“Goodbye-”
“Bye-”
A light farewell exchanged while getting off the elevator on the fourth floor.
It had only been two hours since school ended, but the sky had darkened.
Entering the house by dialing the door lock password, which is unified by the last digits of my phone number.
Of course, at this time, it’s normal for Shiyeon to be home as well.
I headed to my room, feeling relieved by the faint light seeping through the gap in the door.
‘I’m… not really hungry.’
By the time I returned home, it was 7 PM.
Is it because of the package of jjapaguri I won against Seonhyuk in a one-on-one match at the PC room?
It should be around dinner time, but I don’t feel that hungry.
I roughly took off my socks and tossed them into the laundry basket, then headed straight to the washing machine.
If I start it now, I should be able to hang it up by 9 PM.
In the kitchen, a small pot was sitting alone on the dish rack.
Did Shiyeon make some ramen?
I wiped down the still wet pot with a kitchen towel and put it on the shelf where the other pots were.
Maybe it was because I just had a good time gaming at the PC room, but I didn’t really want to sit in front of the computer.
After hanging my school uniform on the hanger, I took off my underwear and tossed it directly into the washing machine, which was already running.
Embracing a strange sense of liberation, I grabbed some fresh underwear and headed to the bathroom.
An evening shower felt like the end of a day’s work.
After covering my body in body wash and shampoo with an artificial floral scent, I felt unbelievably refreshed.
“Mary.”
As I returned to my room with my damp hair let down, Gomtaengi, my friend, immediately called out to me.
“What?”
It’s probably about something from the PC room.
I brought the hairdryer into the room and left a short exclamation.
Since he usually talks about trivial things, I figured it would be the same this time…
“It’s an even day today, and there’s a monster.”
“Damn it.”
Sometimes that really was a big deal.
Gomtaengi succinctly conveyed what needed to be done on the specific date without any fluff.
It’s just my luck that he shows up right after I finished my shower and came in to dry my hair?
Even though no one could hear me, a curse slipped out involuntarily.
The green mask is perfect for keeping my face warm during the winter, but does it even matter now that my bare face is already exposed?
… That’s something the magical girl gallery often chatters about, but without this, the monsters wouldn’t recognize me.
It seems new monsters have appeared while we weren’t dispatching any.
“Let’s hurry and get dressed.”
“Hey, don’t rush me.”
As Gomtaengi urged me on, I stuffed the mask into my tracksuit pocket, slipped my bare feet into my slippers, and dragged my feet toward the outside.
It’s still a little early for the office workers to have completely wrapped up their day.
As I made sure there was no one around in the shortcut between the apartment buildings, I took out the mask.
After putting the mask on my face, I forced my long hair through the back of the mask.
Long hair is too uncomfortable in situations like this.
Wait a minute, hair?
‘Oh right.’
Suddenly, a forgotten memory flashed through my mind.
I was supposed to get a haircut today.
Why is it that I always forget those things the moment school ends?
‘Ah, crap…’
There’s no helping it; I’ll just have to take the penalty.
Scratching the clump of hair stuffed behind the mask, I gathered my voice for the transformation chant.
“Sun.”
Like a little bird flapping its wings, I soared smoothly upward without any shockwave, breaking through the clouds in an instant.
At a certain height, I pulled out Gomtaengi from my pocket, and his arm, which could point in the right direction without me needing to say anything, was already indicating one way.
With power in my legs as if to kick off the ground mid-air, the instantaneous speed easily surpassed the speed of sound.
When I felt Gomtaengi’s signal tapping my fingers squeezed together, I braked mid-air and stopped.
“Is that it?”
“Probably.”
A suspicious figure blazing brightly in the middle of a construction site in the dead of winter.
It couldn’t possibly be a clone in the middle of the construction site…
I was sure it was a monster, but I asked just in case.
When I got a ‘maybe’ sign from Gomtaengi, I gradually descended toward the ground.
I flew down directly to the front so that I could recognize it clearly, and the monster, sensing the change in air currents, looked up.
“Hey.”
“I, I’m here! This cruel magical girl!”
“Huh?”
The monster, which had come barging in, criticized me for being cruel without any sense of irony.
It looked terrified, yet perhaps having some faith, it extended a spikey body part from its blazing form and pointed it toward me.
“I’ve heard that you wield fire!”
“Eh?”
“From the planet where the surface burns with flames, our race won’t be affected by your fire!”
“Oh…”
It seemed like the monster was talking earnestly, but I responded with just a terse word.
