CHAPTER 8

THE ARRIVAL

Funny Trick (Time remaining: thirteen hours, fifty minutes)

For as long as she could remember, Funny Trick—Kayo Nemura—had lived in the shadow of a monster.

That monster was her childhood friend, Umi Shibahara. The word fit her far better than it did Miss Nozomi Himeno, who had been nicknamed Monster. Umi rampaged and destroyed. There was no resisting her, no turning her away.

The children ranked one another by physical strength. Umi Shibahara’s exceptional physical prowess prohibited open resistance, so any complaints about her were whispered in secret and instead dumped on Kayo. Kids said Kayo was using Umi’s presence to play the badass, that she was a suck-up to the top dog, that she acted all bossy because she had Umi but couldn’t do anything by herself. Of course, people bad-mouthed Umi, too, but more so Kayo.

The reality was nothing like that. Kayo never felt being with Umi had brought her anything good. She would’ve rather not ever hung around her, if possible. She just couldn’t fight Umi. Umi wouldn’t leave her alone. Opposing her meant you’d get yourself beaten up, and Kayo wouldn’t risk that for anything. She didn’t even want to imagine getting punched or kicked by someone with the strength and endurance to break the climbing pole in the playground with a kick or swing around the biggest horizontal bar continuously for five minutes.

If I could get strong, too, at least, maybe things would be different, Kayo had thought, so she begged her parents to let her take a karate class, swearing she would work hard at it.

Kayo’s karate instructor had taught her that physical strength wasn’t enough to make you a strong person; what was important was strength of the heart. Her circumstances being what they were, Kayo had been impressed to the point of tears.

Yes, physical strength alone didn’t make you strong. If she were calm and had a strong heart, she wouldn’t feel so tormented by Umi. Kayo would never survive being around an outlaw like Umi, who lived for violence. The one she should be looking up to was her karate instructor.

Thinking back, he may have been Kayo’s first crush. The man had been over forty years old, and Kayo had still just been in elementary school, but even so, Kayo’s heart had burned with passion. This was someone she could follow, someone different from Umi, someone she wanted to be with.

Umi had pulverized those feelings. Kayo had spurned her one day, saying she was going to the karate dojo after school and wouldn’t be able to hang out, to which Umi had given her a disgruntled look. That very day, Umi went to the karate dojo, beat the crap out of the coach and instructor, and made off with the dojo sign before departing, triumphant. Even a real outlaw didn’t have to do it like that, right? The next day, there was a FOR SALE sign nailed to the dojo door, and Kayo’s despair deepened.

Kayo’s conviction that she just had to get away from Umi strengthened, and she threw herself into her studies. If she were to move on to a public middle school, Umi would follow her around forever until graduation day. But if she could go to a different school, any previous relationships would be rendered inaccessible. Her new life would be constructed based on her new school. Her and Umi’s friendship would naturally weaken before fading away.

Wholeheartedly determined, Kayo poured all her time and attention into her schoolwork. She told only her parents and teachers that she was going to take private-school entrance exams and took care not to run into other students when she went for interviews and practice tests. She also impressed upon her parents and teachers not to tell anyone. Even as she was forced to go on Umi’s “adventures,” she whittled down her sleeping hours to study for entrance exams. She’d always been good at memorization, and with the powerful motivation of wanting to escape from Umi on top of that, the task wasn’t at all a struggle.

After doing everything she could, Kayo confronted the exams. She took the utmost caution with her health, too, fending off illness with good food and vaccinations. There were a number of students from her school at Namiyama Middle School, where the exams were being held, and they were surprised to see Kayo there, since she’d hidden that she would be taking the exams. But more than that, they were surprised to see Umi there. Kayo was shocked, too. Why was she there?

When she ran into her at the exam site, it felt like a bad joke. Nobody was supposed to have told Umi she would be there. So then how did Umi know about Kayo taking the exams, and why was she acting like it was obvious the two of them would take them together?

Kayo shook her head vigorously in an attempt to get a grip on herself.

Umi’s grades were average at best. She’d hardly studied, and even if she’d found out somewhere that Kayo was taking the exams and figured she’d give it a shot, too, there was no way she would get the results she wanted. Namiyama Middle School was one of the top three university-oriented schools in the prefecture. Umi hadn’t gone to cram school, nor had she studied for this exam. She’d spent all her time fooling around, so she was bound to fail, and Kayo alone would pass. In which case, there would be no problem.

In the end, both of them passed. Umi bragged that she’d stayed awake for three days to cram, but had she actually managed to pass just by doing that? Once Kayo started at her new school, she heard rumors that the Shibahara family was one of the biggest landowners in the area and that they’d donated a large sum to the school.

Kayo couldn’t withdraw her entrance now. She felt certain that even if she did, Umi would continue to pursue her anyway. She didn’t know why Umi was so interested in her. It wasn’t as if she enjoyed violence, and she wasn’t particularly bold. Physically, she was extremely average. She couldn’t squeeze an adult’s wrist in one hand until their bones fractured, like Umi could.

No matter how Kayo struggled, she couldn’t escape. So Kayo resigned herself and accepted it.

She couldn’t oppose Umi. Everything went just as Umi wanted it. They even ended up becoming magical girls, something that fundamentally shouldn’t even exist. It happened because Umi wanted it. No matter how Kayo rejected the idea, no matter how she insisted there was no way something like this could be real, nobody would listen to her. When Umi stirred them all up, urging them all to work together and beat the evil mages, everyone followed her. Umi could be dealing with the class rep or a teacher or the fairy who’d given them their power; it didn’t matter to her. She was the neighborhood bully, and no matter what sort of authority or benefactor someone was to her, if she didn’t like them, she would punch them and move on.

