Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 13 - Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

HEART VS. HEART

  Kumi-Kumi

She’d gotten word from Mephis that the previous night had been a “disaster.” She said the principal had ordered her to take the transfer student to stay at her home. So first, Kumi-Kumi sent a report to the Elite Guard headquarters on what Mephis told her. She also notified Lillian, but all she got out of her was “Ahhh” and “Uh-huh,” which, like usual, could mean anything. Kumi-Kumi sighed. This was quite a big deal. It really wasn’t worth telling her things.

And then the next day, when Kumi-Kumi saw Adelheid at school, she told her about Mephis, but Adelheid didn’t really react. Kumi-Kumi asked her if something had happened, and Adelheid told her something even more incredible. She said that the night before at the school, Lightning had attacked her, and they’d had a real fight.

Before homeroom started, the members of Group Two went behind the gym to sit on the stairs, lean against the wall, or squat on the ground to have an emergency meeting. Being in a place like this in poses like this, they were just like delinquents. Maybe it wasn’t her imagination that Mephis looked kind of chipper.

“Where’s the transfer student?” Kumi-Kumi asked Mephis.

“I sent her to the classroom ahead of us. I told her I’d give her a pencil and notebook if she was good, so it should basically be fine. And if it’s not fine, then we’ll figure it out somehow, in its own not-fine sorta way.”

They were all in magical-girl form, and Lillian had knit an impromptu set of clappers and yarn, stringing them up around the area so they could detect any approach. I wish Lillian would be this sensible when she’s in human form, Kumi-Kumi thought as she leaned her pickax against the wall of the gym, took off her hat, and placed it on top. Noticing that Adelheid did not part with her hat, saber, or cape, just casually leaning against the wall as is, Kumi-Kumi thought, Oh, Archfiend Cram School people act like they’re always on the battlefield, and felt ashamed of herself for having let go of her pickax, even if it was still within arm’s reach. But picking it up again would be even more embarrassing, so she left it there, and the four magical girls began their discussion.

“That’s so badass, Adelheid!”

“Mephis, you’re being…too loud,” said Kumi-Kumi.

“What was so badass? Ah’m tellin’ ya, it was just bad.”

“When you say bad, though…” Bringing the index fingers of both her hands and even the tail in her hair into it, Mephis pointed at Adelheid.

The one being pointed at, however, muttered, “What…?” like she was uncomfortable.

“It’s the sort of bad that comes with fun, right?” Mephis continued. “It wasn’t actually just bad, right?”

“There’s nothin’ fun about fightin’ for your life. And when ya don’t even know why yer gettin’ attacked, it’s just scary. What in the heck was that gal thinkin’?”

“Scared of battle! This doesn’t sound like something someone from the famous Archfiend Cram School would say!”

Kumi-Kumi repeated herself. “Mephis, you’re…being too loud.”

“Meanwhile,” Mephis went on, “I just spent all night questioning that girl on and on and on and on, and the little shit wouldn’t talk at all. It’s like, I don’t even know if my magic was working or not, fuck. It didn’t seem like she’d done any manga-esque shit like special torture-resistance training or whatever, and by halfway through the night, I was sure this would never work, but I had to do it, right? If I was like, I didn’t think it was gonna work so I quit, then obviously Kumi-Kumi and you guys would be on my ass. That shit isn’t fun, and it’s pointless, too, and that’s what you call a bad time. You’re just playing it up to be rough while you actually got to vent some steam from a nice hard fight, right?”

“So basically, you’re jealous?” asked Lillian.

“I am jealous! Give me a chance to fight, too!”

“Ah’m sure there’s chances lyin’ around all over the place. If ya’d come round the school last night, maybe you’d have gotten yerself in a tussle.” Adelheid rarely ever looked serious, but now she did, which made even Mephis shut her mouth.

Taking advantage of that pause, Lillian picked up the conversation with “So then.” The way she timed that was so perfect, it made Kumi-Kumi think, I wish she would stay in magical-girl form all the time, as she listened.

“Why did you come to the school last night in the first place?” asked Lillian.

“Ah’m a magical girl, so Ah gotta do rounds on mah territory at least, right?”

“This is your territory?” Mephis cut in.

“It’s also mah territory.”

“So then don’t let intruders get away! Shit, this pisses me off, you getting to act all big when you got your ass kicked by Lightning.”

“We avoid fights…as much as possible,” said Kumi-Kumi.

“Loooser!”

“If we’re talkin’ ’bout fights, then ya gotta watch out, too, Mephis. Ya hit Tetty yesterday and ruined rec time, didn’t ya? That’s clearly goin’ too far. Ah’m sure she didn’t mean nothin’ by it, neither. And like, just recently I heard y’all have some history? It’s kinda been on mah mind.”

“I heard that…they went to…the same elementary school…and became magical girls…together.”

“Ah, that right?” said Adelheid. “Huh, so they’re childhood friends.”

“Shaddap! Stop blabbing about pointless shit! We’re talking about Lightning! Fuck off!”

Adelheid was about to argue further when Kumi-Kumi restrained her with a look and gave Lillian a nod. If they were going to talk about the bad relationship between Tetty and Mephis, they should do it when Mephis wasn’t around.

