Chapter 11: A Chilling Confrontation

[Students, class time has arrived. Please return to your classrooms swiftly and prepare…]

The brief reprieve of recess was abruptly declared over.

Scattered across the campus, students either walked or ran, quickening their pace to rush back to their classrooms.

Looking around, along the entire corridor, only Ling Xing moved against the flow, jogging towards the administration building.

Perceptive as she was, she had already grasped what was about to unfold.

Her long white hair swaying, Ling Xing held the Book of Hatred between her fingertips.

As she ran, a gentle breeze stirred, ruffling the pages of the book, causing them to flip rapidly.

Without shifting her gaze, Ling Xing’s fingertip seemed to casually catch on one particular page.

Spread open, that page of the small book, personally hand-drawn and transcribed by Ling Xing, documented…

The magical girl currently confronting Chao Wu, known as the Young Lady—

“…Kuonji Mashiro… Senior?”

Stepping into the principal’s office, Chao Wu softly uttered the other’s name.

For someone like her, who had been engrossed in various magical girl works, idolizing their heroic deeds, and devouring countless tales of heroes and history since childhood—

This was an unmistakable, illustrious magical girl.

The Kuonji master-servant duo, a magical girl pair who had once jointly annihilated several C-rank villains and monsters.

At this moment, it felt as though her dream idol had materialized right before her eyes.

However, not a shred of the joy one might expect from meeting an idol stirred within Chao Wu’s heart.

Instead, there was only…

A chilling dread.

“Why are you here, Senior…? Where is the Captain?”

The noble girl gently blew on the hot tea in her cup, a refined smile gracing her face—a smile that, despite its elegance, betrayed no emotional warmth.

Smiling, she spoke in her somewhat delicate tone, her words even and unperturbed.

“Betraying the organization, colluding with a dark faction to destroy a convoy, leaking classified device information, conspiring with a combatant to steal resources and activate the device, attacking the magical girl auxiliary forces, and willingly handing over the crystal intact to the enemy… To deal with such a member, there’s no need for her to act, nor any need for mercy, is there?”

“—That’s not true at all! I never did any of that!”

Just a day prior, Chao Wu would never have dared to imagine herself refuting her revered senior with such a loud voice.

Yet now, she suddenly felt…

‘Even this girl before her was nothing to be so intimidated by.’

“I am not here to debate with you, nor do I care for your defense, Chao Wu. Since this failure was caused by your mistake, a consequence of your insistence on pursuit despite the Captain’s warnings—it is only natural that you alone must bear the responsibility for this failure.”

The noble girl took a delicate sip of her hot tea, then rose gracefully.

Her sleeve brushed against the desktop as she reached for a decorative item in the principal’s office, retrieving a—

Katana.

“Accept your transgressions, and atone for them with your own life, Chao Wu. Provide an explanation for the branch, and the organization can still arrange for you to have a reputation of dying gloriously in battle before the public. Your family will continue to enjoy the benefits due to a magical girl, and you will be recorded as a magical girl hero—”

The noble girl spoke words steeped in a Showa-era sentiment.

Gripping the scabbard horizontally, she pushed the katana across the desk with one hand, placing it before Chao Wu.

…

‘She realized.’

‘There had been no need for debate from the very beginning.’

‘The other party simply didn’t care what Chao Wu had actually done; they merely sought a sufficiently weighty scapegoat for this monumental error.’

Chao Wu silently gazed at the resplendent noble magical girl before her.

A magical girl who was publicized, molded into a hero, and represented justice.

‘The justice she had yearned for, the justice she had worshipped…’

‘Was it truly just like this?’

“May I ask one question, Senior?”

“If it’s brief, yes. Once this is done, I still need to retrieve the experimental subject. Though merely a combatant, Hane should be able to deal with them easily—”

‘Her heart trembled.’

‘Was Ling Xing being attacked by a legitimate magical girl, a long-established senior?’

‘It was a battle between a magical girl and a combatant, a scenario she typically adored, one where she would cheer for the magical girl. But Chao Wu…

‘…found herself instinctively worrying about Ling Xing, the combatant who should have been her enemy.’

“…Earlier, the magical girl auxiliary squad members who were defeated…”

“Oh, you mean them. They were quite an eyesore anyway. I’ll simply dispose of them along with you. The report will state that you all sacrificed yourselves together.”

The noble girl lightly stroked the opulent, cool-toned gem ring on her finger, casually deciding the fates of several lives with a dismissive air.

They hadn’t sacrificed themselves in battle, nor had anything significant happened even when they fell into enemy hands. Yet, upon returning to the organization, their lives were casually stripped away by their own superior.

Chao Wu gripped the hilt of the katana, her gaze darkening slightly, and drew out a sliver of the cold blade.

The cold, gleaming surface of the blade reflected her face.

“Indeed… to die gloriously as a magical girl, to become a hero celebrated by all, has been my dream since childhood…”

“Yes, I guarantee you’ll get an extra page in the ‘Legends of Magical Girl Heroes’. This is, after all, the first case of a probationary magical girl, so consider yourself honored.”

‘…Disgusting.’

‘The so-called magical girl of justice, the senior magical girl nurtured, controlled, and promoted by the organization…’

‘…was nothing more than a person obsessed with profit and glory, wantonly indulging in wickedness.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. This, *this* can be called “justice”?’

Ling Xing, that rather unconventional girl who nonetheless possessed a streak of kindness, actually fit Chao Wu’s ideal image of a magical girl far better.

“It’s just, unfortunately, Senior, my dream expired yesterday. If you have nothing else to say, I’ll be returning to class now.”

“…?”

‘Was it bewilderment, or astonishment?’

Chao Wu couldn’t decipher the exact expression on the noble girl’s face, but she could certainly read:

[‘I offered her the glory of self-sacrifice, and she *refuses*!?’]

Such words, clearly etched upon her features.

‘How boring.’

Chao Wu no longer had any desire to entangle herself with the other girl. Compared to this nauseating conversation, she yearned to immediately return, grasping this very katana to help Ling Xing.

Even if it meant acting as an ordinary girl, she wanted to…

“Is that so… It seems I’ve been too accommodating, allowing you to harbor unrealistic fantasies, Chao Wu.”

The noble girl gently set down her teacup.

Blood-red tea swirled within the cup, reflecting the confronting figures of the two girls.

“—You, a worthless wretch who isn’t even a magical girl, a piece of trash who hasn’t even finished her probation, it’s an honor of a lifetime just to speak with *me*! How dare you defy my words? How dare you dream of resisting *me*?”

Her delicate tone instantly became imbued with brutality and madness.

Though she had yet to transform, the aura emanating from her now descended like a tangible, oppressive force.

The tea trembled, its surface rippling under this astonishing aura. Eventually, even the teacup itself succumbed to the pressure, emitting a faint crackling sound as cracks began to spread.

Chao Wu’s hand rested on the katana’s hilt, but…

She couldn’t draw the blade.

Without even needing to transform, this terrifying aura alone rendered her incapable of even the simple act of drawing her katana from its sheath.

The disparity in their power was so immense that merely asking her to commit suicide instead of personally striking her down might indeed have been what this Young Lady considered an act of mercy.

It was simply meaningless.

‘—She was going to die.’

Chao Wu clearly recognized this fact.

‘…Yet, surprisingly, she felt calm.’

The moment she had spoken those words, Chao Wu had already known the outcome.

In the final moments of her life, no particular thoughts crowded her mind; she merely wondered, inexplicably…

‘After she died, how would Ling Xing react to this idiot she had known for barely a day?’