Sasaki and Peeps - Volume 8 - Chapter 6.0

<Off-Campus Class, Part Two>

In the end, Magical Blue was fine.

She woke up not long after we set off and hopped out on her own once we landed. She was full of energy and had no external wounds. The army surgeon in Captain Mason’s retinue said all her vitals were normal. She resumed her ski lessons that afternoon.

Apparently, being possessed by a Fairy Drop didn’t do all that much physical damage. Socially, however, the harm could be immeasurable. It seemed you retained all your memories from the time you were possessed, and depending on your personality, you could wind up tormented by shame.

After regaining consciousness, Magical Blue apologized profusely to the captain and his subordinates. They’d all responded with smiles, but it seemed her mental state would be a crucial matter to study for the team moving forward. Otherwise, their most powerful ally could turn into a fearsome enemy at any moment.

“So you lot can’t even get along with a magical girl who’s already on your side, eh?”

“That’s some harsh criticism, but we aim to continue improving.”

“Well, if you keep striking out, then it’ll be game, set, and match for us.”

Once we were safely back from the mountains, Ms. Futarishizuka and the captain started bantering. I pretended not to notice them.

Earlier, during Magical Blue’s checkup, Captain Mason had gotten pretty desperate trying to recruit Magical Pink. You saved my subordinates, please let me thank you, he had said, pulling out all the stops. In the end, his struggle bore fruit; the girl agreed to stay the night at the hotel.

I suspected she was simply charmed by the proposition of curry for dinner. Personally, I was concerned she might run into a psychic from the bureau assigned to the hotel. We couldn’t let her see anyone using psychic powers, or she’d start raising hell. But Captain Mason seemed to want her so badly he didn’t mind taking that risk.

All forces standing by inside the hotel, including my coworkers, had been ordered not to use their powers.

As we were handling all this, the sun set. Our second day of ski lessons was over, and dinner and bath time went by in a flash. The next thing I knew, I was lying in bed in my assigned room. Each faculty member got a single room to themselves—Captain Mason and Miss Inukai had probably talked the principal into it.

I’d be putting off my trip to the otherworld again today. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep the moment I lay down. I slept like a rock that night—I didn’t even wake up once.

And then the final day of ski lessons was upon us. The plan was to take the buses back to school that afternoon, but they’d still packed ski classes into the morning hours. By now, even the students in the beginner class could ski down the course without much help, and they were finally granted access to the lift. For that reason, everyone was all the more excited to go out on the slopes.

I was one of the very few exceptions, of course. I was still anxious about the idea of skiing down the hill, so once again, I’d be stuck practicing how to use my gear at the bottom of the slope. Even a simple snowplow turn, easy on a flat area, was immediately more difficult when performed on a moderate incline. Parallel turns were a pipe dream.

As I was practicing, one of the boys from Class 1-A came up to me. “Mr. Sasaki, um, do you have a minute?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you need?”

Was there a problem that required a teacher’s help? Despite my shaking legs, I somehow managed to straighten up and turn to face him.

If I recalled correctly, this was Nakajima, number eighteen on the class roster. If you lined everyone in class up by their height from shortest to tallest, he’d be pretty far in the back. He had a good amount of muscle on him—he probably worked out regularly—and he seemed pretty large for a middle school student. The paperwork I’d received had noted he was a regular on the soccer team despite being a first-year.

Most striking of all were his pronounced facial features. They lent him a mature air, making him quite handsome. And indeed, he seemed popular among the girls. While kids his age, in the midst of puberty, tended to hang out with others of the same gender, he regularly chatted with the girls, so I figured he was pretty used to interacting with them.

“Sorry for springing this on you so suddenly,” he said, “but I like you, Mr. Sasaki!”

“……”

I’d assumed someone was hurt or something. This caught me completely by surprise.

“I mean, uh, I like you as a teacher and everything, but that’s not what I meant,” he stammered. “I mean, I like you as someone of the opposite sex. Wait, no, that sounds strange. What I mean is I really like you, in a like like way!”

Again with this? Honey trap, part three. Maybe whatever organization was after me had gotten desperate after Ms. Mochizuki and Suzuki both struck out and finally decided to switch genders.

“So, uh, w-would you go out with me?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Nakajima, but I can’t see you that way.”

“Is it, um, because we’re both guys? I can dress up like a girl if that’s better!”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Oh. Well, I guess our ages are pretty different, but maybe we could start as friends…”

He was staring at me, and he looked oddly desperate. I wondered if his family had been taken hostage or something. It seemed like a distinct possibility. Depending on the organization, it might be something much, much worse. If that was the case, I needed to be careful with my responses.

