Susan glanced at her colleague beside her as she gnawed on her bread. "I didn't expect you to be the one joining me on surveillance duty."
Peony, who had changed into casual clothes, yawned.
"Can't help it. I'm the only magical girl at the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau with nothing to do right now. Yinlian has classes today, so I had to come. What? Not happy with me?"
"No, just a little surprised. It's Monday. Shouldn't you have classes too?"
"I took leave, of course. Paid leave, courtesy of the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau."
Peony spoke smugly, her face brimming with youthful vitality, like a college student.
When she had to work, she looked almost thirty.
Work really did age people.
Susan sighed inwardly and touched her face. She had been the same lately. Every morning when she looked in the mirror, she wondered whether she had aged a little more.
She had always belonged firmly to the anti-cosmetics camp, but before leaving home that morning, she had still been unable to resist putting on makeup to conceal her dark circles and somewhat rough skin.
Between her work at the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau and the arrangements on the Azure Cloud Sect's side, Susan's workload actually far exceeded Peony's.
Especially lately, with the Miracle Seed issue, her ongoing search for the Witch Association's mole within the bureau, and her entanglements with Yinluo, she had no shortage of troubles.
Peony tapped the distracted Susan on the head. "What about you, Susan? Have you been all right lately? Just looking at you makes me feel tired."
"I'm fine." Susan finished her bread and dusted off her hands. She had rushed out that morning without breakfast and bought some bread to make do. Watching Jiang Si, who had just left home in the distance, she said, "Things will be fine once this stretch is over."
The two chatted as they followed far behind Jiang Si.
"We'd already agreed yesterday to let Yinlian handle surveillance, but you insisted on taking the job. Come on, even if you don't get along, you don't need to worry that Yinlian would shield a member of an illegal organization, right? Our captain absolutely loathes the Azure Cloud Sect and the Witch Association."
"Yinlian and Yinluo made Jiang Si a promise before," Susan said expressionlessly. "Regardless of whether they'd cover for him, it's better for both sisters to avoid any appearance of impropriety here."
She did not know what arrangements the Azure Cloud Sect would make. The bureau had tightened its investigations lately, leaving her unable to exchange intelligence with Lady Bingtang whenever she wished.
So she had done her best to secure this assignment first, buying the Azure Cloud Sect a day to work out countermeasures.
From what she knew of the Azure Cloud Sect, they would not actually need a day.
But having grown accustomed to the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau's efficiency, she preferred to leave a day's leeway.
Up ahead, after warming up a little, Jiang Si abruptly shifted from walking to jogging.
Naturally, the two quickened their pace as well.
Peony continued their earlier conversation in a low voice. "That may be true... I just think you're too tired."
"It's only one day. Someone else will take over tomorrow."
Susan's icy expression softened a little at Peony's concern. "The bureau's also arranged compensatory leave. Today counts as overtime, and I'll get three days off afterward."
"That's good. That's good."
Peony murmured, "If something's weighing on you, tell me. Don't bottle it all up. Ever since your seed developed problems, you never tell me anything anymore. It really hurts, Susan."
Meanwhile, Jiang Si began gradually accelerating, running faster and faster.
"There's nothing to say." Susan watched Jiang Si ahead. "Even if I said it, it wouldn't change anything."
They had once been the closest of comrades.
The Disaster Countermeasures Bureau's Magical Girl Combat Team had few members. From its founding until now, it had only ever had seven magical girls.
When Susan and Peony joined, the entire team, including Hyacinth, numbered just four.
They had to travel all over Beihai clearing out Calamity Beasts while also ensuring their safety, so they tried to operate in pairs.
Susan and Peony had been teammates ever since joining the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau, weathering countless desperate battles and predicaments.
Looking back now, it seemed like something from long ago.
But in truth, it had only been a year or two.
"You remind me of how you used to be, when we first met."
Jiang Si kept running faster. Peony was already struggling to keep up, and her voice grew uneven. "Back then, you always said, 'No need,' 'There's nothing to say,' 'It's just work,' 'Don't waste time.' You wouldn't communicate with me at all."
