Transformation or Death

Like Family (9)  

Red Spica.

Real name is Ahn Su-chae.

She loved the evening colors as she waited to welcome her mother returning from work, a lovely girl. Given her single-parent household situation, she could have definitely become lonely, but she always attracted love from those around her with her innocent and pure demeanor.

A girl with outstanding looks and a kind heart.

It was not a particularly difficult story in this era for such a girl to awaken special powers during her mother’s crisis.

The problem was that it happened too early.

She became a magical girl at the age of 6. An incident that occurred even before she entered elementary school.

The media covered this extensively. It was the moment the youngest magical girl in Korea was born.

Although bewildered, the girl happily accepted the attention. Being a magical girl was something she had aspired to, and she didn’t dislike receiving attention from others either. Most of all, she felt relief that she wouldn’t cause her mother any more hardship. She might not have fully understood financial matters due to her young age, but she knew her mother had endured many difficulties because of money.

So for a while, the girl was happy. She was so busy that she couldn’t properly attend elementary school, and there were times when she couldn’t sleep at night and had to work because villains appeared.

Others smiled as much as she suffered. So the girl was happy too.

Her senior magical girls took good care of her as well. They made sure she avoided overly difficult tasks. They covered for her when reporters asked provocative questions laced with malice, and protected her from strange articles or public opinion.

But as she grew up, she came to realize her own shortcomings, felt the sharp gazes of reporters, and noticed the envy and inferiority in the eyes of some of her peers. Red Spica came to realize one thing, the world is not always kind to her.

Of course, most ordinary people are kind to magical girls. But malice is like a thorn, piercing holes in the smooth surface of love.

One in a hundred may be a minority, but if that one gathers together, they become the majority. The internet, where there was no need to expose their identities, was the place where these minorities gathered. Unfortunately, they had an overabundance of time and passion to spend on tearing others down.

It took an instant for someone consumed by an inferiority complex to turn an ordinary girl into a wicked brat lusting for money.

Of course, no one seriously believed it. It was just a poor game played by those left behind in reality.

Freedom of expression, the habit of criticism, and suspicion are not bad things in themselves. The problem is that the people using them can be bad.

For those who value their own freedom above all else, the fact that the target they were vilifying was still a child who hadn’t even gone through puberty properly was not important.

Soon, an uproar arose in the internet world.

A movement to protect Red Spica began. For the ethical majority, spreading various rumors about an elementary school girl seemed only ugly. In reaction, her fans supported her with stories of her good deeds or famous scenes.

But where there is protection, there is also backlash. Her fans’ excessive behavior became an excuse to dislike her, and the number of Red Spica’s anti-fans grew as well.

Surprisingly, the girl was not deeply hurt by this incident. She had learned through experience that deranged people would inevitably swarm around celebrities, and she was confident that she would become one of them.

At the same time, this became an incident that made Red Spica re-evaluate her perception of people.

‘I didn’t become this because I wanted to.’

She always had to risk her life in battle, and even the money she earned, she couldn’t spend due to lack of time. From a very young age, she had to be separated from her only family.

So why should she have to endure such words? Why do they write such things without any fear, when they are the ones being protected by her?

They must have been confident.

Confident that they couldn’t harm her.

Because being a magical girl is a job like that. A supernatural being chooses and bestows power. The chosen ones are limited to women with outstanding looks and kindness.

A girl who would have an immense aversion to harming others would become a magical girl, so they could insult her without worry. And even if she did retaliate, there would be huge social repercussions and responsibility, so it was even more unlikely to happen.

Red Spica was one of those people. But those words that crossed the line, combined with the delicate emotions unique to puberty, caused a huge backlash.

“I’m not… Some slave.”

Next time, I’ll sue them. Red Spica resolved. And later, she actually sued some malicious commenters in the name of the Magical Girl Association.

She was heavily criticized for attacking civilians despite being someone who should protect them, but she didn’t care.

Either come and fight me if you’re going to act up. Or just quietly boycott. Fortunately, the boycott from that minority did not damage Red Spica’s influence at all.

With the settlement money, she went to an expensive restaurant with her mother.

The girl was still happy.

Eventually, the girl grew to an age where it was no longer strange to call her a woman. Behind her, there were now so many juniors, younger than her, that it was difficult to count them all with both hands.

The girl was no longer the youngest receiving everyone’s love, and the responsibility that came with that position followed as well.

And then, a problem arose.

