Shelter (3)
"Maybe the magical girl already took care of the monsters."
"If she had, that door would've opened by now."
"It's so quiet—doesn't that mean everything's already been handled?"
"And what if a monster's waiting right outside the door?!"
There was no clock in this dim, cramped space, and my sense of time had gone a little strange.
How long had I been in here?
Ten minutes? Thirty? Or was it already an hour?
Grrrgl—
"Mommy, I'm hungry..."
"Just a little longer, okay? Pretty soon a magical girl big sister will show up and—ta-da!—save us all. Then we'll go eat something delicious. All right, Aya?"
"Okay... I understand..."
The child's stomach clock chimed at the same moment my mouth flooded with saliva.
The hope that had bloomed from reuniting with her mother was flipping into despair from hunger, and the flavor was surprisingly rich. A child's despair, it turned out, tasted far better than an ordinary adult's.
Everyone else is more like... plain despair flavor.
If I'd been a normal monster, that feed-grade despair would have been plenty—but unfortunately, my palate had refined itself to the point where nothing short of premium canned tuna would do.
Or rather—I could eat the ordinary stuff, but I'd spit it out almost immediately. Or maybe it was that I simply couldn't digest it properly...
"Doesn't it feel too quiet, though?"
"Too quiet how?"
"Outside! Outside! If people were still okay, they would've come up from the fifth floor by now—but there's been no word at all!"
People were starting to catch on.
The only humans left in this Shelter were the ones on the fifth floor. Everyone else had, regrettably, already become a monster's nutritional snack.
Apocalypse can feed on despair without physically eating anyone—but that's only because Apocalypse is a Monster Girl.
The way ordinary monsters consumed human despair was brutally simple. Drive a human into despair, then put that despairing human in your mouth to forge an even greater despair—then savor that peak of anguish and digest it thoroughly. Savage, beastly dining—and at the same time, the most universal form of a meal there was.
"Now that you mention it..."
"Isn't it actually dangerous to go outside?"
"Maybe we're better off just staying here."
"But how long are we supposed to stay?"
"I'm hungry..."
The fifth-floor bunker had been built sturdier than the rest of the Shelter, which meant communications barely worked. Phones were dead. Messages, the internet—everything, dead. I'd wondered why this floor alone had no screens; the difficulty of getting a signal through was probably the main reason.
They're all sinking deeper into despair.
The old reassurance that things were fine because no one was alone had long since become a fairy tale. Despair like this only multiplied the more you shared it.
If I'd been an ordinary person, I might have joined their little despair festival myself—but I was less a participant and more a judge on the panel.
Despair this concentrated might actually be decent.
Honestly, at first I'd been firmly in the camp of despair tasting like something? Yeah, right—but now I could feel the distinctive depth of its flavor settling in. If ordinary people's despair was this good, what would a magical girl's despair taste like?
Just imagining it made my mouth water.
Hmm—
And my Despair Circuit spun into motion—
"...Did anyone else just hear something?"
"What now? Why do you keep saying creepy stuff?"
"No, I mean... it sounded like a phone vibrating—"
BOOM—!!!!!!!!!!!!
—the door shattered.
Clean through. Satisfyingly so.
"Peridot! They're saying a monster has appeared at the Shelter! You have to hurry!"
"At the Shelter? But monsters can't get into Shelters."
"That only applies to monsters below Gamma Class!"
"But the one I just took down was only Beta Class..."
The light-green magical girl—Peridot—tilted her head at the mascot whose color matched her own exactly.
A Shelter was supposed to be a place monsters couldn't enter. Even back when she'd been an ordinary child without a magical girl's power, the common understanding had been that Shelters were absolutely safe from monsters.
And yet a monster was there?
...How?
According to her partner, the monster had broken through the Shelter door and gone inside—something Peridot simply couldn't picture. Even the monster she'd just defeated had been a mere Beta Class. A Shelter was a place that a monster the size of a small building couldn't even crack open. And something had smashed that door and walked in?
"Despair energy detected! Estimated despair level above Beta Class—at minimum a Gamma Class monster, Peridot!"
