Step Forward If You Want to Die! – Part 05

“With this, Master should be all ri—”

Tomonori’s words were cut off. A knife was stuck in the stomach she was always so self-conscious about. She bent forward, gasping sharply in pain.

A hand tore the ring off her right ring finger. The one who pulled the sickening stunt was Takeshi Kurisu, our homeroom teacher.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

That’s when I noticed the mana siphon hanging from his neck. The blue smoke flowing from Eu and Haruna drifted toward him. And in that smoke, I saw ruby light. The ruby-colored mana. Only Haruna’s Magiclad Girl mana was being sucked into the guy.

Gathering the ruby glow, Kurisu let out a sinister chuckle.

The creepy laughter no longer belonged to a middle-aged man. Before our eyes, his body shrank, his clothes changed.

What the fuck is happening?

“I’m finally back! Yay!” she giggled.

Standing there was a little girl in white Gothic Lolita clothes.

That drunkard girl. It made sense now. She wasn’t Mr. Kurisu’s daughter or anything. She was Takeshi Kurisu herself.

“I-I know you!” Haruna exclaimed, then quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. But no headache came. The transfer was complete.

Eu’s face flushed red as she collapsed. I let go of Haruna and caught Eu in my arms. I touched her face. She was burning hot. Just like Haruna that morning, she was wracked with fever.

Even so, Eu’s expression was calm.

“Haruna, do you know who that is?” I asked.

“Of course I do! Are you stupid?”

It felt like ages since I’d heard her loud voice.

“An explanation would be nice.”

“That girl is… Ah, I mean… that person is… hm. Chris, the most powerful Magiclad Girl there is. She’s Big Teach’s teacher!”

Haruna knew her name, huh. She couldn’t even remember Big Teach’s, yet Chris stuck in her mind.

Our homeroom teacher, a.k.a. Mr. Bland, turned out to be a Magiclad Girl. And the most powerful one, no less. It was so sudden, it only felt off.

“Haruna, stop Tomonori’s bleeding. I… need to talk to this one.”

I held Eu in my arms while Haruna rushed to deal with the knife in Tomonori’s stomach.

Chris giggled. “Being unique is awesome! Aikawa,” she called my name out of nowhere.

My voice caught in my throat. I couldn’t even respond. Like static on an old TV, the image of the little girl in white Gothic Lolita attire wavered, and in the blink of an eye she was standing right before Tomonori, who was coughing violently while pressing the wound on her stomach.

“Sorry. I had to do that. I wouldn’t stand a chance against you as Kurisu, you see.”

Just her way of speaking proved she was far from Mr. Bland.

Tomonori was completely baffled. No, everyone was. If an unremarkable middle-aged man suddenly turned into a cute little girl, anyone would be confused.

Our teacher—no, the Magiclad Girl Chris—held out her right hand. Fingers spread wide, her face brimming with confidence, she muttered something at lightning speed. And then, everyone there collapsed.

Everyone except me, Haruna, and Eu. Sera, Saras, Tomonori, Anderson—all of them dropped.

“No way,” Haruna gasped. “A wide-range memory wipe without a Magigear?!”

That explained what had just happened. Chris had erased the memories of everyone except those with the power of a Magiclad Girl.

“Oh wow. A male Magiclad Girl? That’s pretty neat.”

“And what about you? Are you a grown man or a little girl?”

Her body flickered again, and in an instant she stood right in front of me.

“Hehe. This is my true form.”

“We met a few times during the festival. Why were you already in your true form back then?”

“Because whenever I get drunk, I revert to my real body.”

“So that’s why you kept drinking. Would you mind telling me why take on the form of a middle-aged man and pretend to be my class’s teacher?”

“You want to hear my story? It was, hmm, maybe a hundred years ago. I challenged the Queen of Villiers herself for the throne.”

Haruna had mentioned something like that before.

“You mean the coup in Villiers?”

“Yup. You actually studied Villiers history? You always sleep during my class.”

“I don’t know the details.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. Back then, I was confident I could crush the Queen no matter what. But I was utterly beaten. She laid a curse on me, stripped me of my individuality and power, and banished me from the world.”

So she was originally a Magiclad Girl. That explained why she still remembered the animal transformation incident I thought I’d erased. Memory alteration doesn’t work on Magiclad Girls.

“So after that, I waited. Waited for a long time. For a practically immortal Magiclad Girl, living in an aging, weary body ignored by all was nothing short of hell. But even then, I never gave up and kept waiting. I chose this place because I thought I’d meet powerful Magiclad Girls here. This area has really strong Megalo, you see.”

Strong Megalo? Anderson said the reason so many odd ones gathered here was because of Eu.

Since when had Eu been in Tokyo? The King of the Night showed up because of her. Vampire Ninjas swarmed here because they were after her. Weird Magiclad Girls came because the Megalo were strong. And at the root of it all… was Eu’s presence?