“If you don’t mind my asking, why me?”

“You protected a girl at our school and fought off a terrorist, didn’t you? I saw the whole thing. You were… Well, I guess that’s…when I fell in love with you.”

“……”

Apparently, he’d witnessed my fight with the child soldier.

Actually, if this was a honey trap, then it was possible the organization behind him had told him about it. Either way, as a bureau member, this was a grave emergency. But since I was in the middle of a ski class, I couldn’t do anything about it right now.

Maybe I should delay my response and discuss the matter with my boss, I thought. But just then…

“Hey! There he is! With the magical middle-aged man!”

“Oh-ho. Not too late, I hope?”

Magical Pink and Ms. Futarishizuka came shredding down the course toward us. The former was in her magical girl outfit, sliding across the snow without the need for skis. She was probably using Magical Flight imperceptibly close to the ground. Her outfit was conspicuous, however, and as a bureau employee, I couldn’t just stand by and watch.

“Excuse me, could you—?”

But before I could finish asking her to explain, she went ahead and told me.

“That person is possessed by a Fairy Drop.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice,” added Ms. Futarishizuka.

Spraying snow everywhere, the two of them came to a stop right next to me. The way they swung themselves to the side to hit the brakes looked so cool. I wanted to ski like that, too. Why was it so hard to learn?

They were both staring at Nakajima, the boy who had just confessed to me.

“…Huh?”

I turned back toward him. Was he really possessed by a Fairy Drop? In that case, had he professed his love to me because that was how he actually felt? From the way Magical Blue had gone nuts the day before, we knew this Fairy Drop made people unable to control their emotions. It probably messed with the target’s sense of reason.

And if that were true, then this wasn’t a honey trap.

In fact, it was literally the first time anyone had ever confessed their love for me without an ulterior motive.

No, wait a minute, I thought. What if Ms. Mochizuki and Suzuki hadn’t been honey traps, either? Was it possible they’d approached me because they just…liked me, plain and simple? No, dream on. There’s no way. But I supposed it wasn’t totally impossible.

All of that information flashed through my brain in an instant. Then, a moment later, Nakajima closed his eyes and crumpled forward. I rushed to catch him so he wouldn’t hit the ground.

That was when I saw something fly out of his back—it looked like a small bug. It was round with a shell, kind of like a male rhinoceros beetle, and a little bigger than the end of my thumb. And it was buzzing away very quickly.

“It’s getting away!” exclaimed Magical Pink.

“Catch it! Catch that little monster!” shouted Ms. Futarishizuka.

Right away, Magical Pink and Ms. Futarishizuka’s attention shifted from Nakajima to the insect. The beetle was fleeing straight toward Ms. Mochizuki, who was sliding our way. She shouted to us enthusiastically as she approached.

“Mr. Sasaki! I heard you were bad at skiing! I can teach you if you like!”

The bug seemed to have a pretty accurate grasp of its surroundings. Immediately, it lowered its altitude, zoomed out of her line of vision, and went around behind her. Partly due to her goggles, Ms. Mochizuki didn’t notice the beetle. As she slid up to us, she shifted her skis to one side and stopped.

“Oh? Ms. Futarishizuka, who might this girl in the adorable—?”

The bug, unbeknownst to Ms. Mochizuki, locked onto the nape of her neck. It crawled inside her ski gear, then dug into her skin.

“Ack…”

As the bug burrowed into her, she gave a full-body shudder. Not a moment later, her behavior changed completely.

“Graaaaaaah!”

She tossed aside her poles and squatted down on the snow, still in her skis. Then, without a shred of regard for her surroundings, she started screaming. She looked like a kid throwing a tantrum.

“No! I can’t do this anymore! Gross, gross, gross, gross, gross, gross! It’s so gross!”

“…Ms.…Mochizuki?”

The total one-eighty had me flummoxed. Ms. Futarishizuka and Magical Pink were the same. Our jaws all dropped as we stared at her.

Then, as we watched, she slowly straightened up and leveled a terrible glare directly at me.

“Ugh! Don’t get the wrong idea, all right?! I’m only talking to you to get promoted! Why else would a young woman like me want to seduce an old man like you?! Argh! Just saying it out loud makes me want to vomit! Gross! Disgusting!”

Ah… How sad.

But this made more sense. Her current reaction was perfectly normal.

“It possessed someone else!” exclaimed Magical Pink.

