“…Haa.”
Magical Girl Sapphire, real name Sophia.
She lay sprawled listlessly on her bed and let out a small sigh.
Even though Jewelry Academia had entered summer break, her daily life had only grown busier.
She had been absorbed in saving citizens in danger and spending time with her mother, who had overcome her illness.
Of course, Sophia herself did not think the situation was difficult in the slightest. If anything, she was genuinely happy to have such fulfilling days continue.
But a certain man kept surfacing in her mind, making it impossible for her to keep her head on straight.
That man was none other than the manager of Café Eclipse, Jade.
Even though she had not seen him recently, she could not forget his mature voice—
‘…Is there no way I can see him again?’
She kicked her feet restlessly and gave the blanket on her bed a weak little kick.
Recently, with summer break having begun, Eclipse had remained closed, so it was nearly impossible for her to run into Jade.
Strictly speaking, the two of them were clearly strangers. Even being generous, they were only at the level of acquaintances.
Though when she thought about everything he had done for her so far, it was impossible to see him as a complete stranger.
‘Still, this is way too long. I can’t see him for more than another month?’
Because she had been going to the café so often for a while, the rebound hit her all the harder.
It was no wonder. Jade had already become Sophia’s emotional pillar.
‘If I contact him first, he’d probably come, but…’
Of course, if she said it was to repay him for accompanying her to the three-way conference, it would be easy to set up a meeting.
‘But asking to meet privately is still embarrassing.’
Her face flushed as she fiddled with her smartphone, which had a sky-blue case.
On the screen was Jade’s profile, whose contact information she had exchanged at some point.
Again and again, she agonized over whether to send a message, wasting time in the same loop.
There was no use hiding it. It was the first time the girl named Sophia had become conscious of the opposite sex.
Until now, Sophia had been so busy with matters concerning magical girls and her family that she had hardly ever had a chance to be conscious of men.
She had been confessed to a few times by male students at Jewelry Academia, but she had snorted and rejected every last one of them, so she did not count those as experience.
But now that her mother’s condition had improved and she had gained some room in both her life and her heart, she was finally able to confirm her own feelings.
It was unmistakable affection. An emotion extremely similar to what Amber directed toward Jade.
‘Wouldn’t a miracle happen where I go outside and just happen to run into Mr. Jade?’
But no matter how much she leaned on an impossible hope, no miracle occurred.
“Ahh, seriously…!”
In the end, Sophia dragged her stifling frustration with her and tossed and turned through the night.
Even a magical girl who protected the world while enjoying worldwide popularity was hopeless when it came to romance.
Meanwhile, at the same time, in the Silver Corps headquarters.
There was another woman here whose head was filled with thoughts of Jade—
“Haa.”
The one who let out a deep sigh with a melancholy face was none other than Crystal, one of the Silver Corps executives.
“I wonder what Lady Crystal is worried about?”
“It must be something small fries like us couldn’t even begin to understand.”
Unaware of the two female employees letting their imaginations run wild in the distance, she trudged down the corridor.
Chris had always thought of herself as a weak human being who could never escape her trauma.
After being appointed as an executive of the Silver Corps, she had tried somehow to erase that flaw, but after an honest conversation with Jade, her thoughts had changed slightly.
‘Me, cool? He really can say such embarrassing things with a straight face.’
The unsightly feelings she had desperately hidden so that no one would ever discover them.
But that impertinent subordinate had affirmed Chris’s past, saying she had raised Neil splendidly.
He was surely the same age as her, but Jade carried a maturity that made it impossible to think of him as a mere low-ranking member of the organization.
‘He deserves to be treated a little better.’
Jade’s position in the Silver Corps could not be called good even as empty flattery.
Perhaps because they disliked that he acted alone with Amber, the youngest member and executive, many small fries often envied or ignored him.
‘But if I step in, it’ll just feel like needless meddling… and he seems busy in all sorts of ways too.’
Chris wanted to share everyday life with Jade even once. Just like when they had spent time together at the park before.
Of course, considering the difference in their positions, it was not as if they could go out and have fun without a care.
‘…I want to meet him again somehow, but if what Lady Lapis said is true, he should be right in the middle of his vacation now, so I’d feel bad disturbing him.’
As a superior, she wondered what it would say about her to interfere with a subordinate’s vacation.
“Grrrgh!”
Even so, she wanted to see him. She wanted to meet him and talk about anything at all—deceiving herself about that desire as best she could, she continued down the corridor.
