Chapter 3
'Who gave you permission to call me Senior?'
The woman's voice came from behind me, and I swallowed the brusque reply that almost slipped out.
When I turned my head to at least get a look at her face, I saw golden hair and golden eyes, along with a wand bearing an impressive cross.
She was obviously a support-type magical girl.
Which explained why she hadn't managed to escape properly and was still panting here.
"Wow, w-wow... T-that's a relief... I thought I was definitely going to die..."
"You won't die. Not as long as Alice is here. No one will."
She seemed to at least realize she'd almost died just now.
Thankfully, she wasn't such an idiot that she failed to understand even that.
"W-Wait, Senior!! Behind you! There's a monster behind you!"
"What?"
<Kahaha!! What perfect timing! You've gathered together nicely! I'll crush both of you at once just like this!!>
After hearing the panicked idiot... correction, rookie, I turned my head forward again and saw that the monster had already approached and was swinging its massive fist at us.
Since its body was about the size of a building, its fist was nearly as large as a truck. If a fist that size came flying at that speed, it was obvious that two magical girls would be flattened into bloody pulp.
...Or so you thought.
'Is she insane?'
"S-Senior! I'm fine, so you should at least go! If you're alone, you can dodge it easily..."
-Whiiiiir...
Mana gathered in my wand, and just like when I had fired Lunar Blast earlier, the crescent moon filled out into a round shape.
The difference was that it was larger than before.
"Alice doesn't abandon her comrades!"
"...!"
'Hah, now even a B-rank monster is ignoring me?'
The mana condensed into a sphere began glowing blue, and the monster's fist came crashing toward us, ready to crush both of us at any moment.
-Whoooosh...
At that moment, the wand began to move as well.
Blue mana streamed along the path of the blue sphere, which was larger than usual, forming a tail behind it.
When the end of the elliptical trajectory collided with the monster's fist,
Comet Smash (Comet Smash).
-Kraaaakabooooom!!!
The monster's fist and everything above it—in other words, the entire arm—was torn away, unable to withstand the immense energy.
<Gyaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!>
"Go back to where you came from, monster!"
<Who are you calling a monster...!>
Before it could recover, I had already completed my leap.
I was suspended in the air near its head, in a position where I could clearly see the portion of its face that had been dented by Lunar Blast earlier.
"Hiyah!!"
-Kraaaakabooooom!!
<Kieeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!!>
Ah. Now that's more like a monster.
A monster ought to let out a monstrous shriek. What good was imitating a human?
"If you won't go back willingly, Alice has no choice but to send you back herself!"
<Guh!>
-Thwack!
First, I struck its chin hard enough to prevent it from making any more surrender declarations, sealing its mouth shut.
What followed was little more than a one-sided beating.
It was already annoying enough being dragged out at such an inconvenient time. After making a nuisance of itself instead of dying quietly, it had even approached me under the mistaken assumption that I would be weak in close combat. It was hard to imagine anything more irritating.
This was why monsters that assumed they would be weak up close just because their ranged attacks were powerful were such a problem.
A newly contracted rookie might be excused, but anyone who had been doing this for eight years and still had no defenses against close combat was an idiot.
And setting aside that obvious common sense, I had never been weak at close combat to begin with.
My ranged attacks were more than powerful enough, but they were a little lacking when it came to finishing off an enemy by themselves,
so people who knew Alice well were aware that she usually finished off her enemies by bringing her wand down on them at close range.
Well, these days, people treated me as something of a has-been, so that fact didn't come up very often.
If you're going to treat me like a has-been, then don't expect anything from me. But whenever I'm different from the Alice they expect, they immediately pounce on me, tear me apart, and throw a fucking fit...
-Kraaaakaboom!
<Grrk...>
-Fwoosh...
"Ah."
The punching bag broke.
B-rank monsters didn't appear very often, so I didn't get many chances to relieve my stress.
"...Alice! Mission accomplished! Then, everyone, I'll be..."
"W-Wait! Senior Alice! You don't remember me?!"
Ugh. What a nuisance.