But usually, would someone expose their trump card like that?
Well, I don’t think it’s necessary to test whether it’s true or not.
If it is true, then providing an excessively high-temperature fire could spell disaster, so I turned my gaze for something appropriate nearby.
“Prepare yourself-!”
As the monster shouted, a pointed object, engulfed in flames, grazed the side of my head near my temple.
However, instead of piercing through my body, the fire merely burned my mask, and the spiked object slid down my cheek like it was grazing metal.
I wasn’t paying any attention to the attack, and beyond my line of sight, there was something good lying around.
“Oh.”
A large rubber cement bucket that was carelessly left at the construction site.
As soon as I spotted it, I thought it was the only thing I could use.
With my method of execution decided in my mind, I grabbed the spiky object and started dragging the monster along.
“Gah!”
I tossed the monster onto the ground near the cement bucket.
It seemed to be quite weak against shocks, as the flames that were clinging to its body flared wildly.
I scooped up some fluffy cement and splashed it on its body.
“…? What is this?”
The confused monster seemed surprised as I scooped another handful and splashed it down.
Each hefty scoop I poured significantly extinguished the flames that were covering its body.
“What the…!”
The monster finally noticed that the flames surrounding it were quickly dwindling.
The fear of being buried alive.
The monster struggled to escape, but the cement, when mixed with water, turned out to be much heavier and stickier than expected.
Moreover, I had firmly secured its legs so it couldn’t escape.
It must have felt the heaviness of the cement gradually covering its body.
Splash, splash… the sound of the sticky cement filled the air.
“Stop, stop it!”
As the amount of cement covering its body increased beyond the flames, the monster’s terrified screams finally burst forth.
‘Now it’s finally at a point where I can talk sense.’
With experience from countless encounters with monsters, I knew this was the state where the most effective intimidation and persuasion could take place.
At this point, the entity, filled with dread, needed to be given hope.
At the edge of death, at the peak of fear.
When pushed to a cliff’s edge, one can devote everything to that little bit of hope.
“Should I let you go-?”
In a teasing voice that held its life in my hands, the dwindling flames on the monster’s body stirred weakly.
“P-please…”
From the monster’s vocal cords came a desperate plea that felt almost nostalgic.
Even though the fire had stuck to my mask, obscuring my vision a bit, I raised my index finger from my clenched right fist and showed the number 1 to my mouth.
“Then, there’s one condition for a painless farewell.”
“W-what…?”
The monster, paralyzed with fear, could barely articulate the trembling sounds.
This was the groundwork for the second negotiation.
Even I thought the sight of me, smiling with the corners of my mouth raised under the burning mask, must have looked devilish.
“Two days from now, at this time… during the treaty, summon the executive monster that came to this ‘Black Zone’.”
“…! I-I understand!”
“Good, you’re a good one.”
With the conversation concluded, the magical girl Sun finished her deep breath for a ‘painless death.’
I raised one leg high, almost straight above the leg touching the ground.
Just a simple motion of bringing a leg down with force.
An overwhelming strike leading to instantaneous death.
While all deaths come with pain, the monster, knocked out in less than a second from a clean shock, awoke in the recovery room.
“Oh, this guy is perfectly fine? Did the fire measures work a bit?”
In contrast to the monstrous reactions of screaming and laughing maniacally, one of the recovering monsters murmured.
Medic Tenkl, noticing the monster sent back to the recovery room, extended its tentacles and waved them left and right in front of the monster.
“Now, combatant, how many do you see?”
“Three…?”
“Hmm, speech organs are functioning normally… not showing any confusion or hallucinations.”
Listening to the monster’s confused response as it sat in the recovery device, Medic Tenkl continued the documentation.
However, something was more important than answering the executive’s questions at that moment.
The message from the girl, who was laughing with a flaming face, while trying to calm her trembling body filled with fear.
The monster had to convey that message.
Otherwise, it was clear that an even greater disaster would loom.
“Th-this tru…”
“Yeah?”
“Th-that magical girl said… to summon the executive monster who came to the ‘Black Zone’ during the treaty, two sets after this!”
“What?”
Medic Tenkl couldn’t help but be startled at the message received from the magical girl Sun.
If it was the treaty with Earth, there was only one case.
The treaty made after visiting magical girl Sun.
It had to be me who would head directly to the Black Zone two sets later.
But there was one more issue with conveying this story.
Who would have guessed that ‘two days’ and ‘two sets’ would sound so similar?
The disaster approaching the monsters from three days onward was probably something neither side anticipated.
