Ch.48Chapter 9. Things That Should Not Be Touched (2)

Though he was someone I didn’t get along with in many ways, James was quite helpful to me at the moment.

First of all, we shared the same top priority.

We were already backed into a corner, with no luxury to take sides with anyone. Honestly, I was starting to think it might be dangerous to stay here much longer. The longer we remained in one place, the greater the chance our location would be discovered.

I could always destroy everything and run away again if needed, but repeating that process constantly would be troublesome.

“Among our limited options, I believe ‘taking an aggressive approach’ is the only real choice we have,” James suggested.

“Since neither side is going to like us anyway, it would be better to pull the negotiating advantage to our side. And typically, such advantage is determined by ‘power.'”

“I get what you’re trying to say,” I said with a frown, crossing my arms and looking down at James.

“But can the two of us really pull that off?”

“After encountering the magical girls several times, I’ve had some thoughts.”

As James spoke, he pressed a device placed in front of him.

It was disturbingly shaped like an “eyeball.” No, it wasn’t just shaped like one—it actually was an eyeball. Probably one that had been attached to James’s robot head.

When I saw it before, one side was completely destroyed and unusable, but this one seemed to be intact. With it removed like this and the back part disassembled, it at least looked more mechanical and not quite as disgusting.

When James pressed the button, something like a projector screen appeared on the apartment wall.

What appeared on the screen was something similar to a video.

I say “similar to a video” because it didn’t seem like it was actually recorded through a camera.

If I had to describe it, it was like an ultrasound image. It resembled those 3D ultrasounds of fetuses I’d seen on the internet—colorless and composed only of polygons, making it look somewhat awkward.

Still, the surface of each model was smoothly rendered, so it was possible to tell who was who.

Seeing this, I understood why James had been so determined to stick with me. He must have wanted to analyze situations like this. And situations can’t be perfectly understood through post-analysis alone.

“This is possible when there’s enough circuit energy. It remembers the flow of energy at that time. This would be impossible with the energy of an ordinary combatant.”

Perhaps that’s why the video only showed what appeared to be “energy.” The magical girls and me. The faintly visible kaijin. And the black hole I had summoned.

“This is from when you infiltrated the company.”

The video showed Hayun holding a man, then falling down helplessly when she saw me. The man wasn’t visible, but his movements could be inferred.

“And this is from when we fought near Chungmuro Station.”

When James pressed the button again, the video showed me rushing toward the kaijin to help Hayun.

The pink light that had shone from Hayun’s “staff” right after was clearly visible. Had James added color just to that part?

“Looking at these two videos, does anything come to mind?”

“…That I’m having some kind of influence on Hayun?”

“Exactly.”

James sat on the floor with his arms crossed and said, “You don’t seem to be just friends with Blossom. I think I may have underestimated you a bit.”

“…”

That was an unpleasant assessment.

I knew and felt that Hayun and I were friends, but I didn’t want to be evaluated on that by James.

“She is clearly influenced by you. And that influence is emotional. Considering the circuit on her wrist, she sees ‘hope’ in you.”

I stared at James.

“Isn’t it interesting? That Blossom both loses and gains hope when she sees you. I would have thought a magical girl of her caliber would find hope in things like ‘justice.'”

To be honest, I had thought the same.

I had assumed Hayun would find hope in creating justice or a beautiful world.

Because that’s how it was in the webtoon.

While the webtoon basically twisted the clichés of magical girl stories, that didn’t mean the protagonist wasn’t good.

All the magical girls had their own realistic concerns, and most thought of their own interests before justice, but Hayun was different.

Hope.

In the comic, Hayun was hope itself. Someone who believed that even if she couldn’t be a perfectly just person herself, by fighting for what she believed in, she could gradually get closer to that hope.

…Of course, in the original work, she never considered that the combatants she was hitting might be ordinary citizens. There were no scenes showing magical girls being conscious of that fact.

Scenes of combatants chatting with each other usually appeared in comedy cuts separate from the main story.

Comedic scenes where combatants would commit various evil acts while chatting about whose child was how old or who was getting married next month, only to be swept away with a shriek by a magical girl’s attack. And then they would recover and reappear in another battle, chatting casually again.

As the series was officially serialized, these settings became too prominent, creating a meme that magical girls were actually the villains. The author seemed to notice this, and the story began to flow too seriously, eventually losing much of that “ironic humor” from the beginning.

“So, I’ve decided to change my approach. You should focus on Blossom.”

“Focus on Hayun?”

“Exactly as I said. Be nice to her whenever a battle breaks out.”

James looked up at me and said, “If we play this right, we might be able to cause division among the magical girls.”

