On Becoming a Magical Girl

In terms of the outcome, though, her little sister was doing perfectly well without her. Yukina had grown up; she was no longer a child who could not live without her "big brother." That was good, and she was glad for her, but she could not help feeling a touch lonely.

Supporting herself with one hand, she slowly leaned back against the chair and picked up the remote to turn on the television.

The television was reporting on yesterday's "Corruption disaster" in an outlying town. The footage showed people evacuating in an orderly fashion, as well as "Magical Girl Efnir" and "Gong Tianzuo · Feifina" fighting the "Corruption" among them.

Reports on Corruption disasters in the local area and elsewhere were a daily staple. She watched for a while before changing the channel.

On the table, the oat milk gave off thin wisps of steam, but she had no appetite at all.

Before long, Yukina came to the table and sat down. Her expression remained as indifferent as ever. She made no comment about breakfast today, quietly picked up a piece of bread, and began chewing it in small bites.

Yanase Naoto also picked up her spoon and began eating at an unhurried pace.

The two of them were always quiet around each other.

"Big brother."

A voice like wind chimes interrupted Yanase Naoto's thoughts. She looked up to find Yukina staring straight at her, holding a cup of warm oat milk in her small hands. Her expression was hesitant, as though she had something to say.

For Yanase Naoto, being called "big brother" again after so little conversation for so long was truly something that made her happy.

Though now that she was a girl, it also gave her a somewhat complicated feeling.

"Yukina, what is it?"

She put down her spoon, her expression unchanged.

She glanced at Yukina. Distracted for a moment, she failed to see through the hesitation in Yukina's eyes. Yukina was harder to understand than when she was little. Looking at the milk in Yukina's hands, she remembered that Yukina had always loved sweets as a child.

"Not enough sugar?"

she asked blandly.

Yukina shook her head and stared directly at Yanase Naoto's face. There was a patch on her "big brother's" face—a glaringly white bandage.

Yukina had noticed that "patch" when Yanase Naoto returned home yesterday. Compared to last night, the bloodstain on the bandage had disappeared, so it had clearly been changed this morning.

Yukina had been concerned about that bandage for a long time.

"Big brother, what happened to your face?"

Only then did Yanase Naoto come back to herself.

So it was the bandage on her face.

Something that conspicuous was indeed hard not to notice, but Yukina's long-overdue concern still caught her by surprise.

She had gotten that bandage during a battle. Naturally, Yanase Naoto could not tell Yukina the truth.

"This? ...I wasn't paying attention while walking and accidentally scraped myself on a utility pole."

Yanase Naoto looked away and deliberately made her tone casual. But in Yukina's eyes, it looked exactly like a lie.

Emergency Mission

"A utility pole?" Yukina pressed.

"Yes... Don't worry about that. Eat up, or you'll be late."

At Yanase Naoto's evasion, Yukina furrowed her sharp brows. She wanted to say something more, but after opening her mouth, she swallowed the words back down.

If Yanase Naoto insisted on that explanation, it did sound plausible. Everyone had careless moments, and Yukina herself had bumped into a utility pole before. But she knew her brother was lying to her. Whenever her brother spoke without sincerity, she would unconsciously look away, just like she was doing now.

Her brother had never been good at lying. From when she had gone alone to Yukina's school as a child and beaten up those who bullied her, to later secretly buying Yukina the birthday gift she had wanted for so long, and even now, her brother had always been like this.

Yukina pursed her lips and did not ask any further questions, but her heart ached a little.

Her brother would occasionally come home with injuries, then act as though nothing had happened. Yukina had asked more than once, but she was always brushed off with careless lies.

At first, Yukina had been anxious and worried for her brother—worried that she had gotten involved with shady people, worried that she had gone down a path of no return. On free weekends, Yukina had followed behind her when she went out, trying to find something out, but every time, she found nothing at all by sheer coincidence. When she returned home, she still faced that same expression pretending nothing had happened. Sometimes she was even questioned in return. As time went on, she realized that perhaps she had simply been too full of herself.