"Gamma Class?!"
Gamma Class monsters were the kind you only ever heard about in the seniors' stories. The seniors said Gamma Class monsters were as huge as mountains. The seniors said Gamma Class monsters could speak human language. Every grotesque monster tale always seemed to revolve around a Gamma Class, and Peridot had grown up listening to those bizarre stories the way other kids listened to fairy tales.
"Yes! A Gamma Class showing up in a city center this size is extremely rare—but if it really is Gamma Class, we're in serious trouble!"
"Got it! I'm on my way!"
"Be careful, Peridot! I've already contacted headquarters—other magical girls should be there soon!"
But she didn't want to run.
A magical girl existed for one purpose: to defeat monsters and save people. To fulfill the wish she'd made as a child, Peridot could not run away.
No—she could not be late.
Just a little faster. Just a little—faster!
She'd burned through a huge amount of Hope Energy fighting the Beta Class, but she could at least buy time. For the people, she would wring every last scrap of strength from her body and hold on somehow—
"Peridot... this is..."
"...Ah."
—or so she'd thought, mere moments ago.
Barely ten seconds earlier, in fact.
Squelch—
"H-Hope Energy: none... not even a scrap of Despair Energy left, either. No—the life energy itself is—"
"Ugh..."
She didn't need anyone to tell her.
Red filled every direction. Something like flesh pressed flat into the floor—something that had once been people.
"Uweeeegh...!!"
The instant she took in the massacre spread before her eyes, Peridot had no choice but to empty everything inside her onto the ground.
Why. Why had this happened.
Why?
"Peridot, snap out of it! Peridot!"
"Th-the Shelter was supposed to be safe... ugh, hhk..."
She clutched her head and curled her spine into a defensive hunch. Despair flooded into a heart that had been brimming with hope only moments before—and it happened in an instant.
"No, no, why? Why? This is—a dream, right?"
"Pull yourself together, Peridot! Despair is growing inside your heart! If this keeps up, the monster will definitely come to feed on it!"
A monster? Right—there had been a monster.
That was why she'd come.
A monster, at the Shelter.
"Aha... ahaha..."
A broken laugh slipped out as she lowered her head and shut her eyes.
A dream, right?
There was no way a Gamma Class monster would appear in a little city like this. When the monster stories had scared her, the seniors had even told her, You'll never see a Gamma Class around here, so don't worry!
"This has to be a dream. A nightmare because yesterday's stories were too scary. So when I open my eyes, for sure—"
Grrrrrrrk—
"Hhk?!"
Despair had a way of arriving without a sound. Her body, sensing the despair that had already closed to arm's length, flung the staff in her hands up in a wild arc. Compared to how half-gone she'd been a second earlier, she somehow managed to lock into a stance.
Whether that was the will to defeat a monster, or pure animal reflex fighting to stay alive, she couldn't have said—
—but in the end, Magical Girl Peridot settled into a combat posture.
Just as a magical girl should.
"Enemy despair level estimated at Gamma Class or higher! If you don't get it together, you'll be finished, Peridot! You need to refill your Hope Energy—now!"
"H-how...?"
But that was about all Peridot could manage.
Without people looking at a magical girl and finding hope, a magical girl could not replenish Hope Energy. And if that avenue was closed, the only remaining source was the magical girl herself.
Someone—please help me. Mom, Dad, where are you? Being alone is so lonely, so please, anyone—
Her mental state right now was no different from a certain moment long ago—when, before she'd ever become a magical girl, she'd crouched in a corner of a Shelter and sobbed her heart out. Just like then, she gripped her staff tight and prayed for something magical to happen; and despite that prayer, the monster in front of her kept drawing closer.
Bit by bit. Bit by bit.
As if savoring the despair inside her—slowly.
"Peridot!!!!"
Grrrrraaaaah—!!!
And at last, in the moment when the magical girl's despair had ripened to perfection, a thousand spikes launched themselves toward Peridot.
Black, black teeth of despair, ready to shred pale-green hope to ribbons.
For an ending as merciless as it was meaningless.
Just like that.