Chapter 9
'...What a strange woman.'
I should have known from the moment she had collected so much merchandise from a long-defunct magical girl.
Anyway, there are far too many people in this world who look perfectly normal on the outside but are strange on the inside.
The most representative examples were magical girls.
'...Of course, I can't say I'm exempt from that group, either.'
'Should I say it's a hassle having the part-timer change again... or should I say it's fortunate that at least I know this one?'
Every time the part-timer changes, they react like that after seeing my age, but by now it hardly affects me.
I've always been perfectly aware of my own looks.
A magical girl's transformation allows her appearance to be altered within a certain range, based on her original body.
The fact that I've been able to work sufficiently well as a magical girl means that, even accounting for the transformation, my natural looks are good enough to support it.
You know without my having to explain that cross-dressing should be done by someone who's at least somewhat good-looking.
Well, if you think it's unsightly, feel free to think so.
Though I wish you'd give some thought to my position—that this is how I'm making a living with that face.
'...Right. A person has to eat to live.'
-Rattle, rattle...
So, what am I doing right now? Looking for work.
There were two ways for a magical girl to make money.
One was the magical girl activity subsidy. The other was money earned through the magical girl's own activities.
I'll explain the subsidy later, but... to begin with, I don't even receive it, and it isn't enough to live on by itself.
So magical girls mainly make money through the second method.
I've already explained that magical girls work as idols, celebrities, and influencers,
and if you think about how those people generally make their money, it's easy enough to predict how magical girls make theirs, too.
'Tsk. Successful people have managers who take care of all this for them.'
A has-been has to spend their own time on it, as befits a has-been.
-Rattle...
"Winter fashion pictorial... Cut... Regular MC spot on a variety show... Cut... Supporting heroine in a drama... Cut... Joint swimsuit photobook featuring twelve magical girls... What is this? Are they insane?"
They may sound like fairly lucrative offers at first glance, but if you're wondering why I cut them all, it's because each one fails to meet my conditions for its own reasons.
First, fashion-related work. Since I'd have to change into various outfits and be photographed from various angles, the risk of my cross-dressing being discovered in the process would be extremely high.
Next, a regular TV spot. I'd have to show my face on television periodically, and not only would coordinating the schedule with my magical-girl activities be a hassle, it could also greatly increase the attention focused on Alice.
And finally, dramas.
...Do I really need to explain?
I don't think anyone wants to watch a cross-dressed man date some other guy.
As an extra category, movies combine all three of those drawbacks, so they're the kind of work I absolutely have to avoid.
By now, you've probably realized one thing.
<Then doesn't that mean most of the offers you're likely to receive fail to meet your conditions?>
Correct.
In fact, 90% of the offers that come to magical girls fall under those conditions, so most proposals go straight to the trash without even being reviewed.
My conditions for accepting an offer are that the camera not move around much, I not have to move around much either, I appear only briefly and then leave, and it not give anyone an excuse to pair me up with another guy.
At most, I can do things like filming a commercial in Alice's outfit without changing clothes, or appearing on a talk show to chat for about an hour before going home.
The problem is that I've milked even those opportunities so thoroughly that hardly any offers come in anymore.
-Rattle
"Oh."
Just as I was wondering whether I'd have to live off the money I'd saved this month, one particular email caught my eye.
Amazingly, it met almost all the conditions I'd mentioned.
And it was for a program unlike the ones I'd milked so far, too.
* * *
It's nothing new, but people really do love putting things in order.
Height, grades, performance, salary, wealth, and so on—in fact, you could say people rank absolutely anything that can be expressed as a number.
Naturally enough, in a world like that, magical girls had rankings of their own.
Commonly known as the Magical Girl Rankings.
You might wonder what kind of arrogant ranking that is, considering magical girls are the ones being protected unilaterally, but despite appearances, it was a fairly systematic ranking connected to the mascots.
The mascots may seem to care only about each individual magical girl, but they have a society of their own, in a way, and they work to improve magical girls' abilities and guarantee the conditions for deployment so they can repel the Abyss invasion more efficiently.
And perhaps humans felt uneasy about exploiting magical girls without pay, so they worked with the mascots to establish a system that ranked magical girls based on factors such as their abilities, number of deployments, character, and public recognition. They paid magical girls activity subsidies based on those rankings.
Of course, this came with the prerequisite that they had to be able to prove they were that magical girl.
'If I'd had access to that, I wouldn't have been living in this tiny, musty apartment.'
That system only exists because the world has improved so much in the first place.
Back in the day, when the magical-girl system hadn't even been properly established, there were no rankings or subsidies or anything like that.
These days, apparently the juniors even decide on groups in advance—raids, parties, and all—and deploy together. You could say the world has gotten pretty nice.
Back in my day, you had to deploy alone five times a day just to get stronger.
Or you had to accomplish something like solo-raiding an A-rank Abyss One or being named MVP of an S-rank raid at least once before you could say you were truly working as a magical girl.
...Ah. Was that too much of a boomer rant?
Well, what can you do? It is a fact that the juniors these days are pathetically weak.
