As of This Very Moment, You’re a Magiclad Girl. What an Honor, Huh? – Part 01
My first summer after entering high school had arrived. Every year, people argued about when summer officially started, but I couldn’t care less. If it’s hot, it’s summer. That was good enough for me.
The rainy season had passed. I stared up at the clear blue sky, half-listening to a very informative teacher drone on, soaking in the dullness of class.
God, I was bored. Wonderfully, luxuriously bored. I believed boredom was the ultimate indulgence.
I flopped forward onto my desk. It was math class, apparently, but I couldn’t be bothered. Not my fault. I hated sunlight.
Never had I hated sitting by the window this much. Second from the back by the window was supposed to be prime seating.
And now here it was, raining—nay, shining—on my parade with its blinding light.
If I were in night school, this wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t about the heat.
It was the sunlight. The damn sunlight.
Complaining wouldn’t change anything. I decided to be grateful to whoever invented curtains. Wanting to block out the rays that were supposedly bad for your skin anyway, I tilted my chair back and poked the guy sleeping behind me with my mechanical pencil.
“Hey, can you close the curtain?”
He just kept snoring softly, no sign of waking up. Maybe I should let him rest in peace. I’ll eat you, I swear.
Ah, shit. My head started going fuzzy. I squinted up at that cursed sunlight.
If only the sun didn’t exist, there’d be nothing to fear in this world.
Anyway, since staying awake made my brain feel like it was melting faster than shaved ice, I’ll just come right out with it.
I’m a zombie. Oh, and a Magiclad Girl,[1] too.
Yup. That was my big, life-defining confession. All right, I’m going to sleep now. Please let me sleep.
Also, someone close that damn curtain.
It was around 7:12 PM, if I remembered right.
That day, I stayed at school until the sun disappeared, taking it easy until night fell, then finally stepped out the front gate. You might wonder why I waited until night, but again, not my fault. If I walked around in the sunlight, I’d collapse on the spot.
I may not look it, but I’m a zombie.
My house was five minutes away on foot. Obviously, no one stuck around to walk home with me at this hour, so I went home alone, in silence.
It should’ve taken five minutes, but that day, I felt like taking a detour.
There was a cemetery near my house. A pretty big one. Naturally, as a perfectly average zombie, I loved the place.
Maybe trying to rebel against the late-June heat, the breeze there felt cool and refreshing. The dark sky, void of stars, shimmered only with moonlight.
With a satisfying crunch of gravel underfoot, I made my way to the middle of the cemetery and, quite inappropriately, sat on a gravestone. The chill of the stone felt amazing.
In the mood for moon-gazing, I stuffed myself with the rice ball I’d just bought. Pure bliss. Ever since becoming a zombie, I got hungry a lot more often.
It might’ve looked lonely, but to me, being alone was proof that everything was peaceful. Spending time doing absolutely nothing, all by myself—that was my idea of a perfect life.
Well, that blissful moment didn’t last.
I must’ve gotten a little too excited. I hurled my empty green tea bottle straight up into the sky. It soared so high, it looked like a tiny speck against the night.
While I stared up, waiting for it to come down, something else sparkled.
A bird? No, way too big for that. And there were two of them. Definitely not a plastic bottle.
I bolted. But panic and urgency were two different things. I calmly tracked their trajectory, figured out a safe zone, and moved there.
Boom! A ridiculously loud crash rang out, and a crater opened right where I’d been standing moments earlier.
Gravel flew everywhere. Dust and pebbles rained down over the tombstones. So this was what people meant by pelting rain.
Swearing to God I’d never litter again, I came back to the newly formed crater like an idiot. Come on, wouldn’t anyone be curious? It had nothing to do with me being a zombie.
“Owowowowow.”
A girl in cosplay you’d normally only see at a doujin convention was clutching her back. She looked around 145 centimeters tall, give or take.
Underneath her lay a black bear in a boy’s school uniform, sprawled out and motionless. And next to me, for some reason, sat a chainsaw.
I picked it up. It was way lighter than I expected. Maybe it just felt that way because I was a zombie. No, wait, that wasn’t the point.
“Hey,” I called to the girl holding her back. She whipped her head around, hair the color of chestnuts bouncing against her shoulders. Her sharp glare locked onto me.
Her eyes were striking, large and catlike. I wanted to just gaze at them in admiration, but my focus kept drifting upward.
Because sprouting from the top of her head was a rare, exquisite feature—a single strand of hair poking up, the kind people call a cowlick.
“You okay?”
“Ah!” She gaped at me and pointed.
What now? Did she figure out I was a zombie?
“My Magigear! Give it back! Now! Hurry! Quick! Immediately! Instantly! In a flash! In a blink! Right away! Pronto! Just hand it over!” She stomped across the gravel toward me.
“Wait, hold on. What’s a Magigear?”
With every step, that ridiculous stray tuft of hair bounced wildly. And seriously, what was she wearing? Her embarrassing cosplay outfit faded away into nothing, and her pale skin was suddenly exposed. Wait, she was naked?
“That thing you’re holding! I can’t cast attack magic without it!”
She seemed too furious to even realize she was completely unclothed.
Still, those were some small, adorable breasts. Truly marvelous. Mom, I finally feel alive again. Though I was technically dead.
“This thing?”
I held out the chainsaw. She reached out to grab it, but the moment her hand got close, a sharp spark of static cracked, and her fingers recoiled without touching it.
“Ow! What the hell?!”
