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Chapter 128
Chapter 4 — Sleep, until your life is over • Episode 4–2 — Hypnotism ④
Translated by KaiesV
Edited by KaiesV
On a bed in a girly, clean room decorated with Magical Girl goods from Sunday morning cartoons for girls and stuffed toys of real-life Magical Girls, a small girl in school uniform was flailing about as if throwing a tantrum.
「Uughh～! I can’t get along with Sylph-san at all! I guess Sylph-san is not just a girl after all… Is it that she has a very difficult situation like Freeze Lazuli in Majuga, and that’s why she doesn’t want to make friends? But it looks like she and Elephant-san are getting along well, ugh—! That’s not fair—!」
Oosaki Rika, a fourth grader at a private elementary school and the true identity of Magical Girl Succubus, shakes her voluminous, fluffy pink hair and swings her arms and legs like a spoiled child begging for candy at the supermarket.
Majuga is a Sunday Morning anime, a coming-of-age battle drama in which a group of girls with one or two quirks, chosen as magical jewels, engage in fierce battles against an otherworldly army that is trying to invade the earth. Rika loved this work as much as she loved real-life Magical Girls, and she was particularly fond of an additional warrior named Freeze Lazuli.
Freeze Lazuli first appeared in the play when the protagonists were nearly defeated by elite monsters, the most elite of the invaders. As the little ones in front of the TVs watched with bated breath, Freeze Lazuli appeared and kicked out the elite monsters with his overwhelming power, as if the jewel warriors would be defeated at this point. The jewel warriors, as well as the viewers, thought she was a new friend, but in her first appearance, she left without saying anything in particular. And so, for a while, Freeze Lazuli was portrayed as a mysterious third force that would occasionally appear before the protagonists, repel the invaders, and then leave, but sometimes they clashed, sometimes they fought together, and the cold ice over her heart gradually melted and she eventually became a friend. In the process, the fate she bears and her past are heavily discussed.
Since being tangled up with two ruffians the other day, Rika has learned that not all Magical Girls are as virtuous and noble as the characters in the story, but she unconsciously sees her favorite character in Sylph, the object of her admiration, in the same way she does. The two are not only the same, but they are also very much in tune with each other. And, of course, she thinks of herself as the hero.
The belief, akin to delusion, that she would surely be friends with Sylph someday was influenced by such unconsciousness.
「Last time I saw Sylph-san, she was looking cool～! Elephant-san was awesome, but I knew Sylph-san was on a different level. And to go out of her way to come to my rescue!」
She had to deal with two Magical Girls at the same time, whom she couldn’t possibly compete with even on a one-on-one basis, and that was the result. Of course, she understood that the Magical Girl named Pantera also had a respectable strength, Elephant who went out of her way to say she would be serious in a two-on-one fight, but Sylph is the kind of being that two such people would surrender without even putting up a fight.
Remembering the cool, unassuming Sylph at that time, Rika writhes around on the bed, holding and cackling at the recently released plush Sylph doll (3,300 yen including tax, supervised by Ex–Magna), which is about the size of a volleyball.
「Nuh～ You’re so noisy, nuh～ I just want you to be quiet, nuh～」
Pooh-chan, the plush fairy in the shape of a sloth who had been sleeping under the foot of the bed, crawled out of the bed and lay down on the floor, perhaps unable to bear Rika’s noisy behavior.
This fairy called Pooh-chan is the new scout faerie assigned to Sakira Town to replace Jack, and is the one who recruited the Magical Girl Succubus. Although he has a sense of mission to protect the world, he is a very lazy and troublesome being. He only teaches Rika the minimum necessary things and answers questions when asked.
It is no coincidence, of course, that Pooh-chan was chosen to replace Jack. Under the direction of Earth, the highest-ranking fairy, a less active and less conscious fairy with minimal ability was chosen to prevent further unnecessary actions by the fairies in the field from disrupting the plan.
「Pooh-chan, you’re here. Think about it with me, Pooh-chan! Master told me that fairies can teach me many things.」
「I don’t know anything, nuh～ It’s not my job, nuh～!」
「Mmph! Pooh-chan’s useless! Wait, what is Pooh-chan’s job then?」
「It’s about recruiting and educating Magical Girls, nuh～ I’ve had enough recruiting, I’m in the process of educating Rika, nuh～」
「You’ve been throwing everything at Master! If you don’t think about it with me, I’ll tell the higher-ups you’re slacking off!」
Rika invoked the schoolchildren’s trump card, “tell the teacher.” Although fewer and fewer children in the middle grades talk that way, they understand that it is effective to report to a higher authority what they cannot solve on their own.
「Eh? That’s troubling, nuh～ Then～ Just use magic, nuh～ Rika is the Magical Girl Succubus, so you can use enchantment magic.」
「By enchantment, do you mean the magic that makes the other person like me? I can’t do that! Getting along by magic is not such a good idea!」
As the Magical Girl Succubus, Rika can use enchantment magic to force people to like her, although Rika herself has almost forgotten about it because it is of no use in her battles with the Diests. Rather, that lineage was originally the main one, and magic to call up things seen in dreams into reality is merely a sub-lineage derived from the nature of dreamer’s magic.