Susan remained silent and drew a breath.
When she first came to the bureau, she had thought Peony was nothing but a burden.
She could handle Calamity Beasts herself. She needed neither teammates nor help.
Ultimately, the bureau already had fewer people than the Azure Cloud Sect. If they still worked in pairs, how could they possibly beat the sect to anything?
And that was indeed the case. Operating in pairs, the Magical Girl Combat Team could not beat the Azure Cloud Sect to Calamity Beasts, let alone promising magical girls.
She had always opposed the bureau's squad-based strategy, hoping every magical girl could operate alone.
As a result, she had always been cold toward Peony, frequently ditching her to carry out missions alone.
Until Susan, still a rookie then, encountered a B-rank Calamity Beast.
A B-rank Calamity Beast was difficult even for a New Sprout magical girl to deal with. To Susan, who was only at the Bud stage then, it was a terrifying monster she could scarcely defeat.
Her wand was snapped, her magic almost drained dry. After her transformation ended, she faced the B-rank Calamity Beast in her most vulnerable flesh-and-blood body.
The reality of injury and fear taught Susan for the first time that being a magical girl did not make her omnipotent.
She could not turn danger into safety every single time.
Peony had arrived at the critical instant and saved her.
Susan could not remember what happened afterward. Gravely injured, she had been hospitalized, and the invasion of corrupted magic left her unconscious for a long time.
When she woke again, she found Peony lying in the hospital bed beside hers, also seriously injured. Seeing her awake, Peony grinned foolishly at her.
Peony had been so foolish then, so naive, yet so dazzling that Susan could not look straight at her.
After that, Susan never ditched Peony to carry out missions alone again.
"I thought, ever since then, we were the best, very best friends... oof!"
After running a while longer, Peony finally stopped, watching Jiang Si still sprinting ahead without the slightest intention of slowing down.
She bent over, braced both hands on her knees, and panted heavily. "Holy crap, is he, is he even human?!"
Even Susan was actually starting to sweat.
Their pace along the way had been anything but slow.
They had run for almost half an hour, yet Jiang Si still had energy to spare and looked as though he could accelerate further.
"I can't. I'm using magic." Peony took out her Miracle Seed first. Although she dared not transform for fear Jiang Si would notice, secretly using a little magic to enhance herself was no problem. "How can someone like him even exist...?"
Beside her, Susan pressed her lips together, staring blankly at Peony's Miracle Seed.
She could not take out her seed here.
But Peony took her hand with practiced ease, easing some of her fatigue, and the two began sprinting again.
They had only stopped briefly, yet Jiang Si was almost out of sight.
With magic supporting her, Peony finally found herself at ease.
Only after catching up to Jiang Si and maintaining a suitable distance again did Peony return to their conversation. "Ever since your seed broke, it's like you broke too, Susan. You won't tell me anything."
"I always thought we'd be friends forever," Peony said in distress. "Why would our relationship go backward?"
Susan regulated her breathing to keep herself from growing too tired as she watched Jiang Si's tiny retreating figure in the distance.
Yes, why?
Laughing with Peony, grieving with her, defeating powerful enemies together.
She, too, had thought their friendship would last forever.
When faulty intelligence from the bureau led to her being caught in the Witch Association's trap, causing problems with her Miracle Seed and leaving her unable to transform, Susan had not actually felt despair, nor had she quickly understood what it meant.
She withdrew from the front lines and moved to the Security Department, where she could only work inside the bureau.
Day after day, as countless little things in daily life piled up and began teaching her what being unable to transform meant.
Only then did Susan gradually begin to crumble.
When she encountered Calamity Beasts and could no longer transform to face them, forced to flee like any ordinary person and wait for magical girls to rescue her;
When even a D-rank Calamity Beast she had once utterly disdained could take her life;
When she could no longer fight shoulder to shoulder with her teammates, only watching from behind as her comrades fought bloody battles against Calamity Beasts at the front;
When appearing on the battlefield only made her a burden, earning rebukes and even disdain from her former comrades.
