Chapter 168

At this very moment, lying amidst the ruins of the fire, with large patches of skin charred and her Kiyohara, was the girl Kuroki Yuka's last memory of her friend.

Even in a dream, Kuroki Yuka instinctively walked to her burned friend's side, squatted down blankly, and wanted to hold her friend's hand.

However, her hands had been trembling since just now, and she couldn't touch her friend's hand no matter what she did.

"..."

After that nightmare, she forgot many things, as if trying to escape it all.

I can't even remember my friends' names.

I only remember my friend, with a face as sweet as the sun after rain, a soft and melodious voice, and an innocent and beautiful smile.

However, after witnessing this nightmare once again, those memories slowly resurfaced:

"... Asuka."

Her gaze was fixed and blank as she murmured her friend's name.

Just when she thought it was just a replay of a past nightmare...

"Why... didn't you save me?"

Kuroki Yuka heard a faint and fragile voice.

She paused for a moment, stunned.

Kuroki Yuka froze, completely still, only her back trembling slightly.

It's not the same as I remember.

However, this had appeared in her nightmares before.

That was what she imagined her friends would say.

"I..."

Kuroki Yuka opened her mouth in a daze, but couldn't say anything.

"You are always... cowardly and selfish, retreating when faced with something you're afraid of."

"You were like that back then too, always."

My friend said something that had never been said before.

But Kuroki Yuka remembered her past self.

At school, my friend always faced the cold stares of her classmates, while she would just stay in a corner, pretending to fit in, timidly remaining silent.

"Sorry..."

After the battle ended, seeing her friend engulfed in flames, she too chose to retreat.

And ever since, she has never escaped that nightmare.

Kuroki Yuka's eyes trembled and wavered, tears welling up in her eyes. She cried, looking somewhat disheveled, and said:

"Just give me a little more time. I'll try my best. I'll get the power to save you from Silver Feather. I'll do whatever it takes. Please..."

"Believe me... I don't want to see you like this in my nightmares again..."

However, all she heard was her friend's disappointed voice.

"Fraud."

"I don't want to see you anymore."

Kuroki Yuka lowered her head again, her sobs ceasing, and she remained frozen in shock.

The world around her, like a nightmare, was gradually permeated and surged with darkness, enveloping the ruins of this nightmare and plunging her entire world into darkness.

"... Eh?"

And her friend's voice kept echoing in her ears in this dark world, like a nightmare.

That light yet indifferent voice pierced Kuroki Yuka's heart.

"I wish you didn't exist."

"Why wasn't it you who got burned?"

"I wish you had died in that fire."

Kuroki Yuka's eyes had dimmed at some point, almost losing their light, leaving only the ashes of a burnt-out flame, just like her fate after that fire.

She knelt motionless on the ground, surrounded by silence; the dark world was empty except for her.

Her friend's last words kept replaying in her mind.

Why... didn't she die in that fire?

Thinking of this, she touched her neck, where there was a large burn mark from the flames, but it was now numb and without feeling.

If only... she had died back then.

Next, Kuroki Yuka's mind became hazy. She could no longer distinguish between a nightmare and reality, between what she had experienced and what was an illusion.

The ruins, scorched by flames, have vanished.

She is currently attending a high school called Maple Plain. She only remembers transferring to this school because she had some unpleasant experiences at her previous school.

When she first arrived, she also considered starting over.

But ever since she arrived, she has felt completely out of place with everything around her.

Here, she was all alone, without the company of friends, and without the pretense of being sociable as before, revealing her gloomy and withdrawn nature.

Her hair, which she had neglected to take care of at some point, had grown long and thick, even covering her eyes. She had also taken off her uncomfortable contact lenses and put on thick black-rimmed glasses that looked a lot like one of the teachers in her class.

In this class, she was quiet and reserved, always sitting alone in her seat, not communicating with others, and doing her own thing.

To be honest, this struck her as slightly odd.

Because that way, she'd be like her old friends.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember anything about her friend. She only remembered that the other person was a homebody who loved Magic girls, just like her. After they parted ways, the only things she had of her friend were the butterfly hair clip her friend had given her and the collector's edition Magic girl picture book.

After class, she would often open that sketchbook and just stare at it blankly, doing nothing.

Recently, some strange rumors have surfaced about her.

"That girl, is there something wrong with her head? She's always staring blankly at that Magic girl picture book..."

"That's a bit strange..."

