had managed to withdraw before taking injury. Judging by the usual sight of magical girls fleeing, it had been a luxurious exit.
Still, the fact that Red Vega, of all people, had run—that did surprise her a little.
An unusual girl who’d only become a magical girl right before adulthood.
Who’d never had any fear of monsters from the start, whose sense of what a hero was had always been clear.
A girl who truly shone like a star.
The world often praised Blue Sirius.
Said she’d defeated an S-rank monster in this era, said she was strong.
But that was wrong. The ones who deserved the praise were people like her.
Against an S-rank monster, she’d done nothing but tremble behind her seniors. Her strength was merely experience bought with time.
She wasn’t the least bit impressive. The praise felt like a burden, sometimes even revolted her.
Because of that praise, because they’d lifted her up so tirelessly, because they’d raised the expectations so high.
It had severed the love that was everything to her.
But Red Vega—what about her?
What a spirited girl. Admirable, and adorable.
She was the next generation’s magical girl, no question.
The girl who would become the wish of everyone.
Blue Sirius believed that of her without a single doubt.
And now that same Red Vega had run.
It was a shock, but she also felt relief.
“Well, then. Now it’s just us left.”
Truthfully, she could have blocked that monster’s attack earlier if she’d wanted to.
She’d let it happen on purpose.
Blue Sirius wanted the girl to know pain.
The camaraderie, the fond pride she’d felt toward the sweet, innocent girl—those had gone full circle and become pity.
Because she was so different from herself, but the ending would be the same.
As with every magical girl, she could see the future shipwreck waiting in the whirlpool of adulation and envy.
Blue Sirius saw herself reflected in her.
It was pitiful.
The girl who shone like a star—her light source was a fiercely boiling furnace.
A heroism prettily gift-wrapped: once toppled, it would surely leave burn scars that could never be undone.
For Red Vega, for the Red Comet.
For the girl who would one day fall and become an ordinary stone, she needed a cushion to brace for impact.
What she needed was frustration. Pain.
She needed a trial that would make her stop and examine herself.
Paradoxically, all of this would hand her a rest.
“Lucky me. Now I don’t have to hesitate.”
Blue Sirius hoped Red Vega would learn one thing.
She hoped that behind the actions of that proud, headlong, bright girl, this one thing would take root.
She hoped she would come to know fear.
**
Power wasn’t the only thing you had to fear.
Knowledge, words, and faith required fear, too.
You had always to fear the road ahead, to fear every act you undertook, to agonize.
“Why? Don’t you hold your ideals dearer than your own life? Strange...”
Boötes asked playfully.
“I am human.”
I answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“They say man does not live by bread alone. By the same logic, without bread, man cannot live. Why do you fail to see that a person needs more than one thing?”
A person cannot live by ideals alone. There were things I must never forget.
I had to know that a righteous outcome cannot gift-wrap every act you committed to achieve it.
The days before I grasped this were foolish.
And heavy with sin.
“However vital the ideal, there are things you must not discard.”
Because the sin is heavy, I must repent.
“I don’t need allies. I don’t need human approval or monster approval. I don’t need your comforting.”
Boötes asked with a note of concern.
“If you’re human, shouldn’t you fear the pain of isolation? Don’t persecute yourself. Everyone makes mistakes and loses heart because of them. Everyone has an escape hatch or two to guard against that.”
“Does fear justify giving up?”
“...Are you really going through with this?”
“What, I don’t know how far into the future you’ve looked, but you had a rough idea I’d do this, didn’t you?”
And beyond fear, there is hope.
“I will achieve my ideal—as a human.”
**
Beyond fear, there is hatred.
Blue Sirius hoped that the girl Baek A-hee would, at the end of her fear, find hatred.
Hatred toward monsters.
A carefully honed hatred becomes a bright torch on even the most treacherous road of terror. Instead of making you shrink back in fear, it gives you a reason to act right now.
A tremendously useful principle of action.
“Hhuuu...”