It seemed Lillian picked up on her sign, and she smoothly moved the conversation on. “Lightning was all right in the end, though, wasn’t she?”

“Ah dunno why, though. After Ah gave ’er that big thwack in the temple, Ah thought, awww darn, Ah mighta gone and done ’er in, but she was all fine and dandy and hopped off home.”

“It’s not that she actually avoided the attack or blocked it with energy or something, right?” Mephis asked.

“Nah way. Ah saw that dent in ’er temple. She was down the road to bein’ unconscious till mornin’, at best.”

“Dent in her temple…,” Mephis repeated. “What were you gonna do if she died for real?”

“Well, Ah’d leave dealin’ with that to y’all. Yer used to that, right?”

“You think the Elite Guard’s work includes body disposal, moron?!”

“Well, that aside, Ah think she used some kind o’ magic.”

“Lightning’s magic… Oh yes,” said Lillian. “Electric shocks, was it?”

“That’s right.”

“Just based on common sense,” Lillian continued, “it wouldn’t be possible to heal bruises with electricity, would it?”

“Well, no.”

“So then…in other words…” Kumi-Kumi hadn’t at all been participating in the rapid-fire exchange of conversation, but that was precisely why she’d had the time to slowly and carefully consider, and so she’d been able to guess the reason for the mysterious phenomenon that was Lightning’s lack of injury. But though she’d been able to think about it, she still couldn’t speak about it very eloquently, so the words came out slow. “Doesn’t that mean…Lightning’s magic…is actually something else?”

“Uh, but she really was shootin’ lightnin’ bolts all over the place,” said Adelheid.

“Well…um…that’s, you know…”

“Oh, I see. True, if the electricity was borrowed from a magical item, while her own magic was something else, then there would be no contradiction.” Lillian clapped her hands.

Adelheid and Mephis looked surprised but also convinced. Mephis clapped Kumi-Kumi on the back, smiling as she said, “Not bad, Kumi-Kumi,” while Adelheid nodded and muttered, “True, then everythin’ would fit.” Kumi-Kumi hadn’t been thinking as far as that, but she nodded with an expression like she’d been thinking that all along.

“Ah hear underreportin’ yer magic, or falsely reportin’ it, has been common since way back,” said Adelheid.

“For real?” said Mephis. “You can do that?”

“Oh, but the pre-enrollment checks here are supposed ta be pretty strict. So Ah’m sure they’re properly investigatin’, so any liars’d get booted right away… Ah assumed anyway.”

“But it’s also possible that they did investigate her but let her in regardless to watch her behavior,” Lillian pointed out.

“For real? They’d go that far?”

One of the group folded her arms and nodded, another looked up into the air instead, another groaned, while another—Kumi-Kumi—blew a long breath out her nose. She had too many things to think about. “If that’s…the principal’s…stance…then that makes it, um…possible there are…actually students…who are hiding their magic…um… That’s not good.”

“If we can’t trust any of the info that comes out public, that’s pretty brutal.”

“Will Lightning be coming to school?” asked Lillian.

“Ah think she’ll come. Cool as a cucumber.”

Mephis scowled. “I can just imagine her showing up with a look on her face like ‘Oh, did something happen?’ That bitch.”

Around the time morning training would be wrapping up, the four detransformed and went back to the classroom. Lightning, who was in the hallway whispering about something, looked even more cool and composed than Kumi-Kumi had anticipated, wearing a breezy smile.

  Pshuke Prains

Hearing the shocking news from the leader of Group Three, Princess Lightning, that she’d fought with Adelheid at the school late the night before, Pshuke felt more confused than angry. She thought there had to be some kind of reason, but the one in question—Lightning—was smiling without any shame at all.

“Adelheid hides what she can really do while at school, doesn’t she?” said Lightning. “Even during rec times, she never uses her magic at all. So I thought I’d like to test some things, if I had the chance. Of course, I never had any intention of doing anything reckless. But she became so worked up, you know. Two magical girls at the school at night is such a dramatic situation, after all, so what can you do? I really rather wouldn’t have, but I let her have a battle. Though of course I knew it wasn’t good to fight.”

Her little speech made Pshuke doubt her sanity. What exactly had she planned to do if she’d killed Adelheid or if Adelheid had killed her? Ranyi’s and Diko’s mouths remained closed and were not moving. Pshuke couldn’t expect either of them to tell her off anyway.

Pshuke glanced over at Sally, who looked bewildered but still kept a proper smile on her face as she asked, “So then…you mean your scheme got found out by Group Two, so you wound up in a fight, yeahhh?”

“Whatever do you mean, scheme?” asked Lightning.

“Your scheme was like, that thing, yeahhh. How in the mock battle yesterday, you offered to join forces with Group One and lent them your dagger.”

“And here I was wondering why you were bringing up schematics… If that’s what you mean, it doesn’t seem it’s been exposed. And now that you mention it, they haven’t returned that weapon I lent them. If I’d had that dagger, perhaps I would have been able to win the fight last night.”

“Uh, that’s not the problem, here…,” said Pshuke.

