“Pirun, we’re screwed.”
[Ihyeon, you should use nicer words, mohu…]
No sooner had Papirun returned to Hikarius than she was met with a sentence that gave her a splitting headache. It was an exceedingly bad opening line for her mental health, especially right after pulling an all-nighter in the Fairy Kingdom. All the more so when she had stayed up through the night and still failed to properly analyze Reshef’s mask.
But Papirun was the eldest among Mother Fairy’s surviving children. Though she had agonized and wavered countless times, she was a seasoned professional who had remained perfectly sane as a mascot until now.
She hid her fatigue behind a plump smile and met Ihyeon’s eyes. After all, making eye contact during a conversation was basic for creating a comfortable atmosphere…
“Schne’s identity got exposed.”
[Wait, what… mohu?]
The shock was so great that she momentarily forgot to add “mohu.”
No wonder Schne was standing beside Ihyeon, clutching her head.
‘I’m certain we started analyzing the mask just before dawn, and it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since we returned to Lux Tiera High School, mohu. What on earth happened in that time, mohu?’
Was there an information leak inside the school? To prevent exactly this sort of situation, most of the homeroom teachers who had frequent contact with the students were fairies transformed into human form. Since there were no alerts on FairyTalk, it wasn’t that.
Papirun’s mind spun rapidly. Usually, magical girls had their identities exposed by family members, but that couldn’t be the case for Schne or Ihyeon.
Na Ihyeon’s only blood relative, Charles, was in a cooperative relationship with the guardian fairies, and Schne had no family. Then…
[Don’t tell me Dine figured it out, mohu?!]
Papirun recalled the statistics from case files of magical girl incidents in other neighborhoods.
Dine was the type who had even infiltrated the school to uncover a magical girl’s identity. And she possessed her own transformation ability as well.
Normally, in cases like that, a candidate compatible with magical girl transformation would end up joining as a new warrior about a semester later. But to think she would identify a magical girl before deciding to switch sides…!
[Kuh, did those suspicious pro-Dine forces at our high school leak the information, mohu?]
Na Ihyeon, who had been about to tell Papirun the truth, fell into confusion. Why on earth was Dine, who had nothing to do with this incident, being brought up here? And what were these Dine enthusiasts supposed to be?
“Wait, Papirun. There was a mascot like that?”
Ah. Papirun let out a low sigh. She had been so shocked that words she should not have said had slipped out.
…Or perhaps it was the fatigue from staying up all night. The fairy flapped her fluffy arms and worked hard to defend her kind.
[There were voices saying that her slightly airheaded charm was cute and that you should join Dine’s new warrior corps too, mohu. I still don’t know who it was, but they should know how to separate public and private matters, so it probably wasn’t them, mohu.]
“Uh, I. I see…”
After hearing about the suspicious tastes of some unidentified fairy, Ihyeon took one step back. Those guardian fairies. Were they really all right with tastes like that?
“Papirun, that’s the thing. It wasn’t Dine.”
[Mohu?]
Schne explained the situation in place of the confused Na Ihyeon. Schne herself was somewhat bewildered, but since she had heard the explanation before Papirun, she had had enough time to accept it.
[…Raban found out, mohu?]
Papirun sank into even deeper anguish.
Raban was truly a suspicious human being.
The suspicion that he was a monster under Salamandine?
That issue had already passed. Until just before Reshef revealed his true colors, it had been a fairly plausible hypothesis, but in the end, Raban’s tip had truly been the decisive clue that revealed the existence of the Five Chanters.
There was no need to keep suspecting it had been a scheme to drive a wedge between Na Chalsu and the Fairy Kingdom. Even if it really had been a wedge-driving scheme, at this point it counted as a public-interest report.
Raban had spoken only the truth last night.
And that was exactly the problem.
The fact that Raban knew the “truth.” It implied that he had been so deeply connected to Naju Pharmaceuticals that its secrets were engraved into his unconscious.
For now, he was treating Na Ihyeon strangely well, but there was no telling what kind of person the original Raban had been, or how large a role he had played in the tragedy at Naju Pharmaceuticals.
‘If only there were records left of Naju Pharmaceuticals’ secret research, mohu…’
They had continued their dark research while maintaining secrecy to a paranoid degree. To put it simply, Na Chalsu, who had not been part of the mainstream Na family, did not know their secrets despite being of the same blood.
As soon as Na Chalsu touched the edge of that secret, he was horrified and somehow tried to contact a guardian fairy to expose them. There was a darkness in Naju Pharmaceuticals so deep that even as a blood relative, he became convinced they had to be stopped.
Raban might have been at the center of that secret.
Even now that he had lost his memories, he possessed alarming initiative and information-gathering ability. Making contact with the Ivory Tower and collecting records of Hikarius’s past and the magical girls’ battles was by no means the work of an ordinary person.
For the moment, he was siding with Na Ihyeon, but he was a bomb that could detonate anywhere, at any time. That was Papirun’s current impression of Raban.
“Yes. Um, they said the counseling room mister left a message for… me.”
Strictly speaking, it had not been directed at Schne, but at “whoever the magical girl who helped Na Ihyeon might be,” but that was practically the same thing.
Gulp. Papirun swallowed without realizing it. What message had someone who had once belonged to the darkest shadows of Naju Pharmaceuticals left for a magical girl?
“He said to take it easy…?”
[Mohu?]
***
Raban’s idea was simple.
Magical girls. More precisely, the magical girls and the mascot faction controlling them were the strongest force within Hikarius.
With his magical power currently lacking, he could not suppress their activities by force. However, Raban had realized the magical girls’ fatal weakness.
‘They’re adolescents still in the middle of emotional development!’
