Loss, Preparation (4)
Loss, Preparation (4)
His heart stopped.
Under ordinary circumstances, that meant death.
Of course, the heart simply ceasing to beat does not mean an instantaneous death. With proper first aid, the chance of survival remains considerable.
But that only applies when the heart has merely stopped.
When the heart has been erased entirely, any hope of first aid becomes laughable.
The hole punched through the center of his chest was so clean it looked as though it had never belonged there at all. The two holes pierced slightly below it were the same. All three had been bored cleanly through, without so much as a drop of blood.
Three holes in a body shrouded in lightning. A cold wind passed through them.
It was a horrific sight.
“To think you mistook me for dead simply because you separated my head from my body.”
The head, floating in midair, burst into laughter. A grotesque spectacle.
Aquila’s head breathed without respiratory organs, found color without a heart, spoke without vocal organs. By all rights it was impossible. Therefore, it was a miracle.
Miraculous starlight began to bud from his head. Radiant golden starlight. Starlight as cold as metal and sharp as lightning.
The starlight jutted outward, extending beneath his neck. It gradually began to take a defined shape: a contour resembling a human body. The starlight stretched into the configuration of hands and feet and became his limbs.
“You have gravely underestimated me.”
Aquila sneered in triumph.
“I shall praise that spirit which dared defy me. I will at least carry your ashes with me.”
The countless eagles that had scattered, aimless, rejoined their formation. Their movement evoked planetary revolution. A host of planets orbiting Aquila as their sun.
From the circling eagles, thousands upon thousands of wings detached. Before they could touch the ground, the wings dissolved into light. That light was gold, just like the light now shaping Aquila’s body.
The revolving eagles’ bodies dispersed and began to amalgamate into a single mass. A mass of grey smoke.
“Behold. This is the divine punishment that will incinerate you.”
The eagles became a cloud. A thundercloud dense enough to smite the world with lightning.
Aquila’s power was not limited to controlling eagles. This lightning was his very essence.
Kugung. Lightning like the majesty of Zeus stormed and raged.
Watcher simply stood there gripping his axe. He did not stir in the slightest.
“...Oppa.”
Jo Ah-yoon was frozen, overwhelmed. Whether it was a blessing or a curse, Aquila’s gaze paid her no mind. Enraged at Han Jae-jung for striking his neck, he was now flaunting the vaunted authority he had withheld until now.
It is said that people often freeze moments before a car accident. Just as a frog freezes before a serpent, their capacity for rational judgment is lost to insurmountable terror and shock.
But the overwhelming force Jo Ah-yoon experienced was slightly different. She was not overwhelmed by the enemy, but by the situation.
She stared vacantly at him after his vital functions had abruptly ceased and he had gone rigid. The massive axe gripped in his right hand, perfectly motionless. The lightning still enveloped his body, yet he uttered no words, made no movement. His lenses were dyed black, void of focus or life, and the crackling of the lightning was the only sound that marked his presence.
“Oppa...?”
She did not know whether the name that slipped from her lips was a question or a lament. Jo Ah-yoon reached out her hand. The lightning grazed her fingers and charred them.
With no time to register the pain, Jo Ah-yoon murmured again.
“Oppa....”
Was this really how it ended? So empty. Like this?
“Why, of everyone... why did you protect someone like me....”
If his dream was to be a guardian to the Guardian, then why had he protected her, when she could barely preserve her own life, let alone protect anyone else? There was no reason for him to die so easily.
No reason for his heart to be pierced just for shielding her.
“You can’t... you can’t... if you really... if you really die like this....”
Jo Ah-yoon’s voice grew thick with tears. Her eyes brimmed, and heavy droplets streamed down her cheeks.
“Don’t go, oppa... please... don’t go... don’t leave like this....”
Death is truly a terrifying thing. Not only one’s own death. The death of another is terrifying as well. Sometimes, another’s death is more frightening than one’s own. That was Jo Ah-yoon now. She would have been happier to have died herself just moments ago.
“Why did it have to be me... it was so much better for you to live than me, who has no dreams and no future....”
Ignoring her palm scorching from the lightning, she seized his arm. Pitiful droplets pattered down onto the back of her hand as hideous burn marks formed.
And then, the arm of Han Jae-jung that Jo Ah-yoon held began to move.
