Two days after the designated time.
Two days, and two Setres.
A 130-day gap, born out of differences in pronunciation and comprehension.
Naturally, there was no chance that Medik Tenkl would come to Earth on an even-numbered day assigned to Mary.
Mary had anticipated that active negotiations with the Monsters would not proceed smoothly.
“Hmph, is this really the only option left…?”
After exhaling a short sigh, she resolved to take sole responsibility for defeating Monsters for an entire week.
That day, the Monsters began a one-person protest that was impossible to ignore—a protest as ominous as a threat.
After receiving the notification, four Monsters in total had been sent to the Black Zone.
Among them, the number of Monsters that returned was zero.
With the sudden occurrence of this abnormal situation, the Monsters in the recovery room had no choice but to report to Medik Tenkl.
“What? Not a single one has returned yet?”
“Already, there are four casualties… What terrible things are they enduring down there?”
Upon receiving this report, Medik Tenkl could not help but panic.
Had something else irritated her as well?
The unpredictable behavior of a Magical Girl was even harder to forecast than the breeding season of females of their own kind.
Faced with this sudden calamity, Medik Tenkl quickly spun both of his brains.
Sending enthusiastic new Monsters to meet the teleportation quota wasn’t a one-off solution; yet, increasing meaningless sacrifices just because they didn’t understand was unnecessary.
Medik Tenkl pondered.
Could it be that what he had heard through the warriors’ vocal apparatus was exactly right, letter by letter and in meaning?
Hadn’t the sound transmitted from one to another become somewhat distorted along the way?
“…! Could it be?”
Medik Tenkl’s two spinning brains came to a halt at a certain conclusion.
If her notice meant not that they should arrive two Setres later, but were giving two Setres as the time frame, what then?
Medik Tenkl’s eyes widened as he grasped this alternative perspective.
Ah, with that understanding, her eccentric behavior started to make sense.
By now, aboard the spaceship, Magical Girl Sun had taken on the reputation of an indiscriminate predator who found joy in the death and torture of Monsters.
“Medik Tenkl… if you don’t come soon, I’ll take the Monsters as hostages for every moment you delay.”
She was showing that message through her actions.
Good heavens, how could she be so cruel?
“I suppose I must go.”
Whether the conclusion he’d reached in his mind was true or false, Medik Tenkl had no choice but to head towards that dreadful Black Zone.
After all, she was currently targeting him.
Before heading to the transmission room, for some reason, Medik Tenkl showed up in an ordinary cabin.
There, just as he arrived, several Monsters who had been enjoying snacks in violation of the ‘no food in the cabins’ rule were sitting together in the middle of the cabin.
“Hey, back there.”
“Gah.”
What bad luck, right at the most visible position for entering Medik Tenkl.
However, Medik Tenkl was not an unyielding principle stickler.
Even intelligent beings sometimes disregard rules, and it wasn’t possible to follow all of them all the time.
Ultimately, these rules had been arbitrarily set by the higher-ups, so Medik Tenkl never cared to enforce them.
As he himself broke many of those rules, scrutinizing them would eventually mean there’d be no Monsters left on the ship who weren’t punished.
Medik Tenkl was searching for something entirely different from trivial rule games.
“Men…do you have any spare metal plates left over from the last turmoil?”
Perplexed at the question, the Monsters in the cabin scratched their heads.
Though they didn’t know what a high-rank like him planned to use it for, they handed over a pristine metal plate with nothing written on it.
A short while later, crouched in a secluded corner of the transmission room, was Medik Tenkl.
Regardless of whether the other Monsters in the room were watching peculiarly and wandering around, he was fervently scribbling on the blank metal plate.
[I want 대화 원해요.]
Though it might be cliched, this was the sentence that had successfully worked once before.
With that phrase which had the highest success rate, Medik Tenkl had to stake everything.
However, there were two things Medik Tenkl overlooked.
First, while he grasped the concept of Earth’s date system in theory as time passed, his understanding was somewhat incomplete.
Second, the writing he had scrawled on the metal plate was black ink.
“Ah…what the crap, is this some kind of mobile game attendance event?”
As soon as it hit midnight, he arrived on Earth.
A time when being forced awake would turn even the most benevolent human into a raving beast.
She looked like a senior military corporal who had just awoken at 1:50 a.m. for an overnight watch.
The middle-school girl Mary, sitting upright in bed, finally spat out an irritable sigh after closing her eyes tightly.
“Hmph.”
After inwardly sighing deeply, she fumbled around in the dark room with her limbs dangling.
Regardless of whether it was morning, noon, or night, the alarm eventually goes off.
In the region where Monsters often appeared at night, earplugs were mandatory enough that they were regularly sold out.
“Ugh…ah, hum.”
She yawned and blinked her sleepy eyes as she left her bed, heading directly for the entrance.
Getting dressed in her tracksuit every night so she could leave immediately when the alarm sounded was her everyday routine.
