Chapter 66
This batch of letters wasn't anything special.
By the time I'd gotten through about half, there hadn't been any special letters like Aia's, and most were ordinary fan letters similar to yesterday's. I was reading them normally when Sapphire informed me that all the letters from the magical girls who'd participated in the classes had arrived, so I went over and picked them up again.
In this case, I'd told Sapphire in advance to deliver only the letters, without any gifts. Something along the lines of telling them that Alice hadn't taught them because she wanted gifts.
'If I had to say I wanted anything, it was my appearance fee. Emerald already paid me all of that, so I don't need anything else.'
And even if the gifts were things magical girls gave to another magical girl, it was obvious that almost none of them would be useful to me. Even if I accepted them, they'd only take up space and be a nuisance. I wanted no part of having piles of things that were difficult to dispose of.
I couldn't sell them secondhand either. They were gifts, first of all, and there was their sincerity; even aside from that, if I sold them and got caught, Alice would be ruined in an instant.
How much would I even get from selling them? Unless I was truly desperate for money, taking that kind of risk just to make a little would be insane.
...They did look somewhat expensive, though. Maybe they were worth more than a little pocket change? Still, I wasn't interested. It wasn't as if I was short on money right now.
'...Anyway, let's read them quickly. I have to choose tomorrow.'
I had to pick the person who would receive the date ticket. Had I said I'd choose one person who wrote the most moving letter? Since I was human, it would be difficult to objectively consider every letter and select the most moving one. I planned to read through them roughly, narrow them down to a few that seemed well written, and then draw one of those at random. 'Moving' was a subjective emotion to begin with.
[Hello, teacher. I began my activities as a magical girl this February...]
[This is my first time writing a letter, so it may be awkward, but I hope you'll read it kindly...! My name is...]
The letters all followed much the same pattern.
Most of the magical girls taking the classes hadn't been active for long to begin with. The concept was that I was training promising rookies who still lacked experience but showed potential.
How well could such magical girls really write?
They might be juniors in name, but considering the gap between ten years of experience and one or two, we were practically people from different worlds.
'...Well, there are a few who aren't too bad...'
They had done their best to put their feelings into their letters, but there weren't many meaningful enough to move the heart of an old man living in another world beyond that gap in time. They were simply endearing.
Still, about one in every seven or eight had decent writing skills, so I set those aside. Endearing was endearing. Since I'd promised the date ticket to whoever wrote the most moving letter, it was only proper to screen them carefully.
That left five letters as the final candidates.
For the random selection, I used a classic but simple method.
I placed the letters in five sections, stood a pen upright in the center, and let go...
-Tap
"This one."
[Can you really decide it that way...?]
"Luck is a skill, too. The letters were all similar in content, so in the end, it was fine for the luckiest person to get it. In the first place, the world is a place where you have to be lucky to survive."
[When you put it that way, I don't really have anything to say...]
This was a common problem when the subjective emotion of 'being moved' became the criterion for selection. To put it bluntly, if I skimmed the letters, picked any one, and then said, "This was the most moving," no one else could object.
Compared to that, I'd read every letter and selected them before randomly choosing among the ambiguous ones, so I'd shown sufficient sincerity. For all I knew, most raffle events probably worked this way too. Or maybe not.
"So whose is this... Huh."
[Who is it? A magical girl you know?]
"Black Rose... This is a name that sounds familiar."
[Ah. Before this program, there was that show where those rookie magical girls competed against each other. Isn't she the winner? You gave advice while commentating, too.]
"...She's the winner of the previous show? Should I redraw?"
[Why?!]
"When things like that keep happening, people naturally suspect there's some kind of collusion. They might say she's actually Emerald's cousin. Or that she's Alice's secret disciple. Things like that."
[Aren't you looking at the world a little too negatively...?]
"If you wanted a partner who viewed the world positively, you shouldn't have contracted with me. I've always been like this."
[Ugh... Do whatever you want. I don't have the right to interfere with behavior like that anyway.]
-Rustle
I absentmindedly unwrapped one of the chocolates that had arrived as a gift and popped it into my mouth. Since I was the one making the choice, no one would know even if I held the drawing again. Only the bunny and I knew about this, and there was no way either of us would be crazy enough to announce that we'd excluded her from the drawing for that reason.
