Mr. Magical Girl

Chapter 55. The Young Ones Have Experienced Torture

Huh? You’ve tried drugs? Huh?

“I’m telling you. I’ve been really busy lately.”

“Keeping justice is important, but isn’t the survival of humanity more important?”

And, of all times, it’s my story, so I tried harder.

“It was truly a horrific war. Heroes were sacrificed, and soldiers died.”

Is there anything different to say? Just break the stone in your mouth and open up! Aren’t you a hero? Put in some effort!

“I even participated in that, you know? I did some reflection there. Wasn’t I too harsh?”

Shining future children who newly recognize themselves as heroes.

Twinkling stars who prove their justice by choosing a rough path in front of hardship.

Green green. The one I broke was a shining star known as a hero.

Still, at the point I broke her, she was just a seed in the dirt, not yet nourished by the fertilizer of hardship.

It’s my fault. But from that action, I found points for improvement.

“Kids aren’t to blame. …Oh, I heard that right. The kids can’t judge yet. They haven’t experienced hardship and choices.”

Their foolishness comes from only learning about heroes as clowns.

So isn’t society to blame for that? The society that raised them that way.

“Oh, it’s too early to stand before justice and be judged. You’re still young?”

The man in front of me nodded with tears flowing, agreeing with my words.

What a sycophant. This guy doesn’t understand my justice. He’s just shaking his head, trying not to make me uncomfortable.

He probably didn’t understand. How could he?

Even the passionate Danger Rifle only understood after its arms were broken.

“And you’re still young too. Do I really need to break you to bring hardship upon you?”

I placed my finger on his forehead and pushed down hard. My finger dug into his flesh, his skull being pressed in.

Thud.

He vigorously shook his head left and right. A negation.

Since my finger fixed his face in place, instead of shaking his head, it twisted, but…

Does he want to live that badly?

Even as the flesh on his forehead ripped and his head became a bloody mess, he continued to shake his head.

“Right. That means you have nothing that I can judge yet?”

Now it seems it was tough to even mumble, so he shook his head vigorously.

As the stone in his mouth turned red and his jaw twisted in pain, he forgot all the pain with a strong will to live.

“Really? You still think you’re clean?”

He twisted his mouth to smile brightly. Our eyes met.

Eyes distorted and filled with fear.

This is the last question. This will determine your treatment.

I stared at him for a moment, but he didn’t show any movements.

Can’t answer? Or is just shaking your head not enough to express your intention?

I pulled out the stone lodged in his mouth.

Pop.

Maybe because I dislocated his jaw when I stuffed the stone in, a white fragment flew through the air as I jerked it out, but that had nothing to do with me.

“Your mouth is open, right? Now speak. Can I avoid breaking you? Do you still think you’re clean?”

Gurgle.

He merely let out a muffled sound.

“Answer.”

Swallow.

His Adam’s apple bobbed heavily.

The sound of blood being swallowed in his mouth.

“I… I did nothing wrong. Please spare me…”

Because of his broken teeth and tongue, a hard-to-listen pronunciation escaped his lips.

“Right. So you did nothing wrong?”

His fate had been decided.

No, it had been decided from the start.

Only the intensity of the judgment regarding him was the significance of this inquiry.

Whack.

I kicked the stone on the ground.

It lodged back into his mouth, and he screamed painfully.

“You just kicked the last chance away. A chance to atone as a hero.”

I smiled brightly. I wonder how this smile reflects in his eyes.

The hammer in my right hand sliced through the air with a loud sound.

A pointless act to instill fear in him.

“I said I was there on the battlefield earlier, right?”

First. One.

Crack.

His right hand was destroyed.

Unlike other heroes, there’s no need to minimize his pain.

This guy is no longer even a clown, but something that has given up everything.

With bones sticking out of his flesh.

Twisting nerves as much as possible.

Leaving clots between skin and skin.

What I’m giving him isn’t hardship but punishment, taking everything from him.

Opening my mouth to the guy gnawing at the stone in madness.

“I saw an interesting scene there. Dozens of wounded soldiers. The hero assigned to safely evacuate them.”

Every word slipping out of my mouth made the man in front of me tremble.

He probably realized what he had done wrong.

“But that hero abandoned his duty and ran away. Do you have something to say?”

I reached out to his trembling lips rolling on the ground.

Seeing my hand approach, he freaked out and tried to fall away, but there was nothing he could do, being restrained by me.

Again, the stone was pulled from his mouth.

Perhaps it was due to his mouth being already damaged, the stone came out easily.

The pain he worried about was nonexistent.

I looked down at him as he trembled, blood flowing from his mouth.

“Do you have anything to say?”

“I can’t… How can I apologize!”

He’s still not broken.

His will is impressive.

So does that mean he has the skills to be pulled into the evacuation team?

“I also have to disappear, you know? So I ran away…”

No more to listen to.

Thump.

I took the chance with his mouth open and kicked the stone again.

Is this what heroes are like?

To avoid experiencing the same thing again, he reached out for the incoming stone.

“If you had just stayed still, your left hand could have been saved.”

To stop him from resisting, I stamped my foot on it.

A sensation of crushing bones came up through my foot.

No matter how necessary this task is, this feeling is a little uncomfortable.

“Aaaagh…”

Again, the stone was forcibly pushed into his mouth.

After the number of times stones were shoved in, now the ugly gray stone naturally occupied his mouth.

His right arm destroyed and left hand crushed, he rolled on the ground, screaming in pain.