Blue Sirius let out another breath. It froze into crystals before it could even form a plume.
The temperature where she stood dropped steadily.
It reached a level you could call absolute zero.
Blue Sirius knows.
The power she possesses is on par with an S-rank monster’s.
So why hasn’t she been able to use it properly until now?
The answer is simple: because she never truly knew how to wield it.
Because she kept launching attacks with ice the same reckless way she had as a rookie.
Using it only as a simple weapon, a tool for mobility.
If both her output and her magical capacity had grown since then, she ought to have learned to handle it accordingly.
Why couldn’t she give up those old methods all this time?
That answer was simple, too.
Because they were techniques she’d built together with the person she loved.
Going to the ice rink together to practice gliding techniques.
Him giving her assignment after assignment to practice ice sculpting.
Watching at her side to help her increase the manifestation speed of the Phantom Frost Sword.
A combat style forged from those accumulated memories.
But where had that beloved person gone now?
He’d been destroyed, unable to withstand the malice others heaped on him, because of her foolish choice.
And what had started that foolish choice?
A monster attacked the school that day.
If it weren’t for monsters, she’d never have had to become a magical girl. He’d never have drawn all that unwanted attention. There’d have been no attack on the school. She’d never have had to part from him.
Even after having to send him away, she wouldn’t have still been saddled with this sense of duty, fighting for her life all this time.
Selfish monsters keep attacking people forever, keep spawning misfortune just like hers forever.
“I wish they would all... just die.”
The monster’s shadow fell over her. It was the monster, spinning like a top sent whirling over a frozen stream. The fact that it had withstood Red Vega’s magic and her own at the same time made it clear its heat resistance was extremely high.
Blue Sirius swept her rapier through the air. A thick mist of ice scattered in its wake. Blue Sirius glided leisurely through that mist, evading the monster.
It kept scouring the hazy mist, hunting for her.
She should have done this from the start.
Blue Sirius calmly repeated the process: evade the monster, scatter more ice mist.
Inside the whitish mist lay a crystalline hatred.
A paired-wing bird that has lost its mate cannot fly; it wanders lost.
Unable to accept a reality too terrifying to face, it acknowledges it at last.
Soon it becomes tragic love. Tragic love turns into lingering attachment.
What comes from chewing over that attachment is, in the end, a curse upon everything that made you lose your mate.
“Even a monster has to breathe....”
And at last, it becomes hatred.
Lament of the Paired-Wing Birds (比翼連哭).
As a paired-wing bird that has lost its mate sheds tears.
A grief deep enough to bring frost even in midsummer swirled along with the ice crystals.
Eventually the monster’s movements ceased.
The ice crystals she’d scattered were a gas of extreme cryogenic temperatures, comparable to liquid nitrogen. Since it kept breathing it in, its lungs had every reason to freeze solid.
The turtle’s head emerged. Blue Sirius froze its limbs solid.
Even with excellent heat resistance, it was possible to bind it by encasing it entirely in ice.
Ice whose hardness she’d raised to the level of diamond.
Producing even a single chunk consumed a staggering amount of magical power.
With every intention of exhausting all her stamina, she bound the monster’s limbs with it.
Then she drove her sword into its mouth. The sharp rapier’s touch probed down its throat.
“Let’s hope your insides are a little less sturdy.”
And from inside the body, she began to form ice.
Cr-cr-crack!
A hideous sound vibrated from within. She didn’t stop. Shards of ice burst from the monster’s eyes.
It was working, but it wasn’t dead yet.
She poured ice inside like filling a pastry with cream.
On and on, until it lost its breath and burst.
Crunch!
At last, the monster’s every movement stopped.
Blue Sirius withdrew her sword, satisfied. Excessive magical power consumption leads to physical exhaustion. Her rough breaths came without pause.
“Hhaaah... haaah...”
Still breathing hard, she looked behind her.
There stood one more hateful monster.
“...Big Dipper.”
“I’d prefer you called me Watcher.”
The green monster of the seven stars.