Chapter 8
"Humming~♩ Mm-hmm~♪"
My name is Kim Sina. I'm twenty years old. After becoming an adult, I spent several months pestering my parents until I finally managed to move out recently, and now I'm an ordinary convenience-store part-timer.
My hobby is collecting magical-girl merchandise. Among them, I especially love Senior Alice.
Ah. You may be wondering why I call her Senior?
Don't be surprised... I'm actually a magical girl too!
I don't do much public activity, so I'm not particularly well-known... but I've been a magical girl for six years.
Anyway. The Senior Alice I truly admire is pretty, cute, lovely, and even incredibly strong.
Despite possessing such perfect qualities, she's a paragon among magical girls, always treating citizens kindly with a smile and never getting angry at them.
The reason I became a magical girl was because I fell in love with Senior Alice after seeing her in action on TV, so what more needs to be said?
The song I'm humming now is from Senior Alice's first album, released about ten years ago. It's called 'Pouring Love into the Starlight.'
Back then, Senior Alice appeared on lots of TV programs, sang songs, released albums, and was very active publicly—and incredibly popular... but after working like that for about two years, her public activities suddenly stopped.
Now, another eight years later... it's true that not many people remember her.
In a world where simply opening XTube and searching "magical girl" brings up hundreds of channels, from popular ones to nonexistent ones, it isn't easy for people to remember Senior Alice, whose public activities have dwindled so much that whether on TV or the internet, you can only occasionally hear a sign of life from her every few months.
It seems she still goes out and defeats Abyss Ones as a magical girl, but since Senior Alice is so strong, she probably defeats them in an instant and goes home.
Usually, successful magical girls spend a long time fighting an Abyss One even for a single deployment, then, after the fight, interact with citizens through interviews, words of encouragement, autograph sessions, handshake events, and so on before returning.
They even do these activities as teams, so you can see anywhere from two or three to as many as five or six of them in one place.
The mascots believe magical girls should form teams and operate together, so many magical girls actually work in teams.
If they form a team in advance and tell their mascot, they can deploy together too.
'Sigh... I want to see Senior Alice...'
I don't even dare hope to see her in person.
I just wish she'd appear on TV more often.
By an incredible coincidence, I got to meet Senior Alice recently, several years after the last time I'd seen her… That day felt so much like a dream that I could barely sleep.
Fans had all sorts of theories about why Senior Alice had cut back her public activities, but the most plausible one currently goes like this.
'She went through puberty late.'
It's actually fairly common among magical girls. Since many magical girls make contracts with mascots in their mid-to-late teens, quite a few keep doing magical-girl activities while putting up with the embarrassment, then eventually decide they can't do it anymore and give it up.
In other words, the accepted theory among fans is that Senior Alice worked hard when she first debuted, but after about two years, she became embarrassed and drastically reduced her activities.
In fact, Senior Alice didn't merely reduce her activities; she even tried to recall as much of the albums and merchandise she'd made back then as possible... so the theory that she'd done it because she was truly embarrassed has gained a lot of support.
...Isn't our senior really cute?
Sometimes, before I go to sleep, I imagine Senior Alice kicking herself under the blankets as she remembers singing and dancing during her early days, and the corners of my mouth always turn up whenever I do.
But! No matter how cute Senior is, I can't just obediently hand back what I worked so hard to obtain.
I can't return the merchandise of my beloved senior that I've carefully collected for ten years without getting anything in return!
If Senior shook hands with me, or hugged me, or—since we're both women, maybe I could be a little greedier—even gave me a kiss on the cheek, wouldn't that be okay? If she did just that much, I think I could die with no regrets, but maybe returning the merchandise would be okay...
-Jingle!
"W-Welcome!"
While my thoughts were running wild for a moment, a customer came in with the sound of the doorbell.
But something about the customer looked familiar...
"...Huh?"
"...Ah."
It was the man who lived next door.
Since the convenience store was right in front of my house, I'd thought I might run into him, but I hadn't expected it to happen so soon.
"Nice to see you! I'll be working here from now on!"
"Uh... yeah..."
...Though I have no idea how long I'll be able to work here.
As a magical girl, I have to deploy immediately whenever an Abyss One appears, even if I'm in the middle of a shift... Obviously, no part-time employer would tolerate that.
That's why I've repeatedly had to find a new part-time job, get fired, find another one, and get fired again.
