Chapter 4
-Beep.
"...Um. You didn't forge your ID, did you?"
"...Would I do something like that?"
"Tsk... The ID does look real, but... you're saying you're twenty-seven with this appearance..."
"People often tell me I look young, so just give it back already."
"Yes... Well... That'll be 86,000 won."
After taking a taxi home, I was using the money I'd earned today to buy food at the convenience store in front of my house.
The clerk must have changed in the meantime, because they kept pestering me by asking whether my ID was real,
but what could I do? I really was that age.
-Rustle.
"Have a good day."
"..."
"Damn... Am I wrong? No, but even so, nobody would forge an ID this thoroughly just to buy a pack of cigarettes..."
'...Some people worry about the strangest things.'
Well, I understood. There had to be more than a few idiots who could simply wait until they became adults and smoke then, but instead insisted on smoking somehow and inconveniencing other people's lives.
There was nothing wrong with being cautious.
But I would have preferred it if they didn't turn me into someone so desperate to put life on hard mode voluntarily that I'd commit a serious crime like forging someone else's ID just to smoke a few cigarettes.
Anyway, every moment I have to exchange even a single word with someone in this appearance is stressful.
If cigarettes hadn't forced me into a situation where I had to show my ID, I wouldn't even have lowered my hood.
Of course, I don't like talking to people even in Alice's appearance, so in the end, every moment is stressful, but the stress I get as Alice and the stress I get in this state are different kinds.
The stress of being Alice comes from having to forcibly act out the character people want, while the stress I feel in my real appearance comes purely from finding people unpleasant.
I was heading home again, irritably pulling my hood back up, with a bag containing cigarettes, ramen, and frozen food for a makeshift meal hanging from one hand.
...?
"Uhh... Oh! H-Hello! Are you from Unit 101...? Whoa!"
-Crash!
...What is this?
A woman carrying a pile of moving boxes was taking her belongings into the unit next door.
"Ow, ow... W-Wait a moment! I'm sorry! I'll clear it away right now! Sorry for blocking the way!"
"...Yes, well."
The way she hurriedly gathered up the things she had spilled when she fell, along with her somewhat dazed expression, already gave me a fragmentary idea of what kind of person she was.
'Tsk...'
People like this were usually the sort who took an interest in their surroundings and stuck their noses into other people's business.
She was one of the types I found most uncomfortable.
I didn't even want to make eye contact with someone for no reason while walking down the street, and now she had to be my next-door neighbor.
I could only hope that ignoring her for a while would make her go away, but I had a feeling she was going to be a nuisance for the time being.
P-Please, go inside for now! I have quite a lot of luggage... I'm sorry! I should have moved it during the day, but something suddenly came up, and it took until now..."
"Yes, it's fine."
"I-I'll move it as quickly as possible! Sorry for making so much noise!"
I squeezed through the roughly cleared path and made it to the front door of my home.
Although it was labeled Unit 101, this was a one-story building with no floor above it... a house consisting of only Units 101 and 102.
Ever since the Abyss invasion began, the number of high-rise buildings had steadily declined, and I heard this building had actually lost Floors Two through Four entirely, so they had simply repaired the first floor well enough and kept it running.
The landlady was already an elderly woman with no family left, so rather than running the place for any particular purpose, it seemed more like a hobby.
Well, from my perspective, that made things convenient.
I didn't want the hassle of meeting her to discuss a deposit or monthly rent, so I had simply handed her a lump sum, and she let me use the place comfortably as if it were my own without complaining.
Another advantage of having no real upper floor was that no one complained even if I smoked inside.
Even though times had changed, it was extremely difficult to find a residential building in this country that consisted only of a first floor.
...Anyway, hoping that this new neighbor wasn't nosy or the sort to bother others, I unlocked the door and was about to open it when
"Heave...!"
-Thump!
-Rumble!
"Waaaah!!"
-Plop.
"..."
The things that had fallen as the woman moved the boxes came tumbling down around my feet.
It wasn't enough to make me annoyed on its own, but one of the fallen items was impossible to ignore:
[With Love in the Starlight★ Alice's First Album]
'...Why is this here...'
Because the very traces I had been trying so desperately to erase were right before my eyes.
"I-I'm sorry! Are you all right?! Are you hurt?!"
"...Um."
"Aaaah, I'm sorry! I often make mistakes in places like this...! Is your foot all right?! You didn't get pinned under anything heavy, did you?!"
As I looked over the things that had spilled out, I saw that it wasn't the only one.
There was a figure released in a limited run of one hundred... a photobook that had been published once before being discontinued... and, besides the officially released items, things that looked like unofficial merchandise I'd never seen before...
The things belonging to the magical girl with familiar long white hair and blue eyes were everywhere.
