Cut Marks (1)
Cut Marks (1)
Footsteps rippled across the marble floor. Running through a hospital hallway wasn’t exactly encouraged, but she was in no state of mind to observe minor courtesies.
Mystical hair with a faint blue sheen scattered wildly with every stride.
Her feet were frantic, her breath was hurried, her eyes were desperate. She moved so swiftly it was impossible to tell if she was fleeing or pursuing, until she halted before a door.
She let out a ragged breath, but didn’t pause to steady it before flinging the door open.
“Ah-yoon!”
The room’s occupant was Jo Ah-yoon. A girl who could no longer be called a magical girl.
“Oh, uh... you came?”
She waved, her smile awkward. She was clearly putting on a brave front. A tinge of loneliness and sorrow lingered at the edges of that smile.
Yoon Seol-hwa’s eyes flooded with grief.
“Ah... Ah-yoon, you really....”
“Hey, what’s with that face? I’m not dead. I was planning to quit ages ago anyway.”
In the midst of busy modern lives, people sometimes have drinks with friends to unwind. That was all Yoon Seol-hwa had done.
That was all she had done....
As with all accidents, misfortune strikes without warning. This time was no different.
A sudden mass monster incursion and the appearance of Virgo. To stop them, Pink Deneb extinguished her own starlight.
However much she might have wanted to retire, she couldn’t have wished for it to happen like this.
She deserved a gentler, warmer send-off. A peaceful farewell amid applause.
A black dwarf.
The price of that technique isn’t simply losing one’s power as a magical girl.
It’s a technique that burns everything you have to create a single moment of light.
The aftereffects remain.
A terminal prognosis, at minimum.
Twenty years at most, a few days at worst. The time you spent as a black dwarf determines how many days you have left.
By the records, the technique was active for ten minutes. Her remaining life would be ten years at most.
Plink. A droplet fell onto Yoon Seol-hwa’s hand as she stroked Jo Ah-yoon’s. The tears showed no sign of stopping.
“Because of me... I’m sorry... I’m so sorry, Ah-yoon... I really....”
If only she hadn’t suggested drinks that day, if only the place had been somewhere else, if only she’d controlled her drinking just a little more, if only she’d been a little stronger... strong enough to defeat any monster that came.
Countless ‘if onlys’ surfaced, but there was no undoing what was done. For now, all she could do was steep herself in grief and regret, going over the past.
She knew the truth. The greatest fault lay with the monsters. If they hadn’t attacked in the first place, none of this would have happened. Yet the self-loathing refused to lift.
“Uh... no... senpai? I....”
“I’m so... sorry....”
Yoon Seol-hwa wept, clinging to this pitiful girl. She was disgusted with herself—what right did she have to cry? She hadn’t been able to do anything. Nothing at all....
But the tears wouldn’t stop.
The guilt she always felt, that wretched emotion, had gained one more reason to exist.
She had the power to protect, so why couldn’t she protect a single thing? The one she truly wanted to keep safe, she couldn’t. Countless people had been saved in this incident, but the one she most wanted to live had been brought near death.
The self-reproach was endless. Like a snowman melting before the spring, she crumbled utterly before the pain of those she loved.
Why must it always be taken from me?
At the same time, she felt wronged. Her lover and her friend—both had suffered because of monsters.
Why must her peaceful happiness always be threatened? Why must they suffer? Why must misfortune find them? What wrong had they done? What wrong could they possibly have done?
Monsters always take. Her happiness, her precious people.
As her guilt swelled, so too did her hatred.
“Senpai... don’t cry... it’s not your fault... if you cry like that... hic.”
Ah-yoon, who had been holding Seol-hwa’s hand tightly, also began to tear up.
“It makes me... sad too... don’t cry... senpai, don’t cryyyyyy waaaaahhhh....”
Before long, she was sobbing even louder than Seol-hwa.
How hard must it have been for her....
Tears welled up again. She remembered Jo Ah-yoon from their school days. The timid girl who couldn’t control her emotions and would burst into tears at the slightest thing.