I would love to hear what the Megalo… what the Underworld had to say about this.

“So your plan was to steal mana from powerful Magiclad Girls with that mana siphon?”

“Yup, yup. And then, I met Haruna.”

“You were the traitor? You were the Demon Baron?!” Haruna’s cowlick bristled.

“Demon Baron? Me? No, no. Not me.” She stretched her small body like she was warming up for exercise.

So she knew the Demon Baron. If I remembered right, the Demon Baron was Big Teach’s friend, and the mastermind behind the coup.

“Haruna is a very brilliant girl. Out of all the Magiclad Girls I’ve seen, I think she’s the best. She even whipped up a mana siphon like it was nothing.”

Right. Haruna had said she used stuff found in our school to create the mana siphon. But to pull that off, she would have needed a teacher’s help, not a student’s. So the person she was referring to was none other than our homeroom teacher.

“With this mana siphon, I thought I could get back my Magiclad Girl power. But there was one problem.”

“It sucked up unwanted stuff too. Like Eu’s ability.”

“Wooow! You’re sharp, huh?”

“Unfortunately, I’m tuned to pick up weird signals like that.”

“And then I almost gave up again, drowning myself in booze.”

So that was why she kept drinking.

Damn it. If I’d thought of that lazy teacher as a cute little girl struggling through it, I’d have found it adorable. But because she looked like a man going through a midlife crisis, I just thought he was useless, annoying, and needed to work harder. If it had all been the pain of this tiny girl instead, it would have been a whole different story. I’d been played. Every bit of it was adorable as hell!

“That’s when I saw something really interesting by the pool.”

“The pool?”

When Tomonori was attacked by the washbowls?

“Exactly what you’re thinking. I never expected Ariel’s Magiclad Weapon to be inside Yoshida. And then I learned about this ring. It regulates and suppresses mana. With these two items together, I thought I could get my old powers back. I quickly borrowed Haruna’s mana siphon, then waited for a chance to strike Yoshida. And well, here we are.”

She pinched her skirt and twirled around.

“Do you want me to congratulate you or something?” I said. “What exactly is your goal?”

“Revenge, probably. My grudge from a hundred years ago hasn’t faded.”

So she meant to take down Villiers’ queen, the one who cursed her? If her goal was the same as Big Teach’s, maybe I should back her up.

“Will you give Haruna’s mana back?”

“No waaay. If I give it back now, I will turn into a middle-aged man again.”

“What? Screw you! Give me my mana back!”

“You planning to take it by force?” She grinned wide.

Sitting back while letting her have her way ticked me off. But more than that, she’d crossed a line. She’d harmed Tomonori.

If it were just some prank by a cute little girl, maybe I could let it slide. But he did it as a grown man. And I wasn’t lenient enough to overlook a geezer’s stupid behavior.

“Haruna, you called her the most powerful Magiclad Girl there is. But you really mean former most powerful, right?”

“Yeah. Big Teach is the strongest right now.”

“Should we take her down?”

“Go ahead!”

It felt like forever since I’d seen Haruna smile like that.

The moment I turned my face back toward Kurisu—I mean, Chris—my head slammed against the wall. My limbs were torn off, and my heart was crushed.

“Wait a sec! You can’t just do that without saying anything!”

“What do you think is necessary to keep being the strongest?”

Her face brimmed with delight. Not bright or innocent, but twisted with madness.

“I’m not holding back. Sorry. It’s your fault for going against me. So, I’m going to erase your existence.”

“Erase… my existence? You can do that?”

If that were possible, the King of the Night wouldn’t have struggled so much.

“I phrased that badly. I mean, I’m going to throw you into a pitch-black void where time doesn’t even exist.”

Ah, I see. Wait, no. Stop! Not that! I’d lose the will to live in less than a day.

Eu, who’d been staying there blank and silent all this time, prostrated herself. “Forgive him,” she said.

Hearing her voice, I thought, maybe it was fine if we didn’t get Haruna’s mana back.

“Knock yourself out,” Haruna muttered.

Chris trembled from head to toe. “Whoa. Such power in your words. Fine, I’ll let it go this time.” She smiled sweetly, then yanked my head clean off. “But don’t expect a next time, okay?”

Her voice sent a shiver through every pore in my body. I was nothing but a head at this point, but still.

She tossed my head aside like trash and stretched with a yawn. “For now, I guess I need rehab. I’ll just kill the strongest one around here.”

With that casual crime announcement, her body blurred and vanished.

It was obvious that Chris’s revenge was going to spark new chaos. Maybe it would even trigger an incident that could shake the world. But honestly, I couldn’t care less about that.

What I did care about was this: she’d stolen something precious from someone important to me.

If I didn’t retrieve Haruna’s mana, she’d sink back into despair. I never wanted to see her cry again.