An Unwanted Overnight Stay (3)
Maybe it was because they thought they had made it back to a safe space.
It did not take long for the humans, tension finally loosened, to turn lively.
They helped themselves to the food in the room as they pleased and sprawled across the bed like they owned it.
Living large, weren't they. Just living it up.
If you're going to barge into someone else's room and take it over, the least you could do is feed me some despair.
This was exactly why I had not wanted to let them inside.
Coming somewhere safe meant that much less despair would be coming my way.
"At this rate, we should be safe until a magical girl deals with the monsters."
"There's no screen in here to check what's going on outside, though. A little boring."
They sure wanted a lot.
I was already irritated enough without them chattering away beside me. My annoyance spiked hard.
Despair at rock bottom. Hope piled high.
It felt like I had been dunked into a barrel crawling with maggots.
Hope that door doesn't get broken down like last time...
I muttered to myself and scooted over to sit against the wall.
I hate humans. I hate hope even more.
I missed Tamako.
Thump thump thump—!!
"What the...?!"
"A m-monster?"
And then more time passed.
At the sound of knocking on the door, the humans started murmuring among themselves.
I would have loved for it to be a monster, but unfortunately, what waited outside was not one.
A monster would not knock that weakly in the first place.
"This is Magical Girl Emerald! Please open the door!"
Figures.
At the familiar voice, I slowly rose from my seat.
The landlord had come to pick me up—I could not exactly refuse to go out.
Come to think of it, she was pretty late.
A monster had shown up at the hotel I was staying in, and she was only just arriving now?
Or is that even really Emerald?
The voice was Emerald's, but I could not feel the distinctive hope that always radiated from a magical girl.
Would the humans really be naïve enough to believe that and open the door?
Creeeak—
Idiots.
"Finally, we can get out of—"
Heehee, kikihik, kik, kikik
Despair swelled in size.
A creature with a roughly humanoid shape, but looking overall like a mass of black shadow, drew a long line across its stomach.
What appeared then were rows of sharp, jagged blades.
Before the human staring blankly at that sight, the monster's maw split wide open.
Crunch— crunch crunch— crunch— crunch crunch crunch—
"This is Magical Girl Emerald! Please open the door!"
"Hic..."
"This is Magical Girl Emerald! Please open the door!"
So it could mimic voices?
I gave a short, impressed nod at the thing that had just eaten a human and was now cheerfully doing Emerald's impression.
Well, if it just mindlessly went around eating people, the magical girls would have already taken care of it.
"S-shut the door right now!"
"I-I can't shut it— AAAAAAAGH!?!!?!"
Crunch crunch— crunch— crunch—
It did not take long for the place they had thought was safe to turn into a slaughterhouse.
Like me arriving at a despair buffet, the monster started looking around the room.
Despair it liked, it ate right away. Despair that was not ripe yet, it waited for to fully ripen before devouring.
I plugged my ears against the humans' shrieking voices and let out a sigh.
I'm half-starved over here, and this thing is having the time of its life.
"...Haa."
Kiik? Kik?
When I sighed, the monster looked at me.
It tilted its head and smacked its lips, like the humans it had just eaten had suited its palate.
Kik, kiik, kikkik
"...? What is it?"
With a bouncy little hop, the monster approached and held out its hand toward me.
Sitting on top of it was a human head.
It looked like it was explaining that this part was the tastiest, and a hollow laugh slipped out of me on its own.
Even to a monster, I must have looked hungry.
"I'm fine. I don't eat things like that."
Kiiik...
Crunch crunch—
When I shook my head and refused, the monster pulled the corners of the mouth on its belly into a long frown, then started chomping down on the human head in its hand.
Yeah, that was definitely a sight an ordinary human would find horrific.
I quietly stepped aside so the blood and brain matter dripping from the monster's mouth would not get on my clothes.
Alright. So what do I do now?
Outside was chaos with monsters, and the humans who had taken refuge in my room had stupidly opened the door and become monster food.
If I just walked out like this, I might get interrogated about how only I had survived.
I had come here to sleep, so how had I ended up backed into a corner like this?
I glared at the things that used to be humans scattered around the floor and pressed my fingers hard into my forehead.
Kik?
"...My head hurts."
Emerald would be arriving here soon enough.
I debated whether I should send this thing away, or whether I should play the kidnapped victim again like last time.
It was the same tired method as before, but it was still the safest option.
"Do you know about the Doctor?"
Kik?
"...So you don't."
