Raw milk, sugar, emulsifiers...
Qiluo stood next to the refrigerated display case, holding a bottle of milk and looking over the ingredient list.
Why was the shelf life of this milk so long? Did they add some weird mana preservative?
She stared at the preservative for a moment, then picked up the strawberry-flavored bottle next to it, examining it while lost in thought.
Nishikawa-senpai forgot to restock the labels for the refrigerated display case before he left today. The morning shift tomorrow will probably find the price tag for the strawberry milk placed in front of the original flavor.
Hmm... Nishikawa-senpai is a good person, so let the kind-hearted Qiluo help him out.
The automatic door suddenly made a crisp chime.
Qiluo put down the milk in her hand and prepared to look toward the entrance.
Ah, a customer? Is there really a customer at this hour?
Don't tell me it's a Magical Girl who went to battle without eating dinner and is now starving after it's over?
Did she see a convenience store still open and run in to get a bite to eat?
Why would Qiluo think that? Because she was practically developing a stereotype at this point!
Sigh, only the kind-hearted Qiluo would keep normal business hours.
“Welcome—”
Qiluo was about to bow and welcome them.
But she was interrupted by a dull thud as something slammed hard against the outside of the glass door.
It wasn't the electronic chime of a customer pushing the door open.
Qiluo stepped out from behind the cash register and poked her head out to look.
A low-tier Erosion Body was splayed across the asphalt outside the automatic doors.
The crack on its head opened and closed, emitting a low-frequency hiss.
It wasn't very large, and its mana fluctuations were weak. It had probably spawned not long ago, gotten disoriented by the torrential rain, and stumbled its way to the convenience store entrance by accident.
She could easily deal with an Erosion Body of this level with a single thread of light. She wouldn't even need to transform; she could just use the mana from Star-trail's mimetic clone to pin it to the wall.
She raised her finger, and a warm white thread of light already slipped out slightly from her fingertip.
But she didn't flick the thread of light. Instead, she slowly withdrew her finger.
Through Star-trail's field of vision, two figures—one blue and one silver—lit up at the end of the street.
Mingyue and Snowrealm were patrolling, heading exactly toward the convenience store, less than two blocks away.
If she acted now, the fluctuation of her mana would definitely be picked up by the two of them.
She didn't want to explain why an ordinary convenience store clerk could handle an Erosion Body by herself on a stormy night.
She had spent so much time maintaining her image as the ordinary Qiluo Tian Gong in front of everyone!
She couldn't let all that effort go to waste tonight just to save a little trouble!
Taking a deep breath, she completely retracted the thread of light into her fingertip, turned around, and walked behind the cash register.
After a moment's thought, she felt that standing didn't make her look ordinary enough. So, she simply squatted down, hiding beneath the counter, leaving only half her head exposed to watch the Erosion Body outside the glass door.
Then, she turned off the warming switch for the oden, took her phone in hand, and hesitated for a moment without dialing any numbers.
What would an ordinary high school girl do in this situation? She had never experienced it, but she would probably be scared out of her wits first.
So she set her phone aside and hugged her knees.
“Ah~ How scary~ Someone save me~”
Qiluo muttered in a low, monotone voice, swaying her head.
Was this a bit unnatural?
“I won't accept this! Please save me!”
Cough, cough. That was what Yuki had said in her heart when she was in danger.
She peeked out half her head from the edge of the counter and saw that the Erosion Body was currently trying to pull its head out from behind the trash can.
What an incredibly stupid Erosion Body. It couldn't even slam open the automatic door.
She pulled her head back and continued to hug her knees, feeling that acting out this scene tonight was far more exhausting than working at the convenience store itself.
A few seconds ago, two blocks away.
Mingyue had just finished clearing a low-tier one. She shook the accumulated water off the handle of her weapon, preparing to continue advancing toward the station along the Observation Department's patrol route.
Nuomi, perched on her shoulder, suddenly perked up its ears. Both long ears turned toward the convenience store at the same time, and the bell on its tail let out a sharp chime.
“There's one over there,” Nuomi pointed its tail toward the convenience store, its nose twitching slightly in the rain. “A low-tier one, spawned not long ago. Wait—”
Its ears rotated another half-turn, and its tone suddenly shifted from alert to a subtle hesitation.
“Someone is shivering inside the convenience store. The frequency is very low, but Nuomi can feel it. They're probably terrified of the Erosion Body.”
Mingyue frowned, shifting her scythe to a more comfortable grip, preparing to speed over. But before she could even kick off the ground, Snowrealm beside her had already bolted.
It was a speed that bordered on reckless abandon.
Ice-attribute mana exploded from beneath her feet, laying down a straight path of ice over the standing water.
She kept her body low, the chains on her weapon wildly wrapping and unwrapping around her wrists.
The mana fluctuations blew away the surrounding curtain of rain in a circle. The standing water on both sides of the ice path was kicked up into half-man-high walls of water by the impact, collapsing with a loud crash only after she had dashed past.
“Snowrealm!” Mingyue shouted, but Snowrealm didn't look back at all.
She had never seen Snowrealm run so fast.
It was a way of running that showed utter disregard for everything else.
As if the Erosion Body splayed at the convenience store entrance wasn't a low-tier one, but a disaster-tier.
As if the person trapped inside that convenience store was more important than all the Erosion Bodies on the entire street combined.
Because she was more important than everyone else!
Snowrealm didn't know how fast she was running.
There was only one convenience store on that street.
It was the place where Qiluo worked.