“…”

I frowned in silence, but James continued speaking, pretending not to notice my expression.

“With a bit of luck, all the magical girls might turn their backs on the Galactic Federation. That’s how central Blossom is among them.”

Beyond simply being friends with all the magical girls, Blossom’s “energy” also affects the circuits of other magical girls.

When James pressed the button again, the screen changed to look like it was filmed with a thermal camera.

“This measures the amount and range of circuit energy.”

My circuit was a deep blue, as if it had dropped below zero. It was almost black. This energy was swirling around the black hole I had created and around where I was standing.

Energy from hope, on the other hand, seemed to represent the “high temperature” on the thermal camera.

The center of the red area was glowing so brightly it was almost white.

Hayun, or Blossom, was almost white, and the energy of the magical girls around her was faintly connected, as if receiving her energy.

Literally, Hayun was the “center”—both in position and energy.

“If we understand this energy center, it might be possible to make all the magical girls defect.”

“…And then what? What should we do if they defect?”

“What else is there to do?”

James showed his teeth as he spoke.

“We just mess everything up. If we do nothing, we’ll be the ones in trouble, right? If we show them that we won’t stay quiet when provoked, they won’t be able to treat you however they want. If possible, establishing a close cooperative relationship with the magical girls wouldn’t be bad either.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Easy or not, do we have any other options? With both my plan and your ideas having gone awry, I can’t think of anything else.”

Annoyingly, he was right.

“…”

But I didn’t want to just admit it.

So I chose to keep my mouth shut.

James, as if he had expected this, slightly raised both hands, then turned his body toward another direction.

It was where the human-shaped body James had been riding was located.

Now only about a quarter of that body remained. And even the remaining parts were mostly the “skeletal” portions.

There was an object that seemed to have been made by scraping together the high-tech parts from the remaining pieces.

It was a “drone” just the right size for a hamster to ride.

I could understand having a cockpit-like structure since something similar would have been in the robot, but I had no idea how he had made the rest of the drone.

Moreover, it didn’t even seem to have the propellers typically found on drones.

“It flies using mana. The principle is similar to the hammer you use as a weapon… Though that ‘principle’ has been seriously distorted by your crude methods.”

“…”

He seems incapable of saying even a single word without getting on my nerves.

“With this, I can follow you even while somewhat defying aerodynamics. Thanks to my ancestors from thousands of years ago, I was miraculously able to cling well to your shoulder, but after the last battle, I honestly felt my life was in danger.”

“That’s true.”

I couldn’t help but nod at that.

James probably follows me around simply because he’s suspicious. While analyzing battles to create more favorable situations is part of it, he likely knows there’s a high chance he’d be in serious danger if he were separated from me and left alone.

Squeakeans may be smart, but their bodies are terribly weak.

“You don’t need to worry about me flying around. I’ve included all the functions I could. If I can receive your mana while near you, I can dodge bullets on my own. With enough energy, I could even pull off more impressive feats.”

I wonder if he made it after observing the magical girls’ circuits.

I shrugged at James.

I didn’t want to admit it in front of him, but honestly, I felt a bit relieved.

I didn’t want to be alone in battle.

Even having someone to exchange insults with would at least ensure I wasn’t lonely.

*

Hayun’s parents had told her they could drive her if necessary.

Of course, that didn’t mean they would drive her themselves. Her parents didn’t have that much time to spare.

Countless countries from countless planets are members of the Galactic Federation. The standard for a day differs by planet, and the time differs by country on each planet.

Having to constantly calculate time differences much more complex than a multinational corporation dealing with world time was an exhausting task.

Federation officials arriving on Earth naturally had no concept of day and night. While they generally tried to match local time, it was better for Earth representatives to adjust first to make a good impression.

As a result, Hayun almost always woke up alone at home.

There was a housekeeper and a driver, but…

“…”

She brought a bowl to the table herself and poured cereal. She added an appropriate amount of milk and crunched away.

Yes, there were people working there, but Hayun somehow didn’t want their help.

Since childhood, she had vaguely thought that this was how Jieun would live.

Jieun might snort if she heard this. Perhaps she didn’t even resolve breakfast with cereal like this.

But still, watching Jieun made Hayun want to be like her. She was always a child who never seemed intimidated and appeared to resolve everything on her own.

She liked walking together every morning. And sitting side by side on the bus.

So today, too, Hayun deliberately took the bus instead of getting in the car.

If she rode it enough times, maybe Jieun would suddenly be standing next to her one day.

Maybe all of this had just been a nightmare, and if Hayun mentioned it, Jieun would laugh and ask what she was talking about.

But time was flowing relentlessly.

The cold winter had passed, and spring was coming.

