Chapter 65: To Be Here

As with other state-run facilities, it was a cemetery with hundreds, thousands of similarly shaped tombstones lined up at regular intervals on a plain overgrown with grass and weeds from lack of proper management.

Had it been a rainy season, one could at least say the lukewarm raindrops brought a damp gloominess, but the midday sun hung in a cloudless, clear blue sky, casting a harsh light upon the desolate field of tombstones covered in vines and moss.

Bistour Blanc looked at the crowd of people surrounding her.

Magical girls in black attire, though their hair and eye colors were diverse, men in suits from the Committee, and people in police uniforms.

For a modest ceremony that could barely be called a funeral, quite a few people had gathered.

The funeral of Glacia Azure.

So many things had happened that it was only now, more than ten days after her death, that they could finally hold a funeral.

The form and manner of a deceased magical girl’s funeral varied.

If she had a family, a secret funeral as a magical girl would be held by other magical girls after her funeral as a human had ended.

In the case of magical girls who had revealed their identities and were active publicly, a spectacle of magical girls flocking to the funeral home would unfold, but such cases were rare.

Most magical girls acted independently without getting involved in the Association’s affairs, only reporting their activities occasionally.

Thus, even if they died fighting monsters, their deaths were often not known until much later.

Therefore, a magical girl’s funeral was short and brief, held in the middle of a desolate cemetery for martyrs, without long condolences, a funeral procession, or a proper venue.

She would be memorialized with the name “Magical Girl Died in the Line of Duty” on a tombstone that had no visitors and no buried body, merely erected.

It was a culture, or rather, a non-culture, created during the chaotic period 20 years ago when magical girls died in droves, and even more non-magical girls died.

“Glacia Azure was the most magical girl-like magical girl.”

Blanc began the eulogy.

She thought that long, gloomy sentences did not suit her death, so she continued with sentences praising how much of a magical girl she was, how fiercely she fought, and how good she was.

After some hollow and meaningless praise that the deceased could no longer hear, there was a moment of silent prayer.

It was a silent prayer that expressed only sorrow for death and loss, without the traditional words of condolence or prayers to gods or spirit kings.

Yu Ji-hye, the head of the Association who was originally supposed to stand here and recite the eulogy, sat blankly in a wheelchair, motionless under the parasol her old friend held over her.

Only a few people, including Association Head Yu Ji-hye, had attended the funerals of Grau Loom and Argente, and Glacia Azure had attended both.

The eulogy and proceedings were Yu Ji-hye’s responsibility.

But now, Glacia was in the coffin herself, and Yu Ji-hye had become a body that could not utter a single word.

Soon, the coffin was lowered into a rectangularly dug hole in the ground, and a shovel of dirt was thrown on top of it.

Glacia Azure was better off in the sense that at least her magically preserved head and the lumps of flesh fragments gathered one by one from the carnage of the battle were in the coffin.

Of the hundreds of tombstones, the number of the dead with even a piece of their corpse remaining could be counted on one hand.

Blanc thought that even if her head had been severely damaged in the battle with Sanguine Obsidia, it was better to have a severed head intact than to be eaten by a monster or burned by magic.

No, that was just self-justification.

And the young magical girls who had experienced the death of a precious person in the most horrific way could not even accept such self-justification.

“Unni… unni… Glacia-unni…”

A young magical girl with green hair knelt before the coffin, which was gradually disappearing under the pouring mounds of dirt, and sobbed.

With each movement of the shovel, a teardrop fell onto the dirt. Deployed in the rear and informed of Glacia’s death late, she had returned to the state she was in before Glacia took her out, shut up in her room alone. Crying constantly.

The small, red-haired magical girl standing next to her stood still.

With unfocused, crimson eyes that held a rotten aura, much like Sanguine Obsidia’s, she lowered her gaze and shed tears endlessly.

As if still holding onto Glacia Azure’s head in her closed heart, Rosa Alisa stood blankly, her palm waving in the air.

At the sight of Materia and Alisa, the magical girl holding the shovel, the committee member, and the police executive all lost their words, unable to find a place to look, and silently covered the coffin with dirt.

Blanc could not find any words to say to the two children.

She herself was one of the adults who had left them to let the unfamiliar wound of loss fester and swell.

She could only think it was right to let them cry enough at this moment and turn her gaze away.