It wasn't that I was agonizing over it for anyone else's sake. It was simply my personality. Was it really right to exclude a winner who had already been selected according to reasonably fair criteria and draw again for that reason?
The sweet taste, indistinguishable from ordinary chocolate despite its luxurious wrapping, spread across my tongue and supplied my body with sugar.
It seemed my body was naturally being affected by it, since supplying the human body with sugar makes people feel better...
"I'll just leave it as it is. Once you use an excuse to reroll something like this, you'll end up rerolling it endlessly."
[The first time is hard, but the second time isn't, huh? Something like that? You've said that a lot.]
I knew that if I made up an excuse and rerolled because I disliked the result of a draw I'd decided would be final, I'd end up doing it over and over, so I decided to stick with it.
What if people suspected collusion? The result was what it was. She'd won the tournament by fighting well in the first place, and although luck had played a part in the final draw, she'd received it because she'd written a fairly good letter. If people suspected her over that, they were the sort who would have suspected her anyway, so I could simply ignore them.
"Then it's decided. And the time is... already two in the morning. I should sleep. We have filming tomorrow too, and being short on sleep would be a problem."
It had already gotten this late while I reviewed the letters. I hadn't even looked at them that carefully, but several hours had flown by. This was why you shouldn't make promises recklessly.
As I cleaned up, I looked over Black Rose's letter once more. The basic pattern was similar to the other magical girls', but it properly explained how she'd incorporated what she'd learned in class into her own practice, what results it had produced, and how she planned to develop going forward. As a reflection on the class, it was a model answer.
The other magical girls who made the shortlist were similar. Those eliminated before the shortlist either failed to properly describe that process or never rose above the level of a junior magical girl sending Alice a fan letter. I'd told them to write a review of the class, not a fan letter to Alice.
* * *
-Beep-beep! Beep!
"...Ugh. Damn alarm."
[You set it yourself.]
"Even if I set it, I can still hate it."
Alarms were essential for someone whose insomnia occasionally relapsed, even if things had been relatively quiet lately. Unless something special was happening, I was unemployed and had no reason to get up, and it was common for me to live with day and night reversed, but lately I'd often been active as Alice. It couldn't be helped.
"Wash up... eat something... get ready for work. It's the last day of filming today."
[When are you going to announce the date-ticket result?]
"After all the classes are over... That way they'll have something to look forward to. Yaaawn."
My eyelids were heavy and yawns kept escaping after going to bed late, but I had to power through it. If I fell asleep now, I'd miss filming, and after doing so well until now, I couldn't make that mistake on the final day.
After showering, I dried my hair and considered the food left in the refrigerator. There was a hamburger I'd bought an extra one of yesterday, but I didn't particularly like hamburgers for breakfast.
[...You don't like hamburgers, so you're eating toast with a fried egg?]
"They may look similar, but they're completely different."
Then I could finish things off by chewing on a few of the gift cookies, making breakfast complete.
-Flash!
"All right. Then shall we head out for the last day of work?"
Being forced to go out as Alice had been stressful all this time, but at last, freedom was within reach.
'Let's make it through the last day safely, without any scandals.'
After I went to work in high spirits, Sapphire told me:
"Miss Lucy, Miss Haru, and Miss Elpira won't be able to participate today."
"...Why?"
"I heard they got into an altercation with some citizens and accidentally made a thoughtless remark. They told us they intend to refrain from activities such as appearing on broadcasts, apart from basic magical-girl activities, as a form of self-reflection for the time being, so we've decided to let them. I only received the news this morning, so I couldn't tell you in advance. I'm sorry."
"No... It's not something you need to apologize for, Miss Sapphire... Alice is fine."
Outwardly, Alice said she was fine, but inwardly, I was clutching the back of my neck in dismay.
It wasn't me who'd caused a controversy; it was one of my students. At least the students didn't have much broadcast exposure, and it was the last day, so that was fortunate. If something like this had happened in the middle of filming, it would've caused me some trouble too.
"Oh, and the last gifts and letters arrived today, but I haven't sorted them yet because I was preparing for filming. I'll sort them later and deliver them to you."
"You can take your time. Do you know roughly how many arrived?"
"From what I heard... about sixty. That's twice as many as yesterday."
"So much love for Alice, all the way to the last day... Alice is so happy she doesn't know what to do."
...Sigh. Seriously.
Filming was ending today, but the thought of spending the foreseeable future buried beneath a mountain of letters made my head swim.