"A gloomy, musty smell."

Kuroki Yuka heard it all, but didn't pay any attention to it.

She remembered that her friends had been said similar things before, but they were just idle gossip and didn't cause her any real harm.

Until, a boy in her class confessed his feelings to her.

On an ordinary afternoon, in the hallway outside the classroom, a boy stopped her, confessed his feelings, and asked her if she wanted to date him, all in front of many classmates.

She used to attend an all-girls school and had never experienced anything like this before.

But in a typical co-educational school, such things might be quite normal.

The boy who confessed his feelings is a very popular person in the class. He's tall and handsome, and I heard he's a member of the basketball team. Many girls in the class like him.

Kuroki Yuka never expected to be confessed to by him.

Although she looks a bit gloomy now, she's still kind of cute.

She had no interest in boys and decisively rejected them.

But trouble soon followed.

The bell rang shortly afterward.

Kuroki Yuka slumped dejectedly onto the table, her hands propping up the sketchbook her friend had given her, her eyes vacant as she stared at the silhouettes of Magic girls on it.

Just then, she felt the area in front of her darken slightly, as if someone had walked up to her.

"Hey, I've called you several times already, can't you hear me?"

A girl's voice, with a somewhat condescending tone, made Kuroki Yuka feel very annoyed.

She straightened up slightly, turned her head, and saw the popular girl in the class standing next to her with a few friends, while the girl herself looked down at her from above.

Kuroki Yuka lowered her head:

"Is there something you need?"

Her tone was somewhat cold, which made the girl, who was quite good-looking, look even more gloomy.

The girl had one hand on her hip and her eyes slightly closed.

"Why did Kimura confess to you? Do you even know what you did?"

At this point, she was starting to lose control of her anger.

Kimura is the boy who confessed his feelings to Kuroki Yuka.

At this moment, Kuroki Yuka more or less realized that this girl seemed to have a crush on that boy.

But she didn't react in any particular way.

"Who knows, what does it have to do with me?"

She wasn't interested in talking to the girl and continued looking at the picture book. Actually, she wasn't paying much attention to the contents of the book, since she had seen it many times before.

But this angered the girl.

"I'm usually the one spending time with him, and you haven't done anything? And is this how you treat him after I rejected him?"

Girls' logic is incomprehensible.

In Kuroki Yuka's previous school, there were only girls like this who were self-important but seemed to have many friends.

Now, the girls around her are all gathered around this pretty girl, seemingly agreeing with her and feeling angry on her behalf.

"Then go ask him, don't bother me."

Kuroki Yuka lazy to look at this girl again.

Instead of forcing herself to be sociable and friendly as before, she adopted the image of a mature woman from her memories, displaying a cold and lazy attitude.

Just as she ignored the girl and continued looking at the sketchbook in her hand, the girl suddenly snatched the sketchbook from her hand.

Kuroki Yuka paused for a moment, then looked at the girl:

Give it back to me.

Her tone was no longer as calm as before.

The girl seemed to have finally grasped the knack; she put the picture book aside, then roughly tossed it aside, glancing at it casually.

"You spend all day watching this kind of ridiculous stuff. You're a high school girl, right? Watching this kind of thing in the classroom is just disgusting."

Kuroki Yuka idea what was so disgusting about it.

She never knew there was anything shameful about watching such things.

But people in these schools in this country seem to find these things strange, and it's taken for granted that those who watch them are being improper.

Regardless of her opinion, the people around her felt the same way, leaving her bewildered.

She simply repeated coldly:

Give it back to me.

The girl didn't seem to be willing to back down. She just glanced at Kuroki Yuka's sketchbook with disgust, and then, without intending to return it to Kuroki Yuka, she held it between two fingers with a look of disdain.

"Do you know how strange you are? You spend all day reading these weird books and staying in a corner by yourself. Why would Kimura like someone like you?"

Kuroki Yuka tried several times to snatch her sketchbook back, but the girl stubbornly pushed it back. After hearing Kuroki Yuka shout "Give it back to me!" with some anger, the girl also got a little provoked and threw the sketchbook on the ground.

With a "thud," Kuroki Yuka's art book fell to the ground. The book, which was originally so precious that there wasn't even a crease in the corner, was now bruised and uneven.

Seeing this, Kuroki Yuka lowered her head.

She didn't get angry, because that wouldn't do any good; she simply said coldly:

"Idiot."