“Catch it! Catch that stupid bug while it’s still possessing her!” shouted Ms. Futarishizuka.

The two of them immediately jumped on her. But as they did, the bug detached from Ms. Mochizuki’s neck and buzzed away into the sky, evading the two girls’ grasping hands.

That’s one fast beetle, I thought.

Released from the Fairy Drop, Ms. Mochizuki lost consciousness just as Nakajima had, falling forward onto the snow. I wanted to catch her, but I was already holding the boy, so I was forced to let her fall.

“Ms. Futarishizuka, could you catch—?”

“Oh no, it’s getting away again!” shouted Magical Pink.

“Not on my watch!” exclaimed my colleague. “I’ll catch that bug if it kills me!”

Ms. Mochizuki fell to the snow with a thud. Ms. Futarishizuka and Magical Pink were completely absorbed in chasing the beetle and paid no mind to the unconscious woman. Then another person approached from the direction the beetle was fleeing.

It was the girl who had come up to me the day before last—Suzuki, number nine on the class roster.

“Mr. Sasaki! I can teach you how to ski again if you want! I bet you’d love that, right?”

As I thought, the insect was very aware of its surroundings. It dropped several meters toward the ground and flew around behind the girl. Then, exactly as it had with Ms. Mochizuki, it went for her neck. Suzuki didn’t notice what was happening and came to a stop right next to us.

“Huh? Wait, Ms. Mochizuki and Ms. Futarishizuka are here, too?”

The bug grabbed hold of her ski gear. Then, just like before, it dug into her skin at the nape of her neck.

“Ack…”

Her body lurched, and she reacted just like Ms. Mochizuki had.

“Graaaaaaah!”

“Um, Suzuki…?” I said, already guessing what was about to happen. I hated how my gut was only ever spot-on at times like these.

“I can’t stand this anymore! I just can’t! Why do I have to do this stuff?! I haven’t even had my first kiss! I’ve never even fallen in love! Why the hell should I have to flirt with this old man?!”

“Please, Suzuki, calm down.”

“But if I don’t try my best, they’ll kill Dad! They’ll kill him…!”

As expected, the two of them had been honey traps. But while Ms. Mochizuki was only after a promotion, it seemed Suzuki had a very serious reason for what she was doing. It seemed she’d fallen into the hands of some bad people. I had to do something.

“Suzuki, please settle down. They won’t kill your dad. We’ll take care of it for you. So please try and relax. There isn’t anything to worry about.”

I repeatedly tried to soothe my student, kneeling down despite my trembling legs to meet her at eye level. But, in a fit of rage, she swung her ski pole straight into my gut. Now I was emotionally and physically injured.

Meanwhile, Magical Pink and Ms. Futarishizuka only had eyes for the Fairy Drop.

“You won’t get away this time!” said Magical Pink as she flew through the air toward Suzuki’s neck.

This time, I thought for sure she had it.

But seconds before she could grab the beetle, it flitted away from my student and escaped Magical Pink’s grasp.

Once it had gotten a little ways away, it made a sudden turn and changed direction. Apparently, it had decided she would be its next target. It flew around her head, aiming for her back.

In a panic, Magical Pink tried to dodge it—but the bug stuck itself firmly to her neck.

“Agh…!”

Just like what happened to Ms. Mochizuki and Suzuki, Magical Pink’s body lurched. Seeing this, my colleague screamed.

“No! Crap! It just took over the most dangerous person here!”

“Ms. Futarishizuka,” I called out. “Get away from there!”

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind how Magical Pink would start acting if she lost control of her emotions. We all knew what was in her heart. Ms. Futarishizuka quickly fled the scene.

Meanwhile, I reached for Suzuki’s hand as she fell to keep her from hitting the snow. But I was already supporting Nakajima with my other arm. They may have been kids, but I couldn’t carry two middle schoolers at once. Instead, I laid them down on the snow.

As I did, Magical Pink made her declaration.

“All psychics must die!”

Her eyes were fixed on Ms. Futarishizuka. She raised her wand without a hint of hesitation.

“Eeeeek!” my colleague cried out in fear and jumped to the side.

A moment later, Magical Pink’s Magical Beam sizzled through the air, punching a hole in the ski slope. Ms. Futarishizuka barely managed to dodge the strike, and her gear got a little scorched. But a moment later, Magical Pink was getting ready to fire again.

“Stop this! Ack, it’s gonna hit me! It’s gonna blow me to smithereens!”

Expertly manipulating her skis and poles, Futarishizuka slid across the snow. With her lightweight body and superhuman physical abilities, she was practically a star athlete. Her moves would have made any Winter Olympics contender go white in the face.