Thinking back, it was somewhat similar to wearing uniforms for overnight watches.
Shuffling in her slippers, she went outside where she’d transform.
A convenience store near her apartment, in a camera-blind dark zone.
She’d transform with an incantation, flying into the sky, while Gomtaengi would naturally slip from her pocket and perch in her hand.
“Then, after capturing all the Monsters, what do you plan to do?”
“Hostages.”
“Will that be effective?”
Glancing at the round, globe-like object dangling from her waist.
A Mascot Ball containing the four Monsters that had shown up recently.
While Gomtaengi’s observation was valid, there was no direct line of communication to the Monsters.
Whether this form of coercion would work with the Monsters was unknown, but this was the best one-person protest humans could do against Monsters.
“I hope so.”
While tinkering with the empty Mascot Ball, she flew into the sky, as if she was playing a monster collection game.
Hovering near the destination Gomtaengi indicated.
Looking down at the ground, some unrecognizable figure was waving something in the direction of the sky from an old, smelly concrete alley.
A peculiar metal plate, reflecting the faint light of the moon.
When she saw the familiar black inscription on the metal plate, written in ink, it clicked—she instantly recognized the culprit.
“Ah, so it is you.”
“Effective as always.”
Gently landing on the ground, the worn-out, haphazardly-built concrete floor beneath gave a soft crunch.
Shabby and poorly-constructed buildings with narrow alleys—it was a street steeped in memories.
Are there still these old-smelling streets around?
Was this a redevelopment zone? There seemed to be no people, but…
While glancing around, the Monster, an octopus-like creature holding the banner that read, “I want 대화 원해요” high into the sky, finally lowered it.
The tone, as it spoke cautiously towards her, seemed tentative.
“Is this…the one who requested to find me, by any chance?”
“Ah, I told you to come in two days, but you didn’t, so I gave you a bit of a hard time.”
“Two…days? You didn’t mean 2 Setres?”
“Huh?”
“Eh?”
The puzzling single-word exclamations from the two creatures overlapped, and at that moment, it seemed both felt something was amiss.
Who would interpret the casual use of “two days” as their own unit, Setres?
After a few exchanges cleared up the misunderstanding, the four captured Monsters were released and brought before the Monster officer, Medik Tenkl.
“Hahaha, white…! All white, hehehe!”
“Wow, his wits have flown!”
The worst condition of the Monsters belonged to the first one captured.
The official Medik Tenkl sighed deeply, fiddling with some strange small device, and began sending the Monsters back one by one to wherever.
A teleportation device more humane than burning, stabbing, or beating.
That’s impressive tech for instant teleportation.
“Much obliged, men.”
“So, let’s get to today’s talk.”
“Yes.”
The Monster officer, Medik Tenkl, seemed to have extremely high discipline.
After conversing a bit, she discovered something interesting: these creatures were, in the end, subcontractors too.
They were in a position where they had to complete the assigned tasks, regardless of success or failure.
Thus, it was a fitting situation to present her original offer.
“Do you know how Earth’s days work?”
“I’ve learned a bit, so much as that 1 Setre equals the time of night and day changing 66 times…”
“Ah, this is a calendar…”
Opening her smartphone to show the calendar:
Dividing a day into hours, minutes, and seconds.
Breaking down months into the concept of weeks.
Partitioning a year into months—gradually teaching these concepts to the Monster.
“After that, how about dropping by twice a week at the latest, between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.?”
A strange negotiation time was reached.
First, by adjusting the frequency and time, it would eliminate the need to get up in the early hours of the morning for deployment.
This offer didn’t seem bad to the Monsters either, as they intriguingly brought their tentacles near their faces, nodding curiously.
“Hoohoo, if the Monsters appear during this time, you’ll accommodate them, right?”
“At the very least, the number of Monsters in the intensive care facilities will drastically decrease.”
Apparently, due to Magical Girl Sun—me—permanent losses were almost mandatory, so resolving this would benefit their side as well.
Medik Tenkl scrawled something on the ground using a piece of dirt smeared with ink.
After starting to jot down some cryptic characters on the ground, he began scratching his head while holding the piece of dirt, saying hesitantly,
“Ah, but 2 times per week wouldn’t quite fill our quota…”
“What do you mean, how much do you need to meet?”
“Based on Setres, we need to fill at least 22 appearances.”
“How long is a Setre in Earth time?”
“Ugh…ah, it’s 66 days.”
After hearing this, she roughly calculated the math in her head.
About if you halve it, 33 days—almost a month.
Assuming she had to show up 11 times over roughly 4 weeks, that was about two or three times per week.
“Can’t be helped, let’s set it at 2 to 3 times a week.”
“Deeply thankful, we’ll make sure to adhere to the exact times.”
At this moment, they were both grateful to each other.
In this way, an inconceivable, secret negotiation was taking place between the Monsters and humans.