Take last night’s operation to eliminate Reshef, for example.
If it had been the work of cold-blooded mascots, they would not have attempted such a rough capture. From the perspective of risk-return management, they would have prepared a more refined method.
If things went really wrong, they would have finished preparing to fire a beam that turned people into magical girls, prepared at least up to Plan E, and then sortie. That was the mascot way, as Raban understood it.
But last night’s crude battle had been different. It was too clumsy to be one of the mascots’ schemes.
If Na Ihyeon had asked Schne, the magical girl, for advice, and Schne had acted impulsively as a result, then the absurd outcome of Reshef escaping could be explained.
‘This is exactly the point to attack!’
Appealing to the bond of friendship. There was no need to tell any particular lies in order to break the other party’s will to fight.
***
[Take it easy? What does that mean, mohu?]
“Oh, that. Uncle Raban said that if dark magic power accumulates in the body, it’s not good.”
In truth, magical girls originally had no need to worry about dark magic power accumulation. That was why the guardian fairies had not given magical girls any particular warnings about handling dark magic power.
Mother Fairy’s barrier over Hikarius was not just for show. Even if the barrier temporarily stopped functioning due to maintenance work or the like, the laws of dreams and hope engraved by Mother Fairy had the effect of purifying dark magic power on their own.
To be precise, it was mutual annihilation caused by opposing magical powers colliding, but one side’s output was so overwhelmingly dominant that it was fair enough to simply call it purification.
The tiny amount of dark magic power possessed by the monsters of the Ivory Tower—though for a certain dark mage, it was worth a fortune, compared to the quantity of dreams and hope produced by magical girls, “tiny” was accurate—was meaningless to magical girls.
If it was dark magic power on the level of the Four Heavenly Kings, the story changed somewhat.
That is, if the entirety of a Heavenly King’s magic power was dark magic power. However, most of the magic power composing the Four Heavenly Kings was the magic power of the element that symbolized them.
Despair and hope might be one thing, but there was no reason for fire and hope, or water and hope, to cancel each other out.
Because of that, magical girls could annihilate monsters with overwhelming force without worrying about contamination.
But then the Five Chanters appeared.
A legacy of the old era bearing malice overwhelmingly greater than that of conventional monsters.
‘But even that alone shouldn’t have built up enough contamination to affect magical girls, mohu…?’
As if sensing Papirun’s question, Na Ihyeon kept talking. Raban had focused on the fact that the Black Forest had burned down.
“The Black Forest where I lived was originally, like, a dark magic power reservoir? A seal? Something like that, and since it all burned down, dark magic power is going to be scattered all over Hikarius, apparently.”
[Mohu?]
“He gave me this long explanation about how, since the forest that held dark magic power in one place was damaged, dark magic power would start overflowing, and if that happened, just fighting in Hikarius would become a burden.”
Raban’s explanation had been as follows. Given what a magical girl’s duty was, he could not urge them to stop fighting.
However, now that the Black Forest’s ability to condense dark magic power had been damaged and the immeasurably deep reservoir of dark magic power had begun to erupt, the processing capacity of Hikarius’s barrier—which would normally purify the dark magic power clinging to magical girls—would eventually approach its limit.
“He said that if that happens, the more we fight, the more dark magic power will accumulate in the human body, and a magical girl’s mental health will deteriorate exponentially. So that’s why he said it.”
In other words, take it a little easier.
If you wanted to protect everyone, you first had to be able to protect yourself.
“After hearing that, I thought about it. The counseling room teacher said that the collapse of Hikarius’s barrier probably began in earnest because Dine set the Black Forest on fire, but even before that, problems must have been accumulating in the barrier.”
He had added that Raban’s own return from the magical disaster was proof of that. Unless some sort of incident had occurred that disturbed Hikarius’s barrier, such a sudden return would have been impossible.
[…It must be because of the ritual to revive Avon, mohu.]
Schne nodded. Papirun was flustered by the fact that Raban’s message was extremely reasonable, and in a sense, kind.
Did he want to part ways with Naju Pharmaceuticals, separate from his desire to recover his memories? Well, a person with normal sensibilities would hardly welcome that sinister darkness.
After thinking for a moment, Papirun asked the two girls a question.
[Raban’s concern is valid, mohu. It seems that, just like when you faced the Five Chanters, combat will place a tremendous burden on your minds for the time being, mohu.]
Refraining from sorties, as Raban had said, was one option. Papirun suggested calling in magical girls from other cities and reducing the burden with as many rotation personnel as possible.
However, the magical girls quietly shook their heads.
“We might have it easier, but what about the people in the other cities?”
“It’s all right. This is something we have to do.”
They really were admirable children. Papirun looked at the two girls with a feeling that was both bitter and proud.
‘If only there were a way to lessen the burden on those children…’
At that moment, Papirun once again recalled an idea she had buried in the back of her mind.
Psychological counseling to reduce magical girls’ negative thoughts.
At the time, she simply could not trust Raban, and yet she also could not find another ordinary civilian counselor and entrust them with a magical girl’s psychological counseling, so the idea had been put on hold.
Using a guardian fairy was out of the question. Guardian fairies, who were especially vulnerable to negative thoughts, might instead be corrupted while conducting individual counseling.
There had been a case in another city where one had fallen to darkness while saying, “I hate the world that makes our children suffer like this!” That was why mascots could not take an active role in mental care.
But now. Raban was showing far more goodwill toward the magical girls than expected, and he had presented what was, in his own way, the best solution to the problems about to come.
[Girls, mohu.]
“Yes?” “Yeah?”
If that was the case, then just once.
[Would you like to try receiving psychological counseling while transformed, mohu?]
Wouldn’t it be worth entrusting it to him?