‘What should I do?’
As Raban investigated this world—Hikarius, to be precise—three things in particular drew his attention.
Magical girls. Naju Pharmaceuticals. And lastly, culture.
And this “culture” was precisely the element that made this place feel most alien from Raban’s Earth.
This place had culture, but no cultural barriers. There might be the concept of a transfer student from “a somewhat distant city,” but there was no such thing as a “foreigner” to be found. It was strange. Earth existed as a sort of unified state, and no one thought that odd.
A world with Norse myths like the legend of Siegfried, yet no Northern Europe. That was the conclusion he had reached after digging into the sense of incongruity he felt while seeing bizarre names like “Balmung Slash” and “Tyrfing Breaker” in an encyclopedia of magical girls’ special moves throughout history.
This world retained legends and myths extremely similar to those of Earth, but it was still not his Earth.
‘If I had to define it, it’s closer to a parallel world that split off at some point.’
Raban guessed that the cause of the divergence was the magical girls—or more precisely, the mascots that created magical girls. Perhaps those beings, monopolizing the power known as magic, had intervened in human history and unified all nations into one for ease of management.
‘To put it more precisely, should I say they expelled the very concept of nations itself?’
It was something often seen in anime. People who clearly looked foreign, yet everyone spoke the same language—an oddity like that.
Raban once again shuddered at the terrifying nature of the mascot faction.
And there was one other thing he realized while investigating these cultural trends.
In this world, human malice was exceptionally scarce. Would anyone believe there were no records of large-scale wars in a civilization that had developed to the modern level?
However, there was just one incident that ran directly counter to that trend.
That was the malice directed toward Naju Pharmaceuticals. Most people living in Hikarius held some degree of antipathy toward Naju Pharmaceuticals, whether small or great.
Naju Pharmaceuticals had vanished, leaving behind the Black Forest, and attempts to uncover the full truth of the incident had become taboo. All that remained was the result: countless people who had worked at Naju Pharmaceuticals had disappeared.
And that girl must have been the one forced to receive all that malice upon herself.
Desire spoke.
If he could draw out and exploit the negative thoughts inside that girl, just how much mana could he gather?
Reason spoke.
No matter how he thought about it, wouldn’t the mascots be keeping a dedicated watch on her?
Even in places like the military, those with peculiar notes written in the remarks column were quietly watched. The mascots had assigned surveillance personnel to him the moment he entered the school—would they really not be watching Na Ihyeon?
He had no desire to recklessly touch her and end up vaporized by a magical girl’s mana cannon. After pondering for a moment, Raban arrived at a rational conclusion.
‘Then I just have to touch her carefully instead of recklessly!’
If he approached not through artificial and desperate means like suggestion magic, but by building an appropriate friendship and slowly lowering her psychological barriers, no one would feel anything was off.
Therefore, his answer to Na Ihyeon’s question was this.
“Goodness. Aren’t you the one who needs counseling, not me?”
***
Na Ihyeon was bewildered. Because this was the first time an adult had ever said something like that to her… no, including her friends, it was the first time anyone had openly picked a fight with her mental health.
“What?”
Her reply naturally came out sharp. The mister, who looked more presentable than when they had first met, continued in a calm tone.
“Ihyeon. My experience with things like social life is rather lacking because of my memory problem, but…”
Was he saying that even to someone like him, her personality seemed problematic? Na Ihyeon looked at the key ring on her phone. Silver knuckles. They were shiny and pretty, but no one understood her taste—
“You’re a kind person.”
“…Huh?”
An unexpected answer came back.
“Taking in a suspicious person who was eating grass in front of your house and feeding him is proof enough.”
“Anyone would’ve done that.”
“I think differently, but let’s say that’s true. Then that means you at least have the average moral character of Hikarius, doesn’t it?”
Na Ihyeon nodded with a slightly uneasy feeling, wondering why this conversation was leading to the conclusion that she needed counseling.
“But your friends don’t trust you, even though you’re at least as kind as other people. Perhaps I should say they’re a little afraid of you.”
It was something Na Ihyeon herself had said. Her counseling records were clearly different from those of other peer counselors.
“Well, that’s because I carry knuckles around, and…”
“If there’s an ‘and,’ then it seems you can guess other reasons too.”
Her lips would not part. Naju Pharmaceuticals. The fact that she was a blood relative of the Na family had been like a yoke tightening around her ever since the incident.
“To be honest, I was surprised to learn that you were family of the owner group. I thought they would be more cunning and terrifying.”
But you were not like that. Raban calmly described the kindness he had felt from her.
“You must have shown that kindness steadily while attending school. But others have been unconsciously keeping you at a distance, and that still continues now. I can tell.”
