Dense magic power turned into a cloud of dust and drifted away on the night wind.

Borel’s battle attire quickly came undone, and she returned to the appearance of an ordinary person. She raised her hand and stared at it on instinct.

“So this is death?”

Her delicate palm shattered like a crushed gem. Starting from the fingertips, it crumbled away like fine sand.

Borel lifted her head and looked at Yukieda. Without the attire, her real eyes were exposed. They were vacant, yet still full of emotion.

At that moment, her pupils trembled. The look she gave Yukieda carried hatred.

“Why can’t you let me go just once?!”

As she shouted, she rushed forward and tried to grab Yukieda by the throat. But now that she had lost her power, she was only an ordinary person. Weak, like an old woman at death’s door. Yukieda merely waved her hand and knocked her to the ground.

Sitting on the ground, Borel laughed. By then, one of her arms was already gone.

Yukieda didn’t blow her head apart this time. That counted as her final mercy. She could feel it clearly. The Witch before her was losing both her life and her remaining magic at a terrifying speed.

“Even now, I’m still making a fool of myself.”

Yukieda watched her in silence. This was the first time she had ever seen something like this, so she had to watch Borel die completely with her own eyes before she could relax.

Mai’s voice came through the radio. Just moments ago, the Demon had collapsed on its own.

“Got it.”

The sound of dress shoes running over the ruins came closer and closer.

Kazama Kurenai looked extremely battered. It was obvious she had suffered badly at the Demon’s hands.

She stared seriously at Borel, who was sitting on the ground and fading away, then spoke into the radio.

“The mission is over. We succeeded.”

From the outer perimeter came countless sirens. Ambulances. Fire trucks. They sounded almost like crying.

“Do you regret it?”

Yukieda couldn’t help asking.

Borel’s legs had already vanished too. The collapse had spread to her lower abdomen. She could no longer “sit.” She could only lie in the dirty water and look up at the brilliant starry sky.

“Regret? What do you mean? Killing those humans?”

Borel’s gaze was calm. With effort, she tilted her head and looked at Yukieda.

“Every one of them had a family behind them. Their families might’ve still been waiting for them to come home for breakfast the next morning. And yet you did so many terrible things!”

Borel’s face filled with disappointment. She let out a self-mocking laugh.

“So the one who beat me was someone like you.”

After muttering that, she said, “Let me ask you this. Do you pity the tuna in a seafood shop?”

Before Yukieda could answer, the fiery red Magical Girl at her side snapped angrily,

“You bastard, you’re comparing humans to tuna?!”

Borel sounded almost like she was talking to herself.

“You misunderstood. I’m not trying to belittle humans. I’m saying we do have a causal connection with them, but only that much. Haven’t the two of you noticed? Most people look at you the same way tuna look at humans.”

“Blank and ignorant.”

Borel added one more line. Her broken body had already crumbled up to her chest.

“You—!” Kazama’s face turned ugly. She hurriedly tried to argue back. “That’s not true. I’m human! I’m not like you!”

At death’s door, Borel looked at the red and white girls before her with a strange expression.

“A fish that’s come ashore? Can that still be called a fish? It won’t be long now. You’ll find out how those fish guard themselves against you. And the two of you will soon—”

“That’s enough nonsense!”

Kazama cut her off.

Borel stopped paying attention to her and simply looked at the stars.

Yukieda looked at Borel, who now had only her head left, and asked her final question.

“What about Hachiya? In your eyes, was he a fish too?”

“If I could, I’d want to jump back into the water and be with him.”

After saying that, Borel returned to nothingness.

The two Magical Girls silently stared at the ground. There was only a small puddle left. It was as if Borel had never existed at all.

Through the radio, Yukieda formally reported that Borel had been completely eliminated.

She could feel the breathing on the other end stop for a moment. Then Mr. Kenji’s voice came through her earpiece.

“Good. There’s still something we need your help with. There may still be team members alive under the rubble. We need your power, and the other Magical Girl’s too.”

“Understood.”

By the time Yukieda and Kazama ran back to the previous main battlefield, quite a few rescue workers had already arrived.

Most wore orange-yellow firefighter uniforms. Some were doctors in white. A large number were workers operating heavy machinery. Judging by their gear, they had clearly been waiting nearby for some time.

Yukieda could clearly feel the distance between them and herself. The moment she and Kurenai appeared, almost everyone stopped talking at the same time and looked at them. Only after that did the whispers begin.

The Magical Girl called Kurenai put on her mask. This seemed to be her first time taking part in a rescue effort. Or maybe Borel’s words had shaken her just now. Uneasy, she reached out and held Yukieda’s hand. Yukieda could feel the sweat in her palm.

Like soothing a daughter, Yukieda patted the back of her hand.

“It’s okay.”

Yukieda and Kurenai immediately threw themselves into the rescue work.

Doing everything they could to save every life that still had hope.

Maybe the crane’s steel cable hadn’t been secured properly. With a burst of crackling snaps, a massive chunk of the building broke loose from the crane. Below it were two firefighters still carrying out rescue work. An accident was about to happen right before everyone’s eyes.

