Chapter 32
Time passed, and before I knew it, it was filming day again.
Before filming began, in the usual space where Mia, Sapphire, and Alice had gathered...
-Grin
"...Miss Mia? You seem to be in a particularly good mood today."
"Oh, is it that obvious? Hehe, lately I just start smiling even when I'm doing nothing."
...Mia looked as though flowers were drifting around her, radiating a blissful atmosphere.
"Something good must have happened."
"I think I've... started dating someone."
'Cough.'
I nearly choked on the chocolate milk I was drinking.
Fortunately, I managed to hold it back, so nothing showed on the outside, but an unpleasant sensation lingered in my esophagus.
"...If you said 'I think I have' rather than 'I have started,' then I suppose it hasn't properly started yet. Is it one of those relationships people commonly call 'seeing each other'?"
"Uh... Ah, n-no! We have started! We've even gone on a date!"
"I see. Congratulations."
...Could that be about me?
Considering the timing, that was the most reasonable conclusion.
I hadn't expected her to openly talk about it even in her magical-girl form.
Maybe this was a strategy to plant clues in advance and increase the number of witnesses around her.
"There's no rule saying magical girls can't date. I hope it works out for you."
"Hehe, thank you. That's why I wanted to ask... Have you really never dated, Miss Sapphire? There's something I'd like to ask you about."
"No. I've been busy with work."
"Really? I would have thought Miss Sapphire was popular. You seem older than me, too."
"...It's not that I couldn't; I chose not to. If I started dating, I'd have to divert resources that would otherwise be spent elsewhere."
"I used to think that way, too, but... I'm so happy... You should give it a try sometime, too, Miss Sapphire."
".........I'll take that as a kind thought."
I couldn't tell whether she was deliberately needling her or speaking with pure intentions.
Considering the Mia I knew, she was such a pure-hearted girl that I thought the latter was more likely, but when magical girls exchanged lines like that, it was usually the former.
After all, it wasn't uncommon to see women in their prime smiling at each other while fighting with words.
"Then, since Miss Mia will be busy dating, I suppose I'll have to work even harder to support Miss Alice."
"What?! That's the joy of my life!"
"Didn't you say you were happy? Ask your boyfriend to take care of that."
"Fangirling and dating are separate things! I'm sorry! It's my first relationship, so I just wanted to brag about it!"
"Well, I understand. Apparently, people release different hormones when they're in a relationship. Hmm... In any case, questions about dating. Everyone around me is also too busy working to have any connection to romance..."
I deliberately avoided looking in their direction, pretending to read through the script while drinking my chocolate milk, but for some reason, I could feel their gazes.
Alice's senses were so sharp that this alone was enough for me to know both of them were looking at me, but...
'Don't react. Don't react. Don't react. Don't react.'
-Sip
I pretended to calmly scan the script, as though I hadn't noticed anything.
If I reacted here, a barrage of questions would rain down on me, and I had no confidence that I could brush them off gracefully.
All I could do was let it slide by acting in character as Alice.
"...You don't think I have anyone, right?"
"I suppose not."
"...What if I do?"
"There's no way you do. No, you mustn't."
"Of course not. Whoever it is, anyone monopolizing my senior will have to pay the price..."
'I can hear every word, you know.'
By the way, when did Sapphire get influenced by Mia?
When I first met her, she had been an intellectual character who was professional, never crossed the line, and simply did her job properly, but after spending so much time with Mia, she had become Alice's second fan.
It wasn't as though she were one of those fans who went wild whenever an idol started dating.
"Still, just in case, shall we ask...?"
"Hmm... As a manager, managing scandals is important, too..."
'How long have they even known each other, and she's already worried about scandals?!'
Just as I was feeling threatened in real time, a helping hand descended from an unexpected direction.
"Oh? Are you talking about romance? Then it would be a shame if I left myself out again."
"...Producer? Have you ever dated?"
"Pardon? I'm married."
"You're married?!"
"You were married?!"
"...If you two are both that shocked, even I feel a little hurt, you know? My husband was the reason I retired as a magical girl, too."
"You did?!"
"Ah, I think I've heard that. Right, you were."
"Was I the only one who didn't know?!"
...Even I was a little surprised.
Who'd have thought that woman was already married?
'Come to think of it, what happens if a magical girl gets pregnant?'
[Um... According to the mascots' rules, the moment she becomes pregnant... More precisely, if she engages in that act when pregnancy is possible, the contract is terminated on the spot.]
'What if the magical girl doesn't realize it?'
[Even if the magical girl doesn't know, the mascot will. And this is an absolute command engraved into our bodies from the moment we were designed, so it activates unconditionally, regardless of how good the relationship between the mascot and magical girl was.]
'Is it to prevent a magical girl's power from being passed on to her child?'
[I'm only a low-ranking mascot, after all. Her Majesty, who designed us, must have had some reason. The magical girl's mana could have harmful effects on a fetus, too, you know?]
'I see...'
In my position, already deceiving the mascots as the fake Alice, digging into the mascots' secrets was a dangerous proposition.
If I carelessly pried into their information and stirred up a hornet's nest, leading to something like a search and seizure, Tokkaengi and I would both be finished.
I couldn't forget that.
These creatures had pitiful, doll-like appearances, but above them was some transcendent being that sent mascots like these to the dozens or hundreds of dimensions invaded by the Abyss to oppose it.