Magical Pink lifted herself into the air and gave chase.

Meanwhile, I took out my smartphone and contacted Miss Inukai. She picked up after two and a half rings—a lot faster than I’d expected.

“Hello, this is Inukai.”

“Hello, sorry, this is Sasaki. There’s a problem at the slope. Could you evacuate the students? Also, Magical Pink is in a state of confusion. Please do not send out any psychics.”

“I, uh, I understand. I’ll deal with it immediately!”

After a few moments, avalanche alarms started going off all over the resort, and the scattered students hurriedly withdrew from the area.

Across the slope, Magical Pink and Ms. Futarishizuka continued their game of tag in the snow. Possibly out of consideration for her environment, my colleague took the backcountry route, with Magical Pink hot on her tail. They were quickly disappearing into the distance.

I took off after them. Using just a touch of flight magic to get myself into the air, I fake-skied across the snow.

The area had a lot of trees, and I hurried through them, listening for the sounds of battle.

Soon I spotted Ms. Futarishizuka, backed into a corner. She must have hit a tree because she was sitting against its base, and one of her skis was gone. In front of her was Magical Pink, moments away from firing her beam.

“I will kill all psychics!”

This magical middle-aged man desperately flung himself into the line of fire, using a barrier spell to protect his coworker. The beam covered the entire barrier, and my vision went white once again.

I looked down, but I wasn’t particularly injured. I’d caught the beam just before it reached Futarishizuka, much like when I’d protected the helicopter from Magical Blue the day before.

I heard my colleague’s voice from behind me. “Ah, you saved me. I really thought I was done for this time.”

“I’ve always been curious,” I said. “If a Magical Beam hits you and vaporizes you until there’s nothing left, would your psychic power still work? I feel like you could easily get back to normal if you were just, say, hit by a train or something.”

“You’re asking me that?”

“Well, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Ms. Futarishizuka stood up on her own; I didn’t have to use any healing magic. She didn’t seem seriously hurt, either. With practiced motions, she found her missing ski and put it back on her foot, then picked up her poles.

“Could you hold her here?” she asked. “I’ll go around behind her.”

“You sure that’ll work?”

“Come on. Think about it. This is my time to shine.”

Without waiting for a response, she dove out from behind the barrier spell and made her way around the magical girl. Magical Pink realized what was happening, and a moment later, she swung her Magical Beam around after her target. The ribbon of light roared through the sky, chasing my colleague. Soon my vision cleared up, and I could see them both again.

Ms. Futarishizuka found herself right in the beam’s path and tried to twist her body to dodge it.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t completely avoid it. The telephone pole-sized ray of light gouged out part of her midsection. Blood splattered, dyeing the powder snow around us a pretty shade of red. That had to hurt.

But she ignored the pain and used her poles to close in.

“Huh…?!”

Magical Pink tried to leap back. But Ms. Futarishizuka’s hand reached her first.

It all happened in an instant; she didn’t even have time to use Magical Flight.

Ms. Futarishizuka tossed her poles to the side and jumped at her target. After a blindingly quick grapple, Magical Pink fell to the ground. Ms. Futarishizuka straddled her, grinning. From the side, she looked like a little kid excited about all the snow.

At the same time, the Magical Beam dissipated.

“I got the stupid Fairy Drop thing!” exclaimed Ms. Futarishizuka happily, thrusting her right arm into the air.

In her fingers, I saw the beetle we’d all been chasing. But now I was worried it would try to possess her next. Thankfully, my prediction didn’t come true. I waited a few moments, but no changes came over my colleague.

Nervously, I walked over to her.

“See? Check it out. Look at the stinger on its butt—it’s going in and out.”

“That’s how it gets you, huh?”

“Sure looks like it. I can’t imagine what else this thing is for.”

The pointy bit at the end of the beetle’s body was currently extending and retracting over and over. I assumed that, like a hornet’s stinger, it was normally kept inside the thing’s body. And since it looked like a beetle, it was a pretty nasty sight. It was really creeping me out.

“I have no idea who would have made such a thing or why,” said Ms. Futarishizuka. “If some criminal cooked it up for fun, I imagine the fairy world must be full of people with a lot of free time on their hands. Or maybe it’s on some divine mission we can’t possibly fathom.”

“Maybe Type Twelve will figure something out if we ask her to analyze it.”

“Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing we should be using the mechanical life-form’s handy technology on.”

“I’m more worried about her since she was just possessed,” I said, glancing at Magical Pink.