The two firefighters helplessly raised their arms to shield themselves.

Yukieda dashed out. She swept the two nearby firefighters into her arms and carried them away, while Kurenai, with perfect coordination, knocked the falling chunk away with a single thrust of her spear.

Yukieda set the two firefighters down, and Kurenai landed on the ground.

Someone at the scene started clapping. Then the applause gradually spread. Faintly, praise could be heard from all around.

Hero, and things like that.

Kazama’s chest, rising and falling at almost the same pace as Yukieda’s, puffed up so high it was practically reaching the sky.

All the unease she had felt before was swept away. She worked even harder after that.

Behind her mask, Yukieda let out a soft laugh. The movement was tiny, but Kazama still noticed it.

Thinking of how timid she had looked just now, Kazama felt nothing but embarrassment. She was supposed to be the senior one, yet she had unconsciously grabbed her junior’s hand and even needed comfort from her.

For some reason, she felt that the way Yukieda was looking at her was a little strange.

Like...

A father watching over his daughter?

No way.

Kazama moved even faster, like she had a motor installed.

The cleanup afterward would last a long time. The entire city of Shiratsuru was sunk in immense grief.

The losses in this operation could only be called devastating. Nearly every TV station was reporting on it.

But there was another piece of news even louder than the rest.

A Witch had been successfully killed.

The operation’s chief commander, personnel at every level, and the Magical Girls who fought on the front line all received high praise from the international community. Foreign media called it “a battle fought to defend humanity’s peace and dignity.”

On TV, an interview with the operation’s chief commander was playing.

It was Mr. Kenji. He looked like he had aged ten years, speaking in the usual official lines.

“First, I want to thank the team members who gave their lives in this operation. They were all heroes, all true soldiers. Second, I want to thank the ordinary people who held the perimeter the entire time. If not for them... Finally, I want to thank this city’s protector, as well as another supporter. For special reasons, I cannot reveal their names...”

Watching the report on TV, Yukieda let out a sigh instead.

At that moment, she was sitting deep in the sofa with her pale, smooth legs crossed, her pinkish bare feet gently swinging.

“Heroes...?”

For some reason, Yukieda thought of Omi, the one she had killed. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining what the outcome would have been if that old man had been the one leading Shiratsuru.

Even though she knew it was wrong to think that way, she just couldn’t stop herself.

Another news report caught Yukieda’s attention.

It was about Hachiya Masaki.

That man hadn’t died after all. At the moment Borel’s core was crushed, the Demon collapsed on its own, revealing Hachiya hidden inside. He was immediately arrested by the ground forces.

By all logic, a Demon should never be able to revert. The only explanation was that Borel had left herself a backup plan.

On TV, they only showed a brief shot of him wearing a black hood as a group of special agents escorted him away.

Then came a long list of charges.

Assaulting police officers. Endangering regional security. Destroying public facilities. Threatening civilian safety...

The list went on and on.

After a series of trials, he would be sentenced to death.

Because of the criminal’s extremely special nature, he could obtain a signed document from the Minister of Justice. That would prevent the sentence from being delayed endlessly. After all, in this country, carrying out the death penalty was notoriously difficult.

In the end, he would pay the price for the choices he had made.

Bzzz.

The terminal in her pant leg vibrated once.

It was a new message from Mai.

“Borel’s file has been declassified. Interested in taking a look?”

“Of course.”

That was Yukieda’s reply.

Very soon, Mai sent over a file that could only be viewed online. It couldn’t be opened on the terminal. It had to be accessed from a personal PC.

Yukieda logged into her laptop, entered her account and password, and went through a series of verification steps.

The first thing she saw was a photo of Borel in human form, along with the name beside it.

“Kafuu Nako (Borel).”

According to the file, Borel had once belonged to an early Magical Girl unit. As a trainee, she had taken part in several riot suppression operations, and her evaluations had been fairly good.

Yukieda clicked to the next page.

That situation continued until her second year after officially joining. During a routine operation, she turned on her side and assassinated several high-ranking leaders on the scene...

Later, the organization launched a manhunt against her, and she completely transformed into a Witch.

The official definition of a Witch was:

“A being whose mind and body have both undergone total corruption. Their behavior is deranged and filled with resentment. Everything they do is anti-human. Their highest objective in every action is to overthrow the government and plunge human society into chaos.”

The next page.

It was an investigation into her partner.

Nishimichi Gi.

In the photo was a short woman.

Reading the investigation results below, along with the testimonies, Yukieda’s golden eyes narrowed.

This woman...

To curry favor with her superiors, she had actually forced that kind of substance down her own partner’s throat.

There were also some images...

Branding irons... syringes... nails... hammers...

Further on came the investigation into Borel’s family background and so on.

The final line read: all personnel involved in the case had already been punished.

There was no next page.

No wonder the confidentiality level on this file was so high. If other Magical Girls saw this, who knew what would happen?