'...I remember retrieving as much of it as possible.'
After coming to my senses, I had been doing everything I could to undo the things Alice of old had done, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop each and every item circulating underground.
At least in the case of music, copyright claims had blocked it so thoroughly that it was barely uploaded online anymore... but how could I stop CDs that were already out there?
I had figured figures and photobooks would still be circulating somewhere in secret... but seeing them directly in front of me inevitably left my thoughts tangled.
How am I supposed to retrieve even this...
"...No, it's fine. Good luck."
-Click.
Enough.
If I were Alice, that would be one thing, but what excuse could I possibly use to retrieve it in this appearance?
In the first place, leaving even the slightest connection between this appearance and Alice would be a risk, so I decided not to worry about it.
-Thump!
-Riiing!
-Jangle!
'...There are still Alice fans?'
I could understand it in the past.
Alice had once been a magical girl famous enough to set the entire country abuzz.
But now... even setting aside how infrequently I was active, I had drastically reduced the number of times I appeared in the media whenever possible,
and in the meantime, I had been buried beneath magical girls who worked harder at their magical-girl activities and aggressively promoted themselves through broadcasts, personal X-tubes, and the like, leaving me treated as a has-been.
When I was mentioned occasionally, the reaction was generally something like, 'Come to think of it, there was a magical girl like that. I wonder how she's doing these days?'
Think about it.
Magical girls who would act cute, sing for you, film vlogs, and hold fan-signing events whenever they were bored were everywhere, all with nothing more than a quick search, whereas I had been active a loooong time ago—years ago—and was now a magical girl whose face hardly appeared anymore. Would people really remember me?
'...A collector? Or a professional dealer?'
For now, I had only seen Alice-related items, but I couldn't rule out the possibility that they were a professional collector of magical-girl merchandise or a dealer who made money selling it.
If anything, that would explain why only Alice's, a has-been's, things remained.
-Click.
-Hiss...
"Phew..."
I didn't know.
Whether they were a fan of a magical girl who had already become a has-been or a dealer who specialized in that sort of thing, my life wasn't spacious enough for me to take an interest in someone else.
"Bunny. You remember that I have two days off guaranteed, right? I'm off until midnight the day after tomorrow, no matter what happens."
[I told you I know. You've had a hard time too, Sejin, so get some rest.]
"..."
-Puff...
My eyes sank heavily.
When would I finally be able to put an end to this damn bullshit?
What kind of life was this, a grown man having to wear ridiculous clothes, say things contrary to his true feelings, and act as the magical girl people wanted?
Really... The more I thought about it, the more absurd this whole thing seemed.
No matter how I thought about it, I wasn't the sort of person suited to being a magical girl.
'...Though the situation had been unavoidable.'
I had never expected that my life would remain held hostage for eight years after that.
...If I'd known then, perhaps I would have made a different choice.
"Kehk. Cough."
So even this nicotine-soaked body had been the result of an unavoidable choice.
I really couldn't endure it with a clear head.
Especially after what had happened before...
-Lurch...
"Ugh..."
The familiar churning inside my brain.
I placed the cigarette I had been smoking in the ashtray and hurriedly took medicine from the pill bottle within reach, washing it down with water.
"Phew... Phewww..."
It would take roughly fifteen minutes for the effects of the medicine to gradually set in.
'It's okay... It's okay... It's all in the past... Nothing like that will ever happen again...'
I buried my face in the table, consciously regulating my breathing as I repeatedly clenched and unclenched my hands.
And about fifteen minutes later.
"Phewww..."
A disgusting sensation was tickling my brain.
The feeling of my nicotine-soaked brain becoming steeped in drugs as well was something I couldn't call pleasant, no matter how many times I experienced it.
It wasn't as if I had wanted to live this way from the beginning.
If it weren't for that fucking woman, by now I would probably have been living an ordinary life: holding down a normal job and making a living, spending my days worn out by work while still enjoying my hobbies, and meeting someone along the way.
But this was what had happened.
Looking back on those days now had no meaning. It only made my stomach churn.
It was around the time the drug forcibly suppressed my senses and the feeling of powerlessness began to take over my body.
-Ding-dong...
"...What now?"
Did someone just ring my doorbell?
There shouldn't have been anyone coming to visit.
...Then it probably wasn't anything important. A religious proselytizer, a peddler, whatever...
-Knock knock!
"H-Hello! I'm the person who moved in next door earlier! Um, about before... I felt so sorry that I brought over some rice cakes! I-If that feels like too much, you don't have to accept them... I-I'm going to leave them in front of the door for now!"
"...Damn it."
Apparently,
my judgment that this new neighbor had an annoying personality had been correct.
...No wonder. She looked like the sort to be a nuisance just from her appearance.