Snow White
Snow White couldn’t see Rappy anymore. Her wrap was no longer flying in the air, either. The number of wind blades Tepsekemei was blowing was decreasing. The voices of her allies were growing distant—both their minds’ voices and their real voices.
The enemies’ minds, she could them hear so well it was obnoxious.
Sorting out the information she’d gained from their minds, she learned that the Lightnings were artificial magical girls, here in great numbers due to the use of Shufflin technology. Their roles were different depending on their assigned suit, and their numbers indicated their strength.
The Lightnings that stood blocking the way in front of Snow White right now were the weakest in combat among the Lightning group, the Heart Lightnings. The girls were aware of this themselves, and so they made use of numbers to inch in and corner them.
Snow White’s side had already been divided up. There was no help coming. There were too many voices, and she couldn’t deal with each individual one. The situation was incredibly relentless. She couldn’t erase the feeling that there was no resolving this once it had happened—she should have arranged things beforehand before things had gotten like this.
At the end of the day, she had come to this school to investigate. The plan had been to investigate the incident, investigate the class, and investigate the ruins. She was to see if there were students connected to Pythie Frederica, then follow those threads, and if political groundwork was necessary, she would get help not only from Inspection but also from Magical Girl Resources and Management to prepare things. Looking back on that plan now, perhaps they had been too easygoing about things. Most of all, they should have been ready to be attacked at any time. Frederica always aimed to take people by surprise.
For just an instant, Snow White’s heart flew far away.
Ever since the conclusion of the N City incident, she had worried over and over again whether she could have done a little more. She had considered repeatedly if she couldn’t have done something to change the situation, even if she had been a weak magical girl who was sure to lose in a fight.
The faces of those magical girls rose in her mind, one after another.
She really was thankful that Uluru had come to help her—not just emotional help, like making her laugh and encouraging her and such. She would help with paperwork and odd jobs, too, though she would complain while she did it. But she didn’t know how long Uluru would be with her. The one who had killed Premium Sachiko, her little sister, was Ripple. Even if Uluru knew Ripple had been being mind-controlled, Snow White couldn’t know what would happen once they actually met.
And she knew even less what would happen with Princess Deluge in the future. She was trying to move forward, despite her struggling and suffering. In the darkness, she was fumbling around for a way to deal with the absurdities the Magical Kingdom had foisted on them. Just sharing the same short-term goal as Deluge and being able to work with her, as well as Arlie, Brenda, and Catherine had to be good enough. Snow White did not dislike them.
Snow White felt like it was only lately that she’d finally come to be able to rely on the Inspection Department and Mana. But she wondered if she couldn’t have done a better job. Maybe things wouldn’t have wound up like this if it hadn’t been just her, if she’d done better working with them, even if not the very best.
She felt sadness and regret about the Keek incident. If only I’d been a little faster, she thought. If she had done things more skillfully, smoothly, and even more aggressively, then one or two magical girls—or even more, potentially—could have avoided death.
In the underground artificial magical-girl research facility, she had acted aggressively. She’d avoided talking about their friend’s death and positioned the magical girls as she pleased. The incident had been resolved, but it wasn’t as if she’d had no regrets after that. The voices of the heart that she had heard in that facility would never leave her ears, and even now, she would wonder if there hadn’t been a better way to do things. Maybe she wouldn’t have had to make her childhood friend Princess Inferno meet such a sad end—or have made such sorrowful words her final remarks.
She had nothing but regrets when it came to the Puk Puck incident. All the things she could’ve done instead welled up one after another, continuing to torture her spirit endlessly. But the reason that Snow White was able to worry about these things was because she was alive. If she died, she couldn’t even do that. She wouldn’t be able to move forward. No matter how painful it was, the living had to move forward.
None of these incidents had been properly resolved. Even when they ended, they weren’t over, leaving a lingering discomfort in her heart, and sometimes even more than that. But Snow White was recognized as having resolved these incidents, as the nickname of the Magical-Girl Hunter, given to her by Frederica, grew.
She had never been pleased by that nickname. It wasn’t simply that she didn’t like it—she didn’t think of herself as worthy of the name. There wasn’t a single job thus far that she had pulled off perfectly. She always continued to ooze regrets. She could never abandon her feelings for a clean restart. She had no choice but to carry it all, even if the weight of it made her feet feel heavy.
Even in the magical-girl class, she had regrets. And every time she heard the sorrowful cry of a magical girl’s heart, she was beaten by new ones.
She should have acted sooner. The magical girls in the masks were Frederica’s minions, and the Lightnings had come in order to interfere with Frederica. So then if she’d been able to predict what Frederica would do, things would have been different. Hadn’t there been someone else she could have coordinated with more? Shouldn’t she have been more aggressive about her investigation? It was outrageous for people to die because she’d been considering the power relationships between factions and departments and politics. Could she even face the people who had died, then?
The futures of the magical girls who had gone to school believing in tomorrow were being closed. Even if Snow White wanted to cry, she couldn’t. She had to act, or someone else would die.
A piercing sound rang out, as if to drown out Snow White’s wild thoughts. She broke through the floor to escape from a Lightning’s thunder strike. While covered in spiderwebs and mud, she slid under the floorboards. A sword was thrust at her. A dagger was thrown in. Even one hit would be a fatal wound. Snow White continued to flee.