All the treatment she had once received as a magical girl, including the attitudes of those around her, was changing.
She could no longer transform into a magical girl. Things she had once taken for granted no longer existed, while those looks of sympathy, mockery, and pity she had never accepted would never disappear.
Even her best friend, Peony, could not stay beside her all the time.
Because they were no longer comrades. Peony had new teammates. She often had to go out with others to clear out Calamity Beasts and could not always stay with Susan, who could no longer transform.
Even though Peony did everything she could to maintain their friendship.
But distance and time would always quietly dilute many things, including the friendship they once thought would never change.
Watching as there was no longer a place for her beside Peony, watching her former comrade laugh and chat with other magical girls and fight shoulder to shoulder with them, Susan could only handle inconsequential logistical work in the rear, their occasional greetings rushed even when they met.
She could not even find meaning in being alive.
A sudden upheaval could not drive her mad. Susan was not that fragile.
It was the little things in everyday life, like water torture, that broke her in that long, drawn-out despair.
"Nothing stays the same forever, Peony."
As she answered, Jiang Si finally stopped up ahead.
Peony, who was pulling Susan along, stopped too and released her hand. Holding her Miracle Seed, Peony discovered she had actually consumed quite a bit of magic.
Enough to wipe out a D-rank Calamity Beast.
She looked up again at Jiang Si in the distance, neither flushed nor breathless, still stretching with a few exercises, bursting with life. Even knowing his physical abilities were extraordinary, Peony could not help feeling shaken.
What kind of monster was he...?
Seeing Jiang Si stop on the street and stand waiting, apparently unlikely to move again anytime soon, Peony breathed a faint sigh of relief.
This was more tiring than fighting Calamity Beasts.
After catching her breath a little, she turned to Susan, whose face was also slightly flushed and forehead sweaty, and handed her a wet wipe. "So, if something's on your mind, why can't you tell me?"
Susan watched Jiang Si standing ramrod straight and motionless like a sculpture in the distance. Hearing Peony's words, she turned her head away.
Say what? That I hoped you could take me into battle with you? That I hoped you could stay instead of going to the front lines? That you could stop transforming into a magical girl too?
With only words she could not say, in the end there was nothing she could say.
Some things could not be spoken, and her relationship with Peony was no longer close enough for that.
Susan could not accept a self who could not transform.
To regain the power to transform into a magical girl, she went out alone at night searching for Calamity Beasts, fighting them with a seed that no longer held any miracles.
Faced with the despair brought by Calamity Beasts, she called for a miracle with the fiercest hope.
Yet this time, having lost her magical girl powers, miracles no longer answered her.
The Calamity Beast ravaged her body. Pain seeped from the depths of her soul, devouring her flesh and spreading throughout her body.
She thought she would die, and she fully accepted her death.
The magical girl named Susan had already died when she lost her ability to transform.
Until that purple girl appeared.
Terrifying power engulfed both her and the Calamity Beast like a surging tsunami.
Within it, she struggled desperately like a tiny boat that might capsize at any moment.
Then the purple magical girl reached out and pulled her free.
"Why aren't you transforming?"
Susan still remembered that scene. Brilliant white moonlight shone clear, veiling the burning purple flames. Bathed in that light, the girl stood before her as she sat collapsed on the ground. Eyes colder and more beautiful than moonlight stared at her as she commanded:
"Transform."
And so, a miracle descended.
No, the miracle had descended long before. When Shion appeared before her, the miracle had already bestowed its favor upon her.
And when she followed Shion's instructions.
Her depleted Miracle Seed ignited.
But she failed to complete the transformation then. Afterward, Shion hauled her back to the Azure Cloud Sect and tossed her to Bingtang.
Under Bingtang's guidance, she gradually reacquainted herself with her Miracle Seed.
It took another two days before she successfully transformed again.
She cried terribly that day, harder than she ever had in her life.
Those who had never experienced it would never understand how it felt to regain the most important thing, something even more important than life itself, after losing it.
