Ch.102Chapter 17. Questions (5)

I confirmed that Jihye was safe. In truth, the reason I came here in the first place involved my personal feelings, so there wasn’t much else to do besides checking on her.

That’s why I was planning to leave after just a few minutes.

If the chairman wasn’t at headquarters, it would be nearly impossible for us to find him.

It would be great if we could actually track him down. I had several questions to ask, and if possible, I’d like to give him a good punch.

However, our immediate goal was to make the chairman paranoid enough to divert Noir Corporation’s forces toward protecting him.

There was a reason we deliberately avoided showing interest in the research complex, our real target.

Besides, I don’t know how far the government will cover for the chairman, but at least we’re demonstrating that we’re pursuing him.

If the chairman starts gathering forces in one place for his own safety, it might actually make him more conspicuous.

He could flee into space—but if he never returns, I’d rather not worry about him at all.

Wouldn’t it be enough if he couldn’t cause any more trouble on Earth?

…I’m getting sidetracked. Anyway, that’s why I hadn’t planned to stay here very long.

But.

“…Jihye.”

I carefully spoke to Jihye, who was still hugging me.

Her face was a mess of tears.

Actually, it wasn’t just tears.

She had come straight here without cleaning off the oil and blood from fighting the kaijin and smashing cars. While I wasn’t sure about the blood, the oil hadn’t had time to dry.

Naturally, that oil had transferred to Jihye’s clothes, making a mess.

“You’ll get oil on you. Just a moment—”

But even as I gently tried to push her away by the shoulders, Jihye hugged my waist again. Almost like a child being clingy.

No, “clingy” doesn’t fully capture the emotion.

Just as I think of Jihye as family, she must think of me as family too.

Although Jihye has already let me go twice, each repetition only builds up more worry.

“…”

In that warmth, I suddenly realized.

The thought that I had nothing was just my own delusion.

In reality, I already had something precious that I could never lose. Jihye, and Hayun.

What I should be feeling is guilt. My mind was telling me it was immoral to find joy in this situation.

But despite those thoughts, my circuit was already spinning powerfully.

At least Hayun and Ju-a standing behind me knew what this meant. I was literally showing my feelings to others.

Jihye continued hugging me for about two more minutes before stepping back.

Her face was already smudged with soot, and her white shirt was stained with red, yellow, and black marks. While Jihye herself didn’t seem to care, I just felt sorry.

…Really.

Did I really need to avoid her so completely?

Couldn’t I have visited occasionally, just to see Jihye’s face? Did I make her worry unnecessarily by assuming I’d be a burden?

It was pointless to worry about it now.

“…Couldn’t you stay and rest for a bit?”

Seeing the two of us, the teacher carefully asked.

“Ah, well…”

I hesitated.

Rose, Dalia, and Delphinium were already heading toward Noir Corporation headquarters.

Since there hadn’t been any contact from them, there probably weren’t any unusual developments, but we couldn’t just relax comfortably while others were working.

Objectively speaking, even being here like this was problematic. It looked like we were having fun while making others do the work.

But.

Jihye took my hand.

She held my right hand firmly with both of hers and gently pulled it toward her.

It wasn’t enough force to pull my body. Just enough to tug my arm slightly.

A small force I could easily resist if I wanted to.

But it was more than just the act of “holding.”

It was a plea.

She thought she had no right to hold me back, but still wished I wouldn’t leave.

“…”

I looked behind me.

Toward where Hayun and Ju-a were standing.

Both had complicated expressions.

Ju-a’s expression was hard to read. It was close to her usual expressionless face, but the angle of her eyebrows was slightly different. The downturned ends suggested something like sympathy.

The other magical girls already knew my story, even if they didn’t know exactly how close Jihye and I were.

Hayun’s expression was even more complex.

More precisely, it was the face of someone who didn’t know what expression to make.

An awkward smile—thinking we should join the others quickly, but unable to tell me to hurry up.

“…It’s okay.”

Finally, after our eyes met, Hayun carefully offered her opinion.

“There’s no immediate danger… and there are police officers outside.”

Right. At least they weren’t the type to suddenly burst in to capture me, so the immediate situation was “okay.”

Really?

Or am I just rationalizing to myself?

“Jihye, I—”

As I turned my head toward Jihye to speak—

BOOM!

That sound rang out.

For a moment, I wondered if the people outside had changed their minds. They were the only ones likely to attack us right now.