However, whether it is a good thing to be able to use magic is another matter. Rika is an ordinary girl with a general sense of justice, with only a slightly strong yearning for Magical Girls. She believes that it is wrong to become friends with someone by manipulating their mind with the power of magic, and even if she could become friends with someone through magic, she believes that such a thing is not a real friend.
「You told me to think, so I did, and it was terrible, nuh～」
「Because that would mean forcing them to be friends, right? That’s just wrong.」
「Enchantment magic doesn’t work all the time, nuh～ It depends on the Magical Girl, and also on the resistance of the person to whom it is applied, nuh～ I think you’ll really become friends eventually, even if the trigger is magic, nuh～」
「Eh, really?」
Pooh-chan’s sweet words put her on the spot, and if that’s the way it’s going to be, “can she at least give it a try once?” The wicked part of Rika speaks to her. At the moment, she’s trying to make friends with Sylph, but she can’t even get a good start, because she casually refuses to talk to her or doesn’t listen to her at all. Rika interpreted this cool and casual attitude favorably, thinking it was cool, just like Freeze Lazuli, but she was also impatient with the lack of progress in their relationship.
It is good if only for a moment, just to get an idea of the opportunity.
Spend just one day, just one day as friends, and that’s the end of the magic.
Even if no progress is made after that, even if things go back to the way they were, this time I will be on my own to do it right.
So, just for a trial, to see how I would feel if I could be friends with Sylph-san, and to know what goal I should aim for, maybe just once, maybe just for a day.
Such evil whispers begin to loop around and around in Rika’s mind as if justifying her desires.
「B–But that kind of magic doesn’t work on Magical Girls, right? Pooh-chan told me that before, right?」
「That’s usually the case, nuh～ But Tyrant Sylph have been hypnotized before, nuh～ The information I had inherited told her to be careful of such enemies. Rika can also use Hypnotic Magic, so you can use charm afterwards.」
「Hypnotic Magic…? You mean putting someone to sleep and making them suggestible, what’s that…?」
She know what kind of magic a Magical Girl is without having to be taught it, because information about the keywords and how to use them is poured into her mind on its own, in some cases, it is impossible to understand what specific results will be brought about by using the magic if one doesn’t know the meaning of the effect in the first place, or if one doesn’t understand the meaning of the words.
「Simply put, if she’s in hypnosis, the magic of enchantment works, nuh～ Just like a spell, nuh～ So, even if other Magical Girls can’t, you can cast a spell on Tyrant Sylph, nuh～」
「…」
Rika unknowingly gulped down a mouthful of raw saliva.
Magical Girls have protections against magic that act directly on them. Therefore, it should have been impossible to magically make friends with a Magical Girl before talking about ethics. The devil whispered to her, and she was about to give in to her own desires. Rika was trying to find a reason why she could not do it, and was about to stop just in time. But it can be done. Only Tyrant Sylph can understand her magic.
Rika was beginning to conveniently interpret this situation, wondering if perhaps this was fate. Otherwise, this would never have happened.
Until now, she could be friends with any person. Classmates, of course, but also upperclassmen and lowerclassmen at school and older neighborhood sisters. She have never once failed to get along with someone she wanted to get along with. But the first time she couldn’t make a friend, the first time shs wanted to be friends with someone more than anyone else she’d ever met, only that person has the magic effect of making her a friend.
「I’ll try, just a little bit, just a little bit…, but no, it’s not good, I can’t do it… This is not what Magical Girls do… But, ugh…」
「Magical girls in the old animes used magic to make friends and bring smiles to people’s faces, nuh～ All’s well that ends well, nuh～」
Pooh-chan says that it’s not directly manipulating the mind with magic, but rather, creating events that bring two people together through magic, he was referring to the kind of activities that naturally bring smiles to people’s faces by producing beautiful flowers or using magic as an art, like a magic show, but he dared to say it in a way that would make Rika misunderstand it.
「…Then, if it’s just for one time or one day.」
Rika’s balance was tilted toward desire, but she managed to keep it close to the edge through reason and ethics, but the final no-holds-barred push tipped the scales toward desire, bit by bit, bit by bit. And once the balance begins to tip, it will not return to normal unless something is placed on the other side.
「Fuwaaah, now I can finally get some sleep, nuh～」
This Pooh-chan is not planning to do something evil under the auspices of Earth, but is basically just thinking about how to get by in the moment and lead a lazy life without thinking about anything else. This time, too, he is merely saying appropriate things out of his desire to satisfy Rika as soon as possible and go to a quiet sleep.
That is why he was sent to this town, where he was expected not to do anything unnecessary, but a new disturbance was about to start in a direction that Earth didn’t anticipate.