Just how wretched must her current situation be, for her to cry so bitterly? To shed tears exactly as she used to.
What have I done to this girl...!
Seol-hwa pulled Ah-yoon into an embrace. As if she’d reverted to a child, Ah-yoon clung desperately, sharing their warmth.
“Your senpai... no, your Unnie... will take care of you... I’ll do my best so you can live quietly and happily... let’s be happy... you have to be happy... okay?”
“Unnieeee! Don’t cryyy! Hic, don’t cry... I told you I’m really okay... I’m okayyy....”
Ah-yoon really did cry her eyes out, as if she’d reverted to a schoolgirl.
“Ugh... shut up... I’m crying here... just let me be sad....”
In the midst of it, she even muttered something at the empty air.
...! She can’t get used to having lost her mascot....
When she lost her magical girl power, she also lost her ally, her mascot. Normally, the mascot would be comforting her at a time like this. In fact, Seol-hwa was hearing her own mascot’s consolation as well.
[Guardian... don’t cry......]
Ah-yoon had probably grown so used to it that she still talked that way, even without a mascot. The thought made the girl in her arms seem all the more pitiful.
“Ah-yoon....”
“Unnie....”
They held each other and cried for a long time.
Only after weeping so fiercely that dehydration threatened did Yoon Seol-hwa, worried for Jo Ah-yoon’s stability, finally leave.
Afterward, she was scolded by a nurse for disturbing the patient’s rest—compounded by having run in the corridor.
“...Sniff. My head hurts like hell.”
She’d cried so hard her voice had turned nasally. The headache was the result of tears shed in poor condition. Clutching her head, Ah-yoon collapsed onto the bed.
[You should’ve cried in moderation. A sick kid screaming and crying like that—of course you’d feel it.]
A metal orb floating in the air. A familiar voice came from it.
“W-well... senpai was crying... so I... got sad too... aren’t you sad, oppa...? Seol-hwa-senpai was sobbing like that....”
[When you say it like that, you make me sound like a total bastard.]
It was Han Jae-jung’s voice. Ah-yoon flinched not at the voice but at the content, and swiftly ducked her head.
“E-eep... does it really sound that way? I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come across like that, it’s not that I wasn’t considering your feelings....”
[Hey, I’m not scolding you. Don’t do that. Now I feel like an even bigger bastard... though I guess that’s pretty accurate.]
The worst kind of human trash: he manipulated a situation without her consent, ghosted her, then went missing for ages. His voice from beyond the metal orb was tinged with resentment toward himself.
[Anyway, you’ve seen Seol-hwa now. So you get it, right?]
“Yeah... looks like it’s real... sniff.”
She poked curiously at the floating metal orb. It drifted slightly but quickly returned to its original position.
“That I was a magical girl.”
Last night, when she’d first opened her eyes, this metal orb was the first thing she saw. A strangely designed metal orb. Behind it was Han Jae-jung. A real piece of work who’d reappeared after years just to cause her grief. A man she’d wished nothing but happiness for, yet all he’d brought were scars of hardship and news of a suicide attempt. A man she loved anyway.
She remembered how they’d gotten tangled up in that situation.
She just couldn’t remember why she was here. Jo Ah-yoon had to simply look around for a long moment, completely dumbfounded. What reason could there possibly be for just the two of them—her and this oppa—to be alone on a mountain at night?
Could it be they’d been fleeing something under cover of darkness...?
While she’d been nursing such questions, Han Jae-jung delivered some shocking news.
The fact that until just moments ago, she had been a magical girl burning her own starlight away, dying.
“Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real....”
Only her memories of being a magical girl had vanished.
It wasn’t Monsterization either. From what she knew, Monsterization erased all memories of living as a human. This case left her relationships intact.
She’d wondered how such convenient amnesia—erasing only specific memories—could exist. But according to him, it was possible.
He said he was in the same boat.
