“Mister. Come see me later.”
That choppy, audacious way of speaking. And yet, even when she acted like that, he could not find it in himself to dislike her. The reason was that she was an excellent supplier of negative thoughts.
Ravan put on a faint smile and turned his head toward Na Ihyeon. His shimmering silver hair glinted in the sunlight filtering through the blinds.
“Why? Is something wrong?”
‘Of course something’s wrong.’
Ravan was certain of it. These days, Na Ihyeon had been radiating an aura that screamed, I have a problem.
In truth, there likely were not many people who would notice. The little brat was not good at lying, so she could not hide her own mood, but how many people could see into her inner self?
Ordinarily, when a delinquent—Ravan paused for a moment to wonder whether people still used such an old-fashioned word these days—who carried brass knuckles in her pocket openly showed that she was in a bad mood, people tended to avert their eyes rather than ask what was wrong.
He had already blocked any intervention from Schnee Heidel, who was probably the closest thing to a friend Na Ihyeon had at school, despite her isolated atmosphere. That class president, the mascot’s minion, was probably just cheering her on from behind, telling her to hang in there.
“…It’s not something I’m going to say now.”
Na Ihyeon looked around. It was already the tail end of lunch break, and aside from her, who had been on duty in the counseling room today, all the other students had returned to class.
Even if she spoke now, there would be no one to hear, but class would be starting soon. After nodding a few times, Na Ihyeon opened her mouth.
“After school. Once all the kids who came for counseling are done.”
Ravan nodded. In a few hours, he would be able to proceed to the next stage of extracting negative thoughts.
Anticipation mingled with the wait. Ravan looked forward to a happy counseling session.
‘How can I make her recognize her own resentment and loneliness more clearly?’
***
And Ravan’s expectations were betrayed.
“So, you’re saying it seems like your friend is hiding something from you?”
“Yeah… No, I told you, it’s about my friend and that friend’s friend!”
Na Ihyeon was discussing not her own loneliness, but a friend’s secret…?
‘No, what on earth happened here?’
He could not understand. Surely this child’s problem had been adolescent anguish over her self-identity, born from indignation at being ostracized by her peer group for a crime she had not even committed, and sorrow for her vanished family?
No, more importantly.
“You had a friend…?”
“Mister. Do you want to die?”
“See, see, see, see? Look at the kid putting on brass knuckles and acting so viciously! My goodness!”
“Oh, seriously.”
Na Ihyeon made as if to throw her smartphone. The brass-knuckle keychain Ravan still could not get used to jingled.
Ravan, who had prepared something like the thirteenth-ranked carefully selected line for dragging inner loneliness out into the open, suddenly felt all the wind go out of him.
‘Let’s think….’
If he stripped away all the ridiculous smoke screen about it not being her own story, but a story about a friend and a friend’s friend, then Na Ihyeon’s concern was this.
She had a very close friend, and that friend was hiding some secret that could not be carelessly spoken of. But the friend would not explain why she had not told her that secret, nor what exactly the secret was.
“In that case, Ihyeon.”
Having lost his momentum, Ravan decided to simply say whatever came to mind.
However, it would be a sound argument based on an entirely general and common-sense perspective. It was one thing to subtly provoke her about her personal history, but if he blatantly poured cold water on her friendships, all the closeness he had quietly built up until now would be shattered.
“First, let’s make this clear. You—”
“Oh, come on. I said it’s my friend.”
“Fine, fine. What feelings did that friend have toward the friend’s friend?”
***
“Feelings?”
Na Ihyeon blinked. It was a question she had not expected at all.
She had heard rumors that this old guy was surprisingly good at counseling, so she had asked him in hopes of sorting out her restless feelings, but was this not a completely different matter?
Just as Na Ihyeon tilted her head, wondering if she had chosen the wrong person to consult, Ravan added,
“After hearing that the secret was being hidden. After getting a little past the shock at the time of the incident, I mean the feeling that remained like sediment. Was it a profit-and-loss calculation, like, now that she’s gotten everything she could out of me, I should cut ties and keep my distance?”
“No!”
Na Ihyeon shouted reflexively, then saw Ravan looking at her as if to say, I thought so, and turned her head with a pointless cough.
“All right. It’s annoying to keep saying friend or friend’s friend, so let’s call the friend’s friend who hid the secret S, and the kid who heard S’s truth Na Ihyeon.”
“I can sense some kind of intent there!”
“When Na Ihyeon first heard that S had been hiding a secret from her, she probably felt a complicated mix of emotions. It could have been shock at the secret itself, a sense of betrayal toward S, or any number of other feelings. But those aren’t the real feelings.”
“What do you mean, not real?”
“Maybe I chose the wrong word. Let’s call it the essence. At the time, you must have felt several different emotions together. You trusted your friend, but it seems that friend didn’t trust you to the same degree, that sort of thing.”
Ravan added an explanation. The vague and ambiguous mixture of emotions one first felt would settle after a little time passed. What remained after that was something that formed the skeleton of the feelings one had toward that person.
For example, when you stole money from your parents’ wallet and got caught.
Among the immediate feelings would be regret—
“Hold on, mister. What?”
“You know, the regret that if you hadn’t been caught, you wouldn’t have gotten scolded.”
Seeing Na Ihyeon’s expression, Ravan grumbled, “Don’t curse at me with your eyes.”
“Anyway. Regret, or anger like, why are they scolding me over something like this, can be felt at the time. But if you catch your breath and think it over slowly again…”
“I should’ve taken one more bill?”
“What do you take me for? First, I have no memories. Second, even if that really were the case, do you think I’d admit it in front of a student?”