“……”
Citrine, who happened to be passing by, witnessed her disgrace. After watching for a moment, she scratched her head and fled to her own laboratory.
A wish that, at a glance, was almost unreasonable: she wanted to see Jade, even if only by bumping into him in passing.
But perhaps God had not yet abandoned the girls. That wish would come true in an entirely unexpected direction.
***
Five days had passed since Amber safely passed her retest.
I was not going to the café, instead spending my days leisurely at home.
It wasn’t that I had become some jobless youth taking a break; Lapis had ordered me to close the shop for the time being, saying that students wouldn’t come during summer break anyway.
“Phew.”
Even if I was told to rest, I didn’t really have anything to do, but either way, I was pretty happy to have gotten a vacation. I had also been busy for a while helping Amber study.
For now, I decided to keep away from making desserts and quietly refresh myself.
“By the way.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you here?”
I voiced that question to Ravi, who was sitting on the floor and drinking the green tea I had brewed for her.
“Sluuurp…”
“Don’t ignore me and slurp like that. I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you for a while, and then you suddenly barged in.”
Just when I thought it had been a while since I last saw her, she was sitting around in my room without any explanation.
“Ehehe, I wanted to see you after so long, Jade…”
“If you wanted to see me, you should’ve come sooner. I got kidnapped by your colleague and locked up in prison for several days.”
At the same time, I recalled being captured by Ruri and confined in Brilliant’s detention facility.
I wondered why she had not saved me at a time like that, despite being the one who had even infused me with magical power, so I asked her—
“Mica treats people kindly as long as they aren’t dangerous. You were safe too, weren’t you, Jade?”
“Well, that’s true.”
Certainly, aside from when I had first been restrained, she had never actually done anything to harm my body.
‘Even when monsters appeared all over the city last time, she didn’t do anything in particular.’
Of course, Chris had been beside me at the time, but if what I understood was correct, Ravi basically did not interfere with my private life.
She only stepped in when an issue directly tied to my life arose.
In other words, the fact that she was here right now meant she had some sort of purpose.
“Oh, right. Speaking of Ruri, do you know about Guardian?”
“Guardian?”
Ruri had definitely mentioned such an organization when she interrogated me.
From what I heard, they seemed to be the mastermind that had released a large number of monsters into Jewel City, and I had only just remembered that I had meant to ask Ravi about them.
“Well, even our boss said she’d never heard of them, so you probably don’t know either—”
“They’re an environmental group. One that does somewhat illegal things.”
I had asked smugly, assuming she would not know, only for her to answer within three seconds.
“They’re a little different from the Silver Corps. They’re smaller in scale too, with only a few dozen employees.”
A company that presented itself as an environmental organization on the surface while raking in massive capital through illegal actions behind the scenes.
It felt so much like an evil organization that I almost felt a sense of kinship.
Putting the environmental talk aside for now, the point that bothered me was naturally why Ruri had been digging into that organization’s whereabouts.
“Mm, because Guardian’s leader is the one who enhanced Mica’s body?”
“Why do you know that…?”
It felt as if a major secret that should have gradually been revealed as the incident escalated had been exposed all at once.
‘Enhanced her body, huh. So that’s where Ruri’s physical abilities come from.’
Was it something like escaping from a scientist who had imprisoned her and repeatedly subjected her to harsh experiments? It was a staple in comics and movies.
“Let’s stop. Trying to have a serious conversation with you just brings the mood down.”
Listening any further would be rude to the person involved. Everyone had things they wanted to keep hidden.
“If that’s what you want, Jade, then I won’t talk about it anymore. Let’s see, in that case…”
Saying that, Ravi pulled a certain ticket from her pocket as if to change the subject.
“Here!”
“…A free gym pass?”
“You were planning to just lie around and rest anyway, weren’t you? If you keep living like that, it’ll be bad for your body.”
It was true that I had been thinking lately that I needed to take care of my health. If I wasn’t at the café, my daily routine was to laze around at home.
But when I actually tried to start exercising properly, I found it too bothersome to make up my mind, so in the end I just kept lazing around—
“Newly opened… Is this a ten-minute walk from here?”
“You should go. All the exercise equipment is the latest model too.”
The fact that Ravi was recommending it this strongly made me a little uneasy, but since I had nothing to do anyway, I decided I would coax Amber into going with me.
Thinking, Surely nothing much will happen, I raised that flag and shoved the ticket into my wallet.