Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 4 - Chapter 15

Clantail’s Friends

This story is set immediately after the game in Magical Girl Raising Project: Restart ends.

She got out of the bath, scrubbing at her hair with the towel as she checked her magical phone to find she’d received a message from the Magical Kingdom. It said they wanted her to measure her height and weight before and after transforming into a magical girl and reply with that information. They said they were putting together statistics on differences in physique before and after transforming.

She’d been getting a lot of messages like this lately. Someone had told her that since there were a lot of magical girls causing problems, the Magical Kingdom would just pretend to check on them by sending them pointless messages. She got the feeling it was Pfle who had told her this, but maybe it was Shadow Gale. She was really bad at remembering who said what.

Either way, Nene Ono wondered what a magical girl should do if her height and weight did indeed vary.

While she blow-dried her hair, she reread the message.

“Neneee, make sure not to catch a chill after your bath.”

“I knooow.”

Someone called from outside the bathroom, and Nene replied as she reread the message one more time. If this message was just for show, then they probably didn’t care about getting anything that accurate. So then it should be fine to just send them the measurements of her most standard transformation, the pony. But when she considered the negative effects a careless reply could have on the statistics, it seemed less fine.

So should she record the two extremes of her sizes and compose a reply that referenced the possibilities, like “Height between 3~35 feet”? But if they were putting together statistics, that could change the numbers, too. So maybe she should measure the size of each and every animal she could transform into, calculate the average and send that information to them? She really didn’t know what to do.

“Neneeee. If you’re done with the hair dryer, then put it back beside the washing machine.”

“I wiiill.”

Maybe the best answer was a reply asking what she should do. But wouldn’t that irritate them? If these messages weren’t genuine, what if they got annoyed at her for overthinking it?

Troubles like this constantly plagued Nene. People might tell her to “read between the lines,” but how were you supposed to read something you couldn’t see?

Lots of people thought she liked animals, but she wasn’t actually that obsessed with them. She just saw them as normal. At the end of the day, she found them all average—both the ones people tended to hate, like spiders, centipedes, cockroaches and earthworms, and the cute ones, like dogs and cats. It seemed that as other people saw it, simply approaching them all equally made it look as if she loved them.

She sat down in her chair and looked around her room at all the stuffed animals, spiders, snakes, and other things that overflowed over her dresser and bookshelves. She hadn’t bought all this. Her parents had it in their heads that she liked such creatures, so every time they found a stuffed animal, they would buy it for her, and that’s how her room had ended up in this state. Not because she had a special love for them.

“Neneee. Which would you rather have for dinner: taro stem with kasujiru soup, or nozawana greens with kasujiru soup?”

“Nozawanaaa.”

But maybe she did love animals, relatively speaking, compared with how she felt abut humans. She clearly wasn’t good with people.

First of all, she had a bad memory for faces. Everyone in the same age group all looked the same. And once people found out she didn’t remember them, they’d get offended. What’s more, she often stuck her foot in her mouth and upset people. Because of that, she figured it was best to just say nothing, but it wasn’t. Others would call her unsociable and get mad over that instead. Nene meant well and acted with good intentions, but it was not taken that way.

Being around people was hard. She’d lived with her parents for fourteen years, and she couldn’t reach a complete understanding with them. And even her mother and father, who had been together since before she was born, didn’t understand each other perfectly. They often butted heads over whether some comedian was boring or funny, or some actress was beautiful or not… Fortunately, this didn’t seem to mean their relationship was a bad one.

Being with animals was more comfortable. Nene understood the idiosyncrasies of each and every one of the neighborhood stray cats, including where they liked to be petted. She could even see individuality in the spiders in her yard from their color, gloss, size, and the shape of their webs. You couldn’t do this with humans.

It was only just recently that Nene had made her first human friends. In the game, she’d just behaved the same as she always did, but she must have appeared taciturn and calm, since the role of leader had been thrust upon her. Commanding a group had been very difficult, painful, and scary, and none of her memories of it were good, but it had also been fun, and remembering the good times made her sad.

Back then, she’d turned her sadness into anger. She’d had to, or she surely would have lost. Now she couldn’t do that anymore.

“Neneee. Dinner will be done in five minuuutes!”

“Okay.”

Nene wondered if maybe she wouldn’t be able to make any more human friends. Currently, her candidates for new friends were Pfle and Shadow Gale, but she couldn’t help feeling that when she’d met with them the other day, she’d made Shadow Gale angry.

On that day, Nene noticed that Shadow Gale had black lines drawn around her eyes with a magic marker, like glasses rims. Nene had stared at her, wondering what the heck it was, which had probably hurt Shadow Gale. She couldn’t help feeling that her new friend had been in a bad mood the whole day.

In the end, even if she avoided saying anything, her thoughts would show on her face. Even though she wasn’t exactly in any place to be complaining about someone’s fashion sense.

If only I were the kind of person who could speak more, well, tactfully…or be more tactful…, she thought, but she also figured that this was just the sort of person she was. She didn’t like being such a worrywart, but without this anxiety, she wouldn’t be herself, she was sure.

If Pechka were there, then what would she say? She would cook for her, most definitely. Pechka had known that was the most comforting thing. Nonako would have laughed it off while Rionetta would perhaps have said something snarky: “My, how unpleasant.”

The magical phone in her hand rang. Shadow Gale was calling. Nene had only just been feeling bad about her, so she was a little startled but answered anyway. Were they going to have a meeting about their grave visits?

“Can I come over right now?” Shadow Gale burst out without so much as a greeting. She sounded intense. She rattled on. “I just can’t take living in close quarters with someone like her anymore. I don’t want to see her face right now. Can you believe this? She just said she did it because it got interesting reactions out of people! And that prank went on for over a week, you know! Scribbling on my face! She’s not a little kid! And she devised all these schemes to make sure I’d never once find out, stealing away any opportunity I’d have to look in the mirror or erasing the scribbles right before I looked… And then when I finally noticed and got mad at her, she was like, ‘You’re so immature, Mamori.’ Damn it! Just remembering it makes me mad! I refuse to live with that devil anymore. I’ve made up my mind to live my life as a human being. That jerk-ass! I’m so sorry to cause you any trouble, but could I possibly ask this favor from you, even for just a few days? I’ll take the time to come up with what to do next, somehow. I’m honestly very sorry. You’re the only person I know who I don’t think would report me to that fiend. You’re the only person I can count on.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“Thank you! I’m in your debt! I’m coming right away!”

Nene hung up the phone.

Pfle and Shadow Gale really were close.

“Neneee. Dinneeer.”

“Coming!” Figuring she’d have to tell her parents she had a friend coming, Nene rose from her chair. Her mother must have thought she didn’t have any. She imagined her surprise when she saw her daughter had a friend from school coming over. It wasn’t bad.