“...Oppa?”
But the emotion that rose in Jo Ah-yoon was not joy. It was dread. Her instincts screamed a warning. What she sensed from him was not the heat of life, only a coldness like a white snowfield.
White lightning surged into the hollow cavity in his chest. The holes in the other two vital spots were also filled with lightning.
His right hand regripped the axe he had practically let go, and his sagging head lifted stiffly.
No emotion could be felt from those pitch-black lenses.
He looked at Aquila. Aquila looked back at him.
“Hoh. So you too are a monster? Entertaining.”
In the sky, thunder and lightning still churned to roast Watcher alive.
“N-No, wait! Oppa, for now we should... kyaak!”
After the lightning that shook the heavens came lightning that shook the earth. Originating from none other than Watcher himself.
He leaped. A white line sliced through the gold-choked sky. The thunder tearing at the ears followed in his wake.
The golden lightning in the sky launched its counterattack. Dozens of bolts rained down, and Watcher raised his axe.
Kugugung! The two lightning forces collided. The surrounding buildings were reduced to dust in an instant.
Unable to overcome the impact of the lightning, Watcher fell downward. But he used a building roof as a stepping-stone and closed in on Aquila once more. The golden lightning struck again, he parried it only to descend again, then he leaped from another building.
This repeated endlessly.
Jo Ah-yoon stared vacantly at the spectacle of his rampage.
“...Oppa.”
That was not someone who had escaped death. It was merely a mechanical device that was forcibly continuing to operate in order to fulfill its task. A machine devoid of any shred of humanity or emotion, functioning solely to execute its objective.
Was this how his dream would be realized? A grudge enacted to sever an opponent’s neck and drink their blood, with no regard for his own body?
“This is....”
His starlight consumption was abnormal. At that rate of expenditure, he could not sustain a prolonged battle. His movements as he charged Aquila were extremely efficient, but that efficiency was only for killing the enemy, not for protecting himself.
She recalled the sight of him absorbing all the magical girls’ attacks and charging at Contradiction. The same self-destructive combat style, with no thought for his own safety.
“This is... wrong.”
He paid no attention to his surroundings either. Civilians were screaming and fleeing, and the aftermath of the colliding lightning easily collapsed buildings.
A bolt of lightning struck near Jo Ah-yoon’s feet. The asphalt road melted into a crater, and a nauseating stench rose.
“Why are you ending up like that, oppa....”
Jo Ah-yoon knows.
“...Because of me.”
He risked danger and transformed to protect her, even offering his body and bracing for death. Even when his life was at its most perilous, he charged on without a moment’s rest to vanquish the enemy.
And, Jo Ah-yoon knows. He cannot achieve his dream that way.
The one who had interfered with the person chasing his dream was none other than Jo Ah-yoon. She, who had inwardly supported and respected his dream more than anyone.
“Because of me....”
Jo Ah-yoon realized once more.
This had happened before.
She had been kidnapped by a monster in the past. She could not recall what star power the monster used. She remembered from the media buzz that it had been an A-rank monster. She remembered its hideous appearance too. A grotesque form with a cockroach’s body, a human face, and a crow’s wings.
It was back when Blue Sirius was not yet so strong. At the time, her skill was barely enough to subdue a single A-rank monster alone.
The day she was kidnapped, Jo Ah-yoon had fought badly with Han Jae-jung and Yoon Seol-hwa. She couldn’t remember the trigger, but feeling alienated, she had vented her discontent. She was the outsider of the group, which made the reason all the more pitiful.
Because she had been wandering the streets late at night, no one noticed her disappearance. Han Jae-jung was at home, and Yoon Seol-hwa was busy with work.
Jo Ah-yoon had resigned herself to death. So she was going to die easily here. She had accepted that.
But she did not die. Han Jae-jung, who had run frantically through the night streets without a care for the danger simply because he could not reach her, found her, and Yoon Seol-hwa engaged the monster.
When she saw a familiar face, the tension broke and tears streamed endlessly from Jo Ah-yoon’s eyes. Then she had shouted loudly.
“Why did you come! It’s dangerous! Just... just let me die....”
Thinking back, those words made her ears burn with shame. Trying to act tough, she had snapped at the people who had come to save her.
