Chapter 4 — Sleep, until your life is over • Episode 4–3 — Master And Disciple ②
Translated by KaiesV
Edited by KaiesV
At the entrance to a nationwide chain café, a girl in a local middle school uniform wanders around as if looking for someone, when a woman with semi-long light hair sitting in one corner of the restaurant waves her hand lightly and calls her name.
「Chisaki-chan, over here, over here!」
「Ah, Futaba-san, hello.」
The girl in uniform is Kisayama Chisaki, aka Magical Girl Elephant, one of the six Magical Girls in Sakira Town, and her rendezvous was with Mizukami Futaba, aka Monarch Sprite, the Lightning Witch who once stood at the virtual top of all Magical Girls.
Neither of them knows the other is a Magical Girl, but they seem to have hit it off since Tyrant Sylph’s dress-up photo session they held the other day, not content with simply exchanging contact information and keeping in touch daily with Sylph’s movements, the two became friends enough to have tea together to further deepen their friendship.
As for Futaba, she wants Chisaki, who is the only friend for Sylph who doesn’t attend school, to continue to be friends with Sylph, If she, a former Magical Girl who knows the situation to some extent, don’t support their relationship, she thinks that one day a fatal misunderstanding might occur between them, she couldn’t do nothing. She didn’t want to let another tragedy like her own and her brother’s repeat itself.
Chisaki, on the other hand, is trying to follow up with Sylph, who has made peace with her family, so that she won’t become estranged again because she is a Magical Girl, and, she was also full of enthusiasm to become close friends with Sylph in the future, and she gladly accepted Futaba’s invitation for tea with the intention of building a good relationship with Sylph’s relatives and becoming an official family friend.
In other words, this was a win-win secret meeting for both parties.
「I apologize, for making you wait.」
「I didn’t wait at all. I’m sorry it’s your day off. Do you have club activities today or something?」
「Yes. I had track practice only in the morning. I didn’t have any plans for the afternoon, so I was rather happy to be invited.」
「Ahaha, I feel a little better if you say so. Shall I just order first? It’s Onee-san’s treat today, so you can order whatever you like.」
「Thank you, I’ll take your word for it then.」
Although they are friendly enough to joke around with each other on the talk app, this is the first time they’ve met in person since the dress-up photo session the other day, and they seem a little awkward, perhaps because they don’t have a mutual acquaintance, Sylph, with whom they share a common interest.
Chisaki earns a good amount of money from defeating Diests, and she’s not particularly spendthrift, so she isn’t in financial trouble, but thinking that she should take advantage of the kindness of her superior in such an occasion, she thank her for her hospitality, look over the menu lightly, and quickly place her order.
After ordering, the topic of conversation shifted to Sylph, and the initial awkwardness of the two became more and more talkative, and although they did not make a loud noise because of the location, their reserve and nervousness disappeared completely.
「But thank you so much, Chisaki-san. You take Ryō-chan to many places, don’t you? She doesn’t talk much on her own, but when I ask her who she went with and where she went today, she usually ends up talking about you, Chisaki-chan… I really wish her father or I could have played that role, but…」
「Don’t worry about it at all, it’s something I like to do. Besides, Futaba-san must be busy, and Ryō-chan’s parents, well…」
「Have you heard anything from Ryō-chan?」
「As for the mother not being there. I don’t know the details about her father, but he doesn’t seem to be home all the time.」
「I see…」
Futaba asked questions in the hope that Chisaki, who has become closer to Sylph than before she met her, might know something about Sylph’s parents, but she was unable to obtain any promising information. This is also true because Chisaki has consulted with Sylph in advance and has come up with a set-up in advance regarding their relationship externally. For Sylph, it was a measure taken to prevent her from inadvertently leaking the fact that Chisaki was a Magical Girl when Futaba and others were digging deeper into Chisaki, and she had no idea that the two would meet in this way without her knowledge and that the setting would be used in this way.
Sylph’s age is approximately 10 years old, which means that she is about 4 years older than Chisaki, who is in the second year of middle school. It could be a senior student from grade school, or an older sister in the neighborhood, or there could be a case where they are friends even if they are a little older than each other, in Sylph’s case, she doesn’t attend school and doesn’t live close to Futaba, making it difficult to explain how the two became acquainted and friends if they try to hide their commonality as Magical Girls. It was a setup to avoid ragging when suddenly asked and to avoid contradictions between the two arguments.
In fact, Futaba asked how Ryō and Chisaki became friends once in the exchange on the application, so it was a good decision to make the setting consistent. Incidentally, in the setting, they are friends who met via the Internet, found out they lived in the same town, had an off-line meeting, and became close friends in real life. For those of them who are older, it may seem risky to become friends with someone we are not familiar with and cannot see their face with in real life, but for today’s young people, friends over the Internet are not uncommon. If Chisaki’s gender also had been male, she would’ve been suspected of being a pedophile looking to meet someone, but the fact that they were both girls and that their ages were within the realm of common sense made Futaba let her guard down. There was no way she could’ve known that Sylph wasn’t only being targeted but even forcibly kissed.
