As Mia sunk into a reverie, Misaki noisily poured himself a cup of tea, breaking the silence hovering over the terrace, and addressed Mia. “Have you got any aspirations, something you wanna achieve with the whole world conquest thing? ‘Cause usually, when someone’s talking world domination, they have a picture of what kinda society they wanna create.”
“Of course I have that! I want to create a world where the workforce toiling for my benefit can spend their days safely, pleasantly, and in good health! People will most probably resent and reject my dominion, but that cannot be helped, for I am ‘evil’! However, the ordinary folk bear no sin, so I would at least want to provide a happy and merry everyday life for them.”
Ren’s eyes widened at Mia’s speech.
What was she saying? It almost sounded like…
“Hey, hey, Mia, what about the people who are not in the workforce, like the seniors and the children?”
“Hmph! The children are the future workforce that must be protected and kept safe! And seniors and those with disabilities must be treated with kindness and respect!”
…a child’s “perfect world”.
There’s a phrase that children would often use when describing the ideals of a ‘Champion of Justice’. That phrase is, “a world where everybody is happy”. What Mia was talking about was essentially that very same thing.
When children become adults and learn how society works, they mostly come to realize the futility of that dream. There is no way for all the people in the world to attain happiness; it’s difficult enough for the people in one’s immediate vicinity to do that. Eventually, they will learn that making even themselves happy is easier said than done, and will spend the rest of their lives in a desperate pursuit of bliss.
That was why Misaki, and everyone else, thought the same thing—that Mia’s thinking, although she was saying she was evil, was fundamentally that of a ‘Champion of Justice’. Why was it, then, that she insisted so stubbornly that she was ‘evil’? It looked horribly forced on her part.
“…I’ll try bringing it up with the chief,” Ren muttered.
There were a number of things that Mia had mentioned that he was curious about, and a lot of mystery surrounding the previous Supreme Rulers of Evil, such as the tracking device surgically implanted in Mia’s body. Clearing up those questions would be his first priority now.
“Is something wrong?” Mia inquired, her head tilted in puzzlement.
“Nah, I’m fine,” Ren smiled and patted the girl on the head.
“But that must be tough on you. No matter how much you patrol the town, there will always be something. Even we, the police, apprehend and arrest so many people every day, but there’s no end to the troublemakers,” Subaru, who kept silent per usual, spoke up, a beer in his hand.
Mia nodded solemnly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Yes, that’s true, the small conflicts will not cease. However, I must not let that stop me! Oh, right! This is not related to the previous topic, but there is magic I have been training to cast in order to enforce my ideals. I was thinking of activating it behind the school building someday.”
When Ren asked her why it had to be behind the school building specifically, she explained that there were delinquents who liked to frequent that particular place at her school, whom she beat up on an almost daily basis, but who just wouldn’t learn their lesson and continued to engage in shakedowns, pushing weaker people around, and smoking.
“This is why I want to create a flower garden behind my school building. Those scoundrels will not be able to rob others of their money anymore when they will be surrounded by beautiful flowers, right? I intend to secretly cast this spell in all schools around the country! He-he-he… Let me treat you to a sneak peek! It’s still a work in progress, though!” Mia exclaimed, pride oozing from her, and stood up from her seat.
She grabbed the wand she left propped against her chair, and twirled it. Then, she fixed the image in her head, and let the words ring out, pouring intent into them. “Break open and bloom, o flowers of the heart!”
As soon as the last sound escaped her lips, the ground beneath the Crow Rangers’ feet became shrouded in a faint glow. Then, right out of the terrace floor, a multitude of flowers emerged, their buds instantly breaking open to reveal the colorful petals within. Gerberas, carnations, daisies, violets, lotuses, sweet peas, dandelions. The air was filled with the sweet, slightly grassy smell so characteristic to flowers. This was indeed a true “flower garden”.
“How pretty…”
“Yeah,” Subaru gave a faint nod in response to Aya’s words of marvel.
They followed the stems with their gazes, and were surprised to see that the flowers seemed to be rooted in the grains of wood on the planks lining the terrace floor. Even Misaki and Shou seemed to have lost their ability to speak in awe of this sight.
Ren was…he was looking at Mia. She was slightly out of breath. Was she tired?
“…Is this taxing on you?”
“Yes, I feel a bit drained. I always do when I use magic that conjures things up on a broad area. This flower spell is my original creation, but it’s close in scope to a great magical art of darkness. It’s less exhausting than Solassi, though.”
Solassi, the clumsily named great magical art of darkness. That, too, was something that Mia had come up with on her own; the most beautiful thing she could imagine made real.
“Actually, I don’t have a name for this spell yet. Besides, I would like to add more types of flowers, I’m trying to remember them by looking at a botanical field guide. When I put the finishing touches on this, the flower garden the spell will produce will be even more splendid. Bwa-ha-ha!”
As Mia struck a daunting pose, laughing loudly, Misaki walked through the flower field with a shell-shocked expression.
“These will look good at home!” Aya muttered, stalking around and picking a bouquet.
Subaru and Shou seemed to have fun picking flowers as well. Ren was the only one who didn’t take his eyes off Mia.
Mia was no “villain”. No, she was, rather, more of a good person than the Crow Rangers, who grudgingly wore the title of the ‘Champions of Justice’ just because it was a part of their job. She was also a bit lacking in intelligence, her ways of thinking often more befitting of a child rather than the high school student that she was. Most of all, deep down inside, she was very lonely.
Ren had realized that; Subaru, probably, had too. When the three of them would sit around the dinner table, every time she enjoyed herself or was about to crack a smile, she would cast her eyes down. She didn’t want to let them see that she was having fun, so she would stare down at her plate and hide it.
Every time she did that, Ren wanted to make her laugh, wanted her to show him a smile shining with happiness. He had noticed that she sometimes let her guard down and smiled at Aya or Subaru, but he had yet to see her lips quirk up for him. That upset him far more than he wanted to admit.
She wormed her way into his heart from the first time they had met. The way she wore her heart on her sleeve, her unyielding spirit, and her pluck. The way she reacted to his teasing. The more she tried to run, the more he wanted to give chase and catch her. The more she tried to defy him, the more he wanted to corner her and make her give in to him.
When he kissed her to spite her, she blushed, her dark eyes glistening with emotion. He inevitably got an earful from her for that, but he was obviously attracting her attention. When he realized that, it endeared him to her even more. Before he knew what was happening, his infatuation had already grown into affection, and dare he say it, something more.
Both of the spells Mia claimed had been her original creations, were beautiful—the fairy-tale-like rain of light and the vibrant field of flowers. The two sights were so much like something glimpsed from a little girl’s dream; it could hardly be something a villain would come up with.
If you’re talking magic befitting a villain, you should make it a bit more aggressive, don’cha think? Ren wanted to laugh sometimes.
But, such was Mia. This was the reflection of the very heart of Mia Oonari, kind and unable to harm people without a good reason. Indeed, it was because of the goodness of her heart that she could only produce such images. The magic she gave birth to could only be something beautiful. And yet, the girl called herself evil, despite anyone with eyes seeing that she was anything but evil. Did this eat at her as much as it did at him?
Silently, Ren clenched his fist as he watched Mia shoo Shou away when he started trying to make flower angels in the densely packed flower growths. Ren decided here and now that he would learn more about Mia Oonari.