You Didn't Choose Me

Mingyue didn't reply. She was waiting, waiting for Lightweaver to say, “I'm not close with them,” or even, “I haven't officially joined yet.”

But Qiluo didn't say anything else. She knew that if she did, Night Sakura would immediately chime in on the channel to clarify.

And Night Sakura's channel was public; both Kohinata and Amamiya could hear. They had been looking at her as a “teammate” for so long. If she said that, wouldn't the two of them feel disappointed and hurt as well?

Besides, she still wanted to help the Store Owner realize her wish...

“You've joined them,” Mingyue said, finishing her sentence for her when she saw that Lightweaver had no intention of continuing.

“...Yes.”

Mingyue's knuckles turned white. Her lips parted as if she wanted to say something, but she swallowed the first word before it could escape. She turned her head to look at Snowrealm, as if to confirm something.

Snowrealm stood a step behind her, her gaze fixed on Lightweaver.

Snowrealm withdrew her gaze and turned to Mingyue. “In the Association's definitions, the Wings of Freedom is classified as an unregistered Magical Girl mutual-aid organization. Under current Association regulations, contacting an unregistered organization is not a violation, but joining one falls into a gray area.”

Mingyue stared at her. After waiting for two seconds and seeing that she had nothing more to add, she asked, “...Is that all?”

“That is all.”

Mingyue fell into an even longer silence. Nuomi slid down from her shoulder, squatting next to her wrist, and gently rubbed its ears against the back of her hand—the one gripping the scythe.

“...Do you know how long I've been looking for you?” Mingyue's voice suddenly dropped, becoming so quiet that only Lightweaver, standing directly in front of her, could hear.

“You wouldn't even give me your contact information. I've been searching for you all this time. Even if we couldn't be friends, just being able to talk to you would have been enough.”

Shizuru Kirishima didn't think of herself as someone with heavy feelings. Looking back now, perhaps her feelings toward Lightweaver had been buried in her own past all along.

The battle at the amusement park that day, the exact moment Lightweaver appeared.

That warm white light had beamed down from the side of the observation tower, instantly sealing off the entire area she hadn't been able to block in time with moves she had never seen before. The white-haired Magical Girl with red highlights had stood in the center of the web of threads of light, her movements elegant and composed.

When the battle ended, she had simply turned and walked away, not even intending to leave her name behind. No superfluous explanations, no half-hearted excuses—just a flat refusal.

Those words sounded exactly like something she would say. So there really is another person like me in this world.

A stronger version of her own kind.

Things that she herself had only honed after fighting for so long, this person seemed to possess naturally. She wanted to learn from her, yet she also couldn't resist wanting to get closer. These two desires tangled together, making her heart race with every encounter.

When she saw Lightweaver guarding her independence with an almost cold attitude, it was like seeing another version of herself standing across a mirror.

But Lightweaver was far more composed, far more effortless, while she herself was already exhausted just trying to maintain the status quo.

This gap didn't breed jealousy, but rather admiration, along with a tiny, selfish thought: if Lightweaver were willing to stay, if Lightweaver were willing to become someone she knew, then perhaps she too could learn from Lightweaver how to live a little more easily.

And just when she had finally made up her mind to actively step closer, Lightweaver was already standing among others. She didn't need her anymore. This realization made the fingers gripping her scythe tremble.

She took a step forward, her scythe dragging along the ground, its tip carving a thin groove into the earth. “I want to ask you face-to-face—why?”

“The Wings of Freedom has the information channels and combat resources I need,” Qiluo replied, reverting to that calm, explanation-averse Magical Girl. “I'm just a stranger who leaves no traces. I'm not worth you looking for so many times. I'm not worth you compromising the Association's stance.”

“But I think it's worth it!” The words burst from her mouth without a single thought.

Kohinata almost lost her grip on her hammer. Amamiya silently pushed her twin kodachi all the way back into their sheaths and took half a step backward. Night Sakura let out a very soft “Wow” over the communication channel, then proactively muted her mic, deciding not to pass up a rare chance to enjoy the drama in silence.

This isn't admiration. Qiluo slowly gathered the ends of her threads of light back into her palm, crossing out the word “admiration” in her mind. Admiration was looking at someone from afar, pasting her posters on the wall, collecting screenshots of her combat records, and repeatedly typing her name into a search bar.

It wasn't carrying a scythe to chase someone onto a battlefield and asking her, in front of everyone, why she didn't choose you.

This was something heavier than admiration, so heavy that Mingyue herself probably hadn't figured out what to call it yet.

Lightweaver took a step forward, leaping down from the debris to land in front of Mingyue. She stood there empty-handed, about two paces away from her.

A few paces away, Snowrealm didn't look away once, only vaguely feeling as though she could understand a little.

“...Do you know how long I've been looking for you?” Mingyue repeated, her voice hushed, as if speaking to herself.

As she spoke, she pressed a hand to her forehead, as if sorting through the last few thoughts she hadn't quite formulated yet. “I finally managed to run into you in that alleyway, but you wouldn't even give me your contact info. You said you didn't plan on becoming someone I knew. I thought, fine, then I'll keep chasing you until you're willing to know me. But today, I finally caught up, only to find you already standing next to someone else.”

She lowered her hand from her forehead, her deep blue eyes shimmering with light. “You didn't choose me.”

Choice. When she used that word, what was going through her mind? It wasn't “you're not fighting alongside me,” nor was it “you joined another organization.”

It seemed that in her eyes, this matter had never been about belonging to one organization or another from the very beginning. Rather, it was about Lightweaver, as a person, choosing whom to stand beside out of everyone. And she wasn't among those chosen.

This was Mingyue's way of saying: I think you're worth chasing this far. And I hope you think I'm worth stopping for.

Qiluo weighed herself and Mingyue on the same scale in her heart. On her side, she had nothing—nothing but a fake codename.