“I would have liked to discuss it with you, if I could have—saying, ‘It’s looking like there will be a fight, what should I do?’ But there was no time, was there? So I was forced into telling you after the fact. I’m sorry.”

With Lightning right in front of her apologizing with that angelic smile, even knowing she had no sincere desire to apologize, Pshuke was unable to press further, and she just wound up grumbling and griping like always. And Sally, who was far better with words than Pshuke was, couldn’t come down hard on Lightning, either, only cautioning her with a “watch out next time,” while Ranyi in particular was looking at Lightning like she was great or heroic for acting like a loose cannon and pulling this stunt without talking to any of them about it first. And Diko was just there and nothing else. You couldn’t tell from her expression whether she thought well or poorly of Lightning.

“I did unfortunately lose,” Lightning continued, “but I was able to see some of my opponent’s magic. I think the next time we ever have a mock battle, we can work things to our advantage. Next time, we’ll be able to slap away Group Two easily without doing something as tiresome as cooperating with Group One.”

If you were to personify the word “shameless,” it would surely be Lightning right now. It wasn’t just that she didn’t think she was at fault—even when she said crazy things, it sounded mysteriously convincing. Blame it all on her face for being too flawless. No matter what sort of idiocy she spouted, that made it seem as if she was right.

The most free-spirited girl in the class: Princess Lightning. Watching her made Pshuke remember a certain magical girl—the leader of the Puk Faction, Puk Puck. It was that simple innocence and free spirit of hers that had eventually led to her losing her life. After her death, the aristocrats of the Puk Faction who had kept their distance from her had taken control of the faction, and even after every Puk Faction member had been driven out from the magical-girl school, the faction had just barely managed to shove in one student. Pshuke had been told that anyone who was originally from the faction would make the people at the school wary, which was why they had gone to the trouble to pay a freelancer to be a student for two years.

Pshuke had wound up as the only one from the Puk Faction left in the class, and just being there was like walking on a tightrope. Since this would restrict her activity for two years, it paid quite a lot. If she failed, she would receive only the advance and wouldn’t get the rest, and it would also hurt her reputation. No way did she want to get dragged into Lightning’s freewheeling behavior and get expelled before it was done.

At least don’t drag me into it, Pshuke griped inwardly and moaned under her breath, but she had no idea how much anyone actually heard. Sally looked the most apologetic of the group, for some reason, so you knew it was hopeless.

And so Pshuke continued to vent anger that would never reach its target, and their morning meeting came to an end. Group Three all filed into the classroom, and right as they were about to wait for Calkoro, someone called out to them. Wondering who it was, Pshuke looked over to see Tetty Goodgripp. Friend or foe, it’s gonna be nothing but miserable bastards this morning, Pshuke thought, getting even more irritated as she rattled off the filthiest insults toward Tetty in a voice nobody would hear.

Everything had been so boring when Pshuke was in elementary school. The only fun times had been when she’d gotten into animated conversation with her friends trash-talking other people. Giving in to the urge, speaking badly of someone who didn’t show their face in various communities, venting her resentments, building a sense of unity, and then saying farewell with a smile—it had taken no time for her to realize that she liked that sort of thing, and she’d come to start it of her own accord.

But things never went that easy in life, and communities will have loose connections with other communities, and the nasty things she’d been saying about classmates got leaked to another class through the neighborhood association, and after more stuff happened, it was exposed that she liked talking badly about people behind their backs, and the friends who had been so enthusiastic about backbiting with her all did a one-eighty, and she’d wound up completely alone.

Pshuke, who had already been a magical girl at the time, had engaged in some self-reflection. She’d tried various things, like using the Internet or writing a diary and whatnot, and in the end, she’d settled on talking to herself. Communication was ultimately just incidental. The important thing was saying things out loud to vent stress. Spewing venom was like ejecting toxins from the body.

Tetty, who surely wouldn’t imagine Pshuke was saying all sorts of nasty filth about her, held out that dagger to Lightning with her usual harmless-looking smile. “Since I forgot to return it yesterday.”

Time had practically stopped—the classroom had gone silent. It wasn’t just Groups One and Three. Group Two was right there—and Mephis. What Tetty was doing—as if she’d forgotten the very important rule of secretly returning what had been secretly obtained—gathered all the eyes and ears of the classroom, and there was no covering it up now. At the very least, Mephis was looking at them with suspicion.

Wondering about Group One, Pshuke looked over there to see Miss Ril had a worried expression, Arlie and Dory were looking all around anxiously, while Rappy had an “Oh, she’s done it now” expression with a hand on her forehead. It seemed what Tetty was pulling was not their idea.

Pshuke fretted in a panic, but Lightning was calm and cool as if this was nothing at all, accepting the dagger with a smile as she said, “Thank you very much.” Even if the day came when a meteorite fell and the world was destroyed, this abnormally attractive girl would never waver in her attitude, Pshuke thought, and she scowled in irritation.

Tetty bowed her head to Lightning, then next turned back to Mephis, bowing again. The one she was apologizing and saying “I’m sorry” to gazed down at Tetty’s head, confused.

No way, she’s not going to blurt it out to her, Pshuke thought, watching the exchange between the pair with trepidation, and when she heard Tetty continue with, “About yesterday,” she muttered insults at her under her breath.