But it was different.

This wasn’t just the sound of someone hitting a door. It was clearly something exploding. A sound I’d heard several times before.

A sound louder than gunfire.

With a slight delay, the orphanage windows trembled. It wasn’t as intense as an earthquake, but clearly the aftershock of tremendous energy.

“Jieun!”

Hayun shouted.

Even as she called out, she was already running forward. Ju-a was doing the same.

Completely different from their somewhat hesitant attitude just moments ago.

I turned around and—

“Ah.”

I pulled my hand out of Jihye’s grasp.

When I looked back, there was only Jihye, standing with her hand in the air, looking lost.

My heart was racing madly.

To be honest, I was more afraid of Jihye’s expression than the explosion outside.

She wasn’t angry. Jihye clearly understood the situation. She knew I had to go.

But her expression was different from our previous two partings.

Almost pleading.

But that expression appeared on Jihye’s face for just a moment before she lowered her hands and clasped them firmly over her stomach.

A smile appeared on her face.

The same smile she had shown during our previous two partings.

“…Ah…”

Seeing that face, I involuntarily groaned again.

I see.

Jihye didn’t want to let me go either. She probably made that earlier expression before forcing this smile.

Just to avoid showing it to me. To avoid becoming an obstacle to my escape.

Because Jihye also knew she was my only family.

“…”

I gritted my teeth.

I thought everything was gradually getting sorted out.

While I had doubts about becoming a magical girl, I thought it was a meaningful choice to resolve the situation, and it was actually effective.

But the more I made that choice, the further I moved away from my position as “Jeong Jieun.”

Naturally, I would continue to drift away from all the relationships around that position too.

As the magical girl “Lily,” I might not see Jihye for a long time. Even if I did, it would only be occasionally like this.

I understand that can happen when you become an adult. But by then, the relationship would already be established—as friends who meet occasionally and have fun together for life.

But now.

I’m still a high school student. It’s only been two months since I became a second-year.

Many people left the orphanage before us, but most couldn’t even keep in touch regularly. The relationship was severed before it could truly become “family.”

I wondered if Jihye and I would end up the same way.

That terrified me.

It’s strange. Human emotions can somehow accept contradictory feelings simultaneously—part of me was happy that Jihye was waiting for me, that she cared for me so deeply.

Disgusting.

Since becoming Jeong Jieun in this world, I had never felt more disgusting.

…In some ways, even more than when I felt conflicted about Hayun.

I could only curse everything that had put me in this situation.

That included myself.

“I’ll, I’ll be back soon.”

That’s what I said.

It was essentially a lie. Not completely without sincerity, but—

“Okay, I’ll wait.”

That’s what Jihye said. Her voice was much calmer than before.

And hearing that voice, my heart felt like it had fallen to the floor and was rolling around.

Gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut, I turned around.

And ran forward.

Whatever caused that explosion outside, I felt like I needed to beat up the source to vent my frustration.

…Though I’m not sure if even that would be enough.

*

After flying up to check, I saw the explosion had occurred at someone’s house.

Seeing it, I felt chills down my spine.

I recognized the direction.

“Jieun?!”

When I immediately dropped toward that location without saying anything, Hayun shouted in surprise.

But I had no time to answer. There was something I absolutely needed to confirm there.

Human lives? That could be part of it. It’s not completely wrong. Even someone like me understands the basic duty of being human.

But by my admittedly not-so-virtuous standards, that human duty was secondary.

More important was the person who might be in the direction of the explosion.

The direction of the explosion was toward where I had stayed before living with the magical girls.

Pang Pang’s house.

The place where my acquaintance lived—someone I reluctantly called “Earthaboo” instead of her name, a ridiculous nickname she would have hated if she’d heard it.

Black smoke was rising from there.

Why? Why now?

Had the chairman figured it out? That this was where Pang Pang, who had helped me without conditions, lived?

How did he know? Did someone at my workplace recognize my face behind the mask? Did someone see me using the hammer and report me to the chairman?

Or did they check CCTV or something else to find someone close to me?

“…”

This was different from Jihye’s case. While Jihye and Hayun were suffering because of my mess, Jihye wasn’t someone I could choose to avoid. She was literally “family.”

Hayun… well, she can take care of herself. She’s a magical girl. Though I shouldn’t be the one to say this, Hayun could definitely subdue any enemy that appeared before her.

And if that enemy was a villain, she could resolve it without even feeling guilty.

