“You’ve got to be kidding me—the magical girl…
is some over-the-hill plain-Jane?”
The Thorn Monster’s face filled with disbelief.
—No, one moment’s thought made clear this was flatly impossible.
A so-called magical girl was a warrior only a pure, flawless maiden could Transform into, the very embodiment of beauty and personality.
Only beautiful, pure maidens were chosen by the spirits—this was common knowledge even it, a monster, knew.
And yet this utterly unremarkable, over-the-hill woman in glasses, whom it had barely even noticed a moment ago, had turned out to be such a powerful magical girl?
There could be only one answer:
This magical girl had used magic to disguise herself as her earlier appearance.
But…
why?
Who on earth would have nothing better to do than turn themselves into a nobody woman?
But it had inadvertently stepped on this impossibly terrifying magical girl’s landmine—
“Hm?”
A trace of coldness crept into the woman’s voice within the black mist, and in an instant the Thorn Monster sensed danger.
“Who the fuck are you calling an over-the-hill woman?
I’m only twenty-seven!”
“N-no, no…
no one!”
Its survival instinct made the Thorn Monster deny it at once.
“Good…”
The chill in the woman’s words receded a little, though she kept her grip clamped around the monster’s neck—
“I don’t plan on killing you for now.
So cherish this life you’ve managed to scrape together.”
With that, she let go, and the Thorn Monster dropped to the ground, trembling all over.
Though both the magical girl Silver Feather and this mysterious magical girl before it were opponents it could never defeat, it had never felt such terror when facing Silver Feather.
The gap was simply too vast.
It had no room whatsoever to resist.
“Who exactly are you?
You’re clearly a magical girl—so why would you let me go?”
Monsters and magical girls—the two were supposed to be irreconcilable mortal enemies.
Magical girls were the embodiment of love and justice, while monsters were the manifestation of human desire and ugliness.
“You don’t need to know who I am.
As for…
why I’m sparing you?”
She pinched her chin, her posture elegant and haughty.
“It’s simple, really.
I want you to defeat the magical girl Silver Feather and make her give up being a magical girl.”
But the words she spoke sounded nothing like a magical girl—more like a villainous executive from their own organization.
A bold conjecture surfaced in the Thorn Monster’s mind.
Legend told of a group of magical girls who had turned away from love and justice, bewitched by darkness.
They had forsaken the light and chosen the power of Black Magic.
From then on, these magical girls no longer enjoyed the favor of the light, becoming fallen Black Mages.
Could the magical girl before it be a user of Black Magic?
“I was planning to do exactly that anyway.
As long as I keep absorbing humanity’s negative emotions, I’ll fully master the power of a Mature Form monster!”
A monster’s growth was divided into three stages.
Sprout Form, Mature Form, Complete Form.
And above even those was the executive rank of their Black Death Cult—the Apostles.
Sprout Forms were all ordinary cannon fodder; only a scant few monsters could become Mature Forms, gaining power capable of contending with magical girls.
The Thorn Monster was currently at Mature Form.
“Mature Form?
Is that all?”
But this witch seemed rather dissatisfied—
“Oh well.
I’ll invest a little in you.
I hope you’ll cause more trouble for that problem student of mine—ideally, make her give up that boring fantasy of saving the world.”
The Thorn Monster was quite bewildered at first, until it saw the witch extend her hand, palm facing up.
And upon that palm, wreathed in black mist, a strange dark-green crystal hovered.
As a monster, the Thorn Monster was instantly drawn to the thing.
It couldn’t help but lean closer, even losing its earlier wariness, its inhuman eyes now holding nothing but the presence of that crystal.
…
Kaedehara City was not a peaceful place.
Rumor had it that this was the base of some evil organization that ceaselessly manufactured monsters, threatening the city’s public safety.
Fortunately, thanks to the presence of magical girls, the monsters had never caused a single casualty, and the city had instead become an internet-famous hotspot because of it.
Many out-of-town tourists came here specifically to enjoy the magical girl entertainment culture, and the lucky ones could even witness a magical girl save the city with their own eyes.
