Chapter 75: Kidnapping (5)

“That’s bad taste.”

“It’s better than the others.”

She hummed as she hung the card key she had taken from the old researcher around her neck.

With this, wouldn’t she be able to enter the danger zone or something?

It might be a bolt from the blue for the old man in the cabinet, but since she wasn’t folded up like the others, I thought it would be okay.

“It took longer than I thought because there were fewer humans.”

“…I guess so. Most of the researchers lost their lives during the last incident.”

“Huh, so does that mean I was bad?”

“Ha…”

Garnet let out a sigh as if she was discouraged by my words.

Even if she was a delinquent, she wouldn’t have wanted to say something about a fellow human dying or something, since she was a magical girl.

She quickly shut her mouth when she realized that I was deliberately leading her to answer in that direction.

‘That’s why I don’t like quick-witted magical girls…’

It would have been much more fun to make a mistake like Peridot and despair for no reason.

Garnet was, what should I say, a magical girl who seemed easy but wasn’t.

Her pranks didn’t work very well.

She wasn’t having fun.

“Now, let’s see what you’ve hidden here?”

“…”

“Smile, Garnet. Why are you so serious?”

There’s nothing more joyful than learning something new.

With a mad scientist-like thought, she opened the door to the danger zone.

[Welcome, Doctor. Hope you have a good time.]

“…What about a good time?”

“Well, it might be a good time for the researchers, I guess? I don’t know about other humans, though.”

The inside of the lab was dark.

Did they turn off the lights on purpose?

I looked around to find a switch to turn on the light, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find one.

‘…This atmosphere feels familiar.’

A feeling I’ve felt somewhere before.

Then, as I turned my head in a faint despair, something wrapped in black cloth caught my eye.

If my guess was right, it was definitely inside—

“That was the answer.”

“…Damn it.”

When I took off the cloth with my sword, what I saw was none other than a large test tube.

Inside it, of course, was the human child that had recently gone missing.

If something suspicious had happened, the first thing I would have thought was an underground laboratory.

Most of it would have been correct.

“But this doesn’t seem like they’re making magical girls.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m feeling despair, not hope. If they were trying to make magical girls, it would have felt really disgusting—excuse me. It would have felt a bad hope.”

It was too wholesome for researching magical girls.

If it’s research like this, I’m all for it, all for it!

It was an apologetic thing to say to Garnet, who had come to find the human children, but the despair of human children was quite delicious.

Perhaps it was even more so because they were beings who might become magical girls.

“…Let’s save them first.”

“If we break the test tube, the children inside might get hurt. Wouldn’t it be better to find a gentle way to get them out?”

Garnet gently grabbed her arm as she was about to strike the test tube with her staff.

The person who had been telling her not to make a fuss was trying to do something so barbaric.

“If I put it in, there must be a way to get it out, right?”

“Do you know how to get it out?”

“I guess I’ll have to touch anything. Just wait a little bit. I’ll figure it out.”

She was confident in handling the machine.

It would have been better if there was an instruction manual, but unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any here…

Oh, is this it?

Beep, whoosh—

“…What did you just press?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t press anything you don’t know, you idiot!”

“Ouch…”

I groaned as Garnet struck the back of my head with her staff.

No matter what, isn’t hitting me with hope a little too much?

As I rubbed the back of my head and glared at Garnet, the machine connected to the test tube began to move.

“This is…”

“It’s extracting despair.”

The despair that I had been feeling faintly was maximizing and flowing somewhere through the machine.

Garnet frowned as if she was upset at the sight.

That must be it. Despair was like extreme poison to a magical girl.

‘Anyway, it’s too familiar, isn’t it…’

She put a human in the test tube and extracted despair from that human.

It was something Curse would have done, but she couldn’t help but think of someone else’s face first.

Of course, this method was definitely—

“Why did the machine suddenly start working?”

“I know. The new director could have done it, right?”

“That damn new director’s rant. Just call me director. You’ll be gone forever.”

I thought there’d be no one inside, but there really were people.

I hid between the shadows of the machines and quietly stared at the two humans.

Should I listen in on their conversation?

“The new director guy is really weird. Why on earth did he tell us to turn off all the lights in the lab?”

“It’s better than the guy who raised the monster in the lab, tsk.”

“That’s true. None of those guys make my stomach churn just by looking at their faces… ugh.”

From what I could tell from the conversation, it seemed like none of the Curse guys were here right now.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been cursing the presumed Curse being.

Woofwoof…

“These kids are pitiful too. Trapped here, having their despair energy drained.”

“Isn’t that better than mixing with monsters?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If they saw that, they would have bowed down to us and said ‘thank you~’”

As the humans fiddled with the buttons here and there, the machine soon stopped working.

It was quite disappointing that the despair flowing out along with the feeble sound was also reduced.

“It’s the same thing we did in the past anyway, and the work is the same, but the welfare has actually gotten better, so I’m very satisfied.”

“Praise the new director. Praise the new director.”

With those words, the humans disappeared deeper into the depths.

“…You weren’t researching magical girls? More importantly, the new director?”

“It seems like you were researching something more than magical girls.”

After the humans disappeared, Garnet emerged from the shadows of the machines and made an expression that seemed to say that it was unbelievable.

It seemed that she didn’t quite understand that the culprit she thought was Curse was actually someone else.

Well, there’s no other human who would lead such troublesome research than Curse.

After all, if she were a human, then so be it.

“Curs could be right? Why, her head turned into a monster’s head.”

“A monster’s head… Well, um, that could definitely be the case.”

She slipped false information to the magical girl who was having trouble deciding what to do.

It wasn’t exactly a betrayal or anything.

From the moment we arrived here, the culprit of the kidnapping incident had to be revealed.

But if there’s a reason I’m telling this story anyway—yes,

‘It’s more fun.’

I wanted to see her get shocked when the real culprit was revealed and say, ‘It wasn’t Curse…?’

Other people might have called me out for my bad taste, but I was a monster after all.

So it’s okay to let this kind of trivial prank slide! It felt like that.

“But there’s something a little suspicious about it…”

“What part?”

“That guy increased the welfare? Seriously. He became a monster and now he’s more normal…”

“…”

Oh, that kind of thing?

Well, there’s no way a person with that kind of mentality would suddenly take care of the welfare of his employees just because he became a monster.

I nodded reflexively at the reasonable suspicion.

***

“This way, Doctor.”

“Thank you.”

“I do appreciate it. It would be better for you to thank Director Shin rather than me.”

“…Director Shin?”

I walked behind the researcher for a moment.

I tilted my head at the word Director Shin.

If it was Director Shin, did someone else take over as Director?

“Uh, how did you get the children you use as test subjects?”

“I don’t know. Director Shin prepared them, but he said it was okay to use them, so we use them.”

“…”

My head was spinning.

If that man was the one who kidnapped Aya, then returning here was the wrong choice.

Thinking about that made me feel dizzy for a moment.

From the person called Director Shin to the being who kidnapped Aya using a monster.

There was so much information I didn’t know.

‘Using a monster to kidnap children is the method that man used…’

If that man was the one who kidnapped Aya, then it was as good as picking the wrong address.

However, what if Director Shin had used a monster to kidnap Aya just like that man?

My vision began to waver at the countless possibilities that came to mind.

At that moment, when nausea was about to burst out of my throat, one thought occurred to me.

“Where are we going right now?”

As the scenery began to get darker, Lina asked in a trembling voice.

When on earth did I come to a place like this?

The sound of my heart pounding seemed to be right next to my ear.

“The new director wants to see the doctor,” the man said.

It seemed like it was too late to run away.