Chapter 24
Shortly after New Year's, Blue Witch heard the infection-prevention order issued throughout Tokyo by the Future-Seer Mage, but initially did not take it very seriously.
It was said that the Future-Seer Mage had foreseen an increase in people feeling ill a month later, but similar things had happened several times before.
When a major typhoon was predicted, people reinforced roofs and windows and kept the damage to a minimum.
When drought was predicted, they were able to store water in advance.
When an influenza outbreak was predicted, they avoided a pandemic by locking down its epicenter.
Of course, there had also been many tragedies the Future-Seer Mage had been unable to avert.
They had missed the giant monster, and Iruma's coup as well (though Iruma's cunning was a major factor there). They had been unable to prevent the Hell Witch's rampage or the destruction of Katsushika's massive farm.
But whenever a future had been foreseen, tragedy had always been prevented.
No matter how terrible the tragedy, preparing a month in advance could greatly mitigate the damage even if it could not prevent it entirely.
Thus, she had optimistically assumed that if an infectious disease outbreak could be predicted a month in advance, the outbreak when the time came would remain on a very small scale.
However, a month later, when Blue Witch visited Magic University to deliver Dairi's letter to Ohinata, she was shocked to find that four of its five departments had suspended classes.
"A lot of students and professors are complaining that they feel unwell..."
Ohinata, who greeted Blue Witch in the president's office, was clearly not well either.
She looked pale, and the fur on her ears and tail had lost its luster.
Blue Witch's heart clenched tight.
"Don't tell me you're sick too, Kei-chan? You should be lying down..."
"No. I have work analyzing the infected. This university has a particularly high proportion of people reporting symptoms, even compared with the rest of Tokyo. But some people are fine. I need to find out what is causing the difference... If this university is Ground Zero... But even so, some things don't add up..."
Saying that, Ohinata tried to continue organizing the data in the documents, but there was no strength in her voice or hands, and the letters traced by her fountain pen were shaky.
"You can't. Take a rest, okay?"
Blue Witch forcibly took away her fountain pen, pushed the documents aside, and, without giving her a chance to object, picked Ohinata up and laid her on the sofa.
Ohinata fussed a little and reached for the unfinished work, but once she was lying on the soft sofa with a blanket over her, even her will to get up seemed to fail her.
Blue Witch took Ohinata's small hand, gently stroked her cheek, and spoke softly.
"Have you seen a doctor? Should I go get one?"
"That doctor is sick too. Have you seen what the city is like? Half the citizens are ill. Not just Bunkyo Ward. These symptoms may be spreading throughout Tokyo—or even all of Japan..."
The sight of Ohinata speaking weakly with her eyes closed sent a chill through Blue Witch.
Blue Witch put a hand to Ohinata's forehead, but Ohinata had no fever. Nor was she sweating.
And yet she was utterly limp.
She was so weak that it seemed she might die at any moment.
"That's why I have to investigate. I have to find the cause of the disease..."
Mid-sentence, the strength went out of Ohinata's hand.
Blue Witch hurriedly called her name and checked her pulse, but could feel her heart beating. Hearing her breathing, she realized that Ohinata had merely fallen asleep and wiped away a cold sweat.
Yes—if she was that limp, sleeping to regain her strength must surely be the best thing.
She could not wake her, but neither could she leave her sleeping on the sofa indefinitely.
After hesitating, Blue Witch picked up Ohinata, sofa and all, and headed for the campus infirmary.
Every bed in the infirmary was occupied.
Students as pale and limp as Ohinata filled every bed, and some were even sitting collapsed on the floor.
Blue Witch grimaced, collected only clean sheets and blankets, made a makeshift bed in an empty classroom, and carried Ohinata there to lie down. She also remembered to write in large red permanent marker at the classroom entrance: "Medical personnel wanted. All other intruders will be killed. Blue Witch"
If this was an infectious disease, there would be no point in isolating her now. But there was surely no reason to let her come into contact with other infected people.
Blue Witch nursed Ohinata without leaving her side until the sun went down, the moon rose and set, and morning arrived.
During Ohinata's repeated bouts of shallow sleep and hazy wakefulness, Blue Witch gave her water and fed her bread softened with water. When she was hot, Blue Witch removed the blanket; when she was cold, she tucked it back around her. She even helped her use the toilet.
When Ohinata, delirious and reaching for something, murmured "Dad," it broke Blue Witch's heart.
She could not become this clever, adorable girl's father, but she could be like an older sister—and she wanted to believe she already was.
As the night ended, Blue Witch let out a long, deep breath while watching the rising sun, rolled her shoulders, and rubbed the eyes beneath her mask.
Her body felt unusually heavy. She wondered if it was exhaustion from nursing Ohinata, but a few seconds later she remembered that she was a witch.