The convenience store closed early today, but Qiluo had mentioned she was working the evening shift.
The evening shift should have ended, and she should have gone back to her apartment by now—
But what if she hadn't left?
What if she was still restocking shelves in the store, or waiting for the rain to let up before heading back, or just stayed a little longer and happened to run into this Erosion Body?
Qiluo had no mana, no weapons, and not even a decent umbrella.
This was an Erosion Body. How could she possibly cope?
She couldn't let that happen.
She had finally made a friend with great difficulty.
Qiluo was the first person to tell her, “I like everything about you.” She was the first person to flick her forehead and call her a “dummy.” She was the first person who made her feel like tomorrow was worth looking forward to.
If something happened to Qiluo—
She remembered that day at the aquarium when Qiluo smiled and said, “I'll wait for you to come back,” pushing the caramel pudding in front of her.
She remembered this afternoon in the car when she tugged at Qiluo's clothes, and Qiluo turned back to say, “See you tomorrow.”
She remembered talking so much about Qiluo to Star-trail last night, before burying her face in the soft fur on Star-trail's back and saying, “I think I really like her.”
Their “see you tomorrow” hadn't been fulfilled yet. They hadn't eaten enough caramel pudding together yet. She hadn't had the chance to tell Qiluo that her sister was actually a very nice person.
She hadn't taken Qiluo to more places yet—the movie theater, the art museum, the penguin exhibit at the aquarium.
She hadn't learned how to be less nervous around her friend yet. She had so many things left undone.
...
Qiluo peered through the gap between the cash register and the shelves, staring at the thing currently crawling inside.
Eww, so ugly!
In the past, she had always crushed them like ants on the roadside. Now that she was looking closely, it was hideous!
It scraped against the tiled floor, making a grating sound and leaving a dark green trail of corrosion with every step it took.
The crack on its head opened and closed, its exhaled breath condensing into a thin mist on the glass of the refrigerated display case.
So slow, Qiluo counted the seconds in her head.
The oden pot was still hot. If it actually lunged at her, she could splash the hot broth on it to buy some time, then run out the back door.
Of course, if Snowrealm and Mingyue arrived fast enough, she wouldn't even have to move.
She adjusted her squatting posture to make herself a bit more comfortable.
She hugged her knees a bit tighter and suppressed her mana to its absolute minimum.
...
A sound like a bolt of silver-blue lightning erupted at the end of the street.
Just as the Erosion Body turned its head, a figure crashed in through the curtain of rain.
The soles of Snowrealm's boots left two icy tracks on the convenience store's tiled floor. Carried by momentum, she skidded forward half a meter before stabilizing herself.
The hem of her skirt was soaked with rain, and ice dust fell from its edges.
Before hitting the ground, the ice dust was shattered into tiny, sparkling points of light by the surge of mana erupting from her body.
She was releasing a concentration of mana far exceeding her usual levels.
The Erosion Body's limbs were still stuck in the gaps of the shelves, and the crack on its head had just turned toward the cash register.
Snowrealm had already sliced into its torso, moving so fast she left only a blur of light in the air.
The strike sent the Erosion Body flying away from the shelves, crashing into the glass door of the refrigerated display case and spiderwebbing the glass.
It hissed and tried to stand, but Snowrealm gave it no opportunity to recover.
Chains shot out from her left hand, piercing through the location of its core and pinning it to the refrigerated case along with the shattered glass.
Black mist exploded outward, only to be quickly dispersed by the cold air blowing from the display case.
Several bags of potato chips fell from the shelves during the impact. One landed near Snowrealm's feet and was stepped on unconsciously, making a loud crunching sound as the bag compressed.
Snowrealm's sword was still embedded in the frame of the display case, and her chains were still wrapped around where the Erosion Body's remains had dissolved into black mist.
But she didn't care about retrieving them. She spun around and practically stumbled to the front of the cash register.
“Qiluo—!”
Her voice rang out in the convenience store, more urgent than anything she had ever said before.
Her pupils contracted sharply as her eyes swept over Qiluo behind the register.
Qiluo Tian Gong was slumped on the floor behind the counter, hugging her knees, her face as pale as paper.
Mingyue stood at the entrance of the convenience store, her scythe in hand, without stepping inside.
Nuomi rested on her shoulder, its ears drooping, its tails quietly wrapped around her upper arm.
Looking through the shards of the glass door and the crooked shelves at Snowrealm practically throwing herself in front of the cash register, she let out a soft sigh.
She opened the terminal on her wrist, sent a brief message to the Association's Observation Department stating that the convenience store area in front of the station had been cleared, and then leaned against the doorframe, leaving the space to the two of them.
“I'm fine...” Qiluo's voice was very soft, carrying a hint of forced cheerfulness.
As she said this, her fingers were still trembling, and the mana inside her body was frantically trying to re-establish a balance.
Actually, something was wrong!
This time, she wasn't acting!
The moment her mana fluctuations exploded at the end of the street, I knew things were going to go south.
She had sent the Erosion Body flying with a single strike, which was incredibly cool.
But didn't she think her mana concentration was a bit too high?!
The mana valve Qiluo had set inside her body—the threshold meant to stabilize the supply of mana—
had been completely blown open by Yuki's intense, almost rampaging emotions.
Her mana was drained away like a bursting dam. Instantly, her legs went weak, and she collapsed to the floor.
This feeling was exactly the same as when they first made the contract—her vision went dark, and her body felt completely hollowed out.
Rate on N.U.
