Chapter 58
[Title: I just got here and have no idea what happened. Give me a summary of the board drama.]
[Author: Anonymous]
I can't read more than three lines.
Anonymous: The mod was a magical girl.
ㄴAnonymous: That's nothing unusual.
ㄴㄴAnonymous: True, but this time they got caught after opening an Alice letter-writing contest. It's something only the magical girls who watched the class live would know.
Anonymous: Just go look for yourself.
Redoshi: 1. As always, the mod was a magical girl. 2. News that Alice would accept letters spread, sending Alice fans into a frenzy. 3. So I'm writing one now.
ㄴAnonymous: Do I get a burger if I write one?
ㄴㄴRedoshi: You think I'd give you one?
[Title: The Scientific Reason Mods Are Magical Girls.jpg]
[Author: Anonymous]
(An image of Magical Girl Aco's smug expression, with “Q.E.D.” written on it)
Do they volunteer without pay? O
Do they fight monsters? O
Are they always prepared for dangers that could appear at any time? O
Do they have powers? O
Ah. I've figured it out.
Anonymous: Gasp.
Anonymous(222.112): Gasp.
Anonymous: What are you talking about? The mods get five million won a month in activity stipends.
ㄴAnonymous: Magical girls get stipends too, so they're definitely real magical girls.
Premier: But that image is fan art from when Aco made a control mistake, got sent back to the starting village, cried, and rage-quit.
ㄴAnonymous: You still like it, right?
[Title: I'm Not a Magical Girl, But I Watched Alice's Broadcast]
[Author: Bunny Lover]
Even though I'm not a magical girl and couldn't understand what was going on, watching the princess teach for two hours in a teacher persona, waving her arms around, was worth it all by itself.
Anonymous: Anyone catching up on old broadcasts now just to write a letter is a fake fan. If you're an Alice fan, you watched every live broadcast when it came out.
ㄴBunny Lover: For real.
Anonymous: People who say things like that are usually magical girls.
ㄴBunny Lover: There's no way a magical girl would browse a message board.
ㄴㄴAnonymous: Damn, a mod got caught today and was strung up right there.
Jewel Enthusiast: This too must be Lady Emerald's grace.
ㄴBunny Lover: It's the grace of Princess Alice, who accepted the offer to appear.
ㄴㄴJewel Enthusiast: If not for Emerald, this magical girl program wouldn't exist in the first place.
ㄴㄴㄴBunny Lover: (Ugh... I hate to admit it, but that's true... meme)(But I'm still mad! meme)
* * *
[So... apparently we're getting lots of inquiries about where to send letters to Alice even though the broadcast hasn't aired yet.]
[Alice's fans are quick to catch on. Could you keep them there? Alice will pick them up later.]
[Rather than writing physical letters, we could also set up an online submission channel on the viewer message board and collect them there. Other people receive viewer letters through it as well.]
[That sounds good too. Alice is confident she can treasure any letter.]
[Then we'll arrange it that way.]
-Beep
"...Looks like there's a spy among our class students."
[Scary. I didn't expect the news to spread this fast.]
"Well, how many could there really be? Twenty or thirty at most, right? Even if we open an online board, most people will probably just leave a line or two because they have nothing better to do."
Whether they genuinely wanted to or simply felt pressured, most of the students would probably submit one. There might be one or two who didn't, but I expected most of them to do it.
The teacher had openly said she would accept letters, and with most of the other students preparing theirs, it would be hard not to submit one. Especially when you added magical girls' naturally kind personalities into the mix.
-Knock knock!
"Sen... Mr. Sejin! I'm here!"
...Tch. I wasn't going to open the door if she'd called me Senior.
-Creak
"I bought an iced chocolate for you, Senior! Good job, right? I had syrup added too!"
"...I'm only saying this now, but I don't like things that sweet."
"What?!"
"It's not that I hate sweet things altogether... I enjoy them once in a while, but not enough to drink chocolate with syrup added."
"Then what about Alice?!"
"A concept and reality aren't the same thing. And Alice began her activities ten years ago. That's more than enough time for her eating habits to change."
"...That's shocking. I thought Alice really liked sweet things."
-Slurp
Mia said that as she started sipping through her own straw. I suppose she took my refusal to accept it as a sign that she should finish it herself.
"...Ugh. It's sweet."
"Exactly. I don't like it either."
"Then the chocolate milk you drank during filming was something you didn't actually like, but forced yourself to drink to maintain Alice's concept?"
"Now you understand, right? Alice and I are the same person, but ultimately, we're not the same character. Alice is a created character, while I'm a real person. The closer you get to me, the more the image of Alice you knew will crumble."
I'd told her that getting too close would only hurt us both, whether for her sake or mine. This was why.
The illusion of 'Alice' that Mia had built up over the past ten years would shatter the closer she got to me, whose true self and personality were completely different from Alice's.
I hated Alice and was only acting the role because I needed to. My real personality was the exact opposite of hers.
But I couldn't completely replace my own identity with Alice's, either.
In the end, that meant one of the two had to be abandoned.
If she wanted to preserve her illusion of Alice, she had to keep her distance from Han Sejin. If she wanted to grow closer to Han Sejin, she had to be prepared to give up Alice.
Had she understood what I meant?
"...Uuumm..."
Mia's expression began to turn complicated.
I knew she was thinking of me romantically, but giving up Alice—the person she'd spent half her life with at only twenty—couldn't have been easy.
