After filling my stomach with delicious duck stir-fried wrapped in lettuce and white rice, it was a quiet evening.
While fiddling with the computer keyboard and mouse, searching for photo files on the connected smartphone to group and extract, that moment arrived.
The Gomtaengi, who seemed to know I was busy, was looking like he had something to say but was only glancing at me.
When I finally directed my gaze towards him, who was lingering near the keyboard, he opened his mouth.
“Mary, I think a monster is about to appear.”
“…It really only comes on even days.”
I turned my head slightly toward the monster alarm in advance and looked at the calendar; it was indeed an even day.
With a murmur mixed with resentment about it really only coming on even days, I got up.
The appearance of monsters had become a regular event that occurred every other day.
Although I was glad that the sudden events that came twice a day were gone, it felt strange as if I had to go out for a regular shift.
“Did I say that for no reason?”
As I lifted my body from the computer, the Gomtaengi asked if mentioning the even day I was in charge was unnecessary.
Shaking my head dismissively, I briefly told him the truth that the monsters didn’t know yet.
“It doesn’t matter for now; it’s still an odd day for me anyway.”
As I said, it didn’t matter for the moment.
Later, when Shiyeon has a lot of free time and we would have to split up the monster fights into odd and even days, it would be a problem.
I hastily changed into short sleeves and shorts suitable for summer and finished getting ready to go outside.
After all, photo data is something that will take care of itself as long as I move the mouse to group it.
After giving the cut and paste command to the photos, I got up from the chair with a clatter and headed outside.
When I came close to the entrance, I reluctantly caught a glimpse inside Shiyeon’s room.
Shiyeon, who was drawing with the special pen I bought for her, glanced at me as I stood near the entrance and asked.
“Is a monster out?”
“Yeah, I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay, see you.”
With a little tap of my sneakers on the floor, I headed toward the point I remembered.
As I was going down the stairs, the monster alarm began to sound.
Humming along to the melody of that alarm, I walked toward the usual eerie alley.
However, in the alley where no one should normally be wandering about.
“Huh?”
For some reason, there were quite a few people filling that alley.
They weren’t just wandering around; they were sitting there as if they were waiting for the alarm and just tapping on their smartphones.
Despite the monster alarm blaring, people were gathering in the alley instead of evacuating.
What’s going on? Has this alley been designated as an evacuation site?
“Well, that can’t be….”
There are designated evacuation sites, so it shouldn’t be that way, but I tilted my head and had no choice but to bypass the alley and head to another point.
Fortunately, the second point was perfectly clear without a single person.
Feeling relieved, I transformed and flew up into the sky, reaching the location with the monster under the guidance of the Gomtaengi.
A monster standing alone on a vacant hiking trail where no one was around.
Even though it claimed to be deserted, after all, it was still a hiking trail.
If I ended it with a bombardment, even if a fire spark flew, I would be the main feature on tomorrow’s news.
I wanted to finish without letting my face be seen, but due to the environment, it was quite challenging.
Reluctantly, I lowered my altitude and appeared on the hiking trail.
“Oops.”
“Whoa! You appeared!”
“Yeah, I have appeared.”
The monster screamed as if it had met a bear in the woods.
Thinking about it, would it have been better if it were a bear?
As a signal to finish quickly, I tapped my cane on my knee, and the monster said.
“I’m a fan!”
“What?”
The comment was so ridiculous that even the cane I had been heating up suddenly cooled down.
Out of nowhere, a creature that looked like a bipedal Cthulhu said it was a fan and clasped its hands together as if praying.
Like a passionate weeb who was completely absorbed, the monster spoke various things that I hadn’t even asked about.
“So, you guys on the spaceship are into Earth culture?”
“Yes!”
What it roughly explained was this:
On the monsters’ spaceship in orbital space, Earth culture was trending, and magical girls were treated like quasi-idols.
So much so that monsters dispatched to specific regions were actually more about going to see the faces of magical girls rather than fighting them.
Thus, a monster had taken a seat and started talking with me, a magical girl.
“By the way, is it okay for you to tell me that?”
Since it was about monsters’ spaceships and Earth culture being popular….