However, none of this had anything to do with Haibara, an utterly unremarkable high school teacher.
—As if.
At this moment, she stood before the washbasin, rinsing her face with clear water.
Her already rather pale face looked slightly sickly after the cold water, droplets sliding down from her forehead, gathering at the tip of her nose, dripping down bit by bit.
Haibara, twenty-seven years old, a female high school Japanese teacher, normally had an extremely faint presence—hardly anyone even knew her full name.
She was the sort of gloomy nobody woman you could find on any street corner in this city.
She wasn’t particularly bright, came from an average family, and her looks really couldn’t be called outstanding.
From childhood on, she’d always been a passerby unnoticed in some corner.
In university she’d had a relationship that lasted less than a week, after which she discovered she actually liked women.
But later, in her third year, she went after an upperclasswoman, only to find that the senior had already been won over by some tall, rich, and handsome guy.
At that moment, Haibara fully realized that she was nothing more than an ordinary nobody.
As a child, she’d fantasized about being some kind of magical girl too—but surely no magical girl was ever this gloomy and ordinary.
She had no magic, no superpowers.
Just as she was thinking this, her listless eyes turned toward the mirror.
The mirror was veiled in a haze of water vapor, so the image was somewhat blurred.
But it was plain to see that what the mirror reflected was not the face of an ordinary woman.
It was the pale, cool face of a woman.
Even shrouded in vapor, one could still make out her sculpturally elegant beauty, that cold and graceful profile.
Her long, silver-gray curls spilled down carelessly, falling upon her fair shoulders.
But the most captivating thing of all was the deep-purple eyes behind the mist—as if adorned with countless points of starlight, profound and mysterious.
The mirror did not reflect Haibara, but instead the face of a stranger.
Haibara was already used to this.
Unhurriedly, she put on her glasses, then casually reached out and wiped away the vapor on the mirror.
When she opened her eyes again, the figure of the woman from before had vanished, leaving only the face of a gloomy woman in glasses.
Fair’s fair—she did have a slightly unusual side to her.
But only slightly.
On one occasion, she’d had the misfortune of stumbling upon the scene of a monster’s appearance.
Luckily, the monster was quickly struck down by a magical girl, and she wasn’t hurt.
But that careless magical girl left behind something that never should have been left behind.
—A monster’s crystal.
Out of curiosity, or perhaps a reckless disregard for her own life, she reached out and touched that crystal.
The moment she touched the crystal, a flood of memories surged into her mind.
But those memories did not belong to the nobody named Haibara.
They belonged to a magical girl.
The very same mysterious woman she’d just seen in the mirror.
She gained a great deal of magical knowledge, and according to that knowledge, the mysterious woman in the memories was probably several tiers stronger than Silver Feather, the city’s famous magical girl.
She began ceaselessly collecting monster crystals, gaining more and more memories.
Naturally, she also obtained from them the different sort of power she’d long yearned for.
But a chain reaction soon emerged.
Just like when she’d looked in the mirror a moment ago.
Phantoms belonging to that magical girl often appeared around her, as if trying to remind her of something.
As she obtained more and more crystals and received more and more memories, those hallucinations grew more severe.
Now, even looking in the mirror, she saw another person.
Sometimes, Haibara would even mistakenly believe she was that magical girl.
So she gave up.
Faced with the vast memories of another person, Haibara sensed an indescribable danger, so she decided to stop here and touch those abnormal things no longer.
Now she just wanted to be a slacker Neon teacher, teaching Neon’s pretty JKs, and once she’d saved up enough money, confess her feelings to Ms.
Suzuki, the music teacher.
But over the past few years, an endless stream of problem-child students had shattered that fantasy.
They all shared one common trait.
These JKs were, in secret, magical girls saving the world.
They constantly showed up late, left early, and skipped class for all sorts of reasons, and Haibara had no way to refuse them.
Facing her precarious performance record, along with Ms.
Suzuki being relentlessly pushed by her family into matchmaking dates of late, Haibara had arrived at the greatest crisis of her corporate-drone career.
—She had to get these JKs, who spent all day slacking off and thinking of nothing but saving the world, back on the right track.