How did it turn out like this?
She clearly only had to nod to transform into a Magical Girl.
With just a single nod, she could have obtained what she had always wanted.
But... for it to end up like this.
This made the speech Qiluo Tian Gong had prepared completely useless.
“Do you really not want it?” Qiluo looked at Rei. “This opportunity.”
Rei shook her head firmly.
Oh well. Qiluo sighed. Since Rei didn't want to become a Magical Girl, Qiluo could only respect her wishes.
As Rei turned around to leave, her back collar was gently snagged by something.
Looking down, she saw a white thread of light hooked onto her collar. Following the thread back, she found the other end wrapped around Star-trail's tail.
“Wait a moment,” Star-trail floated up from the bedding, hovering in front of Rei, its tail still hooked onto her collar.
“Although you are unwilling to form a formal contract with me, I can give you a temporary transformation opportunity. It's a one-time experience that will automatically dissolve once your mana is depleted.”
“If it's just a temporary transformation... is it really okay?” Rei looked down at the faintly glowing mark on the back of her hand. “Can I really do it? Right here, right now?”
Star-trail didn't answer. It backed up half a meter, hovering just above Qiluo's knees.
Its tail swept across the back of Rei's hand, and the mark lit up in response. Soft white light spilled from between Rei's fingers, spreading all the way up her arm and across her entire body.
Rei felt an unprecedented warmth flowing through her veins.
She opened her hands, and the points of light swirled in her palms before finally condensing into a solid object.
A staff half a head taller than her landed in her palms. The shaft was entirely silver-white, and at its tip was a slowly rotating star.
The butt of the staff tapped the floor, making a crisp, pleasant sound.
Rei looked down at her hands. Starlight leaked through her fingers, falling onto her skirt and bouncing off like shattered stars.
Her dress was a pale silver-white, its color transitioning into a light blue from the waist down, resembling the sky in the final moments before dawn.
A thin Starlight Belt was tied around her waist, its buckle a tiny, rotating ring of stars.
Her twin tails came undone, leaving her long hair draped over her shoulders. The tips of her hair were tinged with a silver glow, swaying gently with every turn of her head.
The staff was still gripped in her hands, its surface etched with intricate star-trail patterns.
Rei stood by the window, her current appearance reflected in the glass.
The curtains of the nurse's office had already been drawn, making her the brightest light source in the room at this moment.
She turned sideways, looking at the silver light at the tips of her hair in the reflection. She twirled a strand around her finger, held it up to her eyes, and let go, watching the hair fall back to her shoulder on its own.
“...Is this really me?”
She blinked at herself in the glass, and the person in the reflection blinked back.
She raised her hand, and the reflection did the same.
“Does it look good?”
Rei turned her head to look at Qiluo, wanting her to give her opinion.
“You look beautiful,” Qiluo said, tilting her head as she sized her up. “The outfit suits you well, and the staff is a great match. You look much more the part than I imagined.”
Rei's face flushed slightly at the compliment. She instinctively tried to hide the staff behind her back, but because it was too long, it bumped against a chair leg with a dull thud, sending her into a flurry to prop it upright again.
“Though—if you stand over by the corridor window, people passing by outside might see you.” Qiluo gestured toward the window with her chin.
Rei let out an “Ah!” and hurriedly scrambled away from the window. Cradling the staff, she retreated to the storage cabinet in the corner of the nurse's office, only then realizing she had overreacted.
Looking at the faintly glowing staff in her arms, she couldn't help but chuckle.
“Is this what it feels like to be a Magical Girl? My body feels so light, like I could touch the ceiling with just a little hop. And there are so many things in my head that were never there before. If I close my eyes, I know exactly where to fly and how to use this staff—who gave me this knowledge?”
“Basic combat knowledge and flight instincts are automatically loaded during transformation,” Star-trail said, floating up from the bedding.
Then why hadn't Kizuna experienced that back then?
That was because this was just a trial run; Qiluo wanted Rei to experience all of it.
Kizuna, on the other hand, had to learn everything completely on her own so she could execute it instinctively.
Rei waved the staff again. This time, she cast off a few tiny specks of starlight, which landed on the bedsheet and burned several tiny, charred holes.
She hurriedly pulled the staff back, rubbing her fingers over the burn marks. Finding that they wouldn't rub off, she quickly dragged a pillow over to cover them.
“The school nurse is going to kill me if she sees this...” she muttered guiltily.
Star-trail floated down from beside the ceiling light. “Your current mana fluctuations are a bit unstable. Try gripping the staff tighter to guide the mana back into it. Don't let it wander around.”
Rei took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Gripping the staff with both hands, the escaping mana gradually gathered back. It stopped running wild and obediently swirled around the staff.
“I really did it...” She opened her eyes, staring at the docile staff in her hands.
The mana that had just burned holes into the bedsheet was now resting quietly against her hands, like a thin pair of gloves.
She tried pulling the mana back into her body, and it obediently sank into her skin, leaving only a faint halo of light around the mark on the back of her hand.
“Not bad,” Star-trail said, landing on Rei's shoulder. “To recall leaking mana so quickly... your intuition for mana fluctuations is better than you think.”
Rei raised the staff and drew a circle above her head. A few stars flew out from the circle, aligning themselves in a crooked line near the ceiling.
Looking up at those stars, she couldn't keep her lips from curling into a grin.
The white fluorescent light of the nurse's office made the stars look rather faint, but she didn't care. She had conjured them herself—every single one of them.
Someone passed by outside. Rei instinctively shrank back into the corner, hiding the staff behind her back. She only breathed a sigh of relief when the footsteps completely faded at the end of the corridor.
“You are a Magical Girl now. Theoretically, you could punch right through that wall.”
Qiluo pointed at the wall next to the storage cabinet. “No need to hide.”
Rei froze for a moment. She looked at her hand, then at the wall, and finally clutched the staff tighter in her arms.
She figured she would probably never learn how to do the 'no need to hide' thing. She simply wasn't the type of person who would go around punching holes in walls.
Rate on N.U.