Apparently this one was not a monster the Doctor had made.
Its behavior was so similar that I had figured they had the same maker, but it looked like a product from a different manufacturer with similar specs.
For example, that creepy narrow-eyed doctor or whoever.
I was not certain, but I could not think of anyone else who would install this kind of creepy behavior pattern into a monster of their own making.
Though the idea that that person was even making monsters was half a hunch, too.
"Ah, speaking of which..."
I had brought something with me, luckily.
I reached into my clothes and fished around, and the keycard I had been wearing around my neck came free with a little tug.
"Do you know what this is? I'd like to go somewhere I can use it."
Kik... kiigii...
"I need to go pick up Aya."
Looking at the photo printed on the keycard, the monster started doing an impression of the child's mother.
What was it, a parrot? It was good at mimicry.
Wait—did that mean it had heard Emerald's voice before, too?
Well, anyway.
"Can you guide me there?"
Kiik, kiigiik...
"I will... I will..."
Walking out on my own two feet would be like advertising Hey, I'm a monster~, so maybe I should use a little trick.
I smeared some of the human byproducts on the floor onto myself and took a pose in front of the monster.
Kiik?
"Carry me. If I walk out on my own, it'll look suspicious."
Kik, kikkik
The monster tilted its head at my behavior, then nodded once I had explained the intent.
Looking at it like this, its intelligence was pretty high.
Were all artificially created monsters like this?
In the original work, most of the monsters had felt more like giant beasts or natural disasters.
"Alright, let's go, let's go."
Kiigiigiik—
When I patted the monster's hand, it made a happy sound and started bouncing along.
Really, if being held in a monster's hand felt more comfortable than being among humans, I could not even feel that much pity for those byproducts on the floor.
Seems I was, from the moment of my birth, a being that belonged with the monsters.
"Welcome, Ruby."
"It's only been a day, Emerald."
What kind of person was it that just looking at them made you want to laugh?
Only yesterday I had been fretting myself sick over Akari being discovered, but without her here, just seeing Ruby's face was enough to make me smile.
There was no way I could fail to be glad, meeting like this again a comrade who had once fought back-to-back with me, guarding each other's lives.
"It's okay for me to come inside today, right?"
"Yes. Last time the place was a complete mess."
"Why? Did you have a boyfriend over or something?"
"A-absolutely not!!"
She really had not changed a bit.
She herself had never dated anyone in her entire life, yet I could clearly remember how often she used that kind of line whenever she teased someone else.
Even Sapphire, who never joked at all, had once said as a joke that there was no one in this world who would take her, so that was saying something.
"Come in for now. I'll treat you to dinner for the first time in a while."
"Don't mind if I do."
Stepping into the apartment, Ruby pushed back the hood she had been wearing low over her face.
Red hair spilled down over her shoulders, and my eyes went round on reflex.
When we first met, it had been a short cut that only reached her neck.
"Ruby from this time period had long hair."
"...Yeah, well. I was younger then. Wanted to look stylish."
Looking embarrassed, she twirled a strand of hair around her finger and glanced aside.
A side of her I would never have seen in the previous world.
Remembering those days when even a short rest had been nearly impossible made me feel, with painful clarity, just how happy this present moment was.
And that is exactly why I cannot lose it.
How hard had we worked—and worked, and worked again—to reclaim this very instant?
Climbing past the gazes of dying magical girls, trampling over monster corpses, carrying the screams and moans of people in our ears, branding the scenes of destruction into our minds.
It had been a horrific time.
A time I never wanted to return to.
"Was it because of that person that you wouldn't let me in?"
"Something like that."
Looking at Tamako sleeping quietly on the bed, Ruby asked.
The real reason had been Akari, not Tamako, but I hedged just enough and somehow got past it.
...I was glad I had gotten better at lying than I used to be.
"Alright then. Time to get to the main subject."
"...Yes."
The talk about Apocalypse.
With Ruby speaking in that serious expression, I could not bring myself to open my mouth first.
The Apocalypse you knew no longer exists.
It was only a single sentence, and yet the reason I could not say it to her was clearly—
WEEEEEEEEENG—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Emerald...!"
"Yes...!"
At the siren that seemed to pierce straight through our ears, both of us shot to our feet without a word.
It was a sound I no longer wanted to hear, and yet one that could never be separated from us.
A scream announcing that despair was devouring people.
Until the day magical girls were no longer needed, we were fated to remain bound to the monsters—and at the same time, to Apocalypse.