“Miss Ril was glowing at the end of the mock battle, right? Well, that was since we borrowed that dagger from Lightning, and Miss Ril used her magic to absorb the property of the dagger to shine.”

She’d gone and said it. Pshuke didn’t get why she had to say it to Mephis personally. And unlike Lightning, Tetty was not acting shamelessly about it, her hands trembling slightly. If that wasn’t acting, then it was the reaction of someone who was scared of retaliation from Mephis.

Mephis seemed to consider a moment. But then she stuck up the middle finger of her right hand like a vulgar hand sign to push up the bridge of her glasses and fix their position. Her expression was entirely calm, but that seemed like nothing other than an omen. “…In other words, it’s like, Groups One and Three got together to take out Group Two?”

“We thought…it would be advantageous to do that,” said Tetty.

“Oh. Huh. You came up with a good idea there, uh-huh.” Mephis laughed ha-ha-ha, and then before you could even blink, her expression transformed into a visage of rage as she made to attack Tetty, but Kumi-Kumi stopped her right arm, Lillian restrained her left, and Adelheid got her in a full nelson from behind.

Kana quietly stepped up behind Kumi-Kumi. “What should I do?”

“Grab…her legs, too.”

“Understood.” She hugged Mephis’s right leg to her chest.

Following Kumi-Kumi’s signal of “One, two,” Mephis’s four captors backed her up, drawing her away from Tetty. Kana, however, was the only one getting kicked in the face over and over with Mephis’s left leg. Her expression never changed. Pshuke really had no idea what this one was thinking, either, in a different sort of way.

Even as she was being dragged away, Mephis mustered all her strength to sling insults. Along with the childish ones of “garbage, shithead, coward, trash,” she went as far as saying, “You’ve always been like—” and Kumi-Kumi covered her mouth so she could only make muffled noises that weren’t words.

Tetty, who had caused this situation, trembled as she watched Mephis. Miss Ril put a hand on her shoulder while Rappy tugged at her sleeve, but Tetty did not obey, taking a step forward toward Mephis and calling out loudly, “Mephis. Listen, um, you did teach me one thing, yesterday.”

Once again, the classroom went quiet. Mephis stopped struggling, and the girls who were restraining her also looked toward Tetty with opening mouths. Group Three had the same looks on their faces. Though they seemed skeptical about what she was going to say, they were listening closely so as not to miss a word.

Then there was a rattle, and the door opened. The sound of the class list being struck twice, followed by the teacher’s voice saying, “Didn’t you all hear the bell?” rang through the classroom. As if time had unfrozen, the girls got moving again, sitting down in their own seats. Calkoro looked at them with curiosity, but she must have decided not to worry about it, as she nodded once and then began taking attendance.

  Calkoro

Seeing the Group Two leader and all the members of her group come together to restrain her, Calkoro inferred that something had happened before class. And not just that—the whole class had a strange atmosphere. They weren’t all staring at Mephis, who was like a captured alien, but at Tetty Goodgripp. She must have said something, but it seemed Calkoro had come into the classroom too late, so she hadn’t heard what.

Calkoro would have assumed that if anyone would start an uproar, it would be Kana, or Mephis, or Kana and Mephis together. But had it actually been Tetty? Calkoro’s impression that Tetty would never proactively cause a problem—that she was in fact the type to try to put a lid on things—still had not changed. Tetty hadn’t deliberately caused that kerfuffle during the mock battle, either. She’d just acted without thinking out of goodwill, her body moving in an attempt to save Mephis.

If Tetty was causing a problem of her own initiative, then it wouldn’t be her own decision—what if the Information Bureau she worked for was making her do it? With that thought, the blackboard chalk in Calkoro’s hand froze for a moment, and she held her right arm with her left hand, restraining it before it started shaking. If the Information Bureau was using Tetty to do something, then Calkoro shouldn’t get involved.

“…Bella Lace gathered resentments from dead bodies, materialized it, and would lock magical girls inside. This might come up on the test, so please remember it.” Calkoro said something she wouldn’t normally say, rapping her knuckles on the blackboard while she was at it to hide her bewilderment and fear.

If the Information Bureau had made Tetty do it, then it would be strange to report this to Halna, but if she failed to report it, not doing so was bound to be taken as negligence in her supervision. If Calkoro could make it feel like she was subtly sliding it in with other items to report, that would reduce the odds that she would touch on it in an impolitic manner. And first, she should come up with every countermeasure she could before dealing with the report.

“Miss Box, who was a skilled boxer, also avariciously absorbed techniques from those of her henchmen magical girls who were skilled in martial arts—such as Bottlecut Girl, who practiced traditional karate. Cranberry was uninterested in anything aside from making herself more powerful, and the goal of the exams she held was also…”

Calkoro’s eye happened to stop on the expressionless Kana. Calkoro cleared her throat and wiped the blackboard with the brush to cover it. Rushing it, she scattered chalk dust around, making her cough for real.

Slacking off again today? she wondered, eyeing Kana again to see that surprisingly, her notebook was open in front of her and her pencil was moving. Though Kumi-Kumi had her textbook shifted over to share with her, it seemed Kana had brought the rest herself.