I should have returned immediately, but I missed my timing while delivering my lines and ended up hearing her out.
I should have gone back before hearing her, but now that I had already heard her, simply leaving would count as ignoring her, and that was something Alice would never do.
Since I'd heard her, I might as well at least confirm what she wanted...
"Hmm... I don't have any memory of you. Have we met somewhere before?"
"Th-That! Five years ago! When an S-rank monster appeared on the Han River, I saw you once! Don't you remember me?"
"The Han River...?"
As I rummaged through my hazy memories, I realized that it was an incident I did remember.
An S-rank monster would have been given a proper name, so perhaps...
"Are you talking about the Leviathan incident?"
"Y-Yes! That's right! You saved my life back then!"
"Ah, you were... Your name was..."
"It's Mia!"
-Sparkle-sparkle
She proudly sported golden eyes so bright and sparkling that I could almost hear a sound effect.
Hmm. I didn't remember her.
Did she think I only saved one or two rookies?
Even today, I had saved one person because a B-rank monster appeared. If a larger-scale A-rank or S-rank monster appeared, how many magical girls would I save during a single battle? There was no way I could remember them all.
What kind of character was she, anyway? A junior magical girl who idolized the senior who had saved her life.
"Of course I remember you! I'm glad to see you're still healthy! Did you make it home safely back then? Alice was busy, so I didn't get a chance to check on you afterward...!"
To be honest, I wanted to ignore her and leave immediately, but Alice wouldn't do something like that, so I had no choice but to play along.
"O-Of course I was fine! Just being saved by you was more than enough... How could I ask for anything more from someone who flew around alone on starlight against Leviathan, lured its water-pressure cannon away from populated areas to buy the citizens time to evacuate, and even delivered the finishing blow?!"
"Heheh. Alice would obviously have to do at least that much."
Well, I didn't dislike praise like this.
In this day and age, when fewer and fewer people knew how to express gratitude instead of taking the help they received for granted, it was the kind of praise that was difficult to hear.
"I-If it's all right with you, would you like to have a meal with me sometime? I've wanted to see you again ever since then, but I never managed to find an opportunity. I only just barely got to meet you like this!"
-Freeze.
Ah.
I barely managed to regain control of myself and smooth out my expression before it could stiffen.
Of course, this wasn't the first time I'd received an offer like this.
There were countless people who wanted to grow closer to a magical girl, whatever their ulterior motives might be.
Even so, I carefully managed my expression and refused in the manner Alice would use.
"Unfortunately, Alice is everyone's magical girl. I'm grateful that you love me, but you can't monopolize Alice's love."
"I-I wasn't trying to monopolize you..."
"Well then, Alice has to get going because she's busy. May your starlight always shine brightly!"
"Ah...!"
-Flash!
Before she could cling to me any further, I had delivered a suitably convincing line, so I immediately became enveloped in light and moved to an uninhabited place.
"Bunny. You really don't have any complaints now, right? Even if you do, I'm not going to listen to them."
[Y-You did well... You can rest now. Two locations in one day, and you practically handled a B-rank on your own... Your record should be fine, too.]
"Anyone listening to you would think my record had ever been lacking."
Even if people treated Alice like a has-been these days, eight years of experience didn't simply disappear.
I could say with certainty that I had never once fallen short in my achievements as a magical girl.
...Though there might have been problems in other areas.
[And you handled that magical girl named Mia well today, too... Do you know how nervous I was? I thought you were going to curse her out like you used to!]
"...You know it's better to get cursed out than to die because you were floundering around."
One of the rules among magical girls was that they could not reveal anything about one another to the outside world.
Magical girls generally operated in secret, and if someone got the wrong idea and exposed another girl's identity to the media, trust between them would collapse in an instant and chaos would follow,
so keeping secrets among magical girls was one of the basic terms of their contracts with their mascots.
This did result in a slight side effect, though...
[You still could have treated her a little more kindly. Do you know how many questions I got from the other mascots asking whether Alice actually had a split personality?]
"...You know I hate magical girls."
