Ch.79Chapter 14. Chaos (2)

# Needless to say, I deeply regretted that “second stupidest idea.”

I was already awkward with Hayun, so how could I not be awkward with Iris?

Still, we had managed to reach a level where we could hold conversations, and since we needed to discuss what we had to do and make going forward, we did talk quite a bit.

But that didn’t mean… we were comfortable enough to be alone in the same space.

We did attend the same school, but we weren’t in the same class, and we certainly weren’t friends who hung out together.

I’m probably not the only one feeling uncomfortable. Iris must be finding this extremely awkward too.

As a result, we ended up sitting facing opposite directions, not even properly washing ourselves.

Still, I tried my best to keep my head turned away.

How could I escape this awkward situation? Should I try making some conversation? That’s what I do with Hayun.

“…”

Great. That was the third stupidest idea.

I quickly organized my thoughts and decided on another option: “wash quickly and get out.”

Outside the tub, I had placed a smaller basin with water to pour over my head. It was one of the few alternatives available to us without a shower.

One basin on each side of the tub, with warm water and a scoop for each of us.

I was planning to just pour some water over my head, use a bit of shampoo, and get out—

“…Jeong Jieun…?”

Iris suddenly spoke to me, and I froze with my body slightly raised and my hand stretched out.

“Uh… yeah.”

I responded with an ambiguous sound that could hardly be called an answer, and then I waited.

“Is it okay if I call you that? Jeong Jieun?”

“Isn’t that a bit strange?”

“Is it strange?”

Does she not realize it’s strange?

I thought about it for a moment.

Certainly, Iris was a character who used formal speech in the webtoon. In Korea, characters who use formal speech with their friends might seem a bit awkward, but the webtoon was centered around magical girls, which was an overtly subcultural theme.

No one would complain if it incorporated some Japanese manga-style elements.

Now that it had jumped into reality, it was natural for forms of address to get awkwardly tangled.

If we were office workers, that way of speaking wouldn’t be so strange. Office colleagues don’t usually switch to informal speech right away, even if they’re the same age. Some might gradually test the waters with semi-formal speech over time, but generally, it’s common sense to use formal speech with a new employee, even if they’re ten years younger.

Some people don’t, but those people usually get talked about behind their backs. They’re likely to make other mistakes too.

“But still, adding ‘ssi’ to my name is strange.”

“…”

Iris fell silent for a moment at my words.

“How do the others address you?”

“Well, the people I work with all have set ways of addressing each other.”

Ah, right.

All the magical girls had designated names. Magical girl names.

When calling Hayun, there was no need to say “Hayun-ssi”—you could just say “Blossom.”

With English names, it doesn’t feel awkward to just use the name without any additions.

However, that left me with a question.

“What about the others?”

“…Do I really need to call them anything?”

“…”

Um…

Well, I guess you can have conversations without specifically using names.

Besides, Iris was a magical girl. She might not be as popular as Hayun, but there would be plenty of people approaching her first to make a good impression. And her parents must be important people too.

“Then, can’t you just call me by my name?”

“Should I call you Jeong Jieun-yang?”

“No, that doesn’t seem right either.”

Terms like “yang” or “gun” were even less familiar to me than “ssi.”

If I had a magical girl title, I could just tell her to use that, but unfortunately, the current me only had the temporary name “Black Magical Girl.”

“Just call me Jieun.”

“Jieun?”

“That works.”

“Then Jieun, I have something I want to ask.”

Wait, that still sounds a bit off. It’s like the speech of a foreigner who just learned Korean.

Her pronunciation seems better than mine though. Very precise.

But since pushing the issue further would only make the naming situation more confusing, I decided not to press it.

“Why did you join Noir Corporation?”

“…”

I regretted entering here with Iris once again.

Iris must have been sitting with her back turned to me as well, since her voice didn’t hit the back of my head directly. She must be finding this situation as awkward as I was.

But unlike me, who had immediately thought of escaping, Iris seemed to think this was a golden opportunity.

I have no idea why.

“Why are you asking about that?”

“…I wonder.”

Iris fell into thought at my question.

Silence followed for a moment.

But this time, I didn’t think about running away. For various reasons, I was genuinely curious about why she had asked that question.

“May I ask you another question?”

Would this question be completely unrelated to the previous one? Or would it be another question to explain why she had asked the first one?

I’m not sure how she interpreted my thoughtful silence, but Iris went ahead and asked her other question without waiting for my consent.

“You were the one who pointed out the inside of my skirt during that battle, weren’t you?”

“…”

I remained silent again.

How should I respond to this?

Of course, I was quite desperate at that time. I was genuinely facing off against a magical girl. It wasn’t for any righteous reason, nor did I think I could accomplish anything—it was just out of stubbornness.