Did she plan to take the class basically seriously? So then when she’d handed in that blank sheet the day before, had she done it to mean something?

“Cranberry perverted what magical-girl activities originally were supposed to be about: helping people on the ground level, and the result was—”

That was it. A field exercise. They couldn’t have one that day, but Calkoro could make one happen somehow within the week. Kana not having shown her real abilities in the mock battle would be a reason to have her do a field exercise. Calkoro would mostly follow around Group Two and keep a watch on Kana, checking on her activity. For the other groups, well, she’d have them do whatever and get them to report later, and that should be plenty.

As she was feeling excited about having come up with a good idea, the class came to an end, and Calkoro immediately put together a report and sent the e-mail, and frighteningly, she got an instant reply.

Calkoro reread the reply from Halna three times over.

Her instructions were nothing so gentle as having them help people around town—she said they should do combat training in a space larger than the gym. And since Kana herself had said she’d learned all of the homunculi’s weaknesses, this time for sure, Calkoro should be able to make her fight properly and keep her from hiding anything. Which, now that she mentioned it, was quite right, but was Halna taking the dangers into consideration?

As for location, Halna said the mountain area behind the school was appropriate. There were no people around there, which was good, but it was so close to the middle of town.

Calkoro couldn’t help but think that too many of the class safety considerations were being left up to the discretion of the teacher. And she really got the feeling that, in her attempt to avoid trouble, she’d dug up more of it.

Hold the exercise tomorrow. Get it ready immediately.

Once she had read those last two lines, Calkoro looked up at the ceiling.

  Kana

She had safely gotten through the full day’s schedule. That day, she had not been under inquiry by Calkoro or reprimanded by Halna: the first day that had ended safely in the true sense of the word. Mephis and Tetty had quarreled a bit, but that was ultimately just in the morning. It didn’t drag on after that, and there had been no other chances for the two of them to talk or to fight like the day before.

Though Kana didn’t show it on her face, she felt great joy in her heart. With the foresight to borrow not only a pencil and eraser, but being canny and getting even a pencil sharpener as well, she’d been able to copy off the blackboard the whole day, like the other students. And neither could it be overlooked how she had been able to submit her assignment. Calkoro had to be satisfied. When there was something Kana didn’t know, she made sure to ask about it, and she never missed any instructions. If she became distracted by things or got lost in thought for a bit, then everything would be ruined. Not just for Kana. She would cause trouble for her group, the whole class, and bring danger to them. With a consideration that was even too much, her life at school was coming into being.

The teacher said there would be a nighttime field exercise the following day. Kana wrote that down in her notebook, including the warning not to forget to leave that time open. Now even if it slipped her mind, there wouldn’t be a problem if she saw that reminder.

Already, she was no longer a transfer student—she’d managed to fully fit in as a member of the class. Feeling satisfied, Kana once again went home with Mephis.

And so it had been a very substantial day, but on the way back, Mephis did not open her mouth, sullenly falling silent. Examining her expression, Kana noted she clearly seemed to be in a bad mood. Kana wondered if she had some kind of personal problem and thought maybe she should offer advice, and the fact that she had enough leisure to be capable of that thought now deepened her private sense of satisfaction.

“Ahhh, shit!”

The moment they got back, Mephis detransformed. It took Kana about three claps worth of time to realize she had done so. Having her classmate suddenly appear in front of her was quite startling. The day before, Mephis hadn’t detransformed between leaving school and going to school, so Kana had sort of assumed that was how it went. But as Kana was considering how to deal with this, the girl went down the hallway to the room at the end, and by the time she came back, she’d changed into a simple undershirt, with steam rising from her head. Not because she was angry. She’d probably gone to have a bath.

Mephis’s hair was now down, and she dried it with a hair dryer, put her glasses in a case, and placed them by her pillow. She lay down on her bed, pulled the blanket up to her shoulders, turned her back to Kana, and turned off her room lights with a remote.

Kana shook her through the blanket. “Wait.”

“Shut up! Goddamn it!” The girl tossed up the blanket, left the bed with determination, smacked her fist on the light switch to turn it on, then came back in the same way, throwing up dust as she plopped down on the bed. From the way she got angry—yes indeed, though her clothing was different, she was very much the same old Mephis.

“Nighttime’s for sleeping, okay! Moron!” Mephis said.

“But isn’t right now evening, not night?” Kana asked.

“Let me sleep.”

“We talked all night and didn’t sleep yesterday.”

“You’re boring me!”

Kana thought she probably knew quite better than anyone else that she was boring, but what point could there be in having it explicitly pointed out? She gave it some consideration but couldn’t figure out what Mephis was trying to say. Despite her remarkable growth lately, she was feeling her limits now. The satisfaction that had been continuously building all day wilted away. This wasn’t good.

“I’d appreciate if you could educate me on what about me is boring—and how,” said Kana.

“I interrogated you all day yesterday, and you didn’t talk!”

“So that was an interrogation?”

“Fugginshihmancuttabitchaghhhh!”

“I’d also appreciate if you avoided untranslatable slang.”

“Spending all night long poking and prodding and interrogating you like a mage—is not what I want to do, okay?! I’m just—not cut out for it! Do you get that?!”

