“A pleasure to meet you, sawayo.”
Inian greeted them with a stiff expression that looked anything but pleased. Her brilliantly golden hair and eyes like fresh blood gleamed.
“My name is Inian. I have recently come to Hikarius, sawayo. I look forward to your kindness from now on, sawayo.”
***
The Demon Realm Grand Duke could not understand the administrative procedures of this insane city.
She had gone to the Magical Disaster Support Office on the third floor of city hall and tossed out a single line: “I have amnesia, sawayo.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than they replied, “Ah, I see. That is truly unfortunate. Here at the Magical Disaster Support Office, we will do our utmost to help citizens caught up in magical disasters return to their daily lives,” and sent her off to Luxtiera High School.
“Report to school starting tomorrow? Is this any way to run a city?”
Even the Demon Realm did not have administrative procedures this sloppy. If a suspicious being appeared, was it not the duty of those in power to at least put them through some minimum verification?
When she voiced this impression to the dark mage, his response was truly a sight to behold.
“Huh? Then doesn’t that make you unfit to rule too?”
It was a remark that praised Raban himself, who had infiltrated the Demon Realm Grand Duke’s vault countless times, while taking a jab at Inian. She immediately punished Raban with her fist.
Raban had slipped into the vault while evading every single verification procedure in the Demon Realm. Each time a failure case of dark mage containment occurred, Inian had stayed up all night rechecking the city’s security, so she had nothing to be ashamed of.
In truth, the Magical Disaster Support Office did have something resembling a verification process.
It was just that it was a procedure to verify academic ability prior to the amnesia. Having easily proven her high-school-level scholastic aptitude according to Raban’s plan, Inian asked in disbelief.
“What happens if one’s academic ability is at the middle school level, sawayo?”
“Yes, you would be placed in the middle school affiliated with Luxtiera High School.”
“……”
The Demon Realm Grand Duke was beginning to suspect that Luxtiera High School was some kind of dumping ground. Like an isolation ward where they gathered dangerous things that were a bit too troublesome to deal with.
“This mad world is even more far gone than the Demon Realm, sawayo!”
“Yeah, and a certain someone who dumped me here bears a truly great responsibility for that, doesn’t she?”
“The fault lies with the customer who proceeded without sufficient consideration despite having been notified of the terms in advance, sawayo.”
The two glared at each other, and before long, they were grabbing each other by the collar and fighting.
The result was Raban’s defeat. What could a frail dark mage, and one without even magic power at that, possibly do against the Demon Realm Grand Duke?
After that series of disturbances, Inian came to face her thrilling first day of school.
“I want to go home.”
***
A magical girl’s magic was truly fair.
Mainly in the sense that it concealed one’s identity—there was also the supplementary point that everyone was granted equal attack power, but that was not important right now.
For standard magical girls, where a guardian fairy personally arranged the connection between the girl and the Mother Fairy for the transformation, it was possible to grasp both their appearance before and after transforming. That was thanks to close supervision as their mascot.
But the codename “Sawayo,” who had appeared last night, was different. She was an individual whom the Mother Fairy had immediately made into a magical girl without any revelation whatsoever. They did remember her appearance before transformation, but what could they do?
The monstrous form Papirun had witnessed and her normal form after releasing her transformation as a magical girl were surely as different as heaven and earth.
For that reason, the mascots of Luxtiera High School did not pay it much mind even when a “girl with blond hair and red eyes” suddenly visited the Magical Disaster Support Office.
It was not as if magical girls changing hair color when they transformed was anything rare.
However….
“Wow! Where did you come from?”
“I was living outside Hikarius and came here, sawayo.”
“I’ve never heard anyone talk like a princess before!”
“I was not accustomed to it from the start either, sawayo.”
“Is it because the elders of your house told you to speak with proper etiquette and all that!?”
“…Something similar happened, sawayo.”
[Ah, damn it. I think that’s her.]
That “sawayo” speech was far too distinctive. They had no idea why a being who had clearly come from another dimension would choose to disguise herself as a high school student of all things, but still.
“There’s a young lady in our class too! Her name’s Dine, and sometimes she can’t come because she’s sickly…. Oh, she’s here!”
The red-haired girl, the moment she arrived in class, was surrounded by friends who grabbed her hand and dragged her along. At the place she was pulled to in bewilderment stood an unfamiliar student with blond hair and gleaming red eyes, her build slightly smaller than Dine’s own.
“Here! This is Dine, our class’s original young lady!”
“Now that I look at them together, both of them have such pretty straight hair! Is this the young-lady style?”
The students chattered without pause. For Inian, whose origins were inherently dark by birth (from the Demon Realm), this was an unbearable amount of positive energy.
“Uh… a transfer student?”
Dine asked, wondering if it could be. Blond hair and red eyes. It made her think of the little kid she had encountered yesterday. The magical girl’s concealment magic blurred impressions in the mind, but it did not erase even such basic features.
“That is correct, sawayo. A pleasure to meet you for the first time, sawayo.”
Dine was shocked.
“This girl has no intention of hiding her identity…?!”
In truth, Inian was equally shocked. Red hair that, no matter how one looked at it, was fiercely proclaiming, “I am fire attribute.”
On top of that, the name Dine. She distinctly remembered the magical girls yesterday calling their comrade, the fire spirit, “Dine.”