“Hey, the blue girlie was fit as a fiddle, wasn’t she?”

Immediately, Magical Pink started to move. Her limbs twitched, and then her eyes flew open. Judging by how quickly she’d recovered, I figured she was only suffering from temporary unconsciousness caused by the Fairy Drop detaching. If Ms. Futarishizuka had used her energy-drain ability, she probably would have been out a little longer.

“Oh, looks like she’s up,” said my colleague.

“……”

Magical Pink glared silently up at the girl currently straddling her stomach.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t squirm or throw a tantrum, either.

Was she not feeling well? Or did she just not like how Ms. Futarishizuka was straddling her?

Eventually, she murmured her catchphrase again.

“…I…will kill all psychics.”

“If you’re just trying to hide your embarrassment, could you be a little less threatening?”

As we’d learned from Magical Blue’s testimony, Magical Pink could remember everything she’d done while possessed. She must have understood what Ms. Futarishizuka was getting at.

But for her, maybe this wasn’t so much covering up her embarrassment as putting up a false show of strength—a last-ditch effort at intimidation.

“I heard from another psychic,” she said.

“What’d you hear, lass?”

“That you can use your power to kill anyone you touch.”

“Yes, that is one of the things I can do with it.”

I hadn’t seen her use it lately, but as a psychic, Ms. Futarishizuka was a born assassin. If you counted up all the psychics she’d killed over her many years of activity, it would probably dwarf Magical Pink’s record. And if not for Peeps’s curse, I’d be way too afraid to hang around her.

“I wanted to kill more psychics,” said Magical Pink.

“Hmm?”

“I wanted to get revenge for my family and friends.”

“Are you telling us your last words or something?”

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it already.”

Magical Pink’s tone was flat, as if she’d given up on everything. Sprawled out on the snow, she looked up at Ms. Futarishizuka in a daze. Now that my colleague had her pinned, it seemed she’d made up her mind to give up.

Considering her life up to this point, I understood why she’d feel that way. The person straddling her didn’t seem to have a clue, however.

“Wait, I didn’t say a word about killing you,” said Ms. Futarishizuka.

“…Why not?”

Magical Pink’s brow furrowed. Her gaze was on the other girl’s side—on the painful-looking wound, still bleeding, that she’d gouged out with her Magical Beam. It was beginning to heal already, thanks to Futarishizuka’s psychic power, but it had to hurt like hell. I could see her brightly colored insides from all the way over here. To be honest, if an image like this had popped up in my browser, I’d have hit the back button in a heartbeat—it was that grotesque.

“I shot you,” said the magical girl.

“Yes, I seem to be getting shot an awful lot lately. How many times does this make?”

“…Yeah. I shot you a lot.”

“But hey, I’m still hanging on. Isn’t that pretty impressive?”

“……”

Ms. Futarishizuka had suffered a similar attack just the other day. In fact, it felt like she got hit with a Magical Beam every time the two of them met. Since she could quickly heal minor wounds, maybe Magical Pink was going easy on her while still hanging on to her desire to kill all psychics. If she’d done the same to Miss Hoshizaki, our senior would be dead two or three times over by now.

“Why won’t you kill me?” asked Magical Pink. “I’d kill me.”

“Easy question, easy answer. Because I want to be your friend.”

And yet Ms. Futarishizuka answered her with a smile—a bright, cheery smile that stretched from ear to ear. It frustrated me to admit, but it was very cute.

However, the fact that this was Ms. Futarishizuka made the otherwise beautiful scene feel incredibly fishy. There were only seven magical girls in the world. In her smile, I saw the bottomless greed of every big shot desperate to get a hold of one. And I was just as rotten an adult as she was.

But Magical Pink’s heart was pure.

“……”

She seemed surprised as she looked up at the girl straddling her stomach. To her, Futarishizuka’s smile must have looked positively radiant. While she wasn’t as bad as Type Twelve, she wasn’t a very expressive person, so it was quite striking to see her so shocked.

“Why so surprised? I said the same thing before, didn’t I?”

“But every time I see you, you nag at me. That’s all you do.”

“Well, of course I do. Someone I want to be friends with is doing something bad.”

“You attacked me, too.”

“I have the right to self-defense.”

“That excuse won’t get you very far in Japan.”

“I don’t like how kids these days are so smart about the legal system.”

Magical Pink was right. Ms. Futarishizuka had given her a good scolding just yesterday, right before she took a Magical Beam to the shoulder. If you added in the attacks that didn’t manage to hit her, she was probably Pink’s number one target by a wide margin.