Raban spoke of his experiences during the past few days, when he had no memories. The feeling of being an outsider to society, perhaps even being treated like an impurity.
Wariness toward a stranger was natural. There might be no malice in that behavior. But the wounds left on the one who received that natural wariness were rather deep.
Even when one showed kindness without expecting anything in return, all that came back was an uncomfortable fear.
‘Just how many years have you endured those wounds?’
Raban’s story ultimately led to concern. A child even her closest friends feared approaching. Concern for such a situation.
Na Ihyeon worked her lips.
No one. Not even her uncle, who had survived the disappearance incident, had ever said something like this to her.
She could not properly form any words. A little below her solar plexus, she felt something hot boiling up. Something that seemed to mix resentment she had not even known had piled up inside her, a childish complaint asking what he knew about anything, and a transparent sense of relief.
Na Ihyeon could not honestly vomit it out. It was too heavy an emotion to pour out to a mister she had only known for a few days.
Instead, as if shaking off her embarrassment, she answered playfully.
“What are you saying, mister? I do have friends, you know?”
The mister replied with a faint smile.
“Oh dear. To think I was the only one without friends. You betrayed me, Ihyeon!”
“This is the sociability of a high school student in her prime, and the difference between that and a washed-up old man!”
***
Raban confirmed that his diagnosis had been accurate.
‘Normally, in a situation like this, she would protest that she has lots of friends, not that she has friends.’
Na Ihyeon was bad at lying, and she had the disposition of trying to tell the truth whenever possible. That must have been why such an ambiguous answer had come out.
There was no need to dig any deeper for now.
It was enough that he had secured the position of “an adult who is friendly to me.” A loneliness she had never realized until now—or had realized and pretended not to know—had been brought to the surface.
Someday, when the valley of emotion deepened, it would be enough if she thought of him.
Metaphorically speaking, it was like a rusted bolt. A joint that had rusted and hardened was difficult to loosen with force. But once, just once, the first crack appeared, the rest would proceed smoothly.
Someday, if he and Na Ihyeon opened up to each other again, he would be able to reap more than enough harvest.
Raban put on a good-natured smile and began cleaning.
***
Hikarius patrols had become even stricter after the appearance of the Shadow Magician. Having quickly checked her assigned area, Magi Black stretched.
“Ever since we ran into him that one time, there’s been no news at all. That monster guy.”
These days, the Ivory Tower was also wary of the Shadow Magician. Instead of creating monsters, they were stockpiling mana to prepare for an attack.
In other words…
“This is seriously boring.”
There was nothing for a magical girl to do. Since she and White were taking different patrol routes for faster patrols, she had no one suitable to talk to either.
‘Should I have tempted Salamandine into going to a café?’
Tap, tap. As Magi Black kicked the concrete floor for no real reason, the conversation in the counseling room passed through her mind.
“That mister…”
He had seemed rather good at counseling. Stepping boldly into someone else’s private circumstances before even being asked was quite far from the counseling ethics she had learned during peer counselor training, but it must have been done out of goodwill in its own way.
“I wonder what he did before he lost his memory.”
[Lost his memory? Who are you talking about, mofu?]
“Ah, Papirun. Where’s White?”
[She said she’d make one more round by the park where you first met the Shadow Magician, then go home, mofu.]
“She really is diligent, just like a class president.”
Magi Black nodded, then opened her mouth, saying, “The person who lost his memory is the new janitor mister at our school.”
“I’m probably the first student at our school who met that mister. He was eating grass in front of my house.”
[…Could you say that one more time, mofu?]
“Yep. You heard right. He was eating grass because he was hungry, so I told him not to do that and to at least go to city hall. Looks like his memories got wiped because he got tangled up in the Naju Pharmaceuticals incident.”
Papirun’s head began to ache as he listened to Magi Black’s story. Raban was an extremely suspicious human.
According to the report from the fairies in charge of the school today, there was even a possibility he was a monster of the Ivory Tower. Since a magical girl had faced him directly and sensed no particular threat, he was likely not someone with malice, but…
Look at Salamandine. Beyond merely having no malice, she even held a certain degree of goodwill, yet she still fought magical girls tooth and nail on nothing but her sense of duty.
Therefore, he could not ignore the possibility that a “monster” was using the “Naju Pharmaceuticals incident” as his backstory. Especially if the Ivory Tower had grasped the full story of that incident and was trying to approach Na Ihyeon.
‘It would be nice if he were just an ordinary person who lost his memory, like Ihyeon says, mofu.’
If not, what should they do?
Was there a way to determine Raban’s true identity?
An old saying from Earth passed through Papirun’s mind. The maxim: “If you want to know a person’s true nature, give them power.”
If Raban was a monster, there was bait he would not be able to pass up.