[I... know. But you're still colleagues in the same field now, one way or another. Anyway, you did well today... Keep it up from now on.]
I had once treated a rookie rather harshly during a joint mission with other magical girls because she had floundered around, made mistakes, and failed to perform even her own role properly.
If word had reached the media, it would have been quite damaging to me, since maintaining Alice's persona was a matter of life and death. Fortunately, it had only happened among magical girls.
Because of that rule, it never became known outside their ranks.
'...Undo transformation.'
-Flash.
When I undid my transformation in the lonely atmosphere, the magical girl with long white hair and sparkling blue eyes disappeared, replaced by my gloomy ordinary self.
"Do I have to take the bus again today...? A taxi would cost too much..."
That brought up a question.
How did magical girls make money?
The answer was: 'They earned it themselves.'
There was no way mascots from another dimension had any of Earth's money, and of course, they didn't pay magical girls for carrying out their missions or anything like that.
In other words, magical girls had to support themselves while also carrying out their duties of exterminating monsters as magical girls.
There was no rule saying magical girls absolutely had to conceal their identities, so those who revealed themselves could earn money with their magical-girl powers or join an agency and release music, among other things,
but magical girls who risked their lives to keep their identities hidden had no choice but to support themselves somehow.
Oh, though these days, I'd heard there were places that provided subsidies whenever someone proved they were a magical girl and defeated an Abyss monster.
It was a system that hadn't existed in the past, and I had no intention of registering, so I didn't know the details.
Anyway, in my case... I lived off the money Alice had earned in the past, along with the appearance fees I received in cash from the TV shows I appeared on very, very occasionally these days.
Technically, my current income was negative... but wasn't it enough that I'd suffered back then?
I couldn't exactly call it a wealthy life, but I ate well enough and bought what I needed.
This was probably why people said you had to work hard while you were young if you wanted to live comfortably in old age.
-Rustle
"Hmm?"
As I was debating whether to take the bus or a taxi, I heard a sound from the ground. When I looked down, a yellow banknote was proudly displaying itself.
"...Looks like someone dropped it while fleeing."
When I turned my head a little farther, I spotted a wallet that had presumably been dropped by someone evacuating. I crept over, opened it, and found a fairly large amount of money inside.
Around 130,000 won. In an age when most things could be handled with cards instead of cash, it was not an amount one saw often.
'There's an ID card... Let's see...'
I checked the ID to see who the owner was, and a somewhat familiar face caught my eye.
I felt like I'd seen this person at least once before, but who was he...?
'Ah. That bastard.'
It was the exact same face as the man who had argued with me the last time I'd been dispatched, demanding to know why I had arrived so late and whether I would take responsibility if he lost his job for being late to work.
'You're guilty of pissing me off.'
If he had been an ordinary powerless citizen, maybe I could understand. But if he was going to shout at a magical girl while receiving protection for free, shouldn't he pay the price?
I removed the bundle of cash from the wallet, then put the ID and cards back inside and kept them with me.
Since evacuations caused by Abyss monsters were an everyday occurrence, systems for storing or returning wallets and other belongings lost by their owners were fairly well established.
The easiest and most standard option was to put it in one of the mailboxes that had existed since long ago.
Well, it wasn't as if I had committed some truly serious crime, so I planned to put it in a mailbox with only the cash removed, leaving the ID and cards inside.
If it might otherwise never be found at all, getting it back with only the cash missing wasn't such a bad deal, was it?
This citizen had probably survived thanks to me, too. He wouldn't begrudge donating transportation fare to a magical girl like that. Since he was the sort of person who worried about his commute to work, he would probably care about a magical girl's commute as well.
Oh, and magical girls didn't just travel from Seoul to Busan or anything. We were dispatched only within a certain area centered around the regions where we usually operated or lived, so returning home didn't take several hours.
Even so, if it took that long to return, wouldn't that be an absurdly terrible black company? It was unpaid labor, after all.
"Come to think of it, it must be getting close to evening..."
Today's haul was 130,000 won in cash and two days of vacation ahead of me.
It hadn't been a bad day at all.