An S-rank Villain. An intelligent supernatural phenomenon. A villain of a different dimension from anything they had faced before. An existence that even she, who had been a magical girl for over 10 years, had rarely encountered. And it happened during a structural operation where she was the leader.

Among the current magical girls, her rescue rate is the strongest. So many people have died to the point where such words seem ridiculous. 

She endured much mockery and resentment. The curses she heard from the victims’ relatives at the memorial service still haven’t faded from her memory.

The various nonsense spouted by dropouts on the internet as usual no longer sounded like nonsense.

Red Spica felt a sense of doubt.

‘…Am I really the bad one?’

It seems that way. 

If a magical girl can’t protect people, isn’t she just a money-grubbing woman selling her face?

At the same time, she felt wronged. The opponent didn’t match her level. What could I have done? No matter what, there would have been casualties, and those families would resent her.

No matter how hard she tried her best, the result was the worst for someone.

‘…I should have died back then.’

She would have at least been praised with words like honorable death. Because a magical girl’s best is a crazy act of rushing in like a moth to the flame, knowing it’s a losing battle.

She wouldn’t have been called lazy or a slacker.

The girl wanted to forget everything. All the people she failed to protect, her self-loathing, and this selfish sense of injustice.

Soon, the girl would get a chance to forget all of this.

She forgot who gave it to her, but through contact with some machine.

Its lens reflected the light, tormenting Virgo’s eyes. After a very long time, once again.

The belt attached to Watchers’s waist. Its shape was similar to the last machine she saw when she was human.

“Why now of all times…!”

She thought she had diligently forgotten. Virgo grit her teeth. 

“Don’t make me recall it!”

She shouted at the lightning constantly approaching her. She tried to look strong, but couldn’t help the slight tremble at the end of her voice. Virgo was afraid.

No matter how many rays she poured out, he didn’t stop moving.

Virgo unveiled one last trick she didn’t want to use.

“You think I’m a pushover? Tell me! Don’t come closer!” 

The power of the Double Star. The power to create a clone identical to herself. Every time she used it, Virgo was enveloped in intense discomfort. It felt like she was looking at herself in a mirror. Objectively seeing herself was truly embarrassing and ugly.

It was a bit better when she lost her mind, but it was hard when even a bit of her memory remained.

But now there were no other moves left. The remaining distance was very small, and a slight delay would lead to decapitation.  

The gathered lightning, unable to discern the ax’s shape, seemed to indicate his strike would not hesitate at all.

“You’re just the same! You’ll disrespect me! Desecrate me!”

Death was terrifying. A sensation she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

“Why are you resisting so hard?!”

Virgo slightly pulled her hand away from the empty space she had been covering. Behind Watcher, someone with a blurred outline emerged from the space her hand had been covering.

It was herself. A girl with an artificial grin bright enough to sense her empathy level. A girl wearing a fluttery gothic lolita-style black dress she didn’t particularly like, possessing a power capable of murder at any time.

“We’re all going to die anyway!”

A villain who indeed exercised that power unhesitatingly, piling up countless corpses. Her black wings spread wide. The black sclera surrounding her violet irises distorted.

The compressed light from her was large enough to blind even herself. 

Vulgar yet beautiful.

A ray that could easily melt a human’s head fired.

“The world is going to be destroyed anyway! We’ll all die and become useless!”

The last scene she saw as a human, the scene she witnessed upon contact with that machine, was of destruction. Humanity’s twilight, a horrific sight of a fiend ravaging all cities.

The beauty of the four seasons, the splendor of morning, the loneliness of night, the charms each person possessed – all vanished, the world painted in a deep muddy purple hue.

Seeing that, Virgo went insane. She had to go insane. It meant all her efforts until then were meaningless, and everything she loved disappeared.  

So Virgo forgot everything. A kind of defense mechanism. She solved the pain of her fading love by erasing love from her memory.

The ray shot straight for Watcher’s heart. If Watcher surrendered even now, she had the intention to stop that ray. 

“So, stop now…”

Without even looking back, he cut through and eliminated the ray coming from behind.

Only a single step remained.

“You.”

The Watcher, Han Jae-jung hidden within that lightning, asked her, “Have you ever seen the stars?”

“…I already told you before.”

Virgo gripped the mechanical device she had promised to give Watcher.

“I’ve forgotten! Stop! Or else I’ll destroy this machine…”

“I see.”

He approached her without stopping at all.

“Then I’ll make you recall again.”

Kwajik!

The lightning-infused ax traced a line. 

A single motion.

The violet hue dominating the girl was overlaid with white.

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