He pointed to the metal orb floating before them as the cause. Or more precisely, he pointed at empty air, narrowly missing the orb. When she’d asked if he couldn’t see it, he said it was invisible to him.
He pointed at the air again, claiming he had one too. Naturally, Jo Ah-yoon couldn’t see it.
She figured Han Jae-jung had gone crazy. She thought maybe all the hardship he’d endured had finally driven him insane.
Her oppa had lost his mind—what a heartbreaking revelation. Around the time Jo Ah-yoon’s eyes were brimming with tears,
the two orbs bumped into each other with a jolt of friction. In that instant, Jo Ah-yoon saw it clearly with her own two eyes. Another orb—aside from the one in front of her.
“Ugh, shit, why did it... ahem, do you believe me now?”
“You looked pretty surprised yourself.”
“No, I knew all about it... of course I did. As for why these two bumped together, well, you know. When friends meet, they get excited and high-five and stuff....”
“Ha, shit. You really didn’t know, huh.”
That playful tone actually helped ease Jo Ah-yoon’s tension.
“...Anyway, it doesn’t seem like a lie. So what’s going on, oppa? What happened to me, and what happened to you?”
After that, Han Jae-jung calmly, concisely told her everything that had happened to him—and also what had happened to Jo Ah-yoon.
“It seems you undertook a Star Contract like I did. Probably....”
It didn’t feel real.
That she had been a magical girl, and had just barely escaped death moments ago.
And that she owed that survival to making contact with this metal orb.
She couldn’t fully grasp or comprehend what he meant. It all felt like a lie.
“H-Hang on, what do you mean, this ‘Star Contract’? And what’s this ‘Transformation’...?”
“Showing you will be faster than explaining.”
He stood up and raised his hand to the air. A strange mechanical device materialized in his palm, somewhat resembling a telescope. As he attached it to his waist, it went shhhk—metal bands unfurled and wrapped around him. It became a belt.
“Transform.”
As Han Jae-jung murmured the word, a round, green starlight burst from the belt. The starlight enveloped his body and reshaped him into a completely different form. Just as the word implied—he transformed into another body.
Later, a magical girl arrived to rescue her, so he fled and the story ended there.
Fortunately, the earlier collision of the orbs seemed to have established a communication link; they could now convey their thoughts through them.
Rescued by a magical girl, the story that had seemed like a bad joke gradually took on substance.
An oppa who really had transformed.
The magical girls who had recognized her and fussed over her with such concern... even the reaction Seol-hwa had shown just moments ago during her visit.
Jo Ah-yoon had been a magical girl. Even without her memories, she could do nothing but accept it.
“I... was a magical girl....”
[I’m telling you, it’s true.]
“I thought you were just bullshitting me to mess around....”
[I told you to search the internet. You’d have known right away.]
“Ugh... I kinda hate that... I stopped looking ages ago because it was all people trashing you or senpai... I don’t even know what songs are popular these days....”
[Ah-yoon.]
“Ack?! Sorry, I was babbling again, wasn’t I....”
[No, that’s not it.]
Through the cold machine came a voice so gentle and warm it was startling.
[I’m sorry.]
Ah-yoon was silent for a moment, then smiled softly.
“What for? You’re the one I’m leaning on most right now. Don’t say things like that. You don’t need to be sorry. If you’re that sorry, then just be better to me from now on.”
She stared quietly out the window at the cityscape before parting her lips again.
“I... was a magical girl....”
No matter how many times she mulled it over, it never felt real.
“...Aren’t magical girls supposed to be good kids...? Like Seol-hwa-senpai... really kind and pretty... so why me...?”
She couldn’t understand it. What in the world had a star seen in her, to choose her? What on earth could she have been thinking, to do such a thing?
“Why was I a magical girl...? What led to it...?”
No matter how many questions she threw out, no answer came back.
Because the person who needed to know that answer didn’t know it either.
Jo Ah-yoon fell silent. She asked her past self.
Why did you become a magical girl?
Her past self remained silent as well.