Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 4 - Chapter 12

The Case of the Missing Beef: The Maid Saw It

This story is set about a year before the game in Magical Girl Raising Project: Restart begins.

The bus riders were clamoring in excitement, everyone snatching the mic from one another as they sang anime songs and hit songs. All these kids were from different grade levels and schools and had only just met, but they laughed together as if they’d been friends for a decade. This summer camp was sure to be a lot of fun.

Noriko Nonohara was one of those excited passengers. In fact, it could be said that it was precisely because she was having fun that the atmosphere was humming like this. Noriko Nonohara—the magical girl Nokko—had the magic power to transmit her own feelings to those around her. She would influence everyone, without exception, with both her negative and positive feelings. If Noriko was enjoying herself, so was everyone else.

And this occasion was different from when she was at home, when she was at school, and when she was working as Nokko. Her mother and father had sent her off, telling her to “go have lots of fun,” and Noriko intended to do so. Normally, when she was transformed into Nokko and going through her typical day, she would restrain and control her emotions to lead her class in a better direction. At this camp, she planned to let her feelings go and prioritize her own enjoyment. She would do what she wanted, aside from the minimal level of control necessary to erase suspicions about her transformation and reduce the impression her appearance created.

“Oh! I can see it!” A boy sitting in the seat in front of her stood up and pointed. Beyond the winding mountain road, they caught a glimpse of a reddish-brown building. It was square and flat on all sides, like a giant matchbox. That was the place they’d be staying.

Shinobu Hioka was a magical girl, as well as a detective. How many people these days actually believed detectives only handled the bizarre cases you read about in mystery novels? Most people had to believe that most detective work was common and vulgar, like searching for runaways, doing background checks, and gathering evidence that a spouse was cheating.

But the reality didn’t even live up to that.

The work Shinobu Hioka had been assigned by her boss was, to be precise, not even work.

“Um…so in other words, this is volunteering, right?”

“Yep. You got it.”

Shinobu meant for her face and tone of voice to convey the silent message, “What the hell is this bullshit, old man?”

But her boss was utterly unmoved as he sipped at his coffee. “We’ve got to send them someone from our office. One of the people running this thing has done a lot for us, so we can’t refuse.”

Shinobu scowled at her boss. He looked back at her coolly. She dropped her gaze to the knees of her pantsuit, changed her expression to a doubtful one, and jerked her head up again. “Why me?”

“It’s training. This was how you got to become a full-fledged detective, back in the old days. I did all this, too.” His tone brooked no argument. The way he said it gave Shinobu the impression he assumed she would never consider refusing in the first place. And the fact was, though she could complain, she couldn’t say no.

Thus, it was decided that Shinobu would serve as staff in a children’s camp.

“Shinobuuu, go help with setting up the campfire.”

“Okaaay. I’m goiiing.”

“Shinobuuu, make sure the times on all the clocks match.”

“Okaaay.”

“Shinobuuu, do roll call, pleeeease.”

“Eeeeveryone’s accounted for.”

Shinobu didn’t know how her boss had explained her presence, but she couldn’t help feeling as if she was being treated as the lowest underling among the staff, a gofer to do everyone’s bidding. She was sure her boss would have made some glib comment: “She’s a newbie at my agency. This is part of her training to be a detective, so work her hard, please.” That was the sort of boss he was.

This summer camp gathered applicants from all over the country. It was large-scale because of the breadth of its recruitment, and there were a lot of kids and comparatively few staff. Each person had plenty of work to do, and the underlings in particular felt the full effects of this.

Shinobu sat down on a cabin bench, canned coffee in hand, and breathed a sigh. The brilliant green lawn that covered the whole gently sloping hill rippled in a refreshing breeze. Here and there, children were laughing and playing. Even though they’d only met that day, they’d already made friends.