She tried again. And again. But the chainsaw in my hand shocked her every time. The sparks grew harsher the more forcefully she reached, until the shocks turned into full-on jolts of electricity.
“More importantly, don’t you have, like, clothes or something?”
“Wuh?”
She echoed the words in her head, trying to process them. About two seconds later, not just her cheeks and ears but her entire face—and body—lit up bright red.
“Don’t look, you perv! Ero Special!”
“Ero Special? Is that, like, Warsman’s finishing move or something?”[2]
“Shut up!”
Without warning, she kicked me hard in the face and darted behind the nearest gravestone.
I didn’t even have time to think about whether I should follow her.
Because the bear in the school uniform, easily over three meters tall, bent its knees, kicked up gravel, and launched itself into the air.
That was the other thing that had fallen with the girl. Even a zombie like me had to freak out a little. I mean, come on. It was totally out of nowhere.
I remembered it taking less than a second for the bear to soar through the air and dropkick me. It was impressively fast.
Not that I had time to admire it. Its paw, complete with squishy pads, smashed into my cheek and sent me flying headfirst into a gravestone.
Man, it was good to be a zombie. I didn’t feel a thing. No matter how hard I stubbed my pinky toe or got whacked in the head, there was no pain. I mean, I was already dead.
I stood up and faced the bear. The chainsaw had flown from my hand during that last hit and landed nearby. The naked girl reached for it cautiously, but again, sparks crackled and the thing rejected her.
“Just one question. What is this bear?”
I glanced sideways at her, then back at the bear. It had assumed a stance straight out of a kung fu movie.
“That’s the vicious female high schooler, Beary! Get out of here, or you’ll be dead in seconds!”
Shocking news. The bear… was a high school girl? Wearing a male school uniform? Well, okay, a student. I could give her that.
“She doesn’t look that dangerous, though.”
The bear in front of me had round, beady eyes, just like a plush toy. Its fur was lovely and fluffy. Adorable, really. If it stayed still, you could mistake it for a high-end stuffed animal.
“Idiot! You absolute moron! Can’t you even gauge your opponent’s strength? I swear, the people from this world!”
The girl groaned in exasperation. She wasn’t exactly great at gauging my strength, either.
The bear, with its plush-toy face, opened its mouth and bared its fangs. Then it howled at the moon. A beast’s roar.
The sound shook the air. The girl and I flinched. Purple, hazy mist billowed from its mouth like poison gas. I shouldn’t have called it adorable.
I clenched my fists lightly and narrowed my eyes.
The bear crouched, inhaled deeply, then exhaled a burst of that same purple mist as it lunged forward, charging at me with terrifying speed.
A backfist. I caught it with a backfist of my own. A solid blow, with weight behind it. Then came a roundhouse kick, a rising three-step combo from low to high, and a full-body slam straight from the shoulder. All chained together seamlessly.
Nope, there’s no dodging that. Impossible.
I was sent flying easily. I crashed into the gravestone the girl had been hiding behind and shattered it into pieces.
“Waaah!” she yelped. I didn’t feel a thing, obviously. “Why’d you come flying over here?! Ugh, stop looking at me, Sergeant Frig![3] Just die already!”
Her face, already flushed, turned beet red as she smacked me over and over. It was kind of refreshing, honestly.
“Want the school uniform?” I asked.
“How should I know?! Huh? What are you even talking about?” Her big, round eyes blinked twice.
“Your change of clothes.”
I pushed myself up and leapt off the gravel-strewn ground.
I reached for the bear’s neck. In the instant we crossed paths, her fuzzy, paw-padded hand coiled around my wrist.
Then in the blink of an eye, she swept my legs out from under me and slammed me onto the gravel.
Apparently, this bear could pull off throws even without fingers. She followed through, dropping onto me with an elbow to the face. It was brutally strong. The impact sounded like a cannonball. I seriously thought it would leave a dent in the ground shaped like my head.
I tried to counter with a punch, but she leapt back instantly and took up another kung fu stance, arms stretched out wide and low.
I stood slowly, brushed the gravel from my clothes, and raised my fists once more.
“You get it now, don’t you? Someone like you can’t take down a Megalo! Just run already, ‘kay?!” she yelled from behind a gravestone.
How about you just watch quietly?
A massive tree loomed over the cemetery like a sentinel, its branches rustling in the wind. To me, it sounded like the crowd cheering.
Once more, I closed the distance. I aimed straight for its face, ready to grab it head-on.
The bear’s paw wrapped around my zombie arm again. But this time, I didn’t stop. I grabbed its uniform by the sleeve and yanked it toward me, then reached up with my other hand and grabbed that huge snout.
I took its head in both hands and twisted. You could practically hear the crack. The bear’s neck spun several times, drool spraying into the night sky, before it finally stopped. Its three-meter frame toppled with a heavy thud.
You ever hear that thing about humans only being able to use a fraction of their strength?
Something about how using 100% of your power would tear your body apart, so your brain holds you back. But when you’re in real danger, sometimes you tap into it. Like that whole adrenaline surge thing.
Well, I could handle that kind of force. Honestly, I wished my body would stop holding back. I could go 120%, easy. Already was. I could go even higher.
Because, you know, I’m a zombie.
1. Masou shoujo, a pun on the classic Mahou shoujo (Magical girl).
2. A reference to the Paro/Palo Special, the signature finishing move of Warsman, a Soviet cyborg in the Kinnikuman series.
3. A reference to Sgt. Frog, known in Japan as Keroro Gunso, a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Mine Yoshizaki.
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