「What Ryō-chan like at home? She often go out with you, but I’d like to hear about her everyday life.」
「She’s always playing video games and reading comic books. I’ve been trying to get her to go to grade school, but she’s just not that into it…」
「A–Ahaha, that’s troubling…」
Chisaki knows that Futaba, who doesn’t know that Ryō is Ryōichi Mizukami, is saying this with 100% good intentions, but Chisaki, who knows Ryō’s true identity, cannot agree lightly, and her words are muddled. If, as Sylph said, she will return to being a man after the fight with the Diests is over, then it wouldn’t make much sense for her to attend school now. Besides, Elephant understands that Sylph feels guilty about her identity in her activities as a Magical Girl. It’s hard to say that forcing them to attend grade school will not end up only hurting Sylph due to her guilt. And unlike the society of Magical Girls, she’s not in the society of grade school. Even if something were to happen in that closed world, she wouldn’t be able to take the side of Sylph.
On the other hand, if Sylph chooses not to return to normal after this battle, then of course she should attend school as well. If she have decided to live her life as a girl named Mizukami Ryō, there is a life that is appropriate for that. The excuse that she will become a man someday is no longer acceptable. Ryo has the right to go to school, make friends of the same age, and be happy. Chisaki thinks so.
「Ah, but lately, I’ve noticed that she seems a bit preoccupied or unfocused in whatever she’s doing. Suddenly her face turns red, she has a kind of feverish look in her eyes, she sighs a lot, and it seems like she’s having some trouble. I tell her to talk to me about everything, but she won’t take me seriously…」
「That is worrisome. I’ll ask her about that too.」
「Thanks, Chisaki-chan. Ryō-chan seems to be very fond of you, so I feel a little safer if you say so, Chisaki-chan.」
Chisaki felt a slight pain in her heart when she saw Futaba’s relieved, good-natured smile and sensed the face of Ryō.
“I’m sorry, maybe it’s me that Sylph-chan is worried about,” Chisaki apologizes inwardly, but at the same time, she pauses, gut-punching in her heart, convinced that her own furious attacks are definitely bearing fruit.
When she stopped Sylph the other day and rode the Ferris wheel alone with her, even Chisaki didn’t originally intend to go that far. Forcibly kissing someone who hasn’t given her the OK to do so is a heinous act that could be reported depending on how the other person feels. Although she felt that she had done this once before at the victory celebration and that it was inevitable in order to make Sylph’s feelings for her, she also regretted that she had overdone it a little.
So she was really going to follow her mentor’s advice and make a romantic confession again, saying that she love Sylph in all its good and bad qualities, with a beautiful scene at a memorable place. However, Elephant’s plan was brilliantly undermined by Sylph’s words.
The fact that she’d been rejected once wasn’t so much a surprise as it was within the realm of expectation. Even when she wanted to be friends with Sylph, it was not a simple matter. Chisaki knew that it would not be so easy when she wanted to take the relationship further than that. That is why she didn’t ask for an answer on the day of the victory celebration. Until the time when Sylph fell in love with her, Saki was determined to keep trying without giving up no matter how many times she was rejected.
Surprisingly, Sylph pleaded with a protective, half-crying expression that she still wanted to be friends with her. She said to Sylph at the time that it was wrong of her to say such horrible things to her, but in fact she wasn’t even a little hurt, she was even moved.
Sylph is a very troublesome Magical Girl who is negative, backward-looking, and self-contained when she thinks in the wrong direction, and it’s hard to believe that she used to be an adult. This time, too, she had expected him to say something that Chisaki would never understand, such as that they could no longer go back to the same kind of relationship they had before, so let’s at least say goodbye before their friendship was destroyed. Of course, she had no intention of giving up when she said that, and she intended to remain friends with Sylph until she fell in love with her, but Sylph betrayed Chisaki’s expectations.
She was sure no one but Chisaki would know how happy that made her.
Her own past actions, the friendship she had nurtured with Sylph, and her love for Sylph had had such an impact on her that it had overturned a fundamental part of her.
Even though she thinks negatively, backward, and in a bad way, she is still so supportive of herself as Sylph that she can’t give up.
And while Elephant was chewing on this emotion, Sylph’s true feelings and confession of love were spewed out in rapid succession.
I can’t believe she haven’t wanted to leave since I kissed her,
I can’t believe that she was trying to get back to being a man, and now she’s lost in that end result,
I can’t believe that she was shaking like that, asking for courage to hold my own hand,
（That means she already likes me!?）
So she couldn’t stand it.
She realized that Sylph was just like she was not long ago.
She believed that they were in love with each other, just not understanding the difference between friendship and love.
In fact, it wasn’t just a touchy kiss, but a very deep kiss, and since she didn’t show any signs of reluctance, it was probably not a misunderstanding. Elephant also noticed this and was already convinced of her own victory. She was sure that in the not-too-distant future, Sylph would realize her love for her and reciprocate her love for her.
「Leave it to me. I will make Ryo-chan happy.」
「I feel like I’m overreacting a bit, but… I’m counting on you.」
Chisaki answered with her chest puffed out in pride, to which Futaba replied with a slight wry smile.