And yet she’d still extended a hand to help her out. That must have resonated with the girl.

“…But I still want to kill psychics,” she said.

“Awfully stubborn, aren’t you?”

“You wouldn’t understand. Only people who had their family killed would understand.”

“You don’t say.”

Still lying on her back, Magical Pink looked up at Ms. Futarishizuka, her expression serious. She closed her fist around a clump of fresh white snow. She wasn’t hurting people because she liked it. Maybe that was why she felt both relief and irritation at everyone’s shows of goodwill.

“You can never understand how I feel,” she said.

“If you’re going to be that insistent, then why don’t I figure out which psychic killed your family and bring them to you? Then you can do whatever you want with them—boil them alive, fry them up, anything. But in exchange, you have to promise not to kill any other psychics from now on.”

“Huh…?”

“That way you’ll have your revenge, right? Keep in mind it may take some time, though.”

I remembered fishing around in the bureau’s database myself for the person responsible for killing Magical Pink’s parents. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any useful leads—at least not at my access level. Maybe I’d get a different result if I asked Type Twelve.

But if the boss finds out, I thought, I’ll get an official reprimand. And mechanical life-forms can’t lie.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” asked Magical Pink.

“Remember what I said last time? There’s a lot of kids who went through the same things you did.”

The two stared at each other. Then Magical Pink seemed to realize something.

“Futarishizuka, did someone kill your family, too?”

“Who can say? It was so long ago that I can’t quite remember.”

“……”

My colleague was still settled on the girl’s stomach, but her tone was detached.

She’d freely admitted to being alive during the Meiji Restoration. Considering her background, it was quite likely someone had killed her family—more likely than if she’d been born a little more recently, anyway. Then again, she could just be lying to placate Magical Pink.

Nevertheless, Futarishizuka’s statement seemed to resonate with the girl. She loosened her fist, letting the packed snow fall through her fingers.

“Is that why you saved me?” she asked.

“It’s an adult’s job to save children who have gone astray.”

“But you’re smaller than I am.”

“Not on the inside, I’m not.”

Now that she’d gotten a reaction, Ms. Futarishizuka pulled the old-lady card. She’d had several exchanges with Magical Pink over the past few days, and it seemed like we were finally reaching a conclusion.

“…Okay. Let’s do what you said.”

“Oh! You mean it?”

“If you keep your promise.”

“But of course! Consider it done. I may look like a child, but this old lady’s got plenty of clout with people in high places. I’ve been doing a lot for the magical middle-aged man over there, as well. You’ll just be another member of the club.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

Personally, this scene was making me anxious. After all, Ms. Futarishizuka still had the Fairy Drop in her hand, and its stinger was still going in and out. If that thing got to her neck, any amicable relationship with Magical Pink would be permanently off the table. Can’t she at least get off the girl?

“…Thanks.”

Magical Pink’s face broke into a smile—the kind you’d expect from a child her age. Thinking back, I was pretty sure this was the first time I’d ever seen her make such an expression.

The fact that she’d launched an attack while possessed meant she really had wanted to kill Ms. Futarishizuka. Seeing her give in like this told me something inside her must have changed.

With any luck, things between us would be a little different going forward.

And now Ms. Futarishizuka has Magical Pink in the bag—hook, line, and sinker.

It took a lot of effort, but we finally retrieved the Fairy Drop. Ms. Futarishizuka insisted she get to keep it since she was the one who caught it. Normally, its retrieval would have been Magical Pink’s job, but she’d cut all ties with the fairy world and abandoned her role long ago, and she didn’t want the thing anyway.

We waited until Ms. Futarishizuka’s wound had finished healing and then withdrew back to the hotel. The three of us headed for my neighbor’s guest room, hoping to have Type Twelve look into the Fairy Drop, which we’d asked Magical Pink to store in her Magical Field for now. Apparently, that was the proper way to handle them.

Fortunately, Type Twelve was in the room when we arrived. She walked over as soon as she saw us.

“Father, Grandmother, the ski lessons were canceled because of an avalanche warning. However, according to my advanced weather predictions, there is zero possibility of avalanches all day.”

It seemed someone wasn’t too happy about the order to evacuate the slope. Her expression was blank, but I could tell from her words how strongly she wanted me to make the lessons resume. Since it was impossible to predict the scope of the damages caused by Magical Pink while she was possessed by the Fairy Drop, the students had all been told to wait in their rooms.