The atmosphere appeared peaceful, but the people managing it were having a rough time. The little kids ran around wherever they wanted, casually pulling stunts that got their supervisors yelling, “That’s dangerous! Stop!”

Shinobu stood up, blew her whistle, and pointed a finger. “Hey, you! I said no climbing trees, didn’t I?” The kids shrieked with laughter and scrambled away. The struggle was never-ending.

The children were resilient, too. After being forced to yell nonstop all afternoon and evening, Shinobu was already exhausted, but the kids were loudly demanding the next event. Even when she told them, “It’s nighttime! So why don’t you go to bed already?!” none of them would listen.

“All right, next up is the test of courage. Shinobu, you help with prep.”

“Huh? Me?”

“We’ll be dimming the lights in the building to make the course. They’ll be coming in from the entrance, following directions to the cafeteria, where they get their proof that they’ve made it, and then it’s over.”

“Which part am I in charge of?”

“You scare the kids at the end in the cafeteria. Your boss told me you’re good at this sort of thing, eh?”

If Shinobu were to take the legal route and sue her boss for spreading around half-truths about her, could she win?

Damn it. Damn it. I’ll do it. I just have to do it, don’t I?

It was her boss who she was mad at, and because he wasn’t there, her fist cut through air. So someone else would have to bear the brunt of her anger: those kids who had been driving Shinobu crazy since the afternoon with their endless disobedience.

After dinner, prep took about thirty minutes.

Shinobu was tired and irritated, but she’d never want anything horrible to happen to the children, of course. Ultimately, she was just going to scare them. This was the task assigned to her, and it had to be what the kids wanted, too. From the outside, she could hear kids saying, “Tests of courage are never scary anyway, right?” and “These scares are so obvious.”

The hallway leading to the cafeteria had been decorated with toy monsters and paper ghosts made by staff. It was all indeed pretty obvious. It would have been better if they could have sent the kids out into the forest, but apparently, they hadn’t been able to get permission for safety reasons, so they’d ended up doing a cheap version.

But…don’t you underestimate adults! You little brats!

Deployed alone in the cafeteria, Shinobu transformed into the magical girl Detec Bell. Detec Bell’s magic was to converse with buildings.

When Detec Bell kissed the wall of the cafeteria, a big face emerged from the whole wall. It was an old face, and the way the light hit it made it look vaguely eerie, too.

“What is it?” asked the face.

“Some kids’ll be coming here soon. Scare them.”

“Why?”

“We’re doing a test of courage. And they’ve been making fun of you, saying the scares here are too obvious.”

“I don’t like people making fun of me.”

“Right? So then scare them nice and good. But you’re not allowed to hurt them or anything like that.” She instructed the face to disappear until a target appeared, and then she hid herself in the shadow of some curtains. Excited, she waited five minutes before someone came in.

From Detec Bell’s position, she could only see the kid from behind. It looked like a girl. Probably around middle school–age. The girl was just about to reach out to take one of the proof-of-completion slips on the cafeteria table—when the face appeared on the wall and licked the girl’s face with its long tongue.

Shinobu must have spent a full five seconds pumping her fist and thinking, Yes! The girl screamed and ran from the cafeteria, and for some reason, Shinobu felt terrified, too, and ran out after the girl. The sounds of screams and yells rang out from everywhere, and the hellish wails echoed through the mountains until it wasn’t just the kids anymore. Even the adults were running around in confusion, crying, some jumping into their rooms in the cabins to lock the doors from the inside, while others trembled under tables and yet others ran around until they exhausted themselves. By eleven at night, the uproar had settled, and all the children and staff were confirmed to be safe.

Not even given the time to wonder why on earth the uproar had gotten this big, Shinobu continued to chase down children. Once they’d put the kids to bed, all the staff gathered in the hall, and the leader raged at her that she had clearly gone too far. Shinobu made herself as small as she could.

All the other girls in Noriko’s room seemed to have fallen asleep. She’d heard that during these overnight events, you would stay up late to talk about crushes and stuff, but it was already late now, and everyone was tired, too. Mainly because of her.