But Pang Pang.

She was just someone who loved Earth, who thought Earth was beautiful based on the passion of Earth people captured in the Voyager probe—the passion of just a small fraction of Earth people.

She helped me simply because she was close to me, and if she suffered because of that…

I could feel my face turning pale.

Why did this happen while I was here? No, if it was the chairman, he might have deliberately timed it after monitoring the situation.

By investigating my behavior patterns and how the government moved, he could quickly identify my vulnerabilities—

“Pang Pang—!”

I called out her name.

The area was already filled with smoke. It wasn’t the black smoke you’d see at a serious fire scene, but the acrid smell of gunpowder and smoke clearly showed the explosion had been significant.

The entrance to Pang Pang’s house isn’t very wide. It’s a semi-basement in what looks like a 30-year-old villa.

There were several rubber basins placed around the entrance, making it difficult to enter—

Above all, there were police here too.

It wasn’t the same situation as with Jihye. The number of police gathered here was just two, barely enough to call a “gathering.”

There was only one car parked. They seemed to be patrol officers who had arrived. They all looked surprised, as if they had just arrived.

The fire truck… had it been dispatched? Just a little while ago, we had to subdue six kaijin. Though it didn’t feel that far since the three of us flew here, it was actually in a different district.

How many police officers would be in this area? Had they been sent to support the fire trucks and ambulances? If so, there would certainly be a shortage of vehicles—

“Ah, there…!”

When I dropped straight toward the entrance of Pang Pang’s smoke-filled house, passing over the police officers’ heads, one of them shouted, but I was too preoccupied to listen properly.

I wanted to call Pang Pang’s name again, but the acrid smoke made it difficult to breathe.

The door seemed to have been blown inward from the outside.

To this extent?

Looking again, I saw signs that not just the door, but all sorts of objects had been shattered. Wooden fragments were scattered inside, and cloth pieces were visible too.

Had she piled obstacles in front of the door? If there were people coming to capture Pang Pang, and she had piled those things to block them…

And if those people, thinking they had no time, had simply blown up the door to get in, that would make sense—

“Jieun!”

As I was about to enter, Hayun pulled me back.

I fell sideways.

A series of ear-splitting noises followed, and something powerful flew into the place I had been about to enter, wreaking havoc on the semi-basement entrance.

A booby trap.

Not just a simple booby trap. What I heard was definitely gunfire.

While I stood dumbfounded, Ju-a quickly moved past me, aimed her gun inside, and fired several shots. There was an explosion sound from inside Pang Pang’s house, and Ju-a carefully peeked in to check.

“…I’ll go in first.”

Only after Ju-a said that and carefully stepped inside did Hayun release me.

I awkwardly got to my feet.

“How did you know?”

“Intuition.”

Hayun answered.

“…”

I couldn’t find a reason to argue with that. Hayun is… the protagonist. Even in the webtoon, she sometimes solved problems this way.

There was no time to think about the mechanics of it.

I quickly got up and carefully followed Ju-a inside.

Though smoke obscured much of the view, I could still somewhat grasp the situation inside.

…It was quite different from when I last saw it.

Shattered objects were scattered everywhere. Pang Pang didn’t have that many belongings, but true to her Earthaboo nature, she had collected various items.

There was a globe on the low table in the corner of the room, and posters on the wall. All of them were torn.

Rather than deliberate destruction, it looked like traces of desperate resistance.

My breathing quickened. Not just because of the acrid smoke.

“…Is this someone you know’s house?”

When Hayun asked, I nodded.

What had I been thinking?

Saying I had no one to help me, I came to the home of the only person who might help. And that person willingly helped me.

But I did nothing in return. I just stayed there as if it were natural and did all sorts of bad things.

When I first robbed the company, I was staying here.

This is where I made weapons from generators, and where I stayed while dealing with magical girls.

Why did I think I wouldn’t be discovered?

Did I think everything would be fine if I just left at the end?

“…”

On top of the emotions I felt seeing Jihye, negative feelings crept up again.

The vibration from my circuit was noticeably reduced.

Despite just receiving the name Lily, and thinking I was so full of hope until moments ago.

In the deepest part of the room, facing the door, stood a turret. Though Ju-a had shot and destroyed it, it was clearly from Noir Corporation.

Did they know I would come? Or were the police who might come here the targets?

I wasn’t sure.

…I just realized how arrogant I had been all this time.