With Ruri’s help, it had already been three days since I’d started pumping iron at Brilliant Fitness Club.
“Hoo, hoo…”
“When you exert force here, please exhale. Keep your feet parallel, like the number 11, so your posture doesn’t collapse.”
Before I knew it, I was smoothly walking the path of a gym rat.
Squats, bench presses, and deadlifts—the so-called big three lifts of fitness.
On top of those, I was introduced to all sorts of exercises for building muscle, allowing me to train my body without a hitch.
“One-minute rest. Two more sets and we’ll be done. Please don’t forget to stretch afterward.”
“Okay. Thanks for helping me out again today.”
When I offered a word of thanks, Ruri shook her head as if it wasn’t anything worth being thanked for.
“To think I’m being personally taught how to exercise by a magical girl. Lapis would probably faint if she knew.”
Over the past six months, I had gotten to know three magical girls. Who could have imagined that a mere small fry like me would achieve something like this?
“Well, Ravi exposed herself on her own, but…”
In any case, from the Silver Corps’ perspective, we’d managed to identify the sworn enemies obstructing our goal of world domination, so it probably wasn’t a bad situation.
Still, my honest feelings were that I wanted to set aside those complicated matters for the moment and simply get along with them.
Even now, thanks to Ruri—an enemy—putting together a training menu suitable for a beginner, I was able to exercise smoothly.
“I feel like I’ve worked out quite a lot, but I don’t really have any muscle soreness. Does proper form really reduce the load on your muscles that much?”
“That’s right. If you’re conscious of your breathing and posture, you can train more efficiently.”
Having an expert by your side really did help. So people didn’t pay expensive gym fees for nothing after all.
“Exercise is nice. Right now, I feel like I could casually take down ten people.”
“…Is there any need to take them down?”
“It was a joke, so please don’t look so serious.”
I’d come to this gym half in doubt, but once I began exercising in earnest, I felt like my self-esteem had somehow gone up.
My appetite had increased compared to usual too, and I could actually feel that my body was getting healthier.
Tak— tak—
For reference, Amber seemed to have taken a liking to the ping-pong table in the corner of the VIP room and was still rallying with the robot.
“By the way, it feels like we’re the only ones ever in this room.”
As I wiped my sweat with a towel nearby, I casually threw out the question.
There were a few customers here and there in the regular gym downstairs, but in this VIP-exclusive room we were using, I hadn’t seen so much as an ant.
If anyone did come in, it was only the female staff member who had first guided us here, stopping by to tidy up the equipment.
“There’s no particular need for you to worry about it. This room was originally made for Brilliant personnel and magical girls.”
“Huh.”
That made sense. Even magical girls, who were practically superhuman, needed privacy, so it wasn’t strange for them to be given such accommodations.
“But are we included among Brilliant personnel too?”
“Sir Jade and Lady Amber are friends of the young lady, so you more than qualify.”
A truly simple and clear answer came back.
“I thought she’d gotten oddly obedient after my suspicions were cleared last time. Guess it was because I’m close to Dia.”
Maybe she really did put her master before her sense of justice. She was helping me exercise like this, too.
Either way, if she no longer felt hostile toward me, then it was a good thing for me.
“More importantly, that towel you’re using right now is the one I was using until just a moment ago.”
“Ah… sorry.”
No wonder it smelled nice. It seemed I’d picked up the wrong one by mistake.
I hurriedly returned the towel and brought over a fresh one.
“Putting that aside.”
Thanks to Ruri sticking with me until the end, I was able to get a rough grasp of her daily routine.
First of all, as a rule, she was active as the magical girl Mica on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
On her days off, she apparently attended to Dia or toured Brilliant’s subsidiaries, working to maintain public order.
And now, while her master was away on an inspection trip to a neighboring country, she was spending her time at the gym to train her body.
It was an efficient routine with absolutely no waste, but at the same time, I found myself a little worried about Ruri’s life.
“Can she actually be getting proper rest while keeping up such a hard lifestyle?”
Unlike other magical girls, she had no magical power, so she had to use her body to confront monsters. Wouldn’t moving her body even during her free time place too much strain on her after all?
“……”
I was bothered enough to say something, but in the end, I gave up and closed my mouth.
“That’s a bit much, considering I joined the Silver Corps.”
What we did wasn’t atrocious enough to be like some criminal organization from a movie, but the Silver Corps still belonged to the axis of evil.