Noriko brought the blanket up over her chin.

She’d totally let her guard down. She was a magical girl. Her physical abilities far surpassed those of a normal human, she could see through darkness, and no matter what attacked her, she’d be able to deal with it. And there was no way she’d ever get scared over some baldly obvious test of courage that wouldn’t even scare a baby. Or so she had thought. She’d been arrogant.

She didn’t know how they had pulled that off, but it had been truly terrifying. Normally, Noriko could keep herself under control and restrain any disturbances in her heart, but that thing had been scary enough to make the entirety of her composure evaporate. The movement and sensation of that tongue had been horribly real.

Driven by terror, Noriko had scampered about in confusion, transmitting her fear everywhere and causing a huge panic. She’d nearly caused a total disaster. It was a small mercy that no one had gotten hurt.

But still. That tongue, that face… Just what sort of trick had they used to make it like that? At the time, she’d been too busy being terrified, but now, she was unbearably curious.

She opened her eyes a crack, thinking about it, only to see a face in the wood knots on the ceiling. It reminded her of the giant human face that had emerged from the wall of the cafeteria, and she panicked and closed her eyes.

Even after that huge uproar, the next morning, the kids were disgustingly full of energy. In fact, it actually seemed like they were happy about the incident. The adults, however, were unhappy compared with how they’d been the day before. They were acting a little cold toward Shinobu, too.

If news of this were to be passed on to her boss, he was guaranteed to rail at her about how she couldn’t even do work that wasn’t work. So she had to do everything from this point on properly to raise her now rock-bottom reputation by at least a fraction of an inch.

“Shinobu, please check the meat.”

“Roger. Right away.”

The plan for the day was orienteering and then a barbecue. They were up high on the mountain, but it being summer, it was pretty hot, and the rays of the sun beat down hard even in the morning. How can they bear to walk around in this sun? Shinobu wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. She pulled the plastic pack of meat out from the jumbo-sized fridge. The coldness felt nice.

There were a lot of people, so it followed that there was also plenty of meat. It had to be the first time in her life she’d ever seen so much.

“Whoa, man!”

“Hey, is this for dinner today?” Having finished their breakfast, kids were coming to gather. Was it the nature of children to form a horde whenever something was happening? Shinobu had to have been a child once, too, but she couldn’t remember anymore.

The kids had only just finished their breakfast, but they nonetheless chorused with cries of “It looks so good!” and “I wanna eat it!” Listening to them made hunger well up from the pit of Shinobu’s stomach, too. It did indeed look good. She wanted to eat it. She wanted to fry it and wolf it down. No, right now, she’d even take it raw. They’re not going to notice if I just eat a little bit, she thought, and her hand was reaching out when she came to her senses. If she nibbled at this meat along with the children, her already rock-bottom reputation would sink below ground level.

“Hey, this is for later! Get ready for orienteering now!” Shinobu somehow managed to drive the kids away and sighed. Maybe she was more tired than she’d realized. No matter how hungry she was, it was crazy to think it was a good idea to eat raw meat.

At any rate, her examination of the meat was done for now. She couldn’t leave it sitting out at room temperature, so she looked over to the tabletop, about to clear it away—and tilted her head.

The meat that had been there just a moment before was gone. Shinobu looked under the table and inside the fridge, and she even pulled open the drawers and the freezer, but it wasn’t anywhere. Anxiety gradually rose within her, then ballooned all at once. Restraining her impending panic, she looked around one more time, but the meat truly wasn’t anywhere.

It was gone.

“Stingy!”

“At least let us touch it.”

“You’re overreacting.”

The staff lady drove the kids away. Though each of them grumbled their complaints, they dispersed. Noriko was part of the dissipating group, but she didn’t complain. She took it for granted that the staff wouldn’t let them touch the food, and though the lady had spoken rather sharply, that may have been because she hadn’t gotten a proper sleep the previous night, which was basically Nokko’s fault.