“Vera.”

“…Blanc-unni.”

Blanc approached Vera Bellastra, who was standing at a distance, staring blankly at Yu Ji-hye in the wheelchair.

Outside of the time she spent running around to handle the aftermath as one of the few Association executives, she was constantly in this dazed state, as if she had lost all purpose and meaning.

“You’ve been through a lot. Thank you.”

There was a hint of tears in her voice as she held Vera’s hand and spoke.

Vera had handled most of the aftermath of that night’s incident, and she was the one who had stopped the reporters, who were constantly prowling for a scoop, from following them here.

“…It feels so empty.”

The death of Glacia Azure, Yu Ji-hye becoming a vegetable, and Sanguine Obsidia’s successful escape.

Whichever way you looked at it, it was a story of utter futility.

The media and public criticism that poured down on the disgrace of losing Sanguine Obsidia after all the operation’s participants had lost consciousness and collapsed,

The foolishness of the committee, which had been all about condemnation at first, but then actively cooperated to resolve the situation as soon as they realized the possibility of Sanguine Obsidia’s recovered blade turning towards them,

The reaction of the general public, sending letters of sympathy as soon as Yu Ji-hye’s condition was known, all felt futile.

Vera Bellastra did not like Yu Ji-hye at all, and they had clashed constantly, fighting whenever they met, but she had not wished for her to be broken.

She had thought that Yu Ji-hye’s futile ideals would never come true, and there had been times when she wanted to see her collapse as she rushed towards those ideals.

However, she had not wanted her to collapse like this.

She had wanted her to remain a competent Association Head.

That’s why she had thought that night, as always, Yu Ji-hye would deal with Sanguine Obsidia and return to her usual self, and Vera herself would, as promised, contribute a little to capturing Sanguine Obsidia and return to her usual business of tracking down the demons that had probably survived and were still hiding.

But the result was disastrous.

“This isn’t what I wanted to happen.”

Vera was feeling a greater gloominess and futility, a directionless bleakness, than anyone else present here, except for one person.

At the end of her gaze was the magical girl with short, violet hair in a pitch-black suit, sitting in a wheelchair.

With both her legs cut off around the middle of her thighs, it would be more accurate to say she was placed on it rather than sitting.

Yu Ji-hye sat blankly, her hands placed quietly down, without any change in expression, a single word, or the slightest movement.

Behind her was the magical girl holding a parasol for her.

The left hand holding the handle was a prosthetic with its metal frame exposed, and her left face, hidden by black hair, was covered in pitch-black scars, like old burn marks or the cracked earth of a parched land.

Eclipse.

The strongest magical girl, famous for loitering around the Busan memorial like a lingering spirit, had appeared at the cemetery pushing Yu Ji-hye’s wheelchair.

Some magical girls and attendees who didn’t know the situation had looked very surprised, but were soon overwhelmed by her terribly dark atmosphere and lifeless eyes and said nothing.

She had stayed behind Yu Ji-hye, holding the wheelchair, throughout the funeral.

One of her eyes was a prosthetic, but both pupils were fixed only on Yu Ji-hye. She noticed a familiar face approaching and spoke in a dispassionate voice.

“Blanc, Jihye is…”

“I’m sorry. Not yet… I don’t know either. If she can get better.”

Squatting down, stroking Yu Ji-hye’s hand and looking into her cloudy eyes, Bistour Blanc answered.

It was a question and answer that came and went several times a day.

This time, Eclipse’s trivial hope that bringing her out in the fine weather and even attending a precious junior’s funeral might elicit some reaction was instantly crushed.

Eclipse turned her head without another word, as if she was used to it now, or as if she too had already given up on Yu Ji-hye’s recovery.

And Blanc couldn’t help but give a vague answer.

For more than ten days since that night, she had been stuck to Yu Ji-hye 24/7, using healing magic, directly injecting her with magic power, and mobilizing all available medical means.

The only conclusion she had reached was the miserable fact that the possibility of recovery was almost nil, or rather, infinitely close to zero.

However, she could only answer that she didn’t know, because if she voiced that fact, it felt as if Yu Ji-hye would never return, and even the slightest sliver of hope would disappear.

They could not continue the conversation, and only the depressingly bright sunlight shone down on the magical girls who fell silent with gloomy faces.