There was no way one night's nursing could leave her this exhausted.
Blue Witch was aghast.
She was infected too!
Since becoming a witch, she had known no illness. Her body should have been sturdy enough for even a minor cut to heal completely within a day.
As she stared at her own hands in disbelief, she heard a knock on the door of the classroom she had made into Ohinata's private sickroom.
"Excuse me—oh? What's this... Oh, Blue Witch?! S-sorry!"
The person who knocked had apparently noticed the scrawled message at the entrance just before opening the door. Footsteps hurried away.
But as the visitor fled, they pushed a sheet of paper through the crack in the door.
Blue Witch pulled the paper out through the gap and read it.
The still-damp letterpress print recorded vital information.
'The disease currently spreading becomes fulminant if the patient has ever experienced fainting due to mana depletion, causing the mortality rate to soar to 100%. Those with low mana reserves are especially urged to refrain from using magic. Ensure that this information is thoroughly disseminated. —Bunkyo Ward Medical Team'
Blue Witch crushed the paper in her fist.
The warning had come far too late.
Thanks to the widespread use of Harvest Magic and Fire Magic, more than half of Tokyo's residents had undoubtedly experienced fainting from mana depletion.
At Magic University in particular, 99 percent of the students had experienced fainting from mana depletion, since the entrance examination included a test of mana reserves.
Naturally, Ohinata, at the forefront of magical linguistics, had fainted from mana depletion many times.
Blue Witch, too, had once fainted from mana depletion while defeating the giant monster.
Blue Witch had begun tumbling down the slope toward death.
While she still had enough strength to move, Blue Witch returned to her home in Ome.
Blue Witch had killed a great many people. Sometimes it had been revenge, sometimes self-defense, and sometimes collateral damage in order to save more lives. She had always had reasons of her own, but killing was killing. The grudges she had incurred were beyond counting.
More than anything, she feared that people seeking revenge on her—a threat she had never even needed to consider because of her strength—would drag those dear to her into it.
On the way home, the dead-looking streets could not help but remind Blue Witch of the earliest days of the disaster.
The doors of the houses were firmly shut, and few people walked the streets. Even when someone lay motionless by the roadside, no one had the energy to spare to care.
Only a few days earlier, the city had been full of lively clamor. Now it was as silent as though its fire had gone out.
Blue Witch grew gloomy when she saw that the soil in a flower bed outside one house had completely dried out and the flowers had withered.
The witches' gathering had spectacularly brought flowers of revival to bloom across Tokyo, but their beauty had lasted only a brief moment. They were the sort of flowers that withered almost immediately.
Upon reaching home, Blue Witch went to sleep in an attempt to conserve what little strength she had.
And when she woke, a mushroom had grown from her head.
"...What is this?"
Seeing the mushroom growing atop her head in the washbasin mirror, Blue Witch experienced a flashback of an unpleasant memory—the familiar color and shape were unmistakable.
Its cap was a lurid mottled purple and red, while the stalk bore grotesque wrinkles resembling a human face.
The sizes differed—human-sized versus palm-sized—but it looked exactly like the mushroom monster that Iruma's mage had controlled with Puppet Magic.
When she defeated the mushroom monster, its corpse exploded.
It had burst apart into fine dust.
The blast itself had been weak, but nearly everyone from the witches' gathering who had been present at the battle had been coated in the powder it scattered.
She had paid it no mind at the time, but perhaps that powder had not been ordinary powder—it might have been mushroom spores.
If the witches had been infected then, becoming unwitting carriers and spreading the fungus throughout Tokyo, the devastation now made perfect sense.
Blue Witch placed scissors at the base of the mushroom atop her head and, watching the mirror, carefully cut it away together with the base of its stem.
It was clearly a foreign object. She had decided that something like this had no business growing out of her head.
However, that decision was a disastrous mistake.
The instant she cut the mushroom away, mana was rapidly sucked from her entire body until she felt dizzy, and within seconds an identical mushroom had sprouted in the exact same spot atop her head.
Not only had Blue Witch exhausted a huge amount of mana, but her condition had also deteriorated rapidly.
It was no longer a matter of merely feeling sluggish. It took willpower just to remain standing.
Cursing her own carelessness, Blue Witch dragged her increasingly heavy body along, slapped her cheek to clear her fogging mind, staggered into the study, and searched through the books on her shelves.
She found a mushroom encyclopedia bought for her as a child, which she had ultimately read less than half of, and turned the pages as though clinging to it.
Of course, it could not possibly contain anything about that mushroom monster, but she wanted even the slightest clue.
If cutting it was forbidden, should she burn it? Would burning it make things even worse? What about freezing it? That might worsen the situation too...
Even after searching it, the mushroom encyclopedia naturally contained no remedy for mushroom disease.
But it yielded the worst possible information.
