Chapter 51: Unwelcomed Guests (2)

It’s strange.

It’s really strange…!

Curse frowned as he looked at the girl on the other side of the screen.

Did she forget where she was?

She was in the depths of the enemy’s territory.

Even in a trap, she seemed quite calm.

It was as if this trap was nothing to her.

“If it’s this level of despair, even she won’t be able to move…”

The verification was already complete.

A room filled with despair matched the despair she felt in the underground laboratory—no, it was even more intense.

Just breathing in there would have been too much pressure to stay still.

As evidence, the monster next to the girl was trembling with overwhelming despair.

“Is there some other intention…?”

Judging from the way she had infiltrated the laboratory, there was a possibility that she had prepared something else.

Perhaps a means of escaping that room, or something entirely different.

“We have to keep watching…”

Dr. Jong-eon’s creation couldn’t have intruded here without thinking.

She didn’t know what he was hiding, but she planned to figure out everything and respond to it.

However, it didn’t take long for her to realize that she was wrong.

“…She’s not moving at all.”

After promising to respond to anything she did, the girl on the screen just sat there.

The only other movements she made were to calm the monster next to her or wave her arms a few times.

The rest of the time, she just looked at the camera and smiled.

The girl’s appearance seemed to suggest that she knew what I was thinking, so she would rather not take action.

“Maybe she really can’t move because of despair…”

I had already experienced in the underground lab that the other person had high self-esteem and liked to brag.

In that case, her response was also likely a kind of bluff.

Although I couldn’t be sure.

“Is it because she has some corner of her that she trusts…?”

Even though she was currently trapped and unable to move, the girl was still Dr. Jong-eon’s creation.

Even if she had been defeated by him, Dr. Jong-eon was still Dr. Jong-eon.

No one but herself would know what kind of blade he was sharpening behind her.

“I don’t know what he’s hiding—”

At that moment, a strange feeling behind her back made her nerves tense.

Right now, there was someone targeting me from behind.

The moment I felt a chill down my spine and turned around, a crimson blade passed through Curse.

“Tch, did you notice?”

“Oh my, I thought it was someone, but it was you.”

“…This damn voice. It’s you, Doctor.”

Would it be a lie if I said that the first emotion I felt at that nervous voice was joy?

I was trying to check the difference between the girl in that room and the magical girl.

For an appropriate test subject to appear in front of me?

This kind of coincidence couldn’t happen.

No, this wasn’t a coincidence; it was definitely fate.

“If it was a magical girl, I thought Emerald would come, but I never thought Garnet would come to me.”

If Emerald was the type of magical girl who spread hope, Garnet was the type who hid her hope and held a blade inside.

If she had reacted even a little late, she would have given her back to that crimson blade in her hand.

Now that she had become a monster, she couldn’t escape the influence of that blade.

Curse smiled deeply as he looked at the hope energy blade that paralyzed the monster’s body and inflicted pain.

“I needed a test subject, and you came at a really good time, Garnet.”

“Who is your test subject, you damned thing?”

The leash is off.

Curse raised the corners of his mouth when he saw that the leash around Garnet’s neck was gone.

It must have been Dr. Jong-eon who untied it.

He never thought that she would use the power of a magical girl to hit him.

Woof-woof—

“Now, shouldn’t a good kid listen to his adult?”

“Get out.”

Curse’s despair core began to move with those soft words.

To crush the magical girl’s hopes and dye her heart with despair.

She was out of breath.

The doctor in front of her was a monster on a whole other level than anything she had ever faced before.

The pressure that weighed down her body and the pain that stabbed her throat every time she took a breath made her tired just from moving.

“You got tired faster than I thought, considering you charged in so confidently.”

“Damn it.”

There was a reason I asked if Akari could win.

Literally, it was a question asking if Garnet could deal with the doctor using her power.

Her own complacency was too great to admit that she didn’t know.

The opponent was the doctor.

Even if he wasn’t a monster but a human, it wouldn’t have been easy to deal with.

