Chapter 66 – Light and Darkness (6)
“Did Rana get imprisoned?”
“It’s not imprisonment, it’s a tax audit and a search warrant… but you can think of it as similar. She’s got a solid mark from the high-ups in the council.”
“So?”
Ren muttered seriously, but the way he was pretending to sound important about a tax audit was just laughable. Seeing Rene move around freely without any hindrance made it clear he didn’t have the strength to stop her directly.
“Of course. Fairies can’t harm other fairies… Uh, anyway, what’s important right now isn’t that!”
“Then what exactly is important?”
“The council is going to impose sanctions. But I know that searching our company won’t mean anything. The president has run the company transparently and cleanly all this time. If there’s someone who doesn’t leave any dust when you shake them, it’s our president.”
“What? So there’s no problem?”
“No. Direct sanctions will come. Right at us!”
Ren slapped his chest in frustration. But it was hard for me to empathize with his anxiety. Direct sanctions? What on earth does that even mean?
“I know what you are. But still, the life you want to enjoy here is as a Magical Girl, not a Demon King, right? It’s not going to be easy to just ignore it. Simply beating everyone up won’t cut it. Plus, don’t you have more things to protect now?”
“If Rana isn’t in any particular danger, then I guess I should just watch for now. Does that mean there’s no need to worry about it right this minute?”
I felt a bit dirty, but for now, just knowing that something was going to be pulled was enough. Plus, I got a guarantee that unless Rana fires up, they can’t figure out my identity.
As much as I wanted to lead a legion from the Demon Realm and stomp down on those cocky fairies, I didn’t want to lose my current form by opposing Yggdrasil, the party I was dealing with. So the only remaining solution was to just keep an eye on whatever antics they were planning.
If I could grab some justification to present to Yggdrasil first, I could respond accordingly.
“Just when I was busy too.”
I placed Ren on my head and returned to the classroom. Even though it was exam season, the atmosphere in the class during break was as noisy as usual.
“You’re going to teach me how to study? You?”
“You seem to be doing no studying at all with the exams right around the corner.”
Just as I was about to return to my seat, Park Tae-jun unexpectedly opened his mouth with a surprising comment. It caught me off guard, as I didn’t see that coming at all.
“Why are you so concerned? Did you say anything like that to Kim Soo-han?”
“W-Why is that girl suddenly being brought up here?”
It was a pure question of confusion, but maybe he misunderstood me because he straightened up. I didn’t want to talk anymore about the poor girl who was a victim of Mamute and ended up dropping out due to long-lasting aftereffects, so I shut my mouth.
“If your grades are good, you get lots of benefits, right? These days the teachers don’t look at you favorably… But that can all be offset. Adults think that doing well in studies is the best no matter what they do.”
“That’s not wrong.”
I snorted. After the Mamute incident, even though I had been lying low, he was originally this kind of guy. It’s unexpected for him to bring this up out of nowhere.
“No. I think there’s something else going on behind this.”
[What nonsense is that?]
Ren was the one rambling weirdly like a psychic. I lightly ignored his absurd comments and decided to just go along with what was happening.
Since Kim Soo-jung was playing with her friends, there was no one I could hang out with in school. Better to have a punching bag next to me than just sitting around staring blankly. Park Tae-jun, on hearing my decision, looked pleased and then began to clear his throat.
“You’re smart, so you’ll learn quickly. First at lunch…”
“Hold on. What is that?”
However, our little hangout didn’t last long. In an instant, an intense thumping overtook the scene. Even I, along with the ordinary students, was surprised and looked around at the source of the strong energy wave.
“It’s a monster!”
“We’re not that far from here…!”
Students pulling out their phones started live-streaming what was happening, utilizing the internet to find out what was going on right there.
“No way! A Dimension Gate has opened. It’s a portal connected to Nebaros, overrun by monsters!”
“…It can open naturally, right?”
Soon after, Ren, who was somewhere communicating, provided me some proper information. The opening of a Dimension Gate was actually not surprising news for me.
