The moment she turned the corner of the corridor and confirmed that she could no longer be seen from the direction of the restaurant,
the apologetic smile she had fabricated vanished from her face like ice dust scattered by the wind.
In its place was a chilling anger.
“How dare a few low-tiers show up at a time like this,” she muttered in a voice only she could hear, as if speaking to the Erosion Bodies, or perhaps to everything that had gone wrong today.
Star-trail rose from her shoulder. Qiluo watched Yuki Kurokawa's profile through its eyes, taking another sip of her oolong tea back at the restaurant booth.
She knew she shouldn't laugh, but seeing Yuki Kurokawa this furious over being interrupted made her lips curl up in amusement.
Anyone would be furious in her shoes—someone normally so calm and collected, forced to leave her very first meal out with a friend after taking only two bites.
Bottling up her frustration, she was ready to unleash all of it onto those blind Erosion Bodies.
Below the end of the corridor was a drainage canal hidden behind municipal greenbelts. It was a place where people rarely passed—exactly the kind of spot Erosion Bodies loved: dark, damp, and close to water.
After confirming no one was around, Yuki Kurokawa raised her left hand. Silvery-white starlight welled from the star-shaped mark on the back of her hand, quickly spreading along the contours of her body.
Ice dust condensed into the shape of a skirt in midair. Her deep black hair fluttered in the magical fluctuations before falling back down, the tips of her hair dyed a cold shade of silvery blue.
A straight sword materialized in her right palm. The chain at the end of the hilt draped gently at her feet, carving a razor-thin trail of ice across the concrete ground.
Snowrealm stood at the edge of the riverbank, her deep blue eyes reflecting the shimmering light from the water's surface. Deep within her pupils, the spinning pattern of star-trails was gradually accelerating.
Two low-tiers, and one that could barely be considered a mid-tier.
The two low-tiers were climbing up the riverbank, while the mid-tier one crouched on a shoal in the very middle of the river. Its carapace was covered in some sort of shellfish-like growths, and the dark purple glow of its core had not yet fully lit up.
Having just spawned and not even fully aware of their surroundings, these Erosion Bodies had chosen the worst possible time to appear before the worst possible person.
Snowrealm didn't give them any time to react.
She blurred into a silvery-blue afterimage, gliding across the water's surface.
Ice dust drifted down from beneath her skirt, freezing into a sheet of thin ice upon contact with the river. The moment her feet touched the ice, she had already locked onto the first low-tier.
She thrust her straight sword upward, the tip of the blade slicing into the gaps of its arthropod shell. Instantly, ice spread from the point of entry, freezing its entire leg.
With a flick of her wrist, she dragged the blade horizontally, prying off the frozen leg along with its carapace. Using the momentum to spin around, she whipped out the chain in her left hand, impaling the forelimb of the second low-tier just as it peeked over the riverbank, pinning it firmly to the concrete wall.
Without pausing, she retracted the chain as she leaped off the thin ice, soaring through the air directly over the mid-tier one's head.
The mid-tier Erosion Body raised its front half, the shellfish-like growths on its shell opening to reveal a dense mass of tiny tentacles inside.
But its counterattack was too slow. Snowrealm flipped in midair above it, pointing her straight sword downward, and plunged it straight through the dark purple glow of its core before it could fully ignite.
Ice erupted outward from the core, bursting into a frozen flower several meters in diameter right in the middle of the river.
“I didn't even have to come today...” Her voice wasn't loud, but the suppressed emotion in her words cracked her usually calm tone.
She landed on the frozen river, her knees bending slightly to absorb the impact.
The low-tier she had pinned to the riverbank was struggling, cracks already appearing in the ice around its leg joints.
She walked over and struck—once, twice, thrice...
Every slash carried far more force than necessary. A final blast of ice dust shot from the tip of her sword, pinning the third Erosion Body along with the ice it had just broken free from back onto the riverbank.
She pulled her sword out of the dissolving remains of the last Erosion Body, standing on the frozen river as she panted heavily.
There had been absolutely no need to slash the low-tier two extra times, nor did she need to deliver a finishing blow to the mid-tier one after landing.
But she had wanted to slash them. She wanted to hack all the words she had held back when forced to leave, every ache of her racing heart, and every syllable she hadn't gotten to say to Tian Gong into the shells of these Erosion Bodies.
Star-trail hopped down gently from the riverbank, landing on the ice beside her feet.
It didn't speak, only looking up at her.
“Kurokawa... is so scary... Her eyes are glowing red!”
“Is she really going to be okay???”
Once her breathing finally evened out, Snowrealm turned around and withdrew her straight sword. The ice-dust chain wrapped around her wrist before dissolving back into points of light.
This absolute steamroll of a battle had vented most of her pent-up frustration.
She looked down at Star-trail. The chilling bloodlust in her eyes had faded, leaving behind only a trace of lingering, unvented grievance and a touch of embarrassment she was too self-conscious to voice.
She lowered her gaze, her voice softer than usual. “...If we had encountered it in an open area, its tentacles would have had a much wider reach. We got lucky today, catching it before it could stabilize.”
“As for the low-tier, two slashes would have sufficed. The extra strike was to confirm if there was a hidden regeneration core.”
Even she felt the excuse was poorly made. She turned away from Star-trail, the tips of her ears peeking through her silvery-blue hair, already blushing red.
“...Let's go back. I haven't eaten the pudding yet.”
Was this really the same Kurokawa whose eyes had been glowing red just a moment ago?
She could have been sitting comfortably in the restaurant, waiting for the baked rice to cool down to the perfect temperature, waiting for the caramel pudding to be served, and enjoying it together with Tian Gong.
Instead, she was standing by a river whose name she didn't even know. Even though all traces of this battle would completely evaporate in a few minutes...
she still couldn't help but think: if the person sitting across from Tian Gong today wasn't her, but some other ordinary girl...
those Erosion Bodies could have been left to other Magical Girls, and Tian Gong wouldn't have been left waiting all by herself in the restaurant.
But she was a Magical Girl, and it was only natural for a Magical Girl to protect the peace.
She felt like she had completely messed things up. Even though Tian Gong had smiled and said she would wait, who would want to be left stranded in a booth on their very first outing together, with the other person running off on an obvious excuse?
...No, it wasn't a date.
She corrected herself in her mind.
As sharp as Tian Gong was, had she really not noticed anything?
“...Time to head back.” Snowrealm stood by the water for a moment, then turned to walk up the steps.
Sitting in the restaurant booth, separated by a pane of glass and a few hundred meters of straight-line distance, Qiluo had watched the entire battle from start to finish through Star-trail's eyes.
It was actually quite nice. Channeling her emotions into combat power was far healthier than keeping them bottled up.
At least she knew Kurokawa was still doing well, didn't she?
Rate on N.U.