Jieun had not reappeared.

“Hayun, hello.”

And in her place, children Hayun didn’t know well had appeared.

She had never disliked them. But she hadn’t thought of them as good either.

Children who had never appeared when Jieun was around seemed to be competing to take her place as soon as Jieun disappeared.

“…Hello.”

She greeted them with a forced smile.

Blossom, who had beaten so many ordinary people and sent them to the hospital, couldn’t even express annoyance at the words of her classmates.

Yet Jieun had been knocked down by those fists several times.

She nodded along appropriately to the chatter beside her. Most of it was uninteresting talk that Hayun didn’t know much about.

Why did they talk so enthusiastically about their parents? About what their father or mother did.

And inevitably, as she listened, those “parents” eventually met Hayun’s parents.

“…”

She was trying to change her thinking.

She knew it was terribly shallow to think this way just because Jieun was among the people she had considered evil.

But still, now that she knew.

Now that she knew the people there had no real choice, that they were ultimately doing “legal work,” she was trying to change.

After talking with Jihye, she became even more confused.

If corporations are evil, then the money from them must be the result of evil actions.

Then how should one view good deeds done with that money?

Money laundering would be a different story, but at least the money Jieun earned went purely to orphanage operating expenses without being diverted elsewhere.

Thanks to that money, the children didn’t have to inherit clothes, never ran out of food, and could eat plenty of snacks.

Whenever parts of the building broke, they could be properly fixed, allowing the orphanage children to live in the best possible conditions for that environment.

Even with government funding, there are always parts that have to be sacrificed. Noir Corporation’s donations helped ensure that no such sacrifices had to be made.

Denying all of that would mean that all corporate donations among all donations in the world would become unnecessary.

All of Jieun’s activities—for which she received little compensation herself—would become meaningless.

Jihye resented Hayun.

It would probably be impossible not to resent Hayun after knowing all of that.

“…”

Until now, she had escaped reality many times.

In fact, she might still be doing so at this very moment.

If she hadn’t been this close to Jieun, would she have had these thoughts after learning that Jieun was among the combatants?

No. Without Jieun, she probably wouldn’t have even become aware of it.

She hadn’t even thought of recognizing them.

Because once she started investigating, everything she hadn’t thought about would come pouring out.

“…Hayun.”

“Yes?”

“We need to get off here.”

Lost in thought, Hayun almost missed her stop.

And only after getting off did she realize that the person who had spoken to her was Iris—Ju-a.

“Ju-a.”

“…”

Ju-a opened her mouth as if to say something to Hayun.

“You’ll be late if you keep spacing out like that.”

But that’s what she said instead.

Judging by her brief pause before speaking, what she had wanted to say was clearly something else.

Hayun nodded and followed behind Ju-a.

Only after entering school did she realize she hadn’t greeted Ju-a properly.

And also that this was the first time she had seen Ju-a taking the bus to school.

But before she could ask anything, Ju-a had already gone into her classroom.

*

During lunch, the children inevitably approached Hayun again.

Hayun didn’t like it much.

Most of the children who spoke to her, despite being nice to her face, were the ones who had testified against Jieun.

Those children seemed to think that magical girls were completely hostile to Jieun.

It couldn’t be helped.

They couldn’t reveal to the outside world that she was a fake terrorist.

This was happening because they blindly believed limited information.

As she was listening to various stories and just nodding along,

“Isn’t she really shameless?”

Hearing that voice, Hayun suddenly stopped her chopsticks.

When she looked up, she met eyes with the girl who had said those words.

The girl completely misread Hayun’s expression.

“I always knew she was that kind of person.”

“What kind of person?”

At Hayun’s calm voice, the girl seemed excited.

Perhaps because Hayun had been forcing smiles and agreeing with trivial stories in front of those children for just over a month, they seemed to think Hayun had completely switched to their side.

“You know, whenever you tried to make friends, she would pop up out of nowhere and interfere. Wasn’t that frustrating? I’m sure she did that because she thought it would benefit her.”

Hayun thought for a moment, then slightly raised the corner of her mouth.

Of course, she wasn’t agreeing.

She just wanted to hear this girl out completely.

Why, how did she think that way?

Thinking about it now, it was strange. She knew Jieun had no intention of making more friends, but how could these children say the exact same things after Jieun disappeared?

“She gave you such hints.”

“Yes, yes.”

Some children nodded in agreement with those words, oblivious.

And some turned deathly pale.

As for Hayun,

Her forced smile froze in place.

“She gave… hints?”

Only after Hayun said that did those children seem to realize what mistake they had made.

“Would you mind telling me more about that?” Hayun asked, undeterred by their reaction.