Chapter 73: Young Desire

A colossal mass plummeted, piercing the murky surface of the water.

It had no mouth to scream, but in its stead, the trembling sea and the raging wind let out a violent roar.

Hundreds of pitch-black, spine-like chunks taller than buildings poured down like rain, creating hundreds of towering pillars of water.

The shadow that clouded the water’s surface swelled as if to burst upward.

But the colossal body casting the shadow was soon cleanly sliced top and bottom, split into two pieces that plunged downward to meet their own reflection.

As if enraged, as if trying to vomit out the black masses, the sea continuously spewed forth massive plumes of spray equal to the weight it had received.

Finally, taking in the largest chunk, it seemed to reach its limit.

The entire sea churned, pushing away the staggering chunks of metal as if trembling in fear.

Eventually, the surface returned to the irregular, unending flow of waves, but the wreckage, as massive as the Yellow Sea is deep, was embedded in the seabed, its dark silhouette visible between the waves.

After a long moment of strained endurance, as the pain-wracked sea tossed and turned, the waves returned to their usual rough, staggering form under a sky of dark clouds that blocked all sunlight, carried on a fishy-smelling wind.

And floating above it all, swaying unsteadily, were a few gray hulks that had barely managed to endure without capsizing.

The few flags hanging from them were clean and brightly colored, but the rust-brown of their hulls, where years of hard use were etched into the peeling paint, could not be hidden. They were warships.

Clap, clap, clap.

On the deck of the lead destroyer, a clapping sound, almost inaudible beneath the roar of the wind and waves, echoed.

He was smiling at the person who had just landed on the front of the deck, clapping his hands so hard they stung.

“…”

The one who had landed had the form of a short girl.

Long, deep black hair, and beneath it, burn scars covering her upper body and the left half of her face.

In her right hand, she held a sword as gray as the sky, brimming with ominous magic.

A girl.

Or, the one called Magical Girl Eclipse.

The last piece of the massive, fallen monster hit the sea’s surface, sending up a pillar of water that crashed onto the deck.

The girl didn’t move, and the man belatedly opened a now-useless transparent umbrella, approaching her and making a show of shielding her.

“Brilliant.

With this, those who oppose you will no longer… well, at least for the time being, they won’t be able to raise their voices.

To think you could dispatch a disaster-class monster so quickly by yourself… well, even I found it hard to believe until I saw it with my own eyes.”

Hidden by the umbrella, by the difference in their height, and by her hair, the girl’s expression was difficult to read.

But the man paid no mind to such things and continued with his duty: the political act of delivering praise.

“Thanks to your dedication, not only I, but also the naval officers and soldiers present here today, can return safely to our families.

Before being a public official, I thank you as a citizen of the Republic of Korea.”

The man spoke, glancing at the people standing like a blurry background on the deck.

He adjusted the tone and volume of his voice so that this motley crew of naval soldiers, officers, reporters, and officials could hear him clearly.

Still, the man could not read the girl’s expression.

Conversely, the girl had no intention of reading the man’s expression.

The girl was simply clenching and unclenching her metal left hand, soothing a body that was screaming from the first proper battle it had experienced in a long time.

The girl was not interested in the fact that the man was tall, well-dressed in a suit befitting a bureaucrat, and possessed the political advantage of a generally likable appearance.

Nor was she interested in the fact that he was a government stooge dispatched for political messaging and action, a member of a faction opposing the Ministry of Magic.

At most, she thought the dry thought that her crushing the Ministry of Magic’s conference table the week before last must have been quite impressive.

In truth, Eclipse had no interest in the man’s name either.

She had already pushed aside the memory of shaking hands and exchanging names before the sortie, listening to his frivolous chatter about government support.

She let his grand speech—about his expectations for the new head of the Magical Girl Association, the safety of the Republic of Korea and human civilization, the restoration of trade routes and economic development, and finally, humanity’s victory—go in one ear and out the other.

It wasn’t just because the nonsense pouring into her exhausted body after an all-out fight was annoying.

Because, wasn’t it absurd?

The disaster-class monster that came down from the north, annihilated two Chinese advance fortresses in the southern Shandong Peninsula, then crossed the Yellow Sea to the shores of Incheon—the one the Chinese named the Bai Ze—was nothing.

This bizarrely shaped disaster-class monster, like most of its kind, looked like a 100-meter-diameter black sea urchin with an octopus body, surrounded by dozens of floating awls.