Taking it easy, huh…

There wasn’t a single speck of dust on the robe the doctor was wearing.

She ground her teeth at the fact that she couldn’t even brush the collar of his shirt, no matter how hard she charged.

“You have a habit of rushing in blindly when your surprise attack fails, Garnet.”

“…”

“Didn’t I tell you? If you want to live as a magical girl for a long time, you better fix that habit.”

“…Shut up.”

“Your senpai—oh, was it Opal? I heard she worked hard to correct your habit.”

“Shut up!!!!”

Senpai.

Opal, senpai.

Thinking of her senpai with her snow-white hair and rainbow-colored eyes, she pulled out the last bit of hope that remained in her heart.

The reason why I’m a magical girl.

The reason I can be a magical girl.

The hope that remained in my heart was sleeping under the name of the promise I made to my senior.

If it weren’t for that, there would be no hope for me.

“…Hope threshold.”

“Hoo.”

The circuit of hope began to spin furiously.

Memories, promises, memories with my senior.

I burned all of them and went beyond my own limits.

To defeat the enemy before my eyes—my enemy.

“When the time comes, I’ll give you a name, Garnet. A name, right?”

“Hey, that’s a magical girl name, right? Not something like that, a real name, a real name.”

“Real name…”

The color of the blade in my hand became vivid.

The current me had the name Mutsuki.

Although it wasn’t the name my senior gave me, it was a precious name given to me by my junior.

“I, we, aren’t your test subjects!!!”

With a human name, I finally became human.

The doctor, who had been quietly watching me as if mocking me, began to spread even deeper despair.

As if my hopes were nothing, like that.

“The output has increased, but if the movement remains the same, it’s meaningless.”

“Huh…!”

However, even though I had surpassed my limit, the blade in my hand did not touch the opponent.

Was the gap between me and the doctor really this much?

It felt like I was being dragged into a bottomless swamp.

“If only I had a leash, I wouldn’t have had to do such meaningless things. It’s too bad, Garnet.”

“Huh, huh… huh…”

The despair that rose in my mind began to stab my heart.

I tried to maintain my sanity by breathing heavily, but since I had used up my last bit of hope, I couldn’t suppress the despair that was spreading.

“Calm down. Come to your senses. If you fall now, there’s no reason for you to come here!”

The most important thing when dealing with a monster was not to despair.

Turn your eyes away from despair, and never look it in the eye.

Never.

However, the despair before my eyes wasn’t the kind of despair that you could ignore.

Jerk—Jerk—

“Is the struggle over now? Still, it was pretty good as a warm-up before the experiment.”

“…Ugh.”

Even without ears, I could listen; even without eyes, I could see.

With each step the doctor took, my body reflexively flinched in despair.

Come on, come on, come on!

I whipped myself and somehow managed to move my body, but all I could actually do was take a few steps back.

“Thank you for your hard work, Garnet.”

The doctor, who had come close to my nose, slowly reached out his hand.

As if to savor the despair in my heart, slowly.

‘This is the end…

There was no longer any means of fighting back.

Because all the hope that remained in my heart had long since been used up.

Now, all that remained was despair.

As I closed my eyes tightly and turned my head, the doctor’s unpleasant laughter whispered in my ear.

“You failed. Just like your senior.”

“Now, it’s time to follow in her footsteps and ‘graduate.’”

With the doctor’s words, several scenes flashed through my head.

Human experiments, screams, pain, despair—I couldn’t breathe.

The despair that had grown inside me was finally eating away at the last ray of reason that remained.

No, it was the moment it was about to consume me.

“… Huh, huh?”

The despair disappeared.

To be exact, it would be more accurate to say that it was sucked out by something.

It was as if a creature that preyed on despair had bitten off that part with its sharp teeth.

As I opened my eyes wide at the sudden strange phenomenon, the doctor turned his gaze to a certain place.

“Idiot.”

The black screen was showing nothing, as if it had always been that way.

All that existed was darkness.

Nevertheless, the doctor continued to stare into that darkness as if something existed inside it.