“No, wait. According to the dark magic abomination’s explanation, the Four Heavenly Kings and the magical girls are enemies, weren’t they?”
A question then sprang up.
“She crawled into enemy territory controlled by a hostile organization with that level of disguise?!”
The two people hiding their identities were horrified by each other’s state of mind.
On the surface, of course, they were only exchanging nonsense like, “Today, I’ll treat you to a slice of cake at Rabbit Sweets Café. Their spring strawberries are delicious.” “Waa, strawberry cake is a dessert I like as well, sawayo.”
The mascots watching their conversation quietly muttered among themselves.
[What is this, mofu.]
[It’s a match that makes one’s heart feel narrow, mofu…]
[A meeting of dummies who think they’ve hidden their identities from each other? This is gourmet!]
[Who was that just now, mofu?]
***
“…So.”
Raban tilted his head as he looked at Inian, who, thanks to some inexplicable administrative handling by Hikarius City Hall, had moved into the room next to his.
“What’s the reason you didn’t come back all day?”
According to his calculations, by the time Raban finished tidying up the counseling room and got off work, Inian should also have been rolling around in her own room.
Under the pretext of moderately socializing as neighbors with amnesia, they were supposed to deceive the mascots’ eyes and hold an operations meeting.
However, Inian only showed her face at the dormitory after Raban, unable to wait any longer, had already dealt with dinner (two triangle kimbap).
Raban’s question now was less anger toward a business partner who had ditched their meeting schedule and closer to pure curiosity.
“She shouldn’t be the type who can make friends from the very first day of school, right?”
“……”
Inian looked utterly exhausted. The vitality and liveliness she had been filled with last night while planning the infiltration of Luxtiera High School, fueled by anger toward Raban, were nowhere to be seen.
It was hard to recall the dignity of the Demon Realm Grand Duke from the sight of the little girl shriveled up like a wet cat.
“The shrill little brats dragged me to a café called Rabbit Sweets, sawayo.”
“I see. The kids here really are something when it comes to friendliness.”
Raban nodded. It seemed the students of this school had a hobby of taking interest in strange things, seeing as they had shown their faces to Inian after him.
“They kept stuffing me with food, saying it was cute when I ate, sawayo.”
The Demon Realm Grand Duke, who had become the recipient of cries like “Oh no! She’s so tiny! So cute!” every time she ate, truly had a headache.
“Every time I ate something, they said it was cute how I chewed, so I experienced what it was like to be a circus clown, sawayo. I am exhausted, sawayo.”
Raban had already experienced having his energy plundered by shining youth in the counseling room. Even if he was a dark mage who had sold his conscience through a double contract, then set the two buyers against each other to preserve his principal, even he could not scold Inian this time.
“Yeah. You had it rough. What about Na Ihyeon?”
“She did not come to the café, so I could not see her, sawayo.”
“I didn’t expect that.”
Raban rubbed his temple. Still, there was no way Na Ihyeon would have been attacked in a single day. For today, focusing on caring for his business partner’s mental state might be the right choice.
“All right. We can do well starting tomorrow. Was there anything worth noting?”
“Salamandine.”
“Ah. One of the Four Heavenly Kings? You saw her?”
“She was in the same class, sawayo.”
“Hold on…”
This was dangerous. A bead of sweat ran down the back of Raban’s neck. Na Ihyeon and Salamandine were in the same class? He had been so busy digging into the kid’s personal life that he had failed to pay attention to dangerous persons in the same class!
For those wicked competitors in the same industry, the main ingredient in cultivating monsters was negative thoughts. From Salamandine’s point of view, Na Ihyeon must look like very appetizing prey.
“We need preventative measures.”
“Tsk. Can’t be helped, Nian. You’ll have to sacrifice yourself a bit. From what I hear, she likes café desserts, so how about taking the whole class around on a Hikarius café tour for a while?”
“Have you lost your mind, sawayo?”
Inian rejected that dreadful proposal outright. To sit there surrounded by total strangers, hearing nothing but that she was cute—such a thing could never be permitted by the pride of the Demon Realm Grand Duke.
…She had already experienced it today, but never again!
After chewing over the bewilderment and fluttering feelings from a few hours ago, Inian shook her head and looked at Raban.
“I probed her inner self today, sawayo.”
The Fire Heavenly King, who originally longed for a fair and square duel with the magical girls, was acting the part of a noble young lady despite it not suiting her personality at all. She had to continue that ridiculous performance in the middle of enemy territory while under the mascots’ gaze.
It would be stranger if negative thoughts did not accumulate.
“Huh?”
“Salamandine also possesses no small amount of negative thoughts, sawayo. Therefore.”
“Hey, wait. You…?”
Raban’s eyes wavered. He could already see exactly what nonsense the Demon Realm Grand Duke was about to spout.
“I shall bring Salamandine to the counseling room as well, sawayo.”
“Are you serious?”
“Do you not know the famous investment saying, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’ sawayo? If we rely only on Na Ihyeon, and as you put it, she ends up spending a school life full of pages of shining youth and her negative thoughts evaporate, then the two of us will have to start preparing for magical girl beam diving, sawayo.”
The Demon Realm Grand Duke proposed business diversification to her partner!