Congratulations on Your Magical Girl Duties

15 – Magical Initiation (1)

Some might question.

What kind of racial discrimination exists in Korea?

Especially targeting a Korean person.

But that was the only way to describe it.

“What’s with the blackie?”

Because of the person standing before my eyes.

Long blonde hair reminiscent of dog fur, and blue eyes.

A curvaceous body that couldn’t be hidden even by casual clothes.

Fluent speech, yet with a slight awkwardness to it.

Clearly a foreigner. A beautiful one at that.

“Shut your trap, you white trash.”

It’s not like my words were going to be gentle.

If the other person spoke like a jerk, why should I be nice, beautiful or not? Besides, she said she was a classmate, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Besides, calling it racism felt a little off. There was an inaccuracy to it.

“Why am I a blackie?”

Where do you see me as a blackie?

If anything, I’m a yellow monkey.

“Your hair is all black, your eyes are black.”

“Crazy b*tch.”

In a world teeming with magical girls, it seems they discriminate by hair color, not skin.

A truly textbook dumb blonde, that one.

Magical girls are definitely all insane.

“Just a moment!”

That instant, a high-pitched voice barges headlong into the standoff.

“You’re Kim Si-yul, am I right?”

The voice’s owner was, predictably, a magical girl.

Blue hair and a rather petite frame.

Slyness flickering in her amber, almond-shaped eyes.

Pink eyeshadow that brought a fox to mind.

I glared, wondering what she wanted, and she recoiled slightly, her lips fluttering.

“Oh, right! I almost forgot to introduce myself!”

Undeterred by my sharp gaze, she launched into her introduction.

“I’m the magical girl Blue Fox! You can call me Sora, though!”

“Sora?”

I asked, my face a mask of wary suspicion.

She beamed, echoing my words.

“Yes! I’m Japanese-American! But my name is still Sora (そら), like the Japanese name!”

So much seemed to have changed while I was gone.

As if gathering all the lunatics in Korea wasn’t enough, now they’re rounding up the foreign ones too.

The country’s really going to hell, isn’t it?

Though, it’s not like it wouldn’t have its reasons.

Lost in my troubled thoughts, the magical girl, Sora, addressed me again.

“You said you were 33 years old, right?”

“Yeah. So what?”

My reply was curt, but she didn’t seem to notice.

She simply continued to regard me.

“Hmm.”

Something felt off.

Her eyes seemed to be appraising me.

It was certain. I’d seen enough of it in this world to last a lifetime.

At that moment, Sora glanced at me, a sly smile gracing her lips.

“In that case, I’ll call you ‘Senpai’ from now on.”

“Hey, why that?”

I questioned, taken aback by her sudden declaration of ‘Senpai’.

Sora replied with an air of absolute certainty.

“You’re older than me, aren’t you? So, you’re my Senpai.”

The magical girl’s demeanor suggested she was simply stating the obvious.

I couldn’t bring myself to argue.

No, I didn’t even want to.

Because you just couldn’t reason with people who acted like that.

In the end, I gave up, halfway.

“Call me ‘Old Man’ or ‘Senpai,’ whatever you want.”

“‘Old Man’ is fine too, but ‘Senpai’ is easier to say, don’t you think? And calling you ‘Oppa’ is completely out of the question.”

“Just do what you want.”

“Oh, and when you call me, use my name. Don’t say ‘Hey’ like you did just now. Got it?”

I conceded one thing, and she piled on another demand.

Her magical girl name was Blue Fox, wasn’t it?

She really was a fox, alright.

The way she smiled with narrowed eyes, the way she managed to get everything she wanted even in this situation.

Well, what could I do?

Fighting with a lunatic would only wear me down.

A sane man has to be patient.

Because I’m the hero.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

As soon as I finished speaking, Sora’s smile vanished, replaced by a serious expression as she asked me.

“What do you think of my sister?”

“Huh?”

My one-word question held two meanings.

“What in the world does that even mean?”

And why was she suddenly talking about a sister out of the blue?

Sora, as if sensing both of my questions, immediately linked arms with the racist.

“Oh, I’m talking about my sister, Ray.”

I didn’t want to know, but I unintentionally learned the magical girl’s name.

Ray.

Probably meaning ‘light’.

Honestly, it was a waste of a name on that b*tch.

Meanwhile, the magical girl Ray, suddenly thrown into the conversation, narrowed her eyes at Sora.

“Sora, why did you say my name?”

“What’s wrong with it? We’re going to be living together, it’s not a bad thing to get to know each other better. Right?”