I wasn’t trying to win. I just wanted to land one hit. I failed that day.

“…”

But this time, Iris also remained silent, perhaps waiting for my question, not saying anything else.

Caught between wanting to escape the discomfort and being curious about why this question had come up, I finally succumbed to my curiosity.

“Yes, that was me.”

“And you continued to show up in battles after that.”

“Yes.”

“So you were that combatant who specifically blocked my way.”

“…And?”

Iris fell silent after hearing my answer.

As the silence stretched on again, I grew a bit irritated and asked,

“Is that an important question?”

“Whether it’s important… I’m not sure myself.”

I was a bit taken aback by Iris’s answer.

It wasn’t the content of the answer that bothered me, but the voice in which she answered. It seemed somehow filled with anguish.

“I just… wanted to confirm.”

I opened my mouth for a moment without answering, then asked again.

“But how did you figure it out?”

Iris seemed momentarily at a loss for words at my question.

Well, she had said she recognized me by the scratch on my helmet, but I didn’t quite believe that.

I didn’t use the same helmet I had when I first met Iris all the way through. I received upgraded helmets whenever the circuit broke down, so Iris should have failed to recognize me at least twice.

But the fact that she consistently recognized me was a bit strange.

“I just… had a feeling.”

The answer that came back was somewhat unsatisfying.

“Did you have some way of identifying me? Can you identify people by seeing their mana or something?”

“…No, it’s not like that.”

Iris answered, seeming even more flustered by my question.

“It really was just a feeling.”

A feeling, huh.

Well, I suppose magical girls might have such intuitions. Why, even detectives sometimes talk about having such sensations. Like, ah, this person is the culprit—that kind of feeling.

Of course, such feelings have probably created quite a few wrongfully accused people in the world, but when the person in question is not just a detective but a magical girl, well.

“So why is that important?”

At my question, Iris seemed to calm down a bit. Perhaps because we had returned to the original question.

“…Usually, combatants lose their nerve when we appear. They start running away as soon as they’re attacked.”

That’s true.

The pay is decent enough. It’s not a small amount at all. After all, many combatants come from distant planets just to earn money.

But that doesn’t mean they want to fight until their bones break or they explode.

It’s not a job where you get openly criticized for running away, and there’s no huge bonus for standing your ground and fighting to the end, so there probably aren’t many people with the loyalty to stay and fight.

In that context, if I was the only one who remained, then yes, I would stand out.

And I didn’t just stay—I charged in with all my might trying to land at least one hit, so I must have been a thorn in their side.

“I wasn’t the only one who stayed until the end.”

But if that’s the assumption, I have something to say too.

The Earthaboo… Pang Pang stood her ground until she collapsed. If she had run away as soon as the battle started, she wouldn’t have been so badly injured in that terrorist attack.

Well, given Pang Pang’s personality, I can’t exactly understand her intentions.

Besides Pang Pang, there were other squad leaders who didn’t run away until they were knocked down.

By the way, I wonder how Pang Pang is doing. Is she still living in that house? I haven’t heard anything about combatants being deployed lately. She can probably still make a living working in the field, but with one of her regular jobs gone, she might be a bit tight on money.

Judging by the lack of any special news reports, it seems she hasn’t been caught, but I was still a bit worried. Even more so because I couldn’t contact her or visit her.

While I was lost in thought, Iris, who had also been briefly contemplative like me, spoke up.

“You were the only one who charged in, determined to land a hit by any means necessary.”

“…”

Is that… true?

“And you even achieved some results.”

“Is that what you’re curious about?”

“Yes, I’m curious about the reason. I think I might understand you a little better if I knew.”

“You want to understand me?”

“Whether we like it or not, we’ll be living together for a while, so shouldn’t we try to understand each other to some extent?”

“…”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just realized you also think about understanding others.”

Water splashed.

Did Iris turn to face me?

“What does that mean?”

The question was a bit sharp. It seems I had touched a nerve with Iris.

“It doesn’t mean anything special.”

If I were to mention that she’s a bit at odds with the others, that’s something between the magical girls. Something I shouldn’t know about.

If I revealed that I knew, Iris would think I heard it from Hayun.

For a while, the back of my head felt a bit hot, but Iris sighed deeply and seemed to turn back around. That’s what it seemed like, anyway, since the water splashed.

I couldn’t see since I was sitting with my back turned.

“…I’m not always this prickly, you know.”

So she’s aware that she comes across as prickly.

“So, does that mean you’re not going to answer my question?”

Should I?

Just a few days ago, I wouldn’t have answered such a question. I would have been even pricklier than the current Iris. I might have even said something strange just to deliberately upset the other person.

When did I lose that edge?

Maybe it’s because Hayun has been boldly occupying the seat next to me for the past few days, making it hard for me to focus on other things.

“I just wanted to win.”