Even now, I sometimes run into junior magical girls at deployment sites, and when I see ones who panic at the sight of an Abyss One, carelessly expose their own weaknesses, or don't even have a proper way to respond when those weaknesses are exploited, all I can do is sigh.
No matter how much the recent magical-girl mortality rate has fallen, being a magical girl is fundamentally a job where you risk your life fighting monsters.
If you aren't even prepared to protect your own life and the lives of civilians... then instead of transforming and heading out in front of an Abyss One, you should quietly get into a bunker and wait for another magical girl to come support you.
Anyway. You may be wondering how great I must be to talk like this...
Well, you'll find out soon enough.
* * *
"Sob... sob......"
-Swish swish
The current time was around 1 a.m.
On the very first day I started my new part-time job, I was sniffling as I mopped the floor.
"Hic...! So, what I did was...! I snatched that damned Manager Kim's necktie..."
"Sir... That's the fifth time you've told that story tonight..."
"Grrk...! When an adult is talking, you're supposed to listen quietly! Didn't they teach you any manners!"
"I think I've listened for about forty minutes, though..."
The owner had told me that strange customers often came in late at night and in the early morning, but I never imagined I'd get one on my very first day...
Please, let this customer be the worst nuisance I'll ever have to deal with.
If something worse than this exists, I might just lose consciousness on the spot.
"Sir... It's about time you went home... Hmm...? Where do you live? I'll call you a taxi."
"My home... My home is... Huh! This is my home! Who are you trying to kick out?! This is my home, which I bought with my own money!!!"
"Yes. I'll call you a taxi."
Apparently, what this customer needed wasn't a taxi but a police car.
At this point, I'd been patient with him long enough.
Just as I felt a vein rising in my forehead and 112 appeared on the phone I'd pulled from my pocket...
[Mia...! Mia...! An Abyss One has appeared...!]
"...!!!"
The mascot who had contracted with me appeared.
'A-Angel D? Where did it appear? Is it nearby?'
[It's a little far away, so you'll need to close the distance before teleportation can activate... You'll probably have to run for about ten minutes at your pace...]
'Why did it have to happen at a time like this...!'
Deployments always happened when least expected, but I never thought I'd have to do one on my first day of work, much less at one in the morning.
'Are there any other magical girls nearby?'
[There's only one in this area. I've sent a request to that one for now, but I don't know how long it'll take. I don't know how far they can teleport, either...]
I call the function that allows a nearby magical girl to move to the site when an Abyss One appears 'teleportation' for convenience, but not just anyone can use it.
Because its range expands in proportion to a magical girl's capabilities, even I, despite my considerable experience, have to close the distance somewhat after an Abyss One is detected before teleportation activates.
'There are two of us, including me...? What rank is the Abyss One? If it's around C-rank, the two of us should be able to handle it.'
[Fortunately, they're C-rank, but the energy being detected isn't from a single entity. I estimate there are probably around three of them.]
'...I guess I have to go, at least.'
It was common sense that the slower a magical girl's deployment, the greater the loss of life would be.
It was absurd that I had to abandon my post in the middle of my first day at a part-time job, but it still wasn't more important than someone's life.
"Excuse me... Something urgent has come up. Would you please leave now...?"
"I told you!! This is!! My! home..."
"Yes, yes. I understand, so please leave quickly. It's closing time at the convenience store now."
Of course, the convenience store was open 24 hours, but he was drunk enough that he wouldn't understand me properly anyway...
When I started pushing the drunk customer out in earnest, he seemed to brace himself and try to resist, but in no time he began to be shoved toward the exit.
Even without transforming, a magical girl is still a magical girl.
Even if I couldn't exert 100% of the strength I had while transformed, I still possessed enough physical ability to subdue an ordinary person with ease.
-Jingle jingle
"W-What? What kind of strength..."
In the midst of it all, I heard the drunk customer's bewildered voice, as if he'd sobered up for a moment, but I'd already pushed him outside and started locking the door with the key...
[Mia. It's been taken care of.]
'...Huh?'
[The magical girl who deployed ahead of you took care of it. Confirmed the elimination of three C-rank Abyss Ones. I'll withdraw the deployment order.]
'Huh?'
H-How long had it been since they were detected?
Even adding together the time I spent thinking, struggling with the drunk, and locking the door, it hadn't been ten minutes, yet three C-rank Abyss Ones had been eliminated in that time?
'Could an A-rank team have happened to be having a company dinner nearby...?'
It was a processing speed that made no sense unless it was something on that level.
As you just saw, the extermination had already been completed before I had even reached teleportation range.
I could understand it if they were E-rank Abyss Ones, but C-rank requires two or three moderately experienced magical girls working together to defeat. For them to have been cleared out this quickly was truly strange.
'W-Well, I suppose it's better this way...'
With a dubious look on my face, I reopened the door I'd locked and went back inside the store.
I'd been prepared to be scolded by the owner and was planning to go, so... if it was all over before I even had to deploy, that's a relief.
"...Hmm. Guess I should go home. It's already..."
As the customer I'd kindly escorted outside just then also seemed to have sobered up and began staggering home,
the first day of my new part-time job was drawing to a peaceful close.