My magic? What magic do I have?
I can't transform, I can't fly, I can't shoot light blasts, and I even got a zero on the simplest magic perception test.
But Rei still began to ponder it. Whenever Tian Gong asked a question, she couldn't help but take it seriously.
Rei recalled when she was very, very young, probably before she even started elementary school, the first time she saw a Magical Girl on television.
It was Magical Girl Shiraha's debut performance. Rei had sat on the floor, so close to the TV that the flashes from every battle reflected on her face.
Her mother had called out from behind her, “Rei, move back! You're going to ruin your eyes,” but she couldn't move at all.
The older girl, wearing glittering clothes, had descended from the sky and defeated the monster with a single spell.
After the fight, she gave a sweet smile to the camera and said, “Keep doing your best, everyone!”
I felt like she was looking at me. I knew it was impossible, but in that moment, I truly felt like she was.
Later, in kindergarten, my close friends and I would play Magical Girl games by the sandbox. I always scrambled to play Shiraha. There was a short-haired girl who also wanted to be Shiraha, so we decided it with rock-paper-scissors. The loser had to play the monster.
At the time, I thought that even if I lost, it didn't matter. As long as I got to transform once in the game, I was willing to be defeated by the monster.
In the end, I won. Standing by the sandbox, clutching a chopstick I brought from home to use as a magic wand, I closed my eyes and recited Shiraha's transformation incantation.
When I opened my eyes, my friends were all staring at me. One girl said, “Rei, when you chanted that, you looked like a real Magical Girl.”
The sun was very bright that afternoon, and the sand was hot to the touch. I really felt like I was shining.
In second grade, it became popular in class to put glittery stickers on our notebooks, pretending they were Magical Girl items.
I saved up my pocket money for three weeks to buy a whole sheet of stickers, and I pasted my favorite star-shaped one on the most prominent spot of my backpack.
My desk partner said, “That's girls' stuff, boys don't play with that.” I replied, “Magical Girls aren't just for girls.”
Later, that same desk partner secretly bought the same stickers and pasted them inside his pencil case, telling absolutely no one.
During one summer break, I saw a real Magical Girl with my own eyes for the first time—living, breathing, and just a street away from me.
That day, my mother and I were returning from the supermarket, carrying two plastic bags full of groceries. Just as we reached our front door, we suddenly heard a massive bang.
A large hole blasted open in the wall of the abandoned commercial building across the street. Debris rained down, clattering loudly against the cars parked on the roadside.
A monster I had never seen before was crawling out of the hole. Its legs were thicker than a person's waist, its body was covered in green scales, and slime dripped from its snapping jaws.
Terrified, I fell to the ground, and the apples from our plastic bag rolled all over the place.
A beam of light descended from the sky. It was a Magical Girl.
I couldn't see her face clearly. I only saw that her weapon was an extremely long staff, and the hem of her skirt was silver-white.
She moved incredibly fast, slicing the monster into pieces in just a few moves. Then, she stood atop a streetlight and glanced down at me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
She nodded, leaped onto the rooftop, and flew away.
Later, I spent a long time researching before I found out her code name was Cold Silver.
From that day on, my favorite changed from “everyone” to “Cold Silver first.”
In her second year of middle school, the school organized a field trip to the Association, where they also offered Magical Girl aptitude tests for anyone who wanted to sign up.
Rei was the first to sign up.
Her hands were shaking so much when she filled out the registration form that she even wrote her name wrong, eventually having to ask the teacher for a new sheet.
The testing room wasn't large, with only a single machine. You just had to place your hand on the sensing plate, close your eyes, and wait a few seconds.
When I placed my hand on it, the sensing plate felt cold—colder than I had imagined. With my eyes closed, I recited every Magical Girl chant I could think of in my head. But when I opened my eyes, the technician looked at me and shook his head.
I said it was fine, but in truth, I had already guessed as much.
I had never been anything special since I was little. I wasn't the fastest runner, my grades weren't the best, and I couldn't draw as well as the art students in my class.
The only thing I was good at was remembering every Magical Girl's name, code name, weapon, and debut date. I could even recite the details of their first public appearance or battle.
But this talent was completely worthless in an aptitude test.
When I walked out of the testing room, my mother was leaning against the hallway wall, waiting for me.
She didn't ask a thing. She simply handed me a bottle of juice that was still dripping with condensation and said, “Let's go home. I made your favorite fried chicken for dinner tonight.”
Rei wasn't sad when she got home, either.
She locked herself in her room and looked through the Magical Girl posters on her wall, one by one.
Meruru was only just starting to become famous back then, and there was only a three-minute video of her online.
Rei watched that clip over and over for the entire night, then dragged herself out of bed to go to school the next day.
From that day on, she never thought about whether she could become a Magical Girl again.
Rather than dwelling on that question, Rei preferred to spend her time following their every battle, every new performance, and the debut of every new Magical Girl.
If she couldn't fight alongside them on the battlefield, she would cheer loudly from the support stands. If she lacked the mana to fight, she would support them in other ways: buying merchandise, editing videos, writing comments, and participating in offline support events.
This was what Rei could do, and it was what she chose to do.
“My magic... If remembering every single Magical Girl counts as magic, then I suppose I have magic.”
Rei said as she slowly looked up at Qiluo.
But she blinked, then rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand to make sure she wasn't seeing things.
Hovering behind Qiluo was a tiny creature, roughly the size of a cat. It was covered in silver-white fur, with fine starlight drifting from the tip of its tail, looking like a miniature, moving galaxy under the dim lights of the nurse's office.
It was floating right above Qiluo's shoulder, its two front paws still held in a forward-reaching position.
Rate on N.U.