Some kinds of mushrooms, it said, spread mycelium through their growing medium before producing mushrooms above ground.
Even when a giant mushroom seemed to spring from a rotten log in just a few days, it had actually spent the several months before that spreading its roots throughout the inside of the log.
It first spread its roots throughout the entire log over those months, preparing itself, and then, when the time was ripe, sent mushrooms bursting forth all at once and grew.
From this information and the sensation of mana being sucked out of her whole body when the severed mushroom rapidly regenerated, Blue Witch realized that her body had already been thoroughly invaded by the mushroom monster's mycelium.
The mushroom atop her head was only the visible tip of the iceberg.
The mycelium that had spread throughout her body was the true culprit.
If that was the case, there was nothing she could do.
There was no way to excise it; burning it all away would mean reducing her entire body to charcoal.
Blue Witch used Freezing Magic to cool herself and lower her body temperature, hoping to slow the mushroom's growth even a little, but perhaps because the disease had progressed, she could not control her mana well enough to activate the spell.
Even when she chanted the spell, it felt as if the mana that should have taken shape from the incantation was being hijacked and sucked away by the mushroom.
Already suffering terribly and now unable to use magic as well, Blue Witch despaired.
So she had no choice but to die?
The mushroom would drain away her mana and stamina until she died as a breeding ground.
Whether intentionally or by accident, Blue Witch cursed Iruma's mage for leaving behind the worst sort of time bomb. She could kill the bastard any number of times and it still would not be enough.
Suddenly, she remembered that she had to tell Dairi about mushroom disease. Living deep in the mountains, Dairi probably knew nothing about it.
Blue Witch was Dairi's source of information. If she said nothing, Dairi would know nothing.
She did not know whether Dairi had ever fainted from mana depletion, but if Dairi had not, a warning was needed to prevent the disease from becoming fulminant――――to keep the mortality rate from shooting to 100%.
Her mind had grown so sluggish that she could no longer even notice something so obvious.
Yet when she tried to send a warning through her eyeball familiar, she could no longer make a sound. Only a hoarse breath escaped; it would not become a voice.
Blue Witch was not afraid of her own death.
That fear was long behind her.
She was simply afraid of being unable to protect those dear to her. Afraid of losing even one of those lives.
There was nothing more she could do for Ohinata. In her current state, it would be dozens of times better to leave Ohinata to the Bunkyo Ward medical team than for Blue Witch to interfere.
But she had to take care of Dairi herself.
If she could not use Eyeball Familiar Communication, she would walk all the way to Okutama.
Blue Witch crawled out of bed and dragged herself down the stairs from the second floor, almost sliding down them to the first.
She was moving by sheer willpower, not physical strength.
After taking nearly an hour to crawl a distance of less than ten meters, Blue Witch noticed a letter lying beneath the front door.
A letter... When could it have been delivered?
Come to think of it, she vaguely remembered hearing the doorbell ring a while ago.
Even Blue Witch's hearing had grown weak.
She blinked repeatedly through her blurred eyes and checked the name of the sender on the letter.
The sender was "Future-Seer Mage."
Why send a letter all the way here instead of sending an eyeball familiar? What on earth was the Future-Seer Mage thinking?
Her vague question was answered by a vague realization.
The Future-Seer Mage, too, had been infected by the mushroom and could no longer use magic.
With symptoms this advanced, the Future-Seer Mage could not come here in person.
There was no choice but to rely on a letter.
What had the Future-Seer Mage seen?
What was the Future-Seer Mage trying to tell Blue Witch?
Blue Witch had yet to let down her guard around the Future-Seer Mage.
Iruma had seemed sincere and capable, just like the Future-Seer Mage. Everyone had trusted Iruma.
But Iruma had been planning an outrageous coup.
She wanted to trust the Future-Seer Mage, but could not bring herself to trust the Future-Seer Mage completely...
Because her mind had grown sluggish, that lingering reservation had disappeared.
Thinking had become difficult.
If the Future-Seer Mage was showing her hope, Blue Witch had no choice but to cling to it.
Blue Witch opened the letter from the Future-Seer Mage and tried to read it.
But she no longer had the strength even to open the letter.
Again and again and again, she tried and failed to open the letter, which was sealed only with glue.
Tears spilled helplessly.
Hope was in her hand, yet there was nothing she could do.
Despair had infected her entire body, leaving her unable to see any light.
She lost her sense of time and did not know how long had passed.
Suddenly, Blue Witch felt the letter being taken from her hand.
"Huh? What are you doing? What's this letter?"
Dairi's carefree voice, utterly devoid of any sense of danger despite this unprecedented biohazard, somehow felt incredibly reassuring now.
Wrapped in that relief, Blue Witch released the tenuous hold she had maintained on consciousness and slipped into a coma.