Just as I finally felt relieved that my meaning had gotten through and was about to say something more,
"So you were drinking things like this during filming while holding back because you hated them?"
"...? Well, technically, yes."
"Wow... That's so cute. You were holding back from drinking something else and forcing yourself to drink that awful chocolate milk just to maintain Alice's concept..."
"...I don't hate it. I just hate drinking such a huge amount of it like water."
"That's the same thing anyway. Actually, even during today's class, I kept suppressing the urge to grin because whenever I saw Senior Alice, I kept thinking of Mr. Sejin. I quietly assisted with the class instead."
...Was that really how it worked?
Rather than giving up either Alice or Han Sejin, she thought Han Sejin pretending to be Alice was cute?
"..."
"Huh? Why? You don't believe me? Mr. Sejin, you're really cute. You're so cute that I can't believe your age. Though maybe your age makes the gap moe even stronger..."
"...Stop it. I'm going to report you for sexual harassment."
"I've only said that you're cute so far?!"
"Your expression is lewd. And you've already made attempted indecent requests."
"Those were directed at Senior Alice, not Mr. Sejin... Huh."
-Stare
As she spoke, Mia's gaze began scanning me from head to toe.
"...What?"
"Um... From what I can tell, the difference between Senior Alice and Mr. Sejin's appearances is just your eyes and hairstyle, right? You haven't made any other changes to your body during transformation? Like altering your face or figure?"
"...Not particularly. I tried to keep it as close to the original Alice as possible."
"...Then have you looked like that for ten years?"
"...?"
She was asking all sorts of strange questions.
Had I looked exactly like this for the past ten years...?
"Probably. I can still wear clothes I bought years ago, and I've kept wearing them over and over, so there probably hasn't been any significant change in my body. My face... is still a little different compared to ten years ago, though."
"...How young were you back then?"
"Even if I wanted to show you, I couldn't. I'm not fond of photographs."
I'd deleted every old photograph I had. I burned the physical ones, and checked the data repeatedly before erasing it completely.
There were no photographs left, and no one who had known me back then remained, so the only way to compare me to my younger self was through my own memories.
I didn't particularly want to remember that, so I had no intention of doing it.
"Ah, so that's what I was curious about... If you cosplayed as Senior Alice in your Sejin form without transforming, how close do you think it would look?"
"If you prepared a wig, colored contacts, and Alice's detailed outfit fitted to my measurements, it would probably be about 99%."
"Wow, then..."
"Of course, I have no intention of doing that for you. No matter how much money you offered or how much you begged, there would be no reason for me to inefficiently become Alice without transforming when I could simply transform."
"Eek."
I'd expected that the moment she asked. It was exactly the kind of request Mia would make.
"First of all, things like that are incredibly expensive. Naturally, you'd want to recreate Alice's appearance as perfectly as possible, so you wouldn't be able to compromise on quality. And the price is only one problem. Where would you store something you used once and never wore again? If you include the staff, the volume would be impossible to ignore, and I don't have room for useless things like that. Lastly, I simply don't want to. Please don't try to erase the boundary I've worked so hard to draw between Alice and Han Sejin."
"...You seem to know quite a lot. Have you done it before?"
"You learn things when you overhear them. Anyway, that's enough questions for today. Now go home."
"Ugh... I wanted to see Mr. Sejin shyly pulling down his skirt..."
"...I might actually report you."
If a twenty-seven-year-old man reported a twenty-year-old convenience-store clerk for sexual harassment, the police would probably misunderstand the situation and come after him instead, but still.
In any case, I couldn't really report her. I was supposed to keep an eye on Mia so she couldn't do anything foolish, no matter what. And it would be strange for a magical girl to willingly go to prison.
"Then I'll get going. It's my workday today."
"...You said your family doesn't know that you're a magical girl."
"Yes. So even if I earned money through stipends or other means, I couldn't exactly tell them about it. Imagine a girl who doesn't attend school properly, doesn't seem to have a part-time job, and suddenly brings home hundreds of thousands of won—not just a few tens of thousands. They'd be worried sick. That's why I have no choice but to do this... Ugh... A convenience-store job for the supposedly precious B-rank support-type magical girl..."
...It would certainly be easier if she revealed the truth, but it wasn't an easy choice. Even though the world had changed in many ways to support magical girls as much as possible, it was still normal for them to hide their identities.
The biggest reason was, of course, that they didn't want to make the people around them worry.
"...Have a good shift. But what's with the bag if you're headed to work?"
"This? It's the backpack I used back in school. I've got a notebook and pens inside."
"...Then why are you bringing that?"
"The teacher assigned homework, so I have to do it diligently."
For a moment, I couldn't understand what she meant and just stared blankly. Had this woman started taking some kind of private lesson without my knowing it?
Then, at the point where my thoughts suddenly came to a halt, an ominous idea occurred to me.
'............Wait. No way.'
"Don't worry. I won't write a single thing related to your secret. Just pouring out the feelings I've had for Senior Alice over the past ten years would fill an entire book. I don't have much time. It has to be submitted before the next broadcast starts to count, right? I need to pour in as much as possible while I can."
"No, when the person herself is right in front of you, why write all that in a letter...?"
"You don't understand a fan's heart! When an idol you admire promises to read a letter you've poured your heart into, a fan is bound to burn with passion!"
"...Fine. Do as you like."
Well, it would work out somehow.
There couldn't possibly be anyone else like Mia. I could just set aside a day and read through them once.