Since we fought in the middle of the city every time, we must be an incredible nuisance to their side.
Even if I was just a low-ranking member, any pointless compassion from me, a bona fide member of the Silver Corps, would amount to nothing but hypocrisy.
More concerning than that was the organization Ruri had mentioned—the Guardian. I would need to pay sufficient attention to them.
According to Ravi’s testimony, the boss of the Guardian had apparently modified Ruri’s body to raise her combat power, but…
“Well, I guess fighting monsters barehanded would be impossible without at least some bodily modification.”
It was ironic. She had undergone modification surgery as the price of obtaining power.
If the Silver Corps, who committed evil deeds in easy-to-understand ways, were WWE, then the Guardian, who even carried out shady modification surgeries, were UFC. That comparison seemed about right.
When I finished the remaining two sets, Ruri immediately came over and handed me a sports drink.
“Then I’ll help you stretch. Since today’s training focused on the lower body, let’s loosen up your legs first.”
“I’ll leave it to you.”
She touched my legs without hesitation and helped me find the correct posture.
Ravi had done far worse to me, so I had developed some resistance, but physical contact with a beautiful girl still put me in a strangely indescribable mood.
Once the stretching was over, Amber, who had finished playing ping-pong at just the right time, was approaching us.
“Perfect timing. Let’s start heading back.”
“Phew, today was fulfilling as well.”
Glistening with sweat, she leisurely headed toward the shower room.
She had an aura far beyond someone who had simply gotten worked up over ping-pong.
“I should wash up too.”
Since it was summer, I might as well shower with cold water. That somehow seemed cooler.
Spending my vacation training my body.
To others, it might have looked like an unremarkable everyday routine, but to me, it was quite fulfilling.
***
Around the time Jade was getting deeply interested in pumping iron—
Sophia was absorbed in her activities as a magical girl, slicing apart monsters that had appeared in the city.
“Haaap!”
The sight of her slaughtering enemies at the speed of light was truly worthy of her epithet, Flash—
“Ohhh, it’s Sapphire!”
“It’s my first time seeing her in person!”
The citizens who saw her cheered and showered Sophia with applause.
But despite their encouragement, she only silently massacred the monsters.
Sophia’s heart was somewhere far away.
“…That should roughly take care of this area.”
Even after clearing out the group of monsters, she flew leisurely through the sky with a somewhat dissatisfied expression.
The root cause was none other than Jade, the president of Eclipse. He was also the first man to whom this girl, who still did not know love, had opened her heart.
“I wonder what he’s doing right now.”
Until now, the only person Sophia had cherished in her heart was Ravi.
And since Ravi was her precious childhood friend who had led her onto the path of becoming a magical girl, in a way, that was only natural.
But this was the first time she had ever shown such attachment toward a member of the opposite sex.
Just thinking of that person made her heart pound, and her chest felt tight as a wistful feeling bloomed within her.
“Haa…”
In the end, seeing her fellow magical girl less energetic than usual, another magical girl boldly stepped forward.
“Sophie! How about leaving things to me for today and heading home first?”
Magical Girl Emerald—nicknamed Emi—who had such a small frame she could be mistaken for an elementary school student, said so triumphantly.
Sophia herself was aware of her own condition, so she accepted the girl’s kindness without bothering to refuse.
“…Will you really be okay on your own?”
“Of course! There is no monster I cannot defeat!”
She really was a child with a pure charm unlike herself, Sophia thought as she reluctantly nodded.
“Then I’ll head in first today. If things get tough, call me anytime.”
After waving goodbye and seeing Emerald off, Sophia had nothing else to do, so she was about to return home as usual.
“If there’s even a little something you want to do, you have to do it right away. Once something happens, it’ll be too late.”
Recalling the advice Jade had given her during the three-way conference, Sophia suddenly stopped in her tracks.
It had been heartfelt advice unlike anything she had ever heard from anyone before.
Certainly, once she retired as a magical girl, she would need to find another job suited to her aptitudes.
Since then, she had been spending her free time searching for a new hobby, but she had yet to discover any field that caught her interest.
“Isn’t there something? Some hobby to kill time with.”
And as she trudged home, lost in thought—
[ Brilliant Fitness Club ]
What happened to enter Sophia’s eyes was a gym bearing the name of Brilliant.