Kayo had thought that maybe things would change a little, once she became a magical girl. But they didn’t.

Even among magical girls, Umi’s—Captain Grace’s—strength was a cut above.

First of all, she was fantastically strong. She was clearly much more capable than even other magical girls, and Funny Trick, Kayo’s magical-girl form, was not at all weak. She may have been strongest, after Captain Grace. But as long as Captain Grace was there, she would never be first. And what was more, she swung around that weapon she’d only acquired that very day to her heart’s content and made good use of her magic pirate ship and the equipment in it.

Even as a magical girl, the combat experience and fighting spirit Umi had cultivated through many years of violent incidents were useful to Captain Grace. She always stood in the front line to fight their enemies, facing even that formidable Bunny Ears girl without any timidity at all, ignoring the bleeding of her injury, giving chase when Bunny Ears ran away. Kayo grew even more resigned as she watched her go. There was nothing she could do about that creature. It wasn’t as if getting magical powers would change her fundamental nature. In fact, she got the feeling that those powers had made her nature all the more apparent.

Following this, Captain Grace also fought with the mysterious black sphere and beat it. She took some hits and shed some blood, and her limbs were streaked with it. Without Funny Trick’s support, it would have been close. But though it couldn’t have been anything you could call an easy victory, Grace looked like she was having fun. She didn’t look at all tired as she immediately headed out to the next fight. Seeing this exasperated Funny Trick, as she was sure Grace would never stop moving until she was dead.

Was it because of the amazing endurance magical girls had or their superior powers of recovery? Or was it due to Umi’s own inborn nature? Captain Grace didn’t see her injuries as such, treating her wounds as nothing more than mere scratches as she wandered about in search of even more foes.

Funny Trick couldn’t understand any of it. She couldn’t understand that enemy who spoke in a foreign language. She couldn’t understand it when Umi was attacked by that black corroding stuff, got half her head erased, and then fell. She couldn’t understand why it had all ended up like this.

Still dazed, Funny Trick was tied up and taken somewhere, where an ally of the magical girl who had killed Umi told her, “That pirate’s death brought you joy.”

In less than the time it took to blink, her brain, which had been refusing to work at all, was set ablaze. She was tortured by a fever hot enough to fry her brain as she screamed and denied it.

She hadn’t been glad about it. She hadn’t been there out of joy. She’d been frozen, unable to accept the fact that Umi Shibahara, the girl she’d always wished would go away, was dying so easily before her eyes as she squeezed Umi’s hand in hers.

Umi couldn’t die here. How could that monster die in a place like this?

Kayo screamed and wailed, and the fencer threw a plate at her, so she shut her mouth.

Inside her heart, she was going berserk, while simultaneously, it was all starting to converge on one point. She would absolutely not forgive these magical girls. She would make them pay an appropriate price. They had denigrated the whole of Kayo’s life. In everything, Umi had always been there. So many times, she had felt Umi was an aggravating, bothersome pain in her ass and wished her gone. Umi had taken her into crises and put her in danger but still smiled boldly to say, “That was fun, huh?” Hanging around with Umi made people think of Kayo as nothing more than an errand girl, Umi’s attendant, treated as an accessory, and some would talk dirt about her behind her back, and though Umi silenced those people with violence, and eventually, no more people were reckless enough to say anything bad about her, nobody but Umi would ever hang out with Kayo anymore, either. Every day, she’d thought, if only Umi were gone, maybe she would’ve had lots of friends.

Umi had been an arrogant, tyrannical egotist who figured all she needed was to have a good time. Kayo had hated her and wished she would go away, but somewhere in her heart, she really had admired her.

Funny Trick clenched her teeth, hard. Now Umi was dead, and these people had killed her.

The patchwork magical girl was eating her ham with gusto.

The fencer was speaking with the fortune-teller in a foreign language. Weddin was at the fencer’s side, waiting on her.

It seemed the fortune-teller was trying to rebuke the fencer.

The one making those sizzling oil sounds in the kitchen had to be the guitarist.

Nobody was looking at Funny Trick. Their eyes were not on her but on Bunny Ears, who was similarly tied up on the floor. The fencer and the fortune-teller both approached Bunny Ears with the sort of respect you showed an opponent you had to be careful with. Compared to her, Funny Trick didn’t matter. They figured they could just leave her alone.

Umi had always said, “If they underestimate me, that’s good for me. Morons who play it like they don’t even care are easy to punch right in the face.”

Funny Trick heard herself swallowing her own spit. If they thought she was nothing, that would make the job easier—or it should.

A magical girl’s appearance had some connection to her abilities and nature. There had been no exceptions to this among the various girls Funny Trick had encountered thus far. The rabbit was canny and fast. The fencer and the pirate were good at sword fighting. The lamp genie flew through the air.

So then what could a stage magician do?

Once more, Funny Trick made sure nobody was paying attention to her and then firmly arched her back. She passed her head through the loop of her bound arms, and then, arching like a reversed shrimp, she touched her wrists and ankles behind her, then bent back in the opposite direction to touch her wrists and ankles in front. She twisted her wrists experimentally. The rope was firm and tight, but there was a bit of slack, just enough to create room to move her wrists a little.

She quickly returned to her original position, slumped languidly on the floor. The patchwork girl was engrossed in her meal, the fencer and the fortune-teller were deep in conversation, the guitarist was still out of the room, and Weddin was zoned out. Nobody was looking at Funny Trick.