It was a monster that couldn’t be stopped even by large naval guns using the latest magic technology, a monster that could only be halted by nuclear weapons, a monster that could only be faced with the sacrifice of dozens of magical girls even with the aid of magic, a monster that could destroy a metropolis in an instant, just as the old city of Busan had vanished years ago.

Hence, disaster-class.

Hence, it was nothing.

Eclipse inadvertently let out a wry laugh, pressing her hand against the rising right corner of her mouth.

It was a relief her left lip still didn’t move well.

If she were a more cynical and scathing person, she would have criticized them like this.

‘To make such a fuss over killing a single disaster-class monster.

If the one that settled in the Gobi Desert, erased the country of Mongolia, and split China in half, or the one lying down on the Himalayas, crushing them into a plateau, had woken up and come south, China’s capital, Shanghai, would have been reduced to ruins, not just two fortresses, and this country would have become a wasteland from the aftershocks alone.’

Eclipse had no intention of speaking so harshly, but she was well aware that the survival and progress humanity now enjoyed was nothing more than a sandcastle, built upon the entire human race turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the existence of monsters that could truly destroy the world.

She had been feeling this more acutely lately.

All the things the government talked about so freely—the expansion of sea routes, the restoration of trade, the increase in food production, the development of magic technology and weaponry—all of it, all that hope and potential, was nothing more than a weak, tiny sandcastle that could be swept away by a single, gentle wave.

For a moment, Eclipse felt the urge to swing her right arm and run rampant.

An urge to feed the blood of those before her to her magic-fevered sword, to slice the ships to pieces as she had the monster and bury them in the waters of the Yellow Sea, and finally, an urge to slice herself to pieces and sink into the sea to disappear.

“…”

Eclipse clenched her fist, stopping the thought.

She forced strength into her trembling right arm, suppressing it.

Only the lament that her body, worn down by overwork since she’d cut back on drinking, was now more frequently ruled by useless and meaningless thoughts echoed in her mind.

The suited man’s words had now become blatant flattery, and a look of annoyance began to creep onto the faces of the people standing around them on the deck.

Eclipse suddenly recalled a conversation.

When was it?

Probably about three years ago, or maybe more recent.

On a day as damp, dreary, and cool as today, a man approached the girl sitting like a ghost in front of a memorial stone.

He was a strangely large man, wearing a fedora and a thick coat like a gentleman from a past century.

She couldn’t remember his face.

No, his face was unrecognizable.

Only the impression that he was like a clown, or perhaps a gentleman, remained in her memory.

“What are you doing here on such a fine day?
Poor young lady.”

His voice seeped drily into her ears, as if it could see through the listener’s past, present, and all their inner pain.

He had surely spoken to her like this, but he didn’t wait for a reply.

His gaze fell upon the memorial stone, and he mentioned the great disaster-class monster that had killed the owners of the inscribed names and annihilated the city in a single moment.

And he said it.

That the current civilization was nothing more than a tiny sandcastle that would be swept away by a single, gentle wave.

Then, he posed an indifferent question.

Can humanity survive?

“I don’t care.”

That day, she had answered thus and turned her back.

Meaning she had no interest in the extinction of humanity, the endless struggle against the monsters, or the protection of civilization.

“Well, we must prepare a grand inauguration ceremony.
The new head of the Magical Girl Association, Eclipse-nim.”

She took the right hand extended by the nameless bureaucrat.

She offered a moderate reply, “I look forward to working with you,” words so unlike her.

Eclipse felt a wave of self-loathing, one of countless that day, thinking that her precious friend, now in a vegetative state, would have seen this and mocked her for becoming a politician.

But now, the reality she had postponed for six years had finally arrived, and she had already made her choice.

She didn’t know if humanity could survive, but she had chosen to stop sitting idly by, so she had to at least try something.

She shook his hand, entered the destroyer, disembarked at the port a short while later, and walked like a new association head should.

Like a respected magical girl, she wore a mask that didn’t fit her in the slightest, not forgetting to mention how much the navy had helped in dealing with the disaster-class monster and how dedicated the soldiers were.

The naval guns and missiles had indeed been helpful in distracting the beast, so it wasn’t a lie.

But the question that clung stubbornly to the deepest parts of her consciousness, a question that could not be hidden by cold, settled anger or hardened hatred, a question that persistently followed her no matter how much time passed, never faded.

What meaning is there in any of this?