'Still, there shouldn't be many deployments from evening to early morning...'
It's not that I lack money.
I have magical-girl subsidies too... and between the spending money I occasionally get for helping my parents with their work, I have no real trouble making a living.
It's just that...
'Just try spending all your time going out or holed up at home because you live alone! If you want to live on your own, at least keep a part-time job!'
-Trickle
The condition for my parents to let me live on my own was that I keep working at something, whether a full-time job or a part-time one.
I'd often worked part-time even before becoming an adult... and since I was already a magical girl back then, I often got fired too.
My parents think that's because I'm incompetent at work, so they keep nagging me to learn and trying to make me do one thing or another.
"Oh. Did you come to buy something? As for what's on sale in the buy-two-get-one-free promotion right now... Oh."
I set aside the sad story for the moment and started babbling happily because someone I knew had come in, but then I realized something and stopped.
Come to think of it... he'd said he was uncomfortable around other people.
"T-Take your time choosing."
"...Yeah."
The man went to pick out his items with an awkward expression.
Personally, it was a fascinating experience.
It feels strange to say this myself, but I'm fairly confident about my looks, so I'm not used to being treated like that by someone else. Especially a man.
My height is a little on the short side! But I have a cute face, so it actually suits me! And the part women call their pride, I'm more confident about mine than most tall women are...
-Nudge
"Like this... ten packs of MalXX Red."
"Uh... ten packs?"
"Yes."
"Y-You must really like cigarettes?"
"..."
Truthfully, my neighbor's appearance doesn't really go with cigarettes.
It's not my place to say this, but he's on the shorter side too... and, well... his features are actually rather cute.
He walks around with his eyes narrowed sleepily, dark circles under them, and his hair tousled rather than neatly styled, so he gives off a somewhat prickly impression, but honestly, even if he wore a school uniform, he looks young enough that anyone would take him for a student.
His skin is incredibly pale, and I don't know what kind of skincare he does, but it's spotless without a single blemish; I think he could do well as a celebrity too.
It's a shame someone like that is uncomfortable around other people.
I haven't asked yet, but I suspect he's either my age or at most a year or two older.
-Rustle
"Oh, come to think of it, do you have your ID card? You seem like an adult anyway, but the boss told me I had to check..."
"...Here."
-Slide
I didn't think the man who had been living alone next door before I moved in could possibly be a minor, but you never know, just in case.
Hmm... born in XX year, so... that would make his age now...
"...Twenty-seven?!"
"..."
"Ah, n-no... uh... I... I'm sorry. You're older than I expected..."
"...I hear that a lot. Ring me up."
"Y-Yes, yes... I'll do that right away."
Even as I hurriedly moved my hands and scanned the items at the register, my mind was in turmoil.
'Twenty-seven????? Seriously??????'
Of course, twenty-seven isn't particularly old, and it's perfectly possible for him to look young, but this was still shocking.
Someone who looked like he could quietly pay the youth fare on a bus was in his late twenties.
'I-Is it because I haven't met many people yet...?'
I look young for my age too, but compared to the person standing before me, I had no confidence at all.
He looked enough like a younger brother that my friends would believe me if I introduced him as one, yet he was seven whole years older than me.
'That means he was already an adult when I hadn't even started middle school?!'
From his overall air, I had expected him to be older, but I thought it would only be by a year or two—not that much...
"...I inserted my card. Please process the payment."
"Ah, ah... I'm sorry."
I barely managed to come to my senses and complete the payment, and he left the store with his things without seeming to mind my behavior, which might have come across as rude.
"Goodbye!"
...Come to think of it, I didn't even ask his name.
Still, he's my only neighbor, so shouldn't I at least learn his name...?
'What a fascinating person.'
He has a cute face, but his tired-looking expression makes him a little difficult to approach, and although he says he's uncomfortable around other people, he isn't prickly either.
And on top of that, he's a full seven years older than me... I've never met anyone so memorable in my life.
'By the way, his voice sounds familiar... Does he do some kind of broadcasting?'
He was definitely someone I'd never seen before he moved in, yet for some reason, he feels strangely familiar.
Maybe it's because his voice is so sweet.
A voice that feels truly familiar and warms your heart just from hearing it, even the first time, must be very rare.
...But his voice really is familiar somehow. Where have I heard it?