“I think your magic is precisely suited to interrogation, though.”

“Like I said! It’s boring! Even after I hit you with my magic all night, you didn’t tell me anything! Nobody’s ever been able to resist it that hard, okay! And then the next day, you were just calmly going through class! But I had to work without any sleep, and I’m sick of it! The hell! Did you get some kinda training for this?! Are you a spy or something?!”

“Don’t these sorts of tasks become more effective through repetition?”

“That! Is! What! I’m calling boring! What the hell sort of point is there in interrogating someone who’s telling me I should do it again?! Fuck off! Fuck off! Just drop dead!” Since she was punching the futon on every syllable, dust was flying up to fill the room.

Kana backed up slightly and touched the cushion she’d been sitting on the day before. Lucky, she thought and picked it up and put it under her bottom like she had yesterday. The carpet in this room had short hairs, so it was uncomfortable to sit without a cushion.

“You! You’re a death-row prisoner, aren’t you?!” Mephis said.

“I’m not from death row,” Kana informed her.

“You’re a jailbreaker!”

“I didn’t escape from prison.”

“You’re some nasty hardcore prisoner, right!”

“Shouldn’t we start by confirming how each of us would define ‘nasty hardcore’?”

“Cut the constant back talk! You trying to make fun of me or what?! Just listen up! Seriously!”

“I’ll listen seriously.”

“Look, okay, you’re a prisoner, right? Listen, I had my hopes up, there. You’d expect that you’ve got to be interesting, right? Anyone would think that—not just me.”

Kana didn’t understand. Aside from some exceptions, prisoners were shut away because they had gotten their hands dirty with criminal activity, and so a student who attended a school to become a full-fledged magical girl should fear them or hold them in contempt. But for some reason, Mephis was expecting her to be interesting. “How exactly did you want me to be interesting?” Kana asked.

“With fight scenes, obviously,” said Mephis. “Of course you wouldn’t expect anything else from an evil magical girl from prison.”

“Fight scenes.” What Kana managed to realize was that it would be difficult to understand just what the “interesting” Mephis described was. Kana did have the feeling that she’d managed to grasp what she should do to satisfy Mephis, if only vaguely. However, granting Mephis’s wish would generate different types of obstructions for Kana. And if it would greatly burden the other classmates and damage all of Class 2-F, then wouldn’t that drive Mephis to dislike her in the end? What Mephis proposed would, after all was said and done, wind up wringing her own neck.

“Wouldn’t that be disadvantageous to more people?” said Kana.

“If it wasn’t too brutal, then I’d go out and kick ass, so it’d be fine. And if that happens, I can vent some stress, too, so it’ll be killing two birds with one stone.”

“…Would it be? I’m not so sure it would.”

“Aghhh! Looking at me with that annoying face while you say all this tedious shit is what’s boring! Go knock yourself out! Shit! Why’s it always Adelheid who gets good stuff happening to her?!”

“You’re saying Adelheid has had good things happen to her?”

“Don’t ask! ’Cause I can’t say! Forget that and just be more violent! You’re a prisoner!”

“Isn’t prison for forcing prisoners to be serious and industrious?”

“You always have a line! Agh, whatever! You’re dumpster trash!” Mephis yelled, grabbing the blanket she’d shoved aside, and with an openly sullen attitude, she threw herself down. Kana wound up left behind. Even if they were to discuss anything further, since she couldn’t see any validity in Mephis’s assertions, she was unable to reach a compromise, and since Mephis was not getting what she wanted, her mood wasn’t going to improve, either. If anything could fix her mood, then would it be flattery and sucking up? If Kana was to compliment anything about Mephis… Maybe her generosity for allowing her to stay over, despite her irritation toward Kana? But she couldn’t help but feel that even if she complimented her for that, it would just end up in oil poured on a fire. Society would call situations like this being out of options.

“So then does this mean I should wait like this until morning?” asked Kana.

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. There’s nothing to you. You’re just hot air.”

Even with Mephis turned away from her, Kana clearly understood that she was angry. It seemed she didn’t want to talk to Kana, no matter what. Had Mephis’s detransformation been her way of announcing her decision to refuse to talk to Kana? Psychologically, this did seem convincing, but Mephis was difficult to understand from the get-go. That made her deeply interesting, but Kana could anticipate that saying that would just make Mephis angry with her again.

Kana shifted on top of the cushion, sliding her legs to the side. She did this since she assumed she would continue sitting like this until morning, and she decided she should adopt a more comfortable position. Next, she wanted something to kill time with. Since she’d had a lot of restrictions forced on her to begin with, she was used to spending her time idly, doing nothing, but there had been so much stimulation lately. It would probably be painful to sit there with nothing. Laughing at herself for having become soft since being sealed away, and well prepared for Mephis to get angry at her again, Kana said, “If you’re saying you don’t want to talk with me, then I’ll give up on that, since there’s nothing I can do about it.”

No response.

“Talking with you was fun,” Kana continued, “but if I was the only one enjoying myself, then that’s no good.”

Mephis rolled over, turning her face to Kana. Her eyes were open. Her expression was a dangerous one. Her pretransformation face, the human one, had a certain kind of punch to it. “You’re kinda pissing me off.”