He began to roll away from me. Is it a display of his primal instinct to try to live no matter what?

“If you resist, it will hurt more.”

Thump.

The sharp head of the hammer pierced through his flesh.

As I lightly tugged, he rolled on the ground and came back to me.

I gathered the final words to break him.

“Want to know something? All those soldiers survived. Not a single one died thanks to heroes weaker than you.”

He looked at me with eyes full of disbelief and fear.

That’s right. You made a wrong choice.

Even if you couldn’t evacuate all of them, if you had upheld your duty as a hero until the end…

“The association’s evacuation unit will arrive soon. Those guys will be hailed as heroes and receive medals. Their pensions will rise.”

In reality, they survived because I was there, but I didn’t put that in my mouth.

Information that doesn’t need to be given to him.

Ultimately, all the heroes and wounded soldiers lived, while you made a wrong choice.

“If you had stayed, all that glory would have been yours. But now, what are you doing?”

In a dark abandoned factory, tortured by a monster.

While other heroes are receiving accolades.

“That’s the choice you made. A choice to give up being a hero, to renounce being a hero. Even though the opposite leads to glory, the hardship and choice you let go of.”

Now, as a hero, I need to take everything from him.

I swung the hammer again.

This time the left arm.

To balance it with the right arm.

But I didn’t apply so much pressure that his bone would protrude out of his skin.

To completely shatter him, leaving permanent disabilities.

Unlike other victims who may somehow bounce back to be heroes through hardship.

Leaving him with a permanent disability so that he loses everything as a hero.

I had no intention of taking his left hand either, but that was his own doing.

Because he hindered my actions, I only did what he deserved.

This isn’t something to earn hardship for.

Not for a sacrifice for a great cause, nor his own definition of justice, nor as an artistic act for desire.

Simply a human choosing to prioritize his own self-preservation.

A being unnecessary for the group of heroes.

“G-g-g-g-g-gah!”

Did the stone busy blocking his mouth shift because his teeth fell out?

A slight scream escaped. Even if his mouth gets filled with wounds, that scream had to be let out.

With that last scream, he flipped over.

Could he not endure the dire pain? Spraying bodily fluids from all holes in his body.

He fled beyond consciousness where pain does not exist.

“You can’t run away.”

I pulled out a small plastic stick from my pocket.

An auto-injector filled with a stimulant.

An item that has served me countless times on the battlefield.

When you press the button against your thigh or abdomen, it completes drug injection seamlessly. But now, I’m using it to inflict pain, not to save someone.

Lifting his clothes, I pressed it against his abdomen and pressed the button.

With a cheerful spring sound, the drug rushed into his body.

A powerful stimulant with narcotic effects. It forcibly awakens the lost consciousness and makes sensitivity towards stimuli.

After a short while.

“Ughhhhh?”

“Awake? Then let’s continue. You still have two legs left, right?”

The time of pain that he has to endure is still not over.

“If you wanted forgiveness, you should have made the right choice from the start.”

Opening my mouth toward him, who had his limbs crushed and could no longer move.

A man resembling a worm rolling on the floor.

Even wanting to escape the pain, the stimulant obstructed that. His mouth twisted by the stone blocked any expressions of pain.

All he has left are regrets and pain.

In his mind, countless regrets are swirling.

If only he hadn’t run then, if only he had just a little more time back then.

But the past cannot be turned back.

The choices made in the past continue to linger on, tormenting everyone.

“Aah… Ughhhh…”

That guy is done for.

Even if they somehow fix his limbs through treatment, what’s left for him is only the association’s removal from hero status.

The association’s capture team has already set out to target him.

Probably arriving in about an hour.

Will the association really offer complete treatment to a human stripped of hero status?

To someone who is neither a civilian caught up in the incident, nor a wounded soldier, nor a hero.

At most, they will try to piece together his bones, letting him walk and move about.

“What the hell… what happened…”

“What? Do you have more to say?”

“What happened that it turned out like this…”

Somehow managing to twist his mouth free of the stone, he spoke.

Turning his painful body back to the ground, he reached out with his broken limbs and looked up at the sky.

He looked at the sky through a holey piece of plywood, where the invisible sky lay beyond.

“I wanted to become a hero… something I dreamed of as a child…”

“Like the hero who saved me…”

Has he finally realized his true desire?

But it’s too late. He’s come too far down the road of regret.

Swept away by a twisted society, he has renounced being a hero.

Whether he had originally been someone who prioritized his own survival or had twisted over time is unknown.

What remains is a beautiful dream of the past.

A broken reality. A future of nothingness.

Even without me, the outcome would have been the same.

The soldiers and heroes who were slaughtered.

Through investigation, his wrongdoings will come to light.

The association’s dismissal.

The only things that will change are the number of victims and the time it takes to reveal the truth.

Perhaps he thought that even if he were expelled, he could still save his life intact.

He fulfilled that hope, trading it for irreversible permanent disability because of my sacrifice.

…Recalling that, I felt a strange emotion for a moment.

An oddly calm feeling.

Countless tortures I felt guilt over… yet, every time, I couldn’t control my emotions.

What’s different this time?

…Doesn’t matter.

Finishing my thoughts, I scattered the black particles oozing from my clothes and walked toward the entrance of the abandoned factory.

Toward the bright outside where light shines down.

“Soon, the association’s dedicated team will arrive. Stay quiet.”

That was the last thing I said before throwing my body toward the light.

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