“Isn’t it almost time we blew this popsicle stand anyway?” asked Ms. Futarishizuka. “It’s the last day. Once we eat lunch, we’re going back to school.”

“Grandmother, your remark is incorrect. There is still almost an hour until lunch.”

“Yes, but you’d have to get your gear back on and all that. In reality, you’d have less than thirty minutes. If it were just you, it’d be one thing, but we’ll have to go around telling all the other students, too. By the time the boys start fawning over you, it would be time to leave.”

Futarishizuka and Type Twelve were standing by the two beds as they talked this over. My neighbor, Abaddon, and Magical Blue were nowhere in sight. They must have left the room for some reason. I suspected Magical Blue was with Captain Mason. Perhaps my neighbor was out looking for the Fairy Drop on her own.

“If I had known this would happen,” said Type Twelve, “I would have conducted the experiment elsewhere. Emotions are dangerous indeed.”

“Experiment? What do you mean, experiment?”

“……”

Ms. Futarishizuka immediately locked on to Type Twelve’s casual remark. I was quite curious myself, and I could see Magical Pink staring at her, too.

“You just said something very important, didn’t you, dear?”

“Grandmother, the youngest daughter would like to exercise her right to silence.”

“You know, in times like these, your inability to lie is very handy indeed.”

“Father, Grandmother is bullying me.”

Type Twelve had been at the mercy of her emotions a lot recently. She fixed me with a stare as if begging me to come to her aid. Unfortunately for her, though, I was on Ms. Futarishizuka’s side in this conversation.

“This experiment of yours. Is it related to the Fairy Drop?” I asked.

“……”

Apparently, I was correct.

I’d been curious why the little bug had ended up at the ski resort. It seemed too unlikely to have been a coincidence. My first guess was that it was pursuing the magical girls, and yet the way it reacted to Magical Pink didn’t quite add up. But if Type Twelve was involved somehow, then everything made sense.

“Don’t tell me you captured that bug before we did?” Futarishizuka appeared to be thinking the exact same thing I was.

“Would there be a problem if I did?”

Type Twelve had stopped trying to hide the truth, and now she was getting defensive. Though her expression remained blank, of course.

Type Twelve’s terminal and quite a few of her smaller pods were present when Magical Blue was possessed by the Fairy Drop. One of these had apparently pursued the target in secret and captured it.

I recalled the time the alien had scooped our swan boat out of Lake Kizaki. I could vividly imagine one of her saucers using some kind of tech to surpass the forces of momentum and gravity and capture the flying bug.

“I suppose we mustn’t forget that you’re public enemy number one for our species, hmm?”

“Grandmother, your thinking is correct. As a mechanical life-form, I cannot permit the existence of anything that would threaten me.”

“In that sense, isn’t the biggest threat to your well-being that glitch of yours we’ve all been dealing with?”

“That is a separate issue. We are not talking about that right now.”

“There! See? You’re doing it again.”

Type Twelve probably couldn’t overlook Captain Mason’s remark about using the Fairy Drop to fight back against her kind. Otherwise, she probably would have used it to ingratiate herself to us the moment she had it.

At any rate, I was curious about the results of her little experiment. Ms. Futarishizuka seemed to be on the same page and quickly asked for information.

“So how’d it go? If you were analyzing that thing, I’d love to hear what you found.”

“It is impossible to gain an understanding of the Fairy Drop’s internal structure using non-destructive methods. More detailed analysis would require disassembly. However, because reconstruction may not be possible, I opted to run an experiment to gather data first.”

“Ah, I see. So that’s why you let the bug loose on the slope.”

“However, Father and Grandmother captured the target before I was able to collect enough data.”

So our running into the Fairy Drop was no coincidence, either. We knew the things were deeply connected to magical girls. I figured Type Twelve chose the ski resort for her experiment because two of them were already there.

After hearing the mechanical life-form’s defense, Ms. Futarishizuka’s attention turned to Magical Pink.

“The term fairy world sounds quite fanciful. Are you sure it’s not more of a science fiction world?”

“I don’t know,” replied Pink. “I killed and tanned the fairy who talked to me before I learned about it.”

“Ah, yes. That was where that fluffy thing around your neck came from…”

She’d told us the fur muffler she wore used to be a fairy. To me, it just looked like some small animal from Earth. Because Pink was our country’s magical girl, I still hadn’t met a fairy in person. Captain Mason acted like he already knew one through Magical Blue, but I doubted he’d tell me anything about it.

“So would the fairy world get mad at us if we broke this so-called Fairy Drop?” asked Ms. Futarishizuka.

