Qiluo walked out of the physical examination center. The afternoon sun filtered through the gaps in the clouds, wrapping her in a comfortable warmth.
She stopped in front of a vending machine, her finger hovering over the touch screen.
Qiluo felt that vending machines were truly the greatest invention ever.
Whether it was drinks or food, you could buy almost anything from these machines.
It was just that many strange, gimmicky options somewhat ruined the simplicity of it.
In the end, she settled on a can of red bean soup.
The can dropped into the dispenser with a dull thud. She bent down to retrieve it, pressing her palm against the warm metal, and turned down a quiet, sparsely traveled corridor along the side of the examination center.
At the end of the corridor was an empty bench, mostly hidden by a neatly trimmed, globe-shaped shrub.
She sat down, rested the red bean soup on her knees, closed her eyes, and shifted her consciousness to Star-trail.
The small, silvery-white creature curled up next to Yuki Kurokawa's pillow opened its eyes, twitched its ears, and dissolved into a nearly transparent silver light. It slipped through the gap in the window and flew toward the hospital, hugging the shadows of the buildings.
The reason she sent Star-trail to investigate wasn't out of curiosity—at least, not entirely.
If this world required specialized equipment just to detect this condition, then the available treatments were likely far more limited than she had anticipated.
And if the patient in that room had indeed been in a coma for a long time, her own knowledge might actually be of some help.
Especially from the perspective of someone who possessed an entirely different medical system from another world.
As for whether she would actually intervene, she would decide once she assessed the exact situation.
Star-trail landed silently on the outer sill of a window on the top floor of the inpatient department.
The lighting inside the hospital room was soft, and the monitor emitted steady, rhythmic beeps.
Lying on the hospital bed was a girl who looked to be about the same age as Yuki Kurokawa. Her light flaxen hair was spread across the pillow, her cheeks pale but her features soft.
A fresh bouquet of flowers sat on the windowsill, water droplets still clinging to the petals.
An IV bag of nutrient solution hung from a stand at the foot of the bed, dripping at a very slow rate.
Star-trail gently tapped the glass with the tip of its nose.
It didn't rashly phase through the window, choosing instead to observe from the outside.
This allowed it to take in the full distribution of mana within the room.
“A dormant circuit caused by external mana contamination,” Qiluo diagnosed internally.
It was exactly as she had suspected.
Back home, a healer from the Temple would use resonance to disperse the stagnant mana and then inject fresh mana to reactivate the circuit. The patient would recover within a few days.
But this world clearly lacked that technology. The doctors here could only use nutrient solutions to sustain the patient's bodily functions while waiting for a miracle.
Or perhaps they had already tried some form of mana therapy?
She had Star-trail linger outside the window a little longer. Judging by the decay of the mana fluctuations, this girl had been lying in this bed for at least six months, if not longer.
The atrophy of her magic circuits was more severe than Qiluo had estimated through the glass earlier.
If left untreated any longer, even if she did eventually wake up, let alone becoming a Magical Girl, even living a normal life would be a distant dream.
She mapped out a plan in her mind. If she could obtain a complete map of the girl's circuits, she could determine how much self-repair capacity remained.
If there was still hope, she could use Star-trail's dual-directional mana to build a temporary bridge, using her own mana to flush open the blockages. Once cleared, the circuits would begin running on their own again.
But the problem lay in how to map her magic circuits...
It would be incredibly difficult because she was currently in a coma, meaning the flow within her circuits was extremely sluggish.
Qiluo couldn't see them clearly... she could only make out the general outline, but not the path of every single channel.
There was another way...
The contract link between a Contract Spirit and a contractor...
If Star-trail established a temporary contract with her, then...
“There is no need to map the circuits beforehand,” Star-trail's voice echoed deep within her consciousness.
“A direct contract will suffice. The contract itself functions as an independent sensory system. Once the bridge is built, every node and pathway of her circuits will automatically be mapped and fed back to us through the contract link.”
It would only require Star-trail to unilaterally connect to her circuits.
The mana consumption of a temporary contract was far lower than that of a formal contract. It wouldn't leave a permanent mark, and they could unilaterally dissolve it once the treatment was complete, avoiding any extra burden on the comatose patient.
“...Let's go with that, then.”
Qiluo placed the can of red bean soup on the bench and stood up to stretch her slightly numb legs.
She walked along the outer wall of the hospital to the fire escape at the back of the inpatient building. After making sure no one was around, she pushed open the unlocked metal door and slipped inside.
Finding a blind spot out of the security cameras' view—a quiet corner behind a power distribution box—she sat against the wall, rested her schoolbag on her lap, and closed her eyes.
She expanded Star-trail's senses to their limit, allowing her own consciousness to fully merge into Star-trail's clone.
Star-trail phased through the glass and landed silently on the hospital room floor.
The girl lay on the bed, her breathing shallow and even. Her hands were folded neatly over the blanket, her nails trimmed and clean—likely cared for regularly by someone.
It leaped gently onto the edge of the bed, its paws leaving barely visible indentations on the pristine white sheets.
From this distance, the full picture of the magic circuits inside her body became clear.
What should have been a perfectly intact network of circuits was now buried under layers of external, corrosive mana.
Although the inner walls of the circuits had suffered some atrophy, fortunately, the core structure remained intact.
Star-trail sat on the edge of the bed, the star-shaped mark on its forehead beginning to glow softly, casting a gentle, pulsing light across the room.
It lowered its head, gently pressing the glowing mark against the girl's feverish forehead.
The moment Star-trail's star-shaped mark touched her forehead, a contract link instantly bridged the gap between them.
At the same time, an entirely different rush of signals surged through the link.
Wrapped in intense fear, it tangled itself around Star-trail's perception like a kite caught in a violent gale.
When a patient in a long-term coma had their circuits touched by an external force, it could sometimes passively awaken their deep consciousness.
She was likely reliving the moment of her injury over and over in a dream. If they didn't soothe her mind first, forcibly dispersing the stagnant mana could cause a severe mental shock.
Star-trail suppressed its own mana to the absolute minimum and gently slipped into her subconscious through the contract link.
The scene before its eyes shifted in an instant.
Star-trail stood in the middle of a ruined landscape. Beneath its paws lay cracked asphalt, where rainwater mingled with the dark green, slimy residue of an Erosion Body, seeping through the fissures.
It heard singing—a melody carried by ragged breaths and trembling notes.
Turning its head, it saw two figures.
One of them wore a transformed stage costume, her skirt adorned with music note motifs. Her long pink hair was plastered to her face by the rain, a trace of blood stained the corner of her mouth, and the beauty mark beneath her eye stood out sharply in the faint glow of her mana.
Meruru?
She was facing off against a massive Erosion Body that towered over two stories high, her feet planted on a music-note barrier that was on the verge of shattering.
A few paces behind her, another girl was struggling to push herself up from the ground.
She wore a matching performance outfit, her light flaxen hair plastered in a messy tangle by the downpour. Clutching her right arm with her left hand, dark red blood seeped through her fingers.
She screamed something at her, her voice completely drowned out by the torrential rain, but her lips seemed to form the words: “Run!”
As the Erosion Body's tentacle swept toward them, she didn't hesitate for a second. She lunged forward and shoved Meruru out of the way.
The tentacle slammed into her chest, and a violent burst of mana erupted from the point of impact.
Her body was thrown back like a kite with a severed string, crashing into the wall of a building behind her before sliding down, already unconscious.
The rain beat down on her face. Her eyes were closed, but her lips trembled slightly, as if she were still trying to sing the rest of that unfinished song.
Rate on N.U.