What irked me, however, was the possibility that this could have been intentionally orchestrated by someone.
“W-Where are you going?!”
“To the bathroom.”
In the end, I bolted from my seat.
“Do you really think the Fairy Council purposely did this? No way. Regardless of how stale and old-fashioned they are, they have some sense of decency!”
“I hope so.”
As I transformed into a Magical Girl and soared through the sky, Ren smacked my head in frustration as he took my words seriously.
Well, right now, it’s just an unfounded speculation.
“It seems Rene’s value is steadily rising.”
Suspended in the air, I chuckled at the sight of a massive rift in space that looked like torn paper.
At that moment, the rift was gradually closing, entangled in shining giant chains. Among all the Magical Girls in this world, only two were capable of engaging with a Dimension Gate. One was here, and the other stood ahead, scattering her blonde hair. Rene herself looked rather flustered as well.
“It’s closing. But we still don’t know how many monsters managed to escape into this world during that brief moment.”
“Dealing with that is the job of the Magical Girls.”
Indeed, my intuition began to sense a growing malice. While it had always been a mass of evil, this one felt like a different breed of malevolence.
Now another poison was released into this already dizzy world. I couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that those who were not hesitant to cultivate malice for results were behind this orchestrated chaos.
*
“Wow… there are so many Magical Girls.”
“Is that blonde girl the one? The Magical Girl Rene who said she would judge the villains. Awesome.”
In the suddenly deserted classroom where Takilas and Lee Jin-ah had left, students chatted excitedly while watching the events livestreamed from various sources.
For the vast majority, the profound justice that Aria and Rene were deliberating and being persuaded about was simply foreign and irrelevant. They were just scared and ecstatic about the one-dimensional appearance and symbols of monsters and Magical Girls.
“Did you succeed?”
“Well, yes, but it’s half-baked.”
Among all this, there were some people who didn’t care at all about the Magical Girls present on the scene. Leaning back in a chair, Park Tae-jun picked up a phone call, smiling in disbelief.
“Half-baked? What’s that about?”
“According to the news, they suddenly left. They said they had to use the restroom, but that was probably a lie. Doesn’t this seem too obvious?”
“…Still, nothing is certain yet.”
While conversing with his superior, Park Tae-jun wore a bitter smile that didn’t match his age. The deeper he tried to control the presence that was far away, even when the other party was hiding their identity, he couldn’t grab hold of them and was being dragged along instead.
“More than that… are you really committed and certain about this?”
“You think I’m still too young to be sure? But I didn’t grow up without knowing anything, or seeing anything normally.”
Park Tae-jun glanced around. The boisterous kids in class, including Kim Soo-jung chatting with her friends, were all around his age.
However, just as René, who was the same age as Aria, had a firm and clear conviction from her more substantial experiences, so did Park Tae-jun.
Even though sometimes he incorporated the darker sides of his family, after meeting Lee Jin-ah and experiencing the Mamute incident, he learned to control it.
“My father always said that investing in people is the most effective. Regardless of whether that’s true, I can assure you, she’s someone I need to hold onto tightly.”
“Understood.”
His superior sighed softly and eventually nodded.
‘He wasn’t the type to be the one being controlled. Maybe it’s because the other party is suspected to be a Magical Girl.’
Soon, putting down the phone that had ended the call, his superior sighed quietly. He hadn’t known Park Tae-jun for only a day or two, so he understood what kind of personality he had.
Of course, after experiencing a harsh incident, he had improved from viewing people as trophies or tools, but based on his observation, the utterly inscrutable girl, Lee Jin-ah, appeared to have no thoughts at all compared to the emotions Park Tae-jun held.
‘Well, experiencing rejection and going through that is how you grow up.’
However, his superior quickly shook his head.
Park Tae-jun had told him not to underestimate him, but to his superior, he still just seemed like a child. On the contrary, it was Lee Jin-ah, with her meaningfully cryptic smirk every time she saw him, that made him feel uneasy.
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