“What’re we doing next, again?”

“She said orienteering.”

“So what’s this orienteering thing?”

“I dunno, really, but I heard it’s kinda like a treasure hunt.”

A treasure hunt! It sounded like there was still more fun in store.

It had been there until just a moment before. Shinobu was certain of that. She hadn’t put it away. In other words, it should still be there. But it wasn’t. She didn’t understand why, but she did understand this was very bad.

This was a case. It was time for a detective. Though she knew this situation was bad, her heart was racing.

“Shinobuuuu! If you’re done there, come over here and help!”

“O-okaaay!”

After making sure the windows were locked, Shinobu closed all the curtains and the entrance to the cafeteria, too, pulling a mop out of the cleaning closet to wedge it through the door handle. Now nobody would see her. She transformed into Detec Bell and kissed the wall.

Transforming into a magical girl calmed her down a little. This was probably just a kid’s prank. While Shinobu had been herding them away, a different group must have carried off the meat. That story fit. But even if that had happened, she had still searched the cafeteria and come up empty. If they’d hid it in here, they’d been really clever about it. If they’d taken it out of the cafeteria, then first, she had to make sure that was actually what had happened. She would check that before she chased them down.

At any rate, Shinobu figured all she had to do was ask the cafeteria directly, so she kissed its wall…but no face emerged from it.

“…Huh?”

She’d only just been calming her head, but now, she got agitated again. This had never happened before. Detec Bell’s magic would even work on crumbling old abandoned buildings. Though no building would tell her anything that would be disadvantageous to its owner, this was the first time no face had emerged at all.

Her muddled mind desperately pursued the possibilities. What was going on here? Not only was the meat mysteriously missing, but a face for the cafeteria hadn’t appeared for some reason. It was strange. She couldn’t figure out why this was happening.

Was this a test for Shinobu because she’d relied too much on her magic? Was the god of detectives telling her to try solving this theft without her magic?

The culprit was probably a child. So was their motive hunger? Or was this a prank?

The gears of Detec Bell’s baffled brain continued to turn.

The idea that the culprit was a child was nothing more than an educated guess on her part, a likely possibility. It could be someone else. Yes…like an animal. In the book that was recognized as the first detective novel in history, the culprit had been an animal. As mystery novel theories went, it wasn’t so odd. They were up in the mountains, so a bear or something? Wolves…were extinct here, huh? So then a tanuki or a fox? No, neither of those. So, what—mice? Cockroaches? It was way too much meat for such small creatures to carry away. That would necessitate disaster-movie-level swarms, and there was no way she’d have failed to notice that. So then maybe…another of the staff? What for? To set her up?

Detec Bell pulled out her auxiliary item, her magnifying glass. If she couldn’t talk with the wall, then she just had to find some other proof. She directed the magnifying glass at the spot where the meat had been and noticed something shining faintly. It looked like a liquid. She rubbed it with her finger, and found it was gooey. When she leaned her nose toward it…it stank.

“What the heck is this…drool?”

If the culprit had been drooling, did that mean hunger was the motive after all? That seemed plausible for either a child or an animal. It seemed unlikely an adult would drool, so she could probably cross the staff off her list of suspects.

Nothing else caught her eye. She could send this saliva over to forensics for DNA analysis and find the culprit that way—

“Shinobuuuu? You’re not done yeeet?”

“S-sorry! I’m coming now!”

Of course she didn’t have that kind of time. Detec Bell’s brain got into gear again.

She’d narrowed it down to either an animal or a child. So then which was it? Were there any other possibilities? A goblin? A ghost? A demon? Such unscientific ideas…but, well, magical girls were real, so could she really cross off ghosts and demons? This building wasn’t that old, but it did have an atmosphere to it. Shaped like a giant matchbox, it seemed like it could be the setting for a “mystery in the mansion”–style incident. And during the test of courage the night before, though she’d been one of the people who was supposed to do the scaring, she’d felt a little something—

“…Hmm?”