That’s what I finally said.

“You wanted to win.”

“Yeah.”

I exhaled deeply.

“It’s frustrating to keep losing every day.”

Iris didn’t respond to my words.

Would she find it absurd? Would she think it was ridiculous that I kept charging in every time when I couldn’t possibly win?

But the answer that came back didn’t contain such emotions.

“I see.”

“You see?”

That’s a bit of an odd response.

“Looking at how you’re still fighting now, aren’t you thinking something similar? No matter who the opponent is, you just hate losing.”

Iris seemed to have misinterpreted my words somewhat.

“Isn’t that why you haven’t given up?”

“No, I didn’t mean it in such a positive way.”

“I know that much.”

She knows and still says such positive things?

I tilted my head, staring straight ahead.

“…”

I waited, thinking she might have more to say, but Iris didn’t say anything further.

And so, that day’s conversation ended there.

*

Is Iris also a magical girl?

I sat alone outside, waiting for the others to finish their bath, and pondered.

The reason she spoke to me first was probably because she wanted to shake off some of the awkwardness. It was her way of being considerate, I suppose.

The magical girls have such strong personalities that they have aspects they dislike about each other due to differences in thinking.

So from Iris’s perspective, I might have been someone she couldn’t understand.

She might have even disliked me. But I understand that. After all, I said some things to Iris when I was a combatant.

She didn’t continue the conversation, so I couldn’t figure out the real reason for her question, but it was still better than sitting in opposite directions without saying anything.

“…”

It’s a strange feeling.

It’s just like the beginning of a semester. Talking with Iris felt exactly like throwing out any topic to try to befriend the person sitting in front or behind you.

As I sat hugging my knees, lost in thought, I heard a clattering sound beside me. When I turned my head, Cherry was handling some machine parts.

Seeing me staring, Cherry looked up at me.

And smiled brightly. At least, that’s what I think happened. Her facial muscles moved similarly to when James smiles.

But unlike James, her face looked much more innocent.

“…What are you doing?”

Since our eyes had met, it felt a bit awkward not to say anything, so I asked.

“I’m improving the radio.”

As she said, Cherry was holding a radio in her hand.

She had opened the back panel and seemed to be working on the circuit.

“If I increase the sensitivity a bit, the sound should be clearer.”

“The radio sound is already clear.”

“No, it can be improved further.”

Cherry responded to James’s objection.

“Are you saying what I made isn’t perfect?”

“I never said that… I’ve been wondering, why do you pick a fight with everything I touch?”

“Aren’t you touching everything I’ve made? Do you even know what circuits these run on?”

“You didn’t make these alone anyway. If Iris could touch them, why can’t I?”

That’s right.

Iris might not know the principles behind the circuits, but she knew how to fix or make other devices that run on those circuits.

It would be natural for Cherry, who had actually learned the principles, to do even better.

“Or are you trying to extract more information about the circuits?”

“Tsk.”

Did she just click her tongue? I seriously pondered the sound Cherry had made.

It probably wasn’t a curse, but seeing James’s soft body twitch slightly, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant sound either.

“If I just knew the principles, I could make them too. Don’t take me for a fool.”

“A fool…?”

That word translates well.

“I’m the one who made the magical girls’ circuits in the first place. I made them to withstand outputs much more intense than yours. The circuits the combatants used were so weak that they would have broken several times with energy like that child’s, right?”

Cherry looked up at me.

Well… she’s not wrong.

James did say he had made these circuits in advance.

“At least I didn’t do something as absurd as making circuits for energy that almost no one possesses.”

“But the energy of five people was enough.”

“…”

They’re really going at it.

Of course, to my eyes, it just looked like two talking hamsters fighting. The words they exchanged were quite serious and important, but somehow, watching them like this made them seem very trivial.

Come to think of it, is Cherry female? Her voice is female. She definitely looks female.

If James is male… is it possible for them to have babies?

No, not babies, but children, I should say.

“…”

James is looking up at me.

“What?”

“That look is very unpleasant.”

“Now you’re saying such things to a child who’s much younger than you?”

“You don’t know how evil that woman is. Do you know what she said to me?”

“How bad could anything a child says be?”

James was genuinely angry, his plump body trembling.

Well done, Cherry. Bury the evil mastermind with your logic.

By the way, child?

Judging by the way he’s talking to me, is he actually older than me?

A hamster older than me… something seems off.

I continued to happily watch James being one-sidedly berated by Cherry for a while after that.

Later, he asked me to say something, but I just watched with a smile.

The two continued fighting until Hayun and Dalia came out of the kitchen after finishing their bath.

Both of them immediately shut their mouths when they saw Hayun, who seemed to be in a bad mood for some reason.

…What’s going on?

Why is she in a bad mood again?

Don’t tell me this is my fault too?