Chapter 76: Don’t Leave Me

I was careless.

And I let my guard down.

My opponent had the ability to completely erase her presence, yet I had excitedly chased only the visible bloodstains.

I failed to recognize the contradiction between the information that the bloodstains were getting closer together and the information that my opponent had gotten ahead of me to set a trap.

This won’t do.

If the magical girls regroup and attack again, I can’t afford to be this careless if I want to protect my precious things, my precious days with my precious person.

But, at least for this moment, it’s fine.

I’ve dealt with magical girls more times than I can count.

A magical girl who can only manage a mere ambush like this is…

“Ugh…”

I grab the blade protruding from my stomach with my right hand.

As the mass of magic that constitutes my right hand clings to the blade and travels down it, penetrating my body to reach the hilt, the magical girl quickly lets go and throws herself backward.

I extend my arm behind me, firing threads of magic both upwards and downwards.

As expected, she seemed to be near her limit, as she failed to properly dodge the threads and her shoulder and side were deeply gouged.

Turning to look, I see the flesh of her right calf is torn.

She must have quickly judged that she could no longer escape the moment her leg was hit and set a trap.

And I, like a fool, walked right into it.

She was clever for a magical girl who was only good at hiding and casting illusions.

I press the tip of the blade with my right hand and push it out.

Clang, clank,

The sound of the blade falling from my back onto the ground echoes in the silent ruins.

Blood pours from my stomach and back.

I feel dizzy.

The reverberating metallic sound seems to shake my mind.

Still, this isn’t enough to kill me.

If my opponent had had enough strength left and had struck my spine or heart, it would have been dangerous.

I clutch the hole in my stomach, stop the blood flow to clot it as a form of first aid, and glare ahead.

The magical girl in black was gasping for breath and staggering.

She probably didn’t even have the strength left to hide and run.

Extending my right arm, I stretch the mass of magic as if reaching for an item on a high shelf and firmly grasp the magical girl’s limbs.

Not to tear them off, as that would cause her to bleed out, but just strong enough to cause severe pain.

I’m seriously injured myself, so it wouldn’t be worth it if I didn’t get some information.

I at least need to confirm whether I, or rather, Lee Seoa, am on the Magical Girl Association’s list of suspects.

“Hah… hah… Sanguine Obsidia.
Ugh… A murderer like you… I’m not afraid.”

As she said those words while trembling, I made the threads of magic dig into the inside of her limbs, probably where the nerves are.

A beautiful scream followed.

The scream, reverberating through the still night air, sounds even more beautiful.

“…You, you saw me, didn’t you?”

“My name… is Caerulea Veil… As you can see, stealth and clones are my specialties.

Hah… The clothes too, don’t I look like a ninja…?”

“Answer my question.”

I poked the area where the nerves would be a little more precisely.

The magical girl was trying to buy time, hoping a comrade would come to her rescue, by talking about things I wasn’t curious about.

It would be troublesome if they swarmed me like they had many times before.

Even if my body can heal from most injuries, I need to get home soon for that to happen.

It’s getting late.

I want to go back quickly.

I don’t want to make her worry.

I want to share an embrace with her.

As it has always been and always will be, I want to be intoxicated by that scent again.

“Your comrades won’t be able to find you this deep in the ruins.
Stop wasting time and answer.
You saw me, didn’t you?”

“Yes… Your form before you transformed… no, is that a disguise…?

Hah… I saw it clearly.

Your name was Lee Seoa, wasn’t it?

Unclear identity… I’ve memorized all the names on the suspect list…”

“Tell me everything you know!”

On impulse, I crushed one of the magical girl’s arms.

Suspect list?

Does that mean my name and face are known to the Magical Girl Association?

If so, it must be through the Community Support Center, or by the magical girls I’ve come into contact with as Lee Seoa…

That means Ahn Yujin, who was always with Lee Seoa, is also on the list of suspects.

I was complacent.

Careless.

Stupid.

From the very beginning, my identity was exposed to the Magical Girl Association.

I thought I had hidden it well.

No.

That can’t be.

Look, even after that night, the night the head of the Magical Girl Association came to kill me herself, nothing happened to me or Yujin.

Think.

Rationally.

If I were a truly ‘prime suspect,’ someone would have come to my house.

So, the list this Caerulea or whatever magical girl is talking about must be just a list of suspicious individuals.

There must be hundreds, thousands of them.

Right?

No, it has to be.

Instead of speaking, I grabbed the magical girl’s chin.

But she seemed to have no more strength to speak, or perhaps realizing she had just misspoken, she shut her mouth.

Caerulea Veil was a magical girl who didn’t stand out much, for better or worse.

Her stealth ability, which was almost useless in direct combat with monsters, and her cloning ability, which could only create illusions of herself, were pretty much all the magic she could use.

That was why Vera Bellastra, who needed her information-gathering and infiltration abilities, valued her skills and used her as a member of her team.

She was thankful that she was never ordered to carry out tasks like assassinating opponents of the Magical Girl Association, as rumored in conspiracy theories or imagined by her right after becoming a magical girl, and she lived thinking that she wasn’t that unlucky after all.

However, while there was hardly a magical girl who didn’t have a sad story or two, she thought that, at least for tonight, there was no one as unlucky as herself.

It was just a routine nightly patrol mission with no special circumstances.

It wasn’t even an area where monsters frequently appeared, so she hadn’t given it much thought.