“Pardon me. Setting that aside, could I make one request?”

“What’re you gonna ask for at this point?”

“I’d like something to kill time until morning. Could you lend me some analects of poetry or some such?”

“An ana…what? I don’t really get what you mean, but you can just read a book. There’s tons over there. Stop being a hassle. I’m going to sleep. Fuck off.”

Kana had managed to obtain the permission of the head of household. Mephis said she was free to read, so she probably wouldn’t criticize her, no matter what book she picked up. So Kana pulled a book off the shelf, flipped through a few pages, then put it back. She pulled out a different one and flipped through it, then pulled out yet another and flipped through it, and did this over and over, but got the same results.

Kana looked up at the ceiling. The stain there was shaped rather like a humanoid golem. “Mephis.”

“What?!”

“There’s nothing here I can read.”

“Huh?” Mephis jumped out of bed. Shock and confusion rose on her face, and she leaped over to Kana like she was going to make a grab for her, snatching the book away from the side to look over it. In less than a breath’s time, her expression calmed, and then her surprise and confusion turned to anger, her eyebrows inverting themselves. Kana sort of felt as if even Mephis’s eyelashes were bristling. “You can read these just fine.”

Opening up the book that was thrust back at her, Kana pointed to one of the pictures drawn in it. “I don’t understand what this means.”

“It’s a normal manga.”

“What’s a manga?”

The anger on Mephis’s face turned back to confusion again. Watching her eyebrows move around alone was interesting, but if Kana said that, it would naturally anger her, so she didn’t say that out loud.

“Huh? What? Is this a gag?” Mephis demanded.

“What do you mean by gag?” Kana asked.

“You don’t know manga?”

“This is the first I’ve ever seen such a thing.”

“You’re lying. You’ve got to be.”

“I don’t lie.” Kana would sometimes not say the truth when she knew it, but that wasn’t a lie. Kana considered that just a bit of a device to make relationships smoother.

“For real? People like that exist…? I saw on online news or something that lately there are young people who don’t know how to read manga, but this is different from that, right?”

“Even before considering how it’s read, I’ve simply never heard of ‘manga’ before.”

“That’s crazy. So then that means you haven’t read Gigabrant, or Daily Life of a Bugler, or Blood of Marchosias. Actually, that means you don’t even know stuff on the level of Bitty Kitty or Maru-Maru—that’s just crazy, whoa.”

“I apologize for being uneducated in this matter, but this is all new information for me.”

Mephis sat down on the bed, crossing her legs as she muttered something under her breath. She seemed lost in thought, like her mind was elsewhere. The hem of her shirt was pushed up over her knees, exposing her underwear, but Kana had already learned that pointing out her underwear would make her angry, so she remained silent as she looked at Mephis’s face and underwear and continued to wait.

“Huh,” Mephis said finally. “’Cause you were in prison. You were in there the whole time, so you didn’t have any chances to come in contact with it. Wait, but if that’s why, then doesn’t that mean you were thrown in jail a way long time ago?”

“It’s not wrong that I haven’t had an opportunity to come in contact with it,” Kana replied.

“Ohhh. You understand the words, right? You speak Japanese pretty fluently, but it’s not like you can’t read or something, right?”

“There’s a translation magic in operation. All I’m unable to understand is how I should read it. It seems as if it’s a sequence of pictures, but there’s no numbers written to indicate what order they should be read. I’m not even sure in the first place if it should be read in order. And there are incomprehensible symbols all over the place as well. I assumed the words that seem like remarks surrounded by circles would be the dialogue spoken by characters, but there’s variation in these surrounding circles, and it seems different ones are used depending on the situation.”

“Ahhh, yeah. Oh. Huh. It’s like, I never really think about it, and I just take it for granted when I read them, but now that you mention it, maybe there are a lot of rules that are sort of, like, an unspoken understanding.”

Whether she’d noticed it or was doing so unconsciously, Mephis fixed the hem of her shirt with her right hand, then folded her legs the other way, and arched her back. Then she snapped forward again, stopping right before her face touched Kana’s. “In other words, like, you don’t know anything about the wide world of manga yet. So that means what sort of manga you read and what sort of manga you’ll come to like might all be up to me, huh. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Is it?”

“It is!” Mephis hugged her arms, gazed up at the ceiling, and let out a sigh of pathos. Kana looked up at the ceiling as well, but there was nothing there but that same stain and the electric light filled with soot.

“Look, magical girls generally like magical girls, right?” said Mephis.

“Well, isn’t that obvious?”

“Well, yeah. I do get that. But it’s not weird for there to be some people who aren’t really attached to magical girls, right? Well, I mean me, though. I like battle manga more than magical girls. I like ability battles where they use their smarts, I like fistfights between robots, I like martial arts with secret techniques, and I really love musclehead battle manga where they compete for beam output; I just like ones where they fight and fight. And really the best of the best of them are the delinquent manga.”

Kana didn’t understand loving battles that much, but it could be that Kana being a weakling meant she’d been looking away from the essential pleasure of battle.

“Is that why you’re so belligerent?” Kana asked.

“Don’t say that.”

