“A uniform just like mine?”

Jiecheng Yuan repeated under her breath. Her face turned deathly pale in an instant.

At the school Jiecheng Yuan attended, someone knew she was a Magical Girl—and was deliberately planning to make her fall?

Worse still, the person behind the whole scheme really did have the power to make a Magical Girl fall.

Jiecheng Yuan didn’t care what effect an increase in Fallen Magical Girls would have on this city. She wasn’t some hero destined to defeat the Demon King, or a superhero sworn to protect world peace. She certainly didn’t have the saintly sense of responsibility for that.

Her goal was simple—pure and simple. She only wanted to redeem herself.

Right now, every person who learned her true identity meant another risk. And this unknown enemy was lying low in the very same school as her. They could watch her every move, while she didn’t even know who they were.

“What do we do?! Don’t just sit there in silence!” When Jiecheng Yuan still didn’t react, Baki urged her anxiously.

What do we do, what do we do… You keep repeating that. I don’t even know what to do myself. Who am I supposed to ask?

Jiecheng Yuan wanted to shout that at her, but Baki looked so pitiful that she just couldn’t bring herself to. Instead, she sulkily raised her cup of iced coffee and gulped down a mouthful. The cold, bitter liquid took the edge off her irritation, and in the end she managed to hold back her impulse.

“I want to ask you something first. Answer honestly: what do you know about the black-haired girl who left my room?” Jiecheng Yuan folded her hands on the table and rested her chin on them.

“You two were going to do something naughty, then I don’t know what happened, but you had a fight.” Baki’s brows knitted together.

“That’s not what I’m asking. Why did you attack her?” Jiecheng Yuan was a little annoyed. If Baki hadn’t seemed so completely serious, she would’ve been furious.

“Because the girl who told me to do it said that girl—the Li you mentioned—would get in the way of our operation. She also said… Li was a Magical Girl too, and that I should just focus on completing my mission…”

“Li is a Magical Girl?” Jiecheng Yuan repeated under her breath, making sure she’d heard right. Her fingers, clasped together, tightened, and her teeth clenched without her realizing it. The anger she’d forced down twice surged out of her. She finally snapped, “She isn’t! Do you realize you might’ve killed someone?!”

“I—I didn’t know. I thought…” Baki’s weak explanation trailed off until she wisely shut her mouth.

Her shout drew the shopkeeper’s gaze, too. Only then did Jiecheng Yuan realize what she’d done. Her body went limp, and she slumped against the sofa, staring up at the empty ceiling.

She had no emotional connection to Li, and she couldn’t understand why she’d lost her temper like that. If she had to name a reason, it was probably her anger at how casually they treated human life.

No, something still wasn’t right. There was no way Li could become a Magical Girl. Her bonds with the other characters in the story came about entirely because she had enough magic inside her for them to replenish their power, and because of her gentle nature.

Even if someone could find out where I live, in the original story, Jiecheng Yuan’s invitation for Li to come over and replenish her magic was just a coincidence. How could the mastermind have known on Saturday morning that Li would come to my house, then planned the whole thing around it?

If the other person knew the game’s plot, that would at least be a far-fetched explanation. But in the game, the two of them spent the night together. So how could she have known that the me who’d crossed over would refuse to let Li replenish her magic—and attack her instead?

Unable to make sense of it, Jiecheng Yuan shifted her gaze back to Quanshan Baqi, trembling across from her. Just like Jiecheng Yuan had somehow fallen herself, Baqi had chosen this path without understanding the full story. Maybe it was because they were both in the same boat, but Jiecheng Yuan couldn’t bring herself to take her anger out on her anymore.

Her willingness to trust Baqi also had a lot to do with her first impression. Baqi’s blunt, straightforward nature made it hard to feel like she was interacting with another girl, and that made Jiecheng Yuan rather fond of this Magical Girl who didn’t exist in the original story.

At the very least, Baqi had the right to know the most basic facts about Magical Girls, didn’t she? With that thought, Jiecheng Yuan softened her tone and patiently explained everything about Magical Girls to her.

She deliberately kept hidden the information only a transmigrator could know. That was Jiecheng Yuan’s secret weapon, and she couldn’t let anyone else learn about it.

What a Magical Girl was, what it meant to fall, how Magical Girls felt about falling, what might happen after a defeat—Jiecheng Yuan told her everything she could think of, without holding anything back.

As she explained, Jiecheng Yuan also found herself reflecting on her own situation. She had only four words for it: extremely bleak.

“Waaah… I—I don’t want to lose! I don’t want to turn into a little ball of fluff!” As Jiecheng Yuan went on, Baki’s sniffles gradually turned into sobs. Wads of tissue piled up on the table, and the pile kept growing.

Jiecheng Yuan had never dated a girl. Aside from the necessary everyday exchanges, she’d had very few chances to talk to girls at all. This was also her first time sitting face-to-face with one over coffee.

When a girl was crying, there was nothing wrong with trying to comfort her a little.

How were you supposed to comfort a crying girl? How would she know? In a situation like this, the best thing she could think of was to lay out the facts and reason with her—to appeal to both her logic and her feelings.

With an attitude like that, she’d probably get labeled a clueless nice guy or a total bro, if she were trying to date someone. Luckily, she was a girl now, and this wasn’t some lovey-dovey café scene between a couple, complete with pink bubbles floating everywhere.

In the end, what Jiecheng Yuan said didn’t sound comforting at all. “The magic gear you get when you transform automatically releases a spell that messes with people’s perception. It makes it hard for them to connect you before and after you transform. So as long as you don’t transform, they won’t find out.”

“Really?” Baki sniffed and nodded thoughtfully.

“Also, after you fall, a Black Magic Mark appears on your body. Only Magical Girls can see it, so if you want to hide your identity, you need to keep it hidden too. Anyway, as long as no one finds out, your life won’t be turned upside down.” Jiecheng Yuan added.

If you thought about it carefully, none of this was very convincing. She hadn’t considered the effects of the Black Magic Mark, or the existence of people who knew a Magical Girl’s identity, among other things. But for now, it was enough to soothe Baqi.

Baqi stayed silent for a long time—nearly ten minutes, probably—seemingly digesting what Jiecheng Yuan had told her. Then she pursed her lips, opened her mouth, and hooked a finger at the corner, pulling it to one side to reveal a sharp canine. Just as Jiecheng Yuan began to wonder what she was doing, Baqi stuck out her pale pink tongue.

Jiecheng Yuan’s gaze was drawn to the girl’s pink tongue. The pattern on it looked a lot like the one on her own abdomen, though there were plenty of differences. There was no doubt about it: that was a Black Magic Mark, too.

Baqi stuck her tongue out as far as she could and spoke indistinctly. “Is this the Black Magic Mark you were talking about?”

“That’s right.” Jiecheng Yuan swallowed and looked away. Quanshan Baqi might be so straightforward she was practically naïve, and she was always making a racket, but none of that changed the fact that she was a beautiful girl.

Seeing a beautiful girl make a gesture like that was just too much to handle.

“Then…” Baqi nodded and drew her tongue back in. She looked at Jiecheng Yuan with eager anticipation. “Can I see yours?”