Since I was already violating a taboo imposed by that transcendent being, it would be wiser for me to quietly keep my head down and somehow find a way to retire.
Even if an official retirement written into the contract was impossible... there was one method I could try.
I'd kept this life going somehow until now in order to seize that opportunity.
It was still unclear when I would get the chance.
"So... You have to pace the progress of a relationship carefully. You need to look at your own personality and your partner's, and use appropriate physical affection at the appropriate time. If physical affection gets too far ahead when your hearts aren't that close yet, or if your hearts grow close but physical affection doesn't keep up, those things can pile up and eventually become grounds for a breakup, you know?"
"Ooh..."
"Hmm! It's getting close to filming time! Shall we start another sparkling lesson today, everyone?"
"Oh, it's already that late... Miss Mia, if you have any questions, contact me separately later, okay?"
"Yes...!"
I cut off the producer, who was imparting useless knowledge to Mia, at an appropriate moment... No, wait, why was Sapphire even holding a notebook?
Anyway, even though it was fake dating, I calculated that things would become troublesome if Mia learned strange knowledge, so I ended the conversation with a suitable excuse.
It was selfish, but Mia staying pure made things easier for me.
If she became jaded by the world, changed her personality, and started making strange demands, my position would become extremely difficult.
"Miss Sapphire, do you think the students did their homework?"
"I think everyone did. I did mine, too."
"...You did too, Miss Sapphire?"
"I did mine, too!"
"...Heheh. With the assistants so motivated, the lesson should be even more fun. Then let's show everyone some wonderful scenes again today!"
"Yaaay!"
* * *
"All right, then today's lesson ends here! Everyone, keep honing your own magic just as I taught you today!"
""""Yes!!!!""""
[Stellar Shift]
-Flash!
'Whew, another day barely over.'
I knew my juniors' magic wasn't particularly impressive, but it was a little worse than I'd imagined.
From the very beginning, I had grown in a manner completely different from ordinary magical girls.
A magical girl normally grows by making a contract with a mascot, adapting that power to herself, and creating new magic, but when I first made my contract, I inherited Alice's power and the spells Alice had used, so I never had the chance to learn magic from the beginning like everyone else.
If you only heard it described, you might say it was a good thing to start out as an S-rank magical girl, but... During my lessons, I often compared magic to mathematics, because the way magic was calculated and used, accumulating knowledge and gradually growing into higher-level magic, resembled mathematics, so I tended to describe it that way.
In that sense, what I went through could be compared to handing an engineering calculator and college-level mathematics to a student who had only just begun learning arithmetic.
Only Tokkaengi and I knew how much I had racked my brain researching magic from the time I first made my contract until I revealed 'Alice' to the world again.
It had only been two years since magical girls first appeared publicly, so magic lecture videos for magical girls like the ones available today were hard to find. And even when I did find them, they were mostly beginners rambling despite not understanding things themselves, along with scraps organized by the few magical girls who were in better shape. I pieced those together with what I knew about 'Alice,' what Tokkaengi and Alice had seen while working together, and so on. After that tearful process, my magical system was built by taking apart and analyzing every spell Alice had used, from A to Z, and growing from there.
Since I couldn't let anyone discover that 'Alice' had disappeared from the world, abandoning Alice's existing magic was never an option. I had to analyze it somehow and make it my own.
Well, as a result, I ended up with the fairly respectable record of being fourth among the S-ranks, but I was still far behind the real Alice's magnificence.
Among the techniques that could be called Alice's ultimate spells, there were still several I couldn't use at all, or could only barely force out by being prepared to drain my mana and mental strength completely.
On the other hand, it was at least some consolation that there were also spells I had created myself rather than inherited from Alice.
That girl had been doing astonishing things as casually as breathing since long ago, so it wasn't surprising.
"Waaaaah..."
"What's wrong, Producer?"
"I knew you had excellent knowledge of magic... but this is really beyond my imagination. If I hadn't retired, I think I'd be sitting there listening with shining eyes, too."
"Heheh. Alice is perfect, after all. This much is easy."
-Creak!
"...Wow."
"......"
Mia and Sapphire followed soon after, both wearing somewhat dazed expressions, as though they had a lot to think about regarding today's lesson.
I could understand Mia, but I had thought Sapphire would already know everything there was to know about magic at her rank. Apparently, she still had something to learn.
Still, no matter how hard I taught...
I was still far behind her.
* * *
[Title: But why can't real magical girls come to Maso-gal when it's a magical girl gallery?]
[Author:ㅇㅇ]
Is there really any need to ban them? If fans and real magical girls were mixed together, they'd answer questions and it would be nice.
ㅇㅇ:Magical girls would reveal that they're magical girls and buddy up with fans, so it can't be helped.
ㄴㅇㅇ:Ah, true.
ㄴㄴㅇㅇ:Also, a few unpopular, small-time magical girls got caught promoting themselves and badmouthing other magical girls, causing chaos in the gallery, so they just decided to ban magical girls.
[Title: But if you're not a current magical girl, isn't there really no reason to keep watching Rookie Magical Class?]
[Author:ㅇㅇ]
Do magical-girl fans really need to go out of their way to watch a magic lecture show?
ㅇㅇ:Alice is cute.
ㅇㅇ:Alice is pretty.
ㅇㅇ:Alice is one thing, but there are so many magical girls themselves that it's fun to watch. There hadn't been a program before this that put dozens of magical girls on one screen.
ㄴㅇㅇ:That's true.