Something was bothering her.

Detec Bell drew back the brim of her hunting cap and strolled around the cafeteria. She wasn’t walking around looking for evidence. She was trying to probe the thing in her head that was bothering her. The heels of her shoes tapped against the linoleum of the floor with a high-pitched noise.

Something had happened in the cafeteria the previous night. A panic? Not that. There had been something before everyone had panicked. She had done something. The original cause of it all had been…

“Ahhh!”

Bell remembered.

Bell’s magic was to make a face appear on any building and to converse with it. She had to kiss a building to activate it and kiss it again to undo it. After she’d summoned the cafeteria’s face in the test of courage the day before, everyone had freaked out, and she’d forgotten to undo her magic. In other words, when she’d kissed the cafeteria just now with the intention of summoning the face, she’d ended up giving it the undo kiss. So it was no wonder the face hadn’t come out.

Suddenly, she felt exhausted, but this case wasn’t solved yet. Bell kissed the wall, and the same face from the previous day emerged. Now she knew her deductions had been correct. “I should have just kissed you again…”

“You look quite tired,” said the face.

“Never mind that. Tell me who the thief is, the one who stole the meat.”

The face twisted into a wrinkled expression. It seemed apologetic and also embarrassed. As far as Detec Bell know, no building face had ever made such an expression. “Well, I do know who the culprit is… Yes, I do.” The face spat up something from its big mouth with a ptoo. It was the pack of meat. It was sticky and wet with saliva.

Detec Bell was temporarily dumbfounded, then angry, leaning in toward the face. “What the heck were you doing?!”

“Well, I’m not quite sure. For some reason, I just suddenly wanted to put that meat into my mouth so badly. And before I knew it, I’d reached out my tongue and snatched it up. It’s so baffling to me, really. I’ve never felt this way ever before… And now that feeling, like I want to put the meat in my mouth—it’s gone, too.”

“Save the excuses for later! Anyway, I’ve got to wash this thing!” Detec Bell turned on the faucet in the sink to run some water. Fortunately, it looked like the plastic pack hadn’t ripped. “Why would you do something I didn’t order you to do?”

“Hmm… I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t think you guys even could eat things.”

“I can’t. If I could, then the meat obviously wouldn’t still be intact. I was just putting it in my mouth, really.”

“Huh. That seems like something you could use as a trick in a locked-room murder mystery…”

Bell’s mind, ready to wander off to this unseen locked-room mystery, was pulled back to reality by a call from outside.

“Shinobuuuu! You’re still not done?!”

“I-I’m dooone! I’m coming nooow!”

This is what happens when you’re a real-life detective after all, she thought as she rinsed the pack of meat.

Even as Noriko walked around the woods doing orienteering, she still couldn’t forget the meat she’d just seen. She’d never seen so much before.

Her parents had taken her to a yakiniku restaurant a while back, and the meat they’d had there had been so good. This would be the first time she’d ever had barbecue, but it had to be about as good as that yakiniku, right?

“O-over there!” A girl walking with her pointed at a cedar tree. An orange marker was tied around its trunk.

“Let’s finish this fast and go eat that meat.”

“For suuure!”

“And make it well-done!”

“It looked so good!”

Maybe Noriko’s thoughts about meat had gotten transmitted around by her magic. All her friends were smiling and talking about how they looked forward to the barbecue. When she had seen that meat earlier in the cafeteria, the boys had reached out toward it, and the girls had devoured it with their eyes. They might have been influenced by Noriko’s magic, too.

“But that’s fine, right? Thinking about how it looks good is sure to make it taste good for real.”

“Hmm? What’re you talking about?”

“Nothing. Come on—let’s hurry and get that stamp.”