She had also realized that, in this sibling relationship, her brother had been pushing her away unilaterally.

All she could get were evasive answers. Clearly, Yanase Naoto did not want to tell her the truth, and that indifferent face would no longer show her a smile.

After being rebuffed so many times, she stopped asking. She needed at least that much self-awareness.

Though she had decided not to pry, her mood inevitably worsened because of it. After all, Yanase Naoto was still her brother. Since childhood, Yukina had lived in the warmth Yanase Naoto had given her. That was something she could never forget, even if Yanase Naoto no longer doted on her now.

Yukina held her cup in silence as the house filled with the television's low music.

A long time passed, until the alarm on her phone rang.

It was time for Yukina to go to school.

"...I'm full."

The words were insincere. The cup struck the table with a crisp, impolite clink. Yukina lowered her gaze, got up, returned to her room, and slammed the door shut. The force of it sent ripples spreading through the water in the cup.

The air fell silent.

Yanase Naoto stared at the closed bedroom door.

In the end, she sighed.

Her little sister was angry. Because of the secret she could not tell Yukina, this dramatic situation had come to be.

Yanase Naoto had thought more than once: if Yukina ever discovered that the "big brother" she had spent ten years with was actually a "big sister," what expression would she make?

People said that older and younger sisters could easily become closer than friends.

But that was not the ending Yanase Naoto wanted.

Besides, what could a "big sister" like her, who had come into the role halfway through life, really do? Would it only backfire? Hiding her identity from Yukina all this time was truly rather despicable. To Yukina, it was a kind of deception, or rather...

But revealing her identity would only be convenient for herself. If her own actions brought danger to Yukina, she would probably regret it for the rest of her life.

Compared to that, she would rather live with this distant relationship between them.

Conflicting emotions tangled in her heart. Efnir raised her head and simply gave up thinking.

Yukina had changed into her school uniform and came out of her room with her school bag in hand.

The brown and navy dress, black thigh-high socks, and her jet-black hair made Yukina look beautiful in her autumn uniform. Though her face always carried an indifferent expression, she still possessed the lively air of youth.

"Don't forget about school."

Leaving only those words behind, Yukina picked up her lunchbox and hurried out.

The relationship between Yanase Naoto and Yukina was no longer what it had once been. Yukina's tone was not cold, but it certainly was not warm either. Rather than siblings, they were more like roommates who merely lived together. That was how these two "siblings" interacted now.

"Be careful on the way. Call me if anything happens."

The apartment door closed, and she received no reply.

Yanase Naoto sighed, carelessly stacked the dishes in the sink, and went into her own room.

This room was always locked and never open to her little sister. There were quite a few secrets inside: feminine products such as sanitary pads hidden in the cabinet, disguises such as wigs and chest bindings, communication devices and documents from the Orderkeepers organization, and a laptop that would expose her identity at a single glance.

Fortunately, Yukina was not the sort of person with enough curiosity to insist on getting to the bottom of things. That spared Yanase Naoto some trouble with explanations and concealment.

Yanase Naoto took off her jacket and untied the chest binding. At last, the oppressive sensation around her chest was released. She let out a long breath and lay down on the bed.

Along with the relief of freeing her chest came the pain in her waist and her accumulated exhaustion, surging over her like waves.

She was a little sleepy. After lying down for only a while, her consciousness slowly drifted away.

She took out her phone and set an alarm for the afternoon.

"Don't forget about school."

Yukina had said that because today was the day for the class parent-teacher meeting, scheduled for four in the afternoon.

Their parents had not returned to the country. As researchers, they were involved in some unknown work and remained unreachable for long stretches of time. As Yukina's brother, Yanase Naoto had become Yukina's only guardian.

The parent-teacher meeting naturally became her responsibility, and also a chance to say a few more words to her little sister.