“Mister, our first encounter was you eating grass in front of a student. I’d say the expiration date for showing me an exemplary adult image has already passed…”
“How vexing. I can’t refute that. Still, listen for now. After calming down and thinking about it, what remains is guilt, like, why did I lie?”
Ravan dragged in some biological knowledge he had picked up somewhere and added it to his explanation. When a situation was urgent, it was hard for a person to accurately know their own emotions. Hormones like adrenaline and dopamine interfered with introspection inside the head.
“So, let’s start by clearly recognizing the emotion. Only then can you clarify what you want to do and what you should do.”
The feelings she had toward Papirun? Na Ihyeon closed her eyes with an “Hmm…” and thought it over.
Looking at Na Ihyeon with her eyes closed, Ravan continued speaking in a casual manner.
“If you’re not sure what you’re feeling right now, let’s think about what you usually feel when you see that friend S. Is she the type who gets a little authority and acts all high and mighty, so she pisses you off?”
“No way. She’s really kind and soft.”
‘Huh. I thought it was Schnee Heidel, the mascot’s minion. Did she have another friend?’
That was why he had chosen the initial S, but had it been someone else? Hiding his bewilderment, Ravan quickly made up his next sentence.
“Then would such a good friend have hidden a secret in order to deceive you?”
“…Probably not.”
They had fought together for a long time. Papirun’s expression had been stiff, and beyond it, there had been anguish that could not be hidden. There was no way she had stayed silent all that time in order to deceive the Magirists.
“Then perhaps Na Ihyeon is worried about S.”
“Worried?”
“Because the secret that friend is hiding doesn’t seem to be something she’s hiding because she wants to. For example, if a friend got unknowingly involved in a drug dead drop and was about to be indicted on drug charges, you’d be shocked, but wouldn’t it eventually lead to worry?”
“Then what should I do?”
Ravan stroked his chin. It was not a gesture with any particular meaning; he had simply tried it once to give the impression that he was listening to her carefully.
“Why not ask her honestly somewhere safe?”
“What?”
“I can understand putting distance between yourself right away because the secret your friend hid makes you uncomfortable, but if you want to find out exactly what that secret is, in the end, it’s best to talk openly. And think about it.”
If Na Ihyeon, who had learned the secret, was worried about S, then would S not also be worried that Na Ihyeon was suffering because of it?
After saying that, Ravan tilted his head from side to side and loosened his stiff neck.
“This really was a consultation where you picked the wrong address by asking me. Talk it out properly between friends and resolve it.”
“Yeah. …No. I mean, I’ll tell my friend to try that.”
“Right. Get home safe—”
Watching Na Ihyeon leave the counseling room, Ravan tilted his head once more.
‘No. But she really has another friend besides the class president?’
‘If there had been some rich kid with silver hair and brass knuckles at my school, I wouldn’t even have been able to meet her eyes.’
‘To think there was one more person who would approach such a terrifying apex predator, an elephant of the savanna, and ask to be friends.’
As expected, in a world with magical girls, people’s mindsets were different from his original world from the ground up. Ravan keenly felt the sense of alienation from his original world as he prepared to leave work.
***
In the middle of the night, standing with Schnee in one corner of a park, Na Ihyeon lightly tapped her smartphone. The mana gathered at her fingertips stimulated, in a particular pattern, the mana circuits hidden inside the phone.
It was a signal calling Papirun.
With a small sparkle, a fairy resembling cotton candy appeared.
[What is it, mohu?]
The tone was the same as usual, but she could sense a faint hesitation hidden within it. Na Ihyeon recalled Ravan’s advice.
“Um, you know. About those Ochanja. Did you hide it because you wanted to?”
[No, mohu.]
It was an immediate answer. An urgent voice in which she could find no trace of falsehood. That was enough.
[That is…]
Papirun struggled, unable to explain. Na Ihyeon’s voice wrapped around her words.
“Then the rest is fine. I’m sure the fairy kingdom has circumstances of its own.”
[Mohu?]
“You’re our friend, and a comrade who’s fought with us until now! That’s enough. Besides, how could we believe everything one of the Four Heavenly Kings said in the first place?”
Na Ihyeon rubbed Mohurun’s soft head, then turned her head toward Schnee.
“It’s about patrol time, so shall we get moving, class president?”
“…Yes.”
Na Ihyeon, who had been preparing to transform, slowly tilted her head. Somehow, the pause before the reply had been long.
“Are you still feeling awkward? Then why don’t you two talk a little? If you talk openly with each other, it might be less of a big deal than you think. I’ll go on ahead!”
After finishing her transformation, Na Ihyeon headed for her own patrol route. Schnee was much smarter and more considerate than she was, so perhaps she had never harbored such suspicions in the first place.
***
…At some point.
[Can you not see it? The comrade who, until yesterday, suspected the fairy together with you has changed her attitude so abruptly.]
At some point, she had begun to hear a voice.
[Do you truly think this is a natural phenomenon?]
She did not know the exact time. It felt as though something like an occasional imagining that surfaced in her mind had, at some point, taken form. Schnee had thought all this time that it was because of that dreadful shadow mage’s magic, and had worked to dispel the curse.
[A clever student like you must have guessed that they are hiding something.]
The most efficient way to deal with this kind of mental magic was to ignore it. To keep maintaining the same detachment as always, as though it had never been audible from the start.
If one maintained composure, magic of the sort that stimulated fear would vanish before long.
And so Schnee had, until now, done her utmost to ignore this voice that had been whispering to her for the past few days. But…
‘Ihyeon.’
That lively, innocent friend. The friend who, even at school today, had been agonizing with her over Papirun’s secret, had changed in an instant.
[You must not trust them.]
Schnee listened, just a little, to the voice within her heart.