Chapter 51

‘This is weird. Really weird…’

Curs frowned while looking at the girl beyond the screen.

Had she forgotten where she was now?

She had fallen into a trap deep in enemy territory, yet she seemed oddly calm.

As if this kind of trap was nothing to her.

“This level of despair should render her immobile…”

The verification was already complete.

The room was filled with despair, matching—no, exceeding—the despair felt in the underground laboratory.

Just breathing in there would make anyone unable to stay still due to the overwhelming pressure.

As proof, the monster next to the girl was squirming under the sheer amount of despair.

‘Is there some other scheme at play…?’

Given that she had infiltrated the lab using the same method, it was possible she had prepared something else.

A means to escape that room, or perhaps something entirely different.

‘I have to keep watching… There’s no way the Sung-Ending Doctor’s creation would invade this place without a plan.’

Whatever she was hiding, I was determined to figure it out and counter it.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize I was wrong.

“…She’s not moving at all.”

After vowing to counter anything she did, the girl on the screen just sat there quietly.

The only movement she made was to calm the monster beside her by waving her arm a few times. The rest of the time, she just smiled at the camera.

Her demeanor was as if she knew what I was thinking and was deliberately not making any moves.

‘Maybe she really can’t move because of the despair…’

I already knew from the underground lab that she was prideful and loved to bluff.

So, this response could very well be another act of bravado.

Though I couldn’t be sure.

‘Does she have something to rely on…?’

Even if she was trapped and unable to move now, she was still the Sung-Ending Doctor’s creation.

Even if she had lost to me, the Sung-Ending Doctor was still the Sung-Ending Doctor.

No one but her could know what kind of blade he was sharpening behind the scenes.

“Whatever you’re hiding—”

At that moment, a strange sensation from behind made my nerves tense.

Right now, something was targeting me from behind. Right this instant.

Feeling a chill run down my spine, I turned around just as a crimson blade grazed past Curs.

“Tch, you noticed?”

“My, my, who do we have here? It’s you, Doctor.”

“…That damn voice. It’s you after all, Doctor.”

If I said the first emotion I felt was joy at that irritated voice, would it be a lie?

I was trying to confirm the difference between the girl in that room and a Magical Girl, and now a perfect test subject had appeared right in front of me.

Coincidences like this couldn’t possibly happen.

No, this wasn’t a coincidence—it was clearly—

‘I thought Emerald would come if it was a Magical Girl, but I never expected Garnet to show up.’

If Emerald was the type of Magical Girl who spread hope everywhere, Garnet was the type who concealed her own hope and carried a blade within.

If I had been even a moment slower, that crimson blade in her hand would have struck my back.

Now that I too had become a monster, I couldn’t escape the effects of that blade.

A blade of hope energy that paralyzed monsters and inflicted pain. Curs smiled deeply as he looked at it.

“Perfect timing. I needed a test subject, and here you are, Garnet.”

“Who the hell is your test subject, you bastard?”

Was the collar—loose?

Curs’ lips curled up as he noticed the collar around Garnet’s neck was gone.

It must have been the Sung-Ending Doctor who removed it.

I never thought he’d resort to using a Magical Girl’s power to deal with me.

Uuuung—

“Now, a good child should listen to adults, shouldn’t they?”

“…Get lost.”

With a low mutter, Curs’ Despair Core began to move.

To subdue the Magical Girl’s hope and dye her heart with despair.

***

I can’t breathe.

The Doctor—no, the monster—before me was on a completely different level from anything I’d faced before.

The pressure crushing my body and the pain stabbing my throat with every breath made even moving exhausting.

“You seemed so confident when you charged in, but you’re tiring out faster than I expected.”

“…Damn it.”

There was a reason Akari had asked if I could win.

It was a question of whether Garnet’s power could stand against the Doctor.

To say I didn’t know would be an understatement of my own carelessness.