Only by experiencing it yourself could you understand something like that. No one could truly share that feeling.
Shion and Lady Bingtang had given her a second life.
Especially Lady Shion.
For Susan, the moment the sect master gave her a second life, she had already decided to live for the Azure Cloud Sect.
She constantly strove to finish her work and carry out missions just so she could see Shion again, see the sect master, and express her feelings and gratitude.
As for the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau, she had long since stopped caring.
"Focus on the mission. We don't get many chances to work together on assignments as it is. Don't let anything go wrong."
Such a cold refusal dimmed Peony's eyes, and she lowered her head, her face filled with dejection.
Paying no heed to her old friend's feelings, Susan watched Jiang Si sitting unceremoniously on the curb in the distance, her brows tightly knitted.
The street was growing busier. Although it was Monday, this street in the city's busiest area never lacked people. Their surroundings gradually grew noisier too, providing better cover for the two of them.
If not for the Azure Cloud Sect, she could not have been bothered whether an unofficial member like him lived or died. If the bureau caught him, he deserved it.
Leaving aside that bizarre physical strength, neither human nor ghost, the mere fact that he had taken half her salary while working for the Azure Cloud Sect, without the slightest spirit of self-sacrifice, treating his sect work as nothing but a way to earn extra cash, was utterly intolerable to Susan.
How could Lady Shion and Lady Bingtang have agreed to let someone like this join the Azure Cloud Sect? She had endured countless hardships and passed test after test, only to become an outer disciple, unable even to come into contact with the sect's core.
I want to go shopping with Lady Shion...
Amid her melancholy, the noise on the bustling, crowded street suddenly dropped a decibel.
The change was so obvious that not only Susan but Peony also noticed something amiss, and Jiang Si rose from the curb.
He went straight to meet someone dressed in casual everyday clothes, her expression as icy as ever, drawing many eyes and backward glances, yet showing a faint smile only when she saw Jiang Si...
Shion.
Susan's eyes flew wide, and she immediately turned to glance at Peony.
Peony, too, stood with her mouth hanging open, looking utterly incredulous.
They knew Jiang Si might have ties to the Azure Cloud Sect, but who could have known he had hooked up directly with its sect master?!
"Th-this..." Peony stammered in shock. "Is that Shion? It is Shion, right? She looks a little taller, but she looks about the same as the bureau's photos. Why is she here?"
Of course it was Lady Shion. That perfect face, those beautiful eyes-apart from being a little taller and having a slightly gentler air, she was practically identical. How could she not be Lady Shion!
"H-hey, how come she's linking arms with Jiang Si? Are they, are they that close? They're not a couple, are they?"
Impossible, absolutely impossible! How could Lady Shion ever fancy someone like that! A fellow who felt no sense of belonging to the Azure Cloud Sect, had no desire to contribute, and only thought about money-how could he possibly deserve to stand beside Lady Shion!
"Should we, should we report this immediately? This situation doesn't seem like something we can handle. If we keep tailing them and Shion notices us, we'll be in danger..."
Looking bewildered, Peony watched the two in the distance as they prepared to leave and asked the question, only to discover that her friend was completely lost in thought. Somewhat agitated, she complained, "That damned Shion..."
"That damned Jiang Si!"
Peony froze for a moment and turned to look at her friend. For an instant, she seemed to glimpse resentment and fury.
But Susan's expression soon turned cold again, her tone indifferent:
"He actually dared to collude with the Azure Cloud Sect."
He actually dared to bewitch the sect leader!
"He's utterly detestable."
It's enough to make me utterly jealous.
"I absolutely won't let him off."
Absolutely!
She closed her eyes and fell silent for a while, seemingly pondering for a long time. Only when Shion and Jiang Si had walked so far that they were nearly out of sight did Susan make her decision:
"Don't report this yet. Follow the target and gather more evidence. We must avoid beating the grass and startling the snake."
Peony nodded, feeling some admiration.
As expected of Susan, as calm as ever. Even after witnessing such a shocking scene, she could still make the right call so quickly.
I needed to try harder too.