“No, well…that’s true, but…”

Surprisingly, Ray didn’t say much else to Sora. She just grumbled quietly to herself.

My honest reaction? I was intrigued.

I thought she’d call me ‘blue-hair’ or something.

But then, a question suddenly popped into my head.

“Your sister?”

Their conversation felt familial, but it seemed off, no matter how I looked at it. Their appearances were completely different, and even their names were unlike family.

So why was she introducing her as her sister?

Sora, her face close to Ray’s, shifted only her gaze to meet mine, answering my unspoken question.

“Ah, after my parents passed away during the Kaijin incident, I was adopted into Ray’s family.”

A rather heavy topic to bring up with a smile.

So, I tried to steer the conversation back on track.

“Anyway, what’s your sister like?”

“Yes! Please tell me honestly!”

Well, even if she’s asking for honesty, what else is there to say?

“She seems kind of dense.”

“Ah, that’s true.”

“You’re better than her.”

“Oh? Are you trying to flirt with me, perhaps?”

Looking at them now, they truly seemed to be family.

Meaning, neither of them were quite right in the head.

To think they could win me over with that paltry thing.

As I stared with eyes grown cold, Sora narrowed hers and smirked, a little.

“Can’t be done. I’m, like, ‘lez.'”

The bit about being Japanese-American fit perfectly, too.

Coming out like it was nothing.

However, setting that aside, the feeling she gave off was… icy.

Chewing over our conversation so far, the magical girl Sora could be summed up with one phrase.

An unfathomable presence.

What she was thinking, what schemes she was brewing – impossible to predict.

Unease and suspicion gnawed at me. A sensation from the primal parts of my mind. In this other world, people of this ilk were the most dangerous of all.

I needed to be careful.

If I wanted to avoid another knife in the back, like before.

Just then, a sharp voice shattered my train of thought.

“Hey, darkie! Why am I a blockhead!”

It was that crazy white broad from earlier.

I couldn’t comprehend it.

I’d spoken plainly, so what was the issue?

“Because your head is empty.”

“Beer?”

“No, not *that* empty, you insane woman.”

“Anyways! I’m smarter than some darkie thinks!”

“Oh, really?”

Smart, is she?

I doubted it.

“Do you even know what Korean superconductors are?”

The white girl immediately retorted.

“Of course. It’s a tool that uses copper and lead, with heat and pressure, to make the resistance zero.”

Unexpected.

He wouldn’t have known with that pea-brain of his.

My silence at her normal answer surprised me, emboldening Whity to step forward even more aggressively than before.

“Do you even know how many freakin’ Indians our American *Maho Shojos* handled with superconductors?”

Then, she wags her index finger from side to side.

“You’re no match for me.”

I’m speechless.

What the hell is she calling a superconductor, that thing?

“We’ve reached a social agreement to call that a lead bullet, you dumb b*tch.”

“Not wrong, though. Or dispute it, then.”

“Uh…”

Trying to argue, I couldn’t find the words.

Strictly speaking, she wasn’t wrong.

More like, she was right.

I really didn’t want to admit it, but this time I had to. That girl was a tougher opponent than I thought.

Meanwhile, perhaps pleased with my reaction, Rei wore a sly smile on her face.

“This much is just basic common sense for anyone living in The City. Got it?”

“The City? What’s that?”

“You seriously don’t know New York, the most famous city in the world? You’re really uneducated, aren’t you.”

How am I supposed to know when you say it like that?

I really want to punch her in the face.

However, separately from that, I couldn’t possibly accept that it was the most famous city in the world.

“Just New York, you say?”

“Huh?”

Rei’s face twists slightly.

I twisted the corners of my mouth even further.

“The place I used to live is more famous than New York, you know?”

“Where?”

Rei narrowed her eyes sharply, glaring at me. As if daring me to spew some nonsense.

I opened my mouth, calm and collected.

“Ssangmun-dong.”

“What in the world is that place?”

“You’re telling me you don’t know Ssangmun-dong?”

“I’m asking what it *is*.”

Ray wore a look of utter defeat. Perhaps even they hadn’t anticipated that kind of answer.

But I was confident.

Ssangmun-dong was, after all, the most famous city.

Not just in Korea, but worldwide.

“Are you daring to claim ignorance of Ssangmun-dong, the city that birthed and raised both Sangwoo, the top student of Seoul National University’s Business Administration program, *and* Seong Gi-hun, the champion of the Squid Game?”

“Ah.”