He was the Doctor. Even if he had a human body, facing him wouldn’t have been easy.

‘Being so carefree, tch…’

Not a speck of dust clung to the Doctor’s coat.

The fact that I couldn’t even graze him despite charging at full force made my teeth grind.

“You’ve always had the habit of recklessly charging in when a sneak attack fails, Garnet.”

“…”

“Didn’t I tell you? If you want to survive long as a Magical Girl, you should fix that habit.”

“…Shut up.”

“Your senior—ah, was it Opal? I recall she worked hard to correct that habit of yours.”

“SHUT UP!!!!”

Senior.

Opal, my senior.

As I recalled her image—her snow-white hair and rainbow-colored eyes—I pulled out the last bit of hope left in my heart.

The reason I became a Magical Girl.

The reason I could be a Magical Girl.

The hope in my heart had been sleeping under the name of a promise with my senior.

If not for that, hope wouldn’t have existed for me.

“…Hope Critical.”

“Oh ho.”

The Hope Circuit began to spin fiercely.

Memories, promises, and moments with my senior.

I burned them all to push past my limits.

To defeat the enemy—the nemesis—before me.

‘Someday, when the time comes, I’ll give you a name, Garnet.’

‘A name? But we already have names, don’t we?’

‘Ah, that’s just your Magical Girl name. I mean a real name, your true name.’

‘A real… name…’

The blade in my hand grew brighter.

Now, I had a name: Mutsuki.

Though it wasn’t a name given by my senior, it was a precious name given by a junior.

“I am—we are—not your test subjects!!!”

With a human name, I finally became human.

As if mocking me, the Doctor began to scatter an even deeper despair.

As if to say the hope I held was nothing.

“Your output has increased, but if your movements remain the same, it’s meaningless.”

“Tch…!”

But even after pushing past my limits, the blade in my hand couldn’t reach him.

Was the gap between us this vast?

It felt like being dragged into a bottomless swamp.

“If only you had kept the collar, you wouldn’t have had to make such meaningless moves. What a pity, Garnet.”

“Huff, huff… Ugh…”

The despair rising in my heart began to stab at me.

I tried to maintain my focus, gasping for breath, but having already used up the last of my hope, I couldn’t hold back the spreading despair.

‘Calm down. Pull yourself together. If you fall now, everything you’ve done will be for nothing!’

The most important thing when facing a monster was not to despair.

Turn your eyes away from despair. Never meet its gaze.

But the despair before me wasn’t the kind you could avoid by looking away.

Thud— thud—

“Are you done struggling? It was a decent warm-up before the experiment, though.”

“…Ugh.”

Even without ears, hear. Even without eyes, see.

With every step the Doctor took, the despair made my body reflexively shrink.

Pull yourself together, pull yourself together, pull yourself together!

I whipped myself mentally, trying to move, but all I managed was to take a few steps back.

“Good work, Garnet.”

The Doctor, now right in front of me, slowly reached out his hand.

As if savoring the despair in my heart, slowly.

‘This is the end…’

There was no means left to resist.

The hope in my heart had long been exhausted.

All that remained was despair.

I clenched my eyes shut and turned my head, only to hear the Doctor’s eerie laughter whisper in my ear.

“You’ve failed. Just like your senior did.”

“…”

“Now, it’s time for you to ‘graduate’ and follow in her footsteps.”

With the Doctor’s words, a flood of images rushed through my mind.

Human experiments, screams, pain, despair—

I couldn’t breathe.

The despair growing in my heart was about to consume the last shred of my sanity.

No, it was about to consume it.

“…Huh?”

“…”

The despair vanished.

To be precise, it was sucked away, as if something had bitten into it with sharp teeth.

The sudden phenomenon made my eyes widen, and the Doctor turned his gaze toward a certain spot.

“…How foolish.”

The black screen showed nothing, as if it had always been that way.

Only darkness existed.

Yet the Doctor kept staring into that darkness, as if something was there.