Chapter 20
Even when a city is thrown into chaos and reduced to a wasteland, people go on living their own lives.
This isn't because people have become especially accustomed to living alongside Abyss Ones. That's simply what people are like.
No matter where a disaster occurs, few people neglect their own lives to worry about it. Those unrelated to the disaster start living their own lives today, while those involved will need some time to overcome their grief.
[The damage caused by the appearance of this A-rank Abyss One is...]
-Beep
For a magical girl to remain mentally healthy, it's also necessary to deliberately avoid seeking out news like this.
All you need is the certainty that you did everything you could.
If you've done everything you can, and damage still occurs, then it was never within your power to affect in the first place. There's no need to feel guilty or sad about it.
It's best to think of magical girls as beings who suppress, even if only slightly, the damage Abyss Ones cause.
In the past, there were quite a few voices arguing that Abyss Ones appeared because of magical girls, or that magical girls should be conscripted and used as soldiers.
A few countries tried to treat the magical girls who appeared in their territory that way and got their fingers badly burned, so voices like that aren't heard these days.
Magical girls are basically suckers, yes, but that doesn't mean they're slaves who do everything other people tell them to do.
A magical girl's job is to eliminate Abyss Ones and prevent the damage they would cause to civilians.
They can follow someone else's orders if doing so is efficient, but if it isn't and only harms the magical girls, and the magical girls simply sit there and take it, the mascots step in.
If power that should be used to eliminate Abyss Ones is being misused and the magical girl shows no will to resolve the matter either, it can be judged a serious breach of contract, and the contract may be terminated.
What happens if a magical girl's contract is terminated?
To understand that, we first need to know how the magical girl contract system works. A magical girl's contract basically lists 'what the magical girl receives through the contract,' 'what the magical girl must do after making the contract,' and 'the conditions under which the magical girl fulfills the contract,' along with various additional explanations and exceptions.
Contrary to what people commonly think, magical girls do receive something as a baseline.
And what people call a magical girl's 'retirement' refers to the third item: fulfilling the conditions and properly bringing the contract to an end.
If the contract is forcibly broken because the conditions weren't met instead of ending through retirement, everything the magical girl received upon signing is naturally reclaimed, as is their magical power. This isn't simply a matter of one person having their magical girl contract canceled and the matter ending there; it also leads to a decline in the mascots' trust in that group of people.
If a certain group of people were contracted to eliminate Abyss Ones, but repeatedly refused to hunt the Abyss Ones they were told to and instead became subject to the state and followed the Great Leader, the mascots would cancel their contracts, leave, and never set foot there again.
Well, you all know perfectly well which countries got themselves into an Abyss One disaster by pulling nonsense like that.
Thanks to them, other countries stopped trying such ridiculous things.
Anyway, if a magical girl properly retires, the things they received through the contract aren't reclaimed. Most of their magical power is taken back, but some remains for them to use.
What can you do with that remaining magical power...? According to retired magical girls, you can transform into the appearance you had when you were a magical girl, and separately, you can possess roughly the physical abilities of an active magical girl in her untransformed state.
Even without transforming, magical girls possess the physical abilities of trained fighters, so it's fair to say they won't be physically outmatched anywhere.
And since magical power also makes aging progress extremely slowly, it must have tremendous value for women, at the very least.
Looking at it this way, you could say magical girls receive plenty after all, and choose for themselves to sign a contract in exchange for being promised a brilliant future. Some might even say that the people who called it unpaid labor were actually blinded by those rewards. Things were quite noisy for a while after a retired magical girl revealed this information.
But still...
How many people would readily accept an offer to work on a battlefield where they never knew when the enemy would attack and would be sent straight into the field whenever it did, all to complete a mission with no known end date in exchange for about ten billion won?
I haven't experienced much of ordinary society since I started working as a magical girl, but I think most people would refuse. Unless they were truly desperate or had nothing left to lose.
That's how it is.
The reward might look attractive, but magical girls aren't fundamentally motivated by rewards. They're the sort who feel satisfaction from helping others and saving people through the work itself.
Some of them even continue eliminating Abyss Ones instead of retiring despite already meeting the conditions for retirement.
Retirement compensation is like severance pay, given to magical girls after they retire to thank them for all their hard work and wish them well in the future. Almost no magical girl sees the compensation itself as the purpose of their activities.
The mascots don't seek out shallow people who want to become magical girls solely for the rewards in the first place.
"Whew. Finally cleared it all out."
So, what was I doing while rambling through all that pointless explanation?
I cleaned up the house that had been wrecked two days ago.
Since an A-rank Abyss One had appeared, there were many homes and buildings in this state, so it would be several more days before a repair company could come. For now, I had no choice but to patch things up and live like this.
Ah, there are magical girls who restore damage caused by Abyss Ones, too. Amazingly, some magical girls can control earth and rock magic well enough to repair buildings.
But those magical girls are usually sent to places where the situation is more serious, so it was rare to see them repairing houses like this.
It wasn't as if I could make them work just because they were magical girls and I was paying them.
As for whether Alice can use that kind of magic? She can't.