At the time, it was truly hard to understand. Why they had cherished her so much, an outcast with a bad personality and small stature.
But they had a reason.
“Because it’s you. Ah-yoon. I saved you because it’s you. No matter how you judge yourself, I want to save you. I want to protect the people who are precious to me. I want to be someone who can do that. That’s my dream. So, I will never abandon you, no matter how much danger I’m in.”
Yoon Seol-hwa had been solemn.
“Ah-yoon, I have a dream. To open a little shop or something with you guys someday and live in peace. So what am I supposed to do if you die now? That’d be a catastrophe.”
Han Jae-jung had been slightly playful.
Though their attitudes differed, the two of them were alike. They both had dreams. The people they wanted to become and the future they wished for. In that instant, Jo Ah-yoon had felt ashamed of herself.
They had dreams. But she did not. She did not consider that a misfortune. Having dreams made one unhappy.
Jo Ah-yoon, whose parents had fled during the night on Christmas Eve and left her to realize there was no Santa Claus, thought so sincerely.
Those who dream are unhappy. At the same time, they shine. They are the courageous ones who do not stop walking, even knowing the future holds countless hardships. They are the ones who walk proudly down a path she was too afraid to take.
Therefore, Jo Ah-yoon respected their courage.
She respected the stubbornness and innocence that let them make choices she could not.
Jo Ah-yoon lowered her head slightly and took in a wide view of the city. A few civilians were leading the evacuation and looking after others. Some were saving their children, some their parents, some their lovers, all striving to preserve life.
Outside the lightning, magical girls were assisting their escape, taking injuries themselves. Beautiful starlight of every hue. Radiant clusters of light not even the night sky could match. Within all that starlight rested individual dreams.
But now, all those dreams were wavering.
Countless lives were wavering. Not just Han Jae-jung’s, but the dreams of the many people here.
Jo Ah-yoon had no dream. But that did not mean she did not support their dreams. It did not mean she wished to obstruct them.
She did not want her existence to become a wall on their road to their dreams.
“...Right. That’s how it was.”
Only now could she recall.
“That’s what it was.”
The day she had been kidnapped, the day Yoon Seol-hwa and Han Jae-jung came to save her, something similar to the present had happened.
The monster that kidnapped her was not an individual but a colony, and after they took down one, it was revealed that dozens more monsters were stationed underground. Once one was defeated, all the monsters below emerged, and the night turned into a nightmare.
Human-sized cockroaches flying in the sky and crawling on the ground. Everyone screamed in revulsion and terror. Facing them all, each an A-rank monster, was a grueling ordeal for the still-inexperienced Blue Sirius.
And so, Jo Ah-yoon.
“I was a magical girl.”
She became a magical girl.
“I didn’t have anything like a dream.”
What she had wasn’t a dream, but a resolve.
“That’s why... I forgot it so easily.”
On the night she ceased to be a magical girl, she met the Belt and saw a vision. The vision the Belt showed her was a world that might have existed. She glimpsed the life of Jo Ah-yoon in a world where she was never kidnapped and never became a magical girl.
She looked happy. Happy enough that she wanted to keep living like that. So Jo Ah-yoon forgot. Because it was her own wish.
“...Parrot.”
[Won’t you regret it?]
A familiar voice leaked from the metal sphere floating in the air.
[You know a life without fighting. You know a life where you’d be a little happier. And you still intend to fight?]
“I’ve realized something anew.”
Deneb’s mascot. The voice of the partner who had been with her since the day she became a magical girl.
“You don’t necessarily have to fight for your own happiness. It’s okay to fight for someone else.”
It was not as if the metal sphere’s voice had been silent until now. It had been active from the start. It had been ready to respond at any moment, if she truly wanted him.
“I’m sorry for forgetting until now, Parrot.”
[...Alright. I understand.]
She had remembered everything. And so, what she had to do was clear.
Jo Ah-yoon grasped the metal sphere.
Chulkeok. With a sleek mechanical sound, the metal sphere unfolded into the form of a belt buckle. Unlike the one now worn at Watcher’s waist, this buckle resembled a bird spreading its wings.
Jo Ah-yoon boldly placed the buckle at her waist and murmured.
“Transform.”
At the moment multicolored starlight and lightning raged, a single beam erupted, cleaving through it all.