Chapter 385

"Why... why can't I open it? Why..."

Sakaki Chika stared in disbelief at the doorknob she couldn't open.

Her face was deathly pale at this moment.

Although it was just a door that couldn't be opened for the time being, despair welled up in my heart at that moment.

Just then, the sound of footsteps coming from behind her in the room sent a chill down her spine.

She heard a hoarse, dejected man's voice:

"Chika? Shouldn't you be at the agency today? Why did you suddenly come back?"

That familiar voice, which she could never hear again, made Sakaki Chika's heart pound.

Sakaki Chika turned around with extreme nervousness.

Then she saw the figure of the man from her memories, the man who was always intertwined with her nightmares.

"I... I..."

She was so scared that she started to stutter again.

Fortunately, the man in front of him wasn't drunk. Although he was still disheveled and dejected, with a gloomy and haggard face, it seemed he hadn't lost money last night.

This was her lifeline:

"I'm going to the office now, I'm just... just coming back to pick something up."

With that, she ran back to her room as if fleeing.

After entering the room, she skillfully and quickly locked the door, then leaned against it, panting heavily.

Her heart clenched, and she even had some difficulty breathing for a moment.

After that, the girl covered her head with both hands, muttering to herself in a state of near collapse:

"Why, why, why..."

Why did she come back here?

Shouldn't she have already escaped?

How did it happen...? Why...? I can't quite remember anymore.

Sakaki Chika was in a state of utter confusion, her mind completely blank.

Oh right...

Transforming into Star Flower should calm her down; perhaps she won't be as afraid of it all as before.

Thinking of this, she felt a little smug, but this feeling abruptly ended when she couldn't find anything familiar.

The girl touched her neck blankly.

"No?"

That thing she never took off.

The Pendulum left by my grandmother.

It's gone?

"No, no."

The Pendulum she used to transform into Star Flower, the culmination of her Crystal to this day, her grandmother's keepsake, is now... gone.

It just so happens to be at this time.

What should we do next?

From the initial burning anxiety, wanting only to wake up from this nightmare as quickly as possible, to the agonizing three minutes spent staring blankly in her room, during which time Sakaki Chika had no idea what she was thinking.

She looked at herself in the mirror.

A haggard, pale face.

The thin, trembling girl in the mirror was undoubtedly herself in junior high school.

Entering the agency implies that the grandmother had already passed away by this time.

This was undoubtedly a nightmare.

But how long will this nightmare last?

"Bang," "Bang," "Bang."

The knocking on the door made Sakaki Chika freeze in place, her heart, which had calmed down a little, start pounding wildly again.

"Chika?"

"I am here."

Fortunately, the man was just urging her to go to work at the firm.

It wasn't until the man outside the room shouted at Sakaki Chika to hurry up that Sakaki Chika finally snapped out of her hesitation and realized what she should do next.

Next, should we go to the firm?

What awaits me there?

To a frightened little animal, every blade of grass and every tree in the darkness seems to harbor a menacing monster.

Sakaki Chika arrived at the agency that was both familiar and unfamiliar to her.

At this time, she was an unknown newcomer who had just joined the agency and was neither capable nor popular.

They can't even be called official idols.

He was just a prospective student.

Although she has signed a contract with the company, her official debut is still a long way off. Even if she does become an idol, based on all her performances, she will never be exposed to the public eye.

She was one of several other prospective students in the same cohort.

A middle school student like her.

Like her... she didn't receive any attention from the agency.

In an idol agency, even if an adult senior has questionable morals or a bad reputation, it doesn't matter to a child like Sakaki Chika, because they are from different worlds.

But it's different for other naive, immature children who aspire to be idols.

At that time, among Sakaki Chika's fellow trainees, there were several people with very bad personalities.

Perhaps "bad" isn't quite the right word.

They were just some naughty kids who didn't know their own limitations back then.

As she tried to enter their practice room, she saw several attractive girls her age chatting at the door.

The place where they were standing happened to block the door.

Sakaki Chika had to raise her head and say softly:

"Um... please let me..."

She tried raising her voice.

But the girls still acted as if they hadn't heard.

Left with no other choice, she stood there for a while, feeling dry and parched, before carefully trying to squeeze through the gap in the doorway that the person had left behind.

At that moment, the girl standing at the door deliberately nudged her with her shoulder.

Sakaki Chika's face was expressionless.

Although she couldn't quite remember their faces because she never saw them again, Sakaki Chika still remembered what they did.

This is no big deal to her.

Compared to what they did later, which was even more outrageous.

The things these people did that went too far are still much better than staying at home.

After that, she found the locker room where she used to be a trainee.

Anyway, let's change into our practice clothes first.

Her instincts led her to go with the flow at this moment.

So, after opening her closet, the girl first took out the trash that someone had put there.

Then she saw her dance shoes.

There's a hole in it.

"..."

This was just... a nightmare, wasn't it?

Upon seeing all this familiar sight, Sakaki Chika was momentarily at a loss for what to do.

She sat back down on the bench.

Afterwards, she took the bag out of the cabinet and rummaged through it, trying to see what was in her bag at that moment, and whether her lost Pendulum might be inside.

Feeling the emptiness in her neck, Sakaki Chika felt an unprecedented unease.

It's almost maddening.

Just then, she did find something.

"... This is?"

Sakaki Chika's fingers touched that thing; the feel was quite familiar, yet slightly different.

It was a pitch-black Pendulum.

It looked very similar to the one her grandmother had given her, but it was also something completely different.

She remembered this.

In the scene that Tachibana showed her, the Magic girls called Prison Flower, who looked a lot like Star Flower, all used this Crystal.

Just then, she suddenly heard a sound coming from somewhere.

Everything in the past, wherever it was, was terrible, wasn't it?

That was Ms. Tachibana's voice.

This feeling is familiar.

Once, she was in the locker room when she suddenly heard a voice in her mind that seemed to come from nowhere, telling her things like she wanted to have a child with Teacher Haihara.

Thinking back now, that must have been Ms. Tachibana.

[I've always found this strange.]

Why?

[Even though Ailu gave you the power of Magic girl, you do nothing in the face of these annoying people, always clumsily and foolishly enduring it all in silence.]

Sakaki Chika did indeed face a lot of pain in the past.

But as Tachibana said, it seems that everything can be solved if the power of Magic girl is used.

Those annoying people, those annoying things.

So, when you've made up your mind and can no longer tolerate it, use it to transform.

[Yes, until you realize that no matter how much you shout, you won't get any response, and you can't bear it anymore.]

But this nightmare has only just begun.

Chapter 152 A Minor Change (Please refresh this chapter)

For the former Sakaki Chika, the boundary between nightmares and reality was blurred.

Or perhaps having nightmares is better.

A dream is just a dream.

But this nightmare felt all too real.