If I could, I wouldn't be putting up a wall with planks right now.
-Knock knock knock
"E-Excuse me. Is anyone there?"
"..."
It was the voice of the woman next door.
For reference, the attack by the Abyss One that destroyed my house had miraculously missed hers. Apparently, apart from some household materials rolling over, there was no significant damage.
So she was taking revenge like this for all the heads I'd smashed before. From now on, I should eliminate every Abyss One I met as painfully as possible.
"I-I could hear hammering, so it seemed like you were inside... I-I'm sorry for keeping coming back, but could you please come out for just a moment?"
'...Sigh.'
Why was she clinging this hard even after I'd made it clear that I found other people uncomfortable?
Still, it was true that I'd made a lot of noise while repairing my house, so I should apologize for that part, too.
-Creeeak...
"I'm sorry. It was noisy, wasn't it? I did it during the day, avoiding your usual sleeping hours as much as possible, but I'm sorry."
"Oh, no, that's fine, but... this. I thought you might need it."
"...What's this?"
"It's a one-person tent and a sleeping bag. In case your bed was damaged, I thought you could use them... Ah, I only bought them and never used them, so don't worry... I washed them before bringing them over, so they're clean. I-I was worried about whether you were getting any proper sleep..."
"..."
She was an incredibly meddlesome woman, but that concern was genuine.
My house had been wrecked like this, and stress had brought back my insomnia, so I hadn't slept properly for nearly two days.
My body was sturdy because it had been strengthened by magical power, but I couldn't ignore the accumulation of mental fatigue, and I was currently in a fairly dazed state.
When ordinary people's homes are damaged like this, they usually sleep in shelters built for such emergencies, saunas, motels, hotels, and so on. But none of those options were possible for me.
I never knew when I might be called out as a magical girl, and while risking my life to conceal that fact, there was no way I could stay in a shelter where ten people slept in one room, a sauna packed with people, or a motel or hotel where the hallways were covered in CCTV cameras.
In the end, the safest place was home.
'...I should refuse.'
If I was going to put up a wall, I had to do it properly.
Accepting some things and refusing others wasn't putting up a wall. It was just being a selfish bastard who swallowed what went down easily and spat out what was bitter.
I had never thought of myself as anything but selfish, but the important thing was that accepting this once would give her an excuse to keep doing things like this afterward.
If I was going to push her away, I had to keep pushing her away. If I pulled her closer just because the situation was like this, that would...
[Sejin. I think you should just accept it.]
'...Bunny. Are you crazy?'
[You're in really bad shape right now. I wouldn't say anything if you'd merely stayed up for a couple of nights as usual, but you fought an A-rank Abyss One, made a contract with Emerald, repaired your house, and only slept for two hours. You said you were going to play a game since you couldn't sleep, but you just shut that off, too.]
'There's no guarantee I'll be able to sleep just because I accept this.'
[But it will help. It's true you can't use your bed. If someone told you to deploy in your current state, could you do it? At this rate, even a B-rank Abyss One would put you in danger.]
'...'
[The mascots have a duty to create a healthy, sustainable deployment environment for magical girls. Since you just defeated an A-rank, they won't demand that you deploy today or tomorrow, but it would be a problem if you weren't in deployable condition when the need arose. You know that well. Can you really say there's a zero percent chance that the Abyss will make an A-rank Abyss One appear again tomorrow—or even today?]
'All right. You're noisy, so be quiet. My head hurts.'
-Throb
Bunny wasn't wrong about a single thing.
It wasn't as if I hadn't suffered from insomnia for more than a day or two, but if I didn't even show any desire to recover in this disastrous condition, it was something Bunny could intervene in.
I didn't like that it meant relying on someone else, but...
"...Thank you. I'll use them well and return them to you."
"Oh, it's because I'd feel bad otherwise. Come to think of it, what should I call you? Your name was Han Sejin, right? I saw you when you were working part-time... Sejin-ssi? Sejin-oppa? Which do you prefer?"
-Shudder
-Grab
A cold sensation crept up from my fingertips, so I hurriedly grabbed my other hand and squeezed it tight.
I was in front of someone else right now.
"Please call me Sejin-ssi. Other forms of address... make me a little uncomfortable."
"Yes... In a way, you could say our house used yours as a shield. I feel bad about that, too..."
"There's no need to feel bad. This is... I'll accept it."
-Click
"...Ah, just a moment."
The sleeping bag and tent were folded up, but they were too thick to pass through the safety chain.
I closed the door slightly, unhooked the chain, then opened it wider and accepted them.
"Oh, right. My name is Kim Sina. Call me whatever's comfortable. I'm quite a bit younger than you, so you can speak casually with me."
"...Yes, Sina-ssi. Then I'll see you next time."
"...Yes! See you next time!"
-Thud
-Click
"...Pheeeeeew."
I didn't particularly like talking to other people in the first place, but the goosebumps on my hands had been an even bigger problem this time.
A woman, someone younger than me, and a magical girl.
Though that woman only seemed to fit the first two for now.
...I really hate this combination.
I really do. Horribly.