Only then did Ray seem to grasp it. Though, truthfully, it would be odd to not understand after I put it like *that*.

“Does that… clear things up a bit?”

“……”

In the end, Ray chose to maintain their silence.

It must have been a truth too difficult to refute.

At any rate, this much was surely enough to establish dominance between two people meeting for the first time.

Therefore, it was now time to use the dormitory for its intended purpose.

“Sora, where’s my bed?”

Yes. Time to sleep.

“Ah, right over there. Right next to Ray *unni’s* bed.”

“Thanks.”

I went straight to the bed Sora pointed out and immediately lay down, intending to sleep.

I’d organize the supplies later.

Right now, I was just too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

Today had been a day of truly tumultuous events.

Almost immediately after returning from the other world, I was dragged away by the police, then dragged to a judgment facility, nearly died during psychological counseling, and then became a magical girl and was dragged to this base.

It was all just being dragged around.

With not a single ounce of my own will reflected.

And amidst all that, I don’t even know if my parents are alive or dead.

“Life is truly fucked up, isn’t it.”

It’s a good thing I’m the major shareholder of Nofilter, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to endure the current reality and would have jumped into the Han River.

To go to a real otherworld, brimming with dreams and hope, instead of that goddamn, son-of-a-b*tch of an otherworld.

“Still, well.”

It wasn’t entirely dissatisfying. There was one thing, a small thing, but definitely satisfactory.

At least I could sleep without worry now.

Even sleep in a bed.

Not on the ground, matted with blood and mud, nor in a tree swarming with snakes and mosquitos, nor on a cold pile of corpses reeking with rot, but actually in a bed with a roof.

Thinking like that, I felt surprisingly at ease.

“Darkie.”

I would have been even more at ease if there wasn’t a crazy b*tch suddenly talking to me from the next bed.

I barely opened my eyes to look at Rei.

“What.”

“Listen up.”

Sora, sensing the mood, turned off the light, but even in the dark room, a pair of blue eyes shone with a fierce light.

“If you get the location wrong and sleep in my bed, I’ll really kill you. I’ll slam a superconductor into your head twice. I mean it.”

A very sharp thing to say to a comrade sharing the same dormitory.

But I only expressed a feeling of surprise.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“No, just.”

It felt like I was back in that otherworld again.

Although the situation was much better than back then.

Anyway, I tried to fall asleep again.

“You done talking? I’m sleeping.”

And so, I drifted off to sleep.

*

A small child stood before me.

A faded dress, slightly torn here and there.

A single, humble evening primrose clutched in both hands.

Gray, bobbed hair, crudely cut, with jagged ends.

Pink eyes, shimmering with a melancholy light.

It was a presence well-known. One could never forget.

The only person in this other world who treated me like a human being, so pure and good.

And.

The one and only reason I was able to become a hero.

That small, fragile girl was my only, precious connection in this other world.

I was overjoyed.

There were so many things I wanted to say.

Whether her body no longer ached, how she had been, whether she had a name now.

Was that all? I wanted to tell her about the countless things that happened today, one by one. If only I could, I wanted to ask her to come to the mortal world with me.

But before I could even speak, the girl, a step ahead, silenced my lips with her finger.

Then, smiling faintly, she called out to me.

“Senpai!”

A term never used.

A term never to be used.

Only then did I realize.

“Ah, goddamn.”

That this was all a dream.

*

Opening my eyes, the interior of the dormitory, as I saw it before sleeping, was clearly in view.

However, something was off.

Judging from the scenery visible outside the window, it was now dawn. Which meant it was still time to sleep.

But why were the lights on?

The surroundings felt somewhat bustling.

Were these b*stards having a party while I was trying to sleep?

Truly a den of lunatics.

“Senpai!”

At that moment, Sora urgently called out to me.

Perfect timing.

“If you’re gonna play, play amongst yourselves. Why wake me up?”

“No, Senpai! That’s not it! It’s urgent! Get up quickly!”

Just what in the world was she doing?

I tilted my head, and Sora spoke up.

“A Kaijin’s appeared in front of the base!”

“What?”

“We have to deploy! Right now!”

Kaijin.

I’d never seen one, only heard tell of living disasters.

It meant we had to fight that thing.

“A Kaijin, you say?”

“Yes!”

Right.

This was a magical girl fight.

“Tough break.”

Of course, not *my* fight.

Well, they’d probably handle it fine.

“Good luck.”

And with that, I drifted back to sleep.

“Get up! You damned senior!”

Sora’s enraged scream served as my lullaby.