Yanase Naoto was awakened by a piercing alarm.

It was melodious yet urgent, accompanied by an unpleasant screech like grit scraping across glass. It was an alarm the organization issued only when Corruption struck.

This contact alert, sent through phones and communication terminals, was a "signal" transmitted at a restricted frequency through specialized devices. It filtered out ordinary human hearing; only those who had received Order Force could hear it.

Hearing that alarm meant Corruption had descended.

Yanase Naoto shot upright from the bed, ignoring the tearing pain shooting through her waist as she hurriedly grabbed her phone.

A short-number call was coming in from the Orderkeepers headquarters. She quickly answered it, no longer deliberately suppressing her voice as it returned to the chime-like voice of a girl.

"This is Efnir."

"Codename Efnir! Emergency mission!"

The anxious voice of a communications officer came from the other end.

Heading to Battle

"Headquarters is under attack by a large-scale 'Corruption' outbreak, rated as a 'Special A'-class disaster. Deploy immediately to provide support. I repeat, headquarters..."

Before the officer could finish, the voice suddenly vanished, replaced by a burst of chaotic noise.

—The transmission had been cut off.

"Special A-class...?"

Yanase Naoto froze slightly.

Special A-class disasters ranked only below S-class and Special S-class. The enemy from yesterday was a rare sight even once a year. It had attacked that valuable food-producing town and devoured countless lives, yet it had only been rated A-class.

And Corruption had appeared at headquarters.

Corruption disasters interfered with communications. The call had probably been cut off because of that.

Something was very unusual. Yanase Naoto sensed it instinctively.

Since they had summoned even an injured person like her, headquarters had clearly judged this incident to be serious enough that every available combatant had to deploy in support.

Though it was difficult to know what was happening now that communications had abruptly been cut off, headquarters rarely made a wrong judgment.

Without hesitating further, she braced herself and moved off the bed, got dressed, dug several pills out of a drawer, shoved them all into her mouth, chewed them up, and swallowed. Then she looked up at the clock.

The hands pointed to a quarter past two.

A terrible bitterness spread across her tongue.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed open the window, confirmed that no one was around, and jumped straight down.

In this era, threatened by the Corruption of the White Hole, humanity had no choice but to huddle within the human cities protected by the Boundary Stele.

Humanity had united into the remaining nations, forming the bonds of development and survival. Massive cities served as centers for human settlement and life, surrounded by several smaller towns. Their functions had gradually been divided, each fulfilling its own role as an appendage of the cities. They provided the cities with food, steel, and other basic necessities, serving as production and processing bases while receiving the cities' protection. The cities, meanwhile, had become the final strongholds of human society and the centers of their respective regions.

An agent's duty was to fight as a warrior for humanity's last living space.

The afternoon sun was as harsh as ever, and waves of heat rushed toward her.

The streets were always packed with stifling heat and noisy clamor. Tall, densely packed office buildings lined both sides of the road like gray mountain ranges.

Efnir sprinted and leaped from one rooftop to another. At times, a moonlight-like blur flashed beneath her feet. That was an agent's exclusive skill—Stairway—which gave her something to push off from as she jumped.

She crossed the city blocks, her small figure like a moon rabbit racing toward headquarters.

As Yanase Naoto, she could barely reach nearly 1.7 meters in height with height-increasing insoles, just a little taller than Yukina. But after becoming "Efnir," her body shrank considerably. She became like a young girl in middle or high school, even a head shorter than Yukina. Only her chest did not change much, making it seem rather spectacular by comparison.

By maintaining a deep resonance with Order Force, agents could enter a special state called Exile Form—the so-called "combat mode," or "transformation." Normally, entering Exile Form greatly enhanced an agent's physical abilities while also causing major changes to their appearance and body. Agents like Efnir, whose physique differed starkly before and after transforming, appeared from time to time. This was common knowledge.