“Pardon me.” Kana tensed, thinking she had offended Mephis, but it seemed she wasn’t particularly bothered, looking up at the ceiling.

“Like the Archfiend Cram School or something’d be cool,” said Mephis. “Do you know about them?”

“I’ve heard the name before.”

“Adelheid went there. But it’s gone, now. Doing stuff like battle manga among yourselves and then, like, suddenly up and deciding you’re breaking up and it’s over, you can’t just do that. I’ve got the right to participate, too. I’m sure it’d be fun to kick their asses.”

“You shouldn’t be reckless.”

“Well, the biggest reason I’d like to kick the Archfiend Cram School’s asses is that I don’t like how full of themselves they act, but it’s not like I don’t want some battle manga kind of stuff to happen. It’s ’cause I don’t get any real battles that I have no choice but to read manga to slake the thirst.” Mephis got up, and standing in front of the bookshelf, she muttered something under her breath, then pulled out a few books. She flipped through the pages to check the contents, then nodded like she was satisfied, stuck up her thumb, and indicated the bed. “C’mere. I’ll teach you the depths of manga culture.”

“Is it that important?”

“Yeah, it is. If you don’t know about manga, that’s about an eighty percent loss in life.”

“Eighty percent seems too large, for just things to read.”

“It’s world changing. It’s not just about entertainment. In this shit world, if the kind of person who constantly has anyone and everyone telling them to go die discovers there’s even a little fun in living, and they come to think that they can’t die until they read what happens next in this manga, and they find people they can talk to about stuff, like this week’s chapter was so cool or whatever, then that’s like an eighty percent change. No, maybe even more than that. I don’t know what sort of life yours was, but it probably wasn’t very happy; I mean, you were in prison.”

“Regarding whether a personal sense of happiness is my ultimate goal or not—”

“Okay, no more being a drag. C’mon, just get over here.” Mephis lay down on the bed and patted beside her. Kana flopped down next to her, eyes falling to the page Mephis had opened up. This marked the beginning of her education on the various types of specialized knowledge, such as division of panels, bubbles, and various symbols. The sheets didn’t smell like a magical girl but rather a girl pretransformation.

  Snow White

Arlie had done a good job. It wasn’t as if she’d originally been designed for information gathering. It was fair to say that she’d been created to fight, so even if she was happily reporting about how “this thing had happened” or “my friend said that,” it was great information.

Still, it made it difficult to dig in deep. The presence of the exchange student Kana was extremely suspicious, but since she had only just transferred in, they still didn’t know anything of significance about her. It seemed like Tetty and Mephis’s quarrel was related to their past, but sloppy probing in that matter would certainly draw suspicion. It was also possible that Tetty and Mephis’s spat was an entirely personal matter, so making Arlie suspicious of them for that sake was too much risk for the benefits. And most of all, after seeing Arlie enjoying her time at school with a smile, “necessities” like having her probe and investigate came to seem like too much.

Snow White spun her mechanical pencil twice over her finger. Thinking about all this serious business in this formal-feeling room furnished and sized just like a meeting room was getting suffocating. Figuring she’d make herself physically more comfortable, at least, Snow White laid a towel over the long table, took off her boots, laid her feet on the towel, and leaned back in her chair.

She looked up at the ceiling. It was dotted with little holes, like the walls of a music room.

She was gathering information from other routes aside from Arlie, too.

Thanks to Brenda and Catherine going out to do the rounds at night, Snow White had found out about Adelheid and Lightning’s private battle.

Mana sent her any information that went through the Inspection Department that seemed like it might be relevant. Most likely her father, who was the chief of Inspection, was turning a blind eye to it.

Deluge had found out about Princess Lightning and was pulling strings in the R&D Department. Snow White could tell from the voice of her heart that she was basically gritting her teeth as she did it.

Snow White had also gotten word from within the Osk Faction about the goings-on at the lab. That was the Osk research organization that was rumored to do all sorts of unethical research and experimentation, with human experimentation first on the list. Since the principal Halna was also associated with the Osks, they had connections to the magical-girl class and provided it with security homunculi at wholesale prices. And over these past few days, the number and quality of those security homunculi had gone up. If those had come before the magical-girl class had launched, that would be one thing, but coming one month after launch was suspicious. Snow White had the creeping feeling that something was off.

Lost in her thoughts, when she heard the voice, she was unsure of it. Jerking up in her seat, she looked over toward where she thought she’d heard it. Shadow Gale was tightening a nut with her wrench. There were mechanical things scattered all around her, but nobody was going to criticize her for making a mess. They left her alone staring vacantly at the machines while she tightened, connected, and made additions, over and over.

Snow White let out a big sigh. It must have been her imagination. She’d thought she’d heard a familiar high-pitched electronic voice murmuring “pon.” But there was no way. Fal hadn’t yet been found.

She brought her attention back to the matter at hand.

She just didn’t have enough eyes at the school. She had to keep as close a watch over it as possible. And then, she would prepare so that if anything happened, she could intervene immediately.

A voice of the heart approached from the hallway. Snow White lowered her feet from the table, adjusting her seat on the chair with a composed expression as if she’d been sitting in it properly all along.