“I don’t know that, either. But the fairy really, really wanted the Fairy Drops.”

“That gross bug doesn’t seem all that great to me.”

“Fairy Drops come in other shapes and sizes. My fairy said they affect their surroundings in different ways and that we should help find them since a bunch of them got scattered all over the Earth.”

I’d been thinking that the bug was creepier than its cute name implied. However, it seemed there were quite a few other variations of these things. That made the name Fairy Drop sound a little more believable.

“Hmm,” Ms. Futarishizuka groaned. “That makes it hard to decide.”

I, too, was hesitant to incur the fairy world’s displeasure. After all, we had no idea how powerful they were. According to Magical Pink’s explanation, there were many other Fairy Drops besides this one. If that were true, we could always collect a few more in secret before we made our move.

Ms. Futarishizuka seemed to feel the same way. “I suppose we’ll shelve the matter for now.”

“I believe that’s best as well,” I said. “According to Type Twelve’s explanation, we can probably dismantle it for research whenever we want. And as long as we have help from a magical girl, we can always look for more.”

“If you’re curious about the Fairy Drops, I can help you find them,” said Magical Pink. Now that she’d made peace with Ms. Futarishizuka, her attitude toward us had softened several degrees—though I was a little wary of my colleague getting such a huge power boost.

“Grandmother,” said Type Twelve, “why do you not scold the youngest daughter?”

“Eh? Why would I do that?”

“Because I exposed Father and Grandmother to danger.”

“Nothing we can do about that, dear. We may be a family, but we all have our own priorities. Of course, if we were a real family, you would have felt compassion for us and hesitated to do what you did.”

“……”

In contrast to her kindness toward Magical Pink, Ms. Futarishizuka was prickly with the mechanical life-form whenever she got the chance. Type Twelve probably would have preferred to be scolded, I thought, seeing her at a loss for words.

To conserve family harmony, I decided to help her out as her pretend father. “Type Twelve, if it were Miss Hoshizaki, I’m sure she would have scolded you.”

“Father, is that true?”

“Yes. There’s no doubt about it.”

Since Magical Blue had been fine physically, we knew there was a good chance no one would be hurt. Type Twelve must have understood that, too—though it reminded us once again that she saw humans only as resources.

“Oh, great,” said Ms. Futarishizuka. “So the son is siding with his wife and child and betraying his mother?”

“I believe balance is important in all things,” I said.

“Father, you seem to be acting kinder toward the youngest daughter today,” noted Type Twelve.

“Argh!” my colleague exclaimed. She swayed from side to side in protest, trying to act cute. “Fine! I don’t care. I have the magical girl!”

“That’s so off-putting, Ms. Futarishizuka,” I said.

She’d changed out of her bloodied clothes as soon as we returned to the hotel. The students and our coworkers were all around the building, after all. Instead of her preferred kimono, she was dressed in the suit she usually wore at school.

“Grandmother, in my view, you are only trying to use that girl for your own ends.”

“I know that’s what she’s doing,” said Magical Pink. “But her offer is worth it to me. So I don’t care. As long as she keeps her promise, I’ll help.”

“You’re such an awful person, Ms. Futarishizuka,” I commented.

“Can’t you put it more nicely? It’s just how the world works. Give and take.”

I’d felt a shiver run down my spine at Type Twelve’s remark. Nevertheless, Magical Pink seemed much more mentally mature than I’d expected. Or maybe she’d grown tired of going around killing psychics all the time.

“That said,” continued Ms. Futarishizuka, “I’d rather like to avoid any more big commotions like this.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said.

At that point, we heard the hotel room door click. The auto-lock had been disengaged from the outside. The door opened, and my neighbor and Abaddon appeared in the hall leading into the bedroom. Magical Blue was with them. All the room’s occupants had returned.

“There you are, mister,” said my neighbor.

“Oh, the youngest daughter is here, too,” added Abaddon.

“Sayoko!” exclaimed Magical Blue. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

All three of them rushed in when they saw us. Apparently, they’d been looking for us. They’d probably been notified when we passed by the hotel’s security cameras. I could hear the beating of helicopter rotors growing louder outside the room’s window. It seemed Captain Mason and the others had been away from the hotel, too.

At the same time, an announcement came over the building’s intercom. It was the teacher in charge of the first-years explaining the plan for the rest of the day. Unfortunately for Type Twelve, ski lessons were officially over. After an hour or so of free time, we’d have lunch according to our original schedule and then return to school.

Ms. Futarishizuka and I had our own tasks to perform, so we promptly got back to work.