She had just cautiously followed a man and a woman who went into the ruins, thinking a crime might be taking place.

And the crime that occurred was not the kind she had imagined.

The black-haired woman had transformed, her hair turning a bone-white that was clearly visible even in the dim light of the dark alley, and her eyes turning a rotten blood-red.

The worst murderer, Sanguine Obsidia.

The moment she let out a gasp, seized by panic and fear, she had a premonition of her fate.

The result was this current state.

To have her communicator destroyed by a blade thrown by Sanguine Obsidia, making her unable to even properly contact headquarters, and to have her leg injured so she couldn’t even escape properly.

There was no greater misfortune.

“Haha…”

A hollow laugh escaped her.

Just as time seems to slow down before death, the sight of Sanguine Obsidia’s unstable, shimmering right arm, made of a mass of magic, splitting and extending to grab her limbs, appeared to Caerulea slowly, very slowly.

Like a predator firmly grasping its tiny prey, like a bizarre monster clinging to its sacrifice.

The magical girl’s actions were ultimately nothing more than a struggle.

Wasn’t it so?

A magical girl with almost no combat ability, who could barely defeat the lowest-level monsters, had managed to lure this monster into a trap and succeed in plunging a knife into its back.

That alone was a great achievement, Caerulea thought, as if it were happening to someone else.

But the sensation of her limbs being grabbed, and the suffocating pain as if trying to wring out more blood from a body that had already bled so much, was the undeniable reality she was facing.

“Yes, the others don’t know, do they.”

The monster, which had been spouting all sorts of things in excitement, smiled a smile that could only be described as hideous, and said that last sentence as if it had reached a conclusion.

Having already lost the energy to even scream, and resigned to the fact that she couldn’t return with the information about Sanguine Obsidia’s identity and was doomed to die in this place, the magical girl’s silence and slight bewilderment were taken as affirmation by the monster, who smiled.

Loudly, so that it echoed throughout the ruins.

“If you go missing in this place, the other magical girls won’t be able to find out that Lee Seoa is Sanguine Obsidia, will they?
Right?”

The monster said in an excited tone, with a joyful expression, and began to dismantle the magical girl, rotating countless magical blades as if running a grinder.

“Even so, there’s no way there’s magic to extract memories from brain fragments or revive the dead, but there might be a method I don’t know of… I have to be thorough.”

***

Has the feeling of joy always been this radiant?

I’m happy.

So happy I can’t express it in words.

It’s not that I’m happy about creating the remains of a magical girl, a mangled and crushed mass.

I’m happy that I protected her, my beloved.

I’m happy that she won’t be exposed to the magical girls and taken away from me.

The black ghost seemed to be trying to say something useless, so while I was at it, I shoved him into the wreckage mixed with the magical girl’s clothes and flesh.

Seeing that ridiculous sight also makes me happy.

Have I ever protected her directly, with my own strength?

There was a time when I stood before a monster and pathetically did nothing.

But this time is different.

I protected Yujin, our life, our daily routine.

The ghost who might argue that I didn’t protect her directly won’t be able to get out for a while, so I won’t have to hear his rebuttal.

If I tell her when I get back, she’ll praise me, right?

She’ll hug me tighter than usual.

[…You killed again, Sanguine Obsidia.]

So you finally crawled out to say something, Spooky.

The voice of an unwelcome guest, heard while I was wallowing in joy.

Spooky, as always, speaks at the worst possible time, so much so that it feels artificial.

I have no idea when he got out.

When I glared at him with my head half-tilted, his black tablecloth-like form flinched as if in fear, but he didn’t seem to have any intention of backing down.

“I had to kill her.

Didn’t I?

You wouldn’t want me to be caught and killed by the magical girls, would you?

No.

Is that what you want?”

[Isn’t it your fault for coming out at night to enjoy killing in the first place?

That’s why you ran into that magical girl…]

In a way, he’s right, but I can only say this was bad luck.

When I asked the magical girl who just died, Caerulea, if she knew my identity from the beginning or if she was deliberately lying in wait here, she remained silent but clearly showed a negative attitude.

It’s just that we were both unlucky.

And I was able to turn that misfortune into joy.

So, I’m happy.

But yes.

There’s no guarantee that something like this won’t happen again.

If the Magical Girl Association gains more strength, they will seriously try to capture me again.

If I don’t want to get caught in a checkmate like that night without even knowing it… if I don’t want to lose Yujin, I need to think seriously.

If Lee Seoa is on the suspect list, then Ahn Yujin will naturally be on the suspect list as well.

Of course, magical girls or the police could come to Yujin, who has an official identity and works outside.

If she’s investigated, if she’s arrested…

No, this isn’t it.

I’ve come to hate the idea of her meeting anyone else.

When did it start?

I used to admire her for working outside and moving around, wanting to live a normal life like her.

But not anymore.

My normal life is only her.

Only she is life.

So, it’s simple.

I’m stronger than before, aren’t I?

If I just capture her, restrain her, and make it so that the only thing left is a peaceful, warm daily life with only her…

I feel nauseous.

I vomit a lump of dark red blood from my stomach onto the pile of flesh.

No.

This is not it.

If she comes to hate me, if she comes to fear and despise me, ah…

I’ve already come to this conclusion before, what’s the point of bringing it up again?

Yes.

It’s all because of the injury.

I was stabbed in the stomach, I’ve lost too much blood, I can’t think straight.

I need to think rationally, normally.

I have to go back.

Before it gets any later.