Wondering if it might be something like military secrets, I asked the creature, who replied with narrowed eyes, waving its hands.
“Oh, we don’t want to fight pointless battles either! There’s a saying on Earth, right? An officer is a soldier’s main enemy….”
“Have these bastards really localized….”
The monster held up a single finger and cited the key phrase ‘an officer is a soldier’s main enemy.’
Seeing a creature with a mindset similar to that of soldiers from the Republic of Korea’s military left me dumbfounded, and I crossed my arms, exhaling a sigh filled with lament.
Is this cultural appropriation or something?
When I finally took out my smartphone to check, it was 5 minutes past our appointment.
Thinking that this leisurely conversation should end here, I lifted my butt off the ground.
“Okay, let’s get going… we need to finish soon.”
“Is it already that time? Other regions were talking about 10 minutes….”
“Where I am, it’s within 5 minutes, so make sure to close your eyes tight in advance.”
“Yes!”
“Hmm….”
I circled around the creature with tightly closed eyes, measuring angles here and there, and finally found an empty sky without overlapping branches or leaves, aiming with my cane.
To avoid causing any pain, I aimed from the bottom up and fired the beam toward the sky.
Like a shooting star soaring into the sky, a flash that brightened the night sky filled the sky momentarily.
After thoroughly confirming that there was no fire around, I looked at the monster as it dissolved into shining powder and headed home.
These days, it had become hard to find alleys without people.
Even the alley where I had just transformed had two or three people in it.
Reluctantly, I was about to head down when I turned again and ended up circling around a few more places….
In the end, I had to drop my transformation near the hiking trail where it was half-assured that no one was around.
“Why is it like this these days?”
Every alley had at least one person in it.
Feeling something strange, yet unable to grasp the cause, I only muttered complaints inwardly.
Walking from the entrance of the hiking trail, which was quite far from home, to near my house led to my t-shirt getting soaked due to the sweltering weather.
I vowed to throw it into the laundry basket as soon as I got home.
In the end, the actual time for monster-fighting was just cut to 5 minutes, but returning home took a full 30 minutes.
From the entrance, I annoyingly pulled off my white t-shirt.
Noticing that it was quite late, Shiyeon seemed to sense something was off as she came out of her room to ask.
“What happened?”
“Every transformation point had people there, ugh….”
Exhaling a sigh mixed with annoyance and lament, I tossed my t-shirt into the laundry basket.
Feeling hot and sticky, I quickly turned on the fan in my room and gathered my underwear to head to the bathroom.
I hurriedly took off the clothes sticking to me with sweat, lathered the towel with body wash, and rubbed myself.
After roughly rinsing off the suds and drying myself, I put the dry towel around my neck and shoulders and stepped out of the bathroom.
Waiting outside was Shiyeon, sitting on the dining chair.
“Mary, isn’t this because of that?”
“Huh?”
As if she had been waiting for me to come out, she sat in the dining chair, pulled out her smartphone, and showed me something.
The keywords Shiyeon searched for were “Incheon Magical Girl,” and the most recent news was from two days ago.
[A black shape appears; is the pre-transformation look of the magical girl Sun finally captured?]
The preview image of the article wasn’t ordinary, showing a black screen with a single person standing far away.
In an alley lined with vehicles, the sudden appearance of a black figure.
The black shape shrank to about the size of a child and jumped into the sky, not coming back down.
“That’s me?”
“Seems someone reported what was caught on the black box.”
“Oh… no wonder.”
With a sigh of realization, I finally understood why people had gathered at that transformation point.
They probably wanted to approach the magical girl somehow or verify her identity.
I was lucky to have just passed through without drawing attention….
Had I stepped into the alley without thinking, I could have been asked some strange questions.
Fortunately, it hadn’t captured anything clearly due to poor image quality and the dark surroundings without a single light.
I wouldn’t be able to use that point anymore.
“Wait, by the way….”
Thinking about it made me feel ridiculous, so I looked outside the window at the distant mountains from within the house.
‘Those people out there certainly aren’t very bright….’
Did they think that when the alarm went off, I would show up saying, ‘Come catch me,’ and transform there?
Of course, I would be long gone to another place.
It wasn’t a stakeout, so what on earth were they thinking?
