"That was way too close. You owe me your life."
"So this is a Grief Seed? It looks… kind of sinister. Hey—you need this, right?"
Sayaka picked up the pitch-black Grief Seed from the ground and turned to Kyoko, only to see the other girl go blank for a split second before collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Hey!"
Sayaka set Hitomi down first, then rushed to Kyoko's side. "What happened to you?"
It was her first time hunting a Witch—her first time even seeing one—so she had no frame of reference for how strong they were. In that one decisive moment, she'd dumped every last scrap of usable magic into her swing.
But now that she thought about it, Kyoko had been holding her Soul Gem in her hand when the slash connected. Had Sayaka accidentally shattered it? Yimi had mentioned that her own magic output was higher than a regular Magical Girl's. If a Soul Gem that housed someone's actual soul got destroyed, what happened?
She didn't know if regular Magical Girls had this function, but she remembered Yimi once saying that her own Soul Gem had a life-saving feature—it could take the soul inside and shelter it from fatal injuries. Yimi said hers was sturdy, but whether an ordinary Magical Girl's gem was equally durable, Sayaka had no idea.
With trembling fingers, she checked Kyoko's breathing.
"She's dead?!"
She'd killed this girl?
Sayaka stumbled back a step.
Annoying as Kyoko was—terrible first impression, selfish rhetoric and all—Sayaka didn't hate her enough to kill her.
She was a murderer…
Sayaka turned and shook Hitomi. "Wake up, Hitomi."
"Sayaka? Why am I out here…"
"You were sleepwalking because you were overtired. Can you get home on your own?"
"I was sleepwalking?" Hitomi looked down, bewildered. For someone who'd been formally trained in etiquette, that was about as embarrassing as snoring.
"Where are you going, Sayaka?"
Sayaka looked down at Kyoko—eyes wide open, frozen in an expression of utter disbelief—and a single tear slid from the corner of her own eye. She forced a smile. "I'm going to turn myself in…"
…
Turning herself in was obviously not happening. At least not until she'd confirmed there was nothing she could do to fix this.
Magical Girls were born from miracles, after all. Maybe there was still some way to undo it. And the only person she could turn to was that child.
The little cat, already tucked into bed, was dragged back out. Wearing her dinosaur pajamas, she crouched solemnly beside Kyoko and examined her.
The Red Person had chased after her trying to beat her up before, true—but she'd also given Kitty apples and cookies.
"How does it look?"
"Her soul got lost. But it should still be around."
Having studied Kyubey's Magical Girl technology and possessing the ability to materialize souls, the little cat naturally knew a fair amount about spiritual matters. Her grasp wasn't deep, but she could at least tell when a person had lost their soul.
Yimi shifted to cat form and stowed her pajamas in her storage space. She sniffed at Kyoko, then bolted off in a specific direction.
Sayaka scrambled to keep up.
"What's going on? Are Soul Gems really that fragile?"
"Regular gems… very fragile."
Fragile enough that a single shot could shatter one—though compared to an ordinary human body, they were certainly tougher.
This was when it became clear just how fast Yimi could run. Sayaka had assumed she'd head back to the scene to search for fragments of the Soul Gem, but instead the little cat led her on a twenty-kilometer sprint to the outskirts of the city.
She finally leapt down from atop a freight truck that hadn't been unloaded yet, the Soul Gem clamped in her mouth.
"Is she okay now?"
Sayaka's anxious heart relaxed slightly, but looking at Yimi, her own expression was still somewhat stiff.
The child had just… carried that thing down in her mouth, hadn't she?
"Whew!"
The moment the Soul Gem was returned, Kyoko gasped and sat bolt upright. "What just happened?"
"Thank goodness…" Sayaka sank down with her legs folded to the sides, her voice softer than usual. She glared at Kyoko. "Seriously—don't go throwing your own soul around!"
"Throwing? What are you talking about?"
Kyoko looked down at the gem in her hand. She had a vague sense of something.
"Kyubey—you're around here, aren't you? Quit playing dead!"
Kyubey actually hopped out. "Playing dead is a meaningless act for our kind."
"You little rat!" Kyoko grabbed it roughly by the ears and lifted it into the air. "You've been hiding something, haven't you?"
Dangling in midair, Kyubey showed not a trace of distress. "It seems you've figured it out. Really, though—losing 'yourself' like that is quite rare among all the Magical Girls in the world."
"Myself? What are you talking about?"
"Soul Gems. As the name implies, they are gems that house the soul. From the moment you signed your Magical Girl contract, the real 'you' became this object. Your body is nothing more than an empty shell you can operate in combat. Once the body moves beyond a hundred meters from the Soul Gem, it ceases to function."
Kyubey recited this information with perfect frankness.
It had never hidden the truth once exposed before. But perhaps because information simply didn't spread fast enough in this era, or perhaps because learning the truth about their own nature only accelerated a girl's descent into despair and subsequent transformation into a Witch, the secret had never gotten out.
"What did you just say?"
"You humans are always like this. It's really quite convenient—no matter how badly the body is damaged, as long as the Soul Gem remains intact, it can be repaired in real time. It's the optimal state for combat."
"Don't screw with me. That's basically being a zombie." Kyoko shoved Kyubey's face into the dirt.
"So it's…"
Sayaka stood frozen.
Normal Magical Girls had their souls forcibly extracted and stored inside their Soul Gems? A body like that—you probably couldn't even call it human anymore.
But… no wonder.
No wonder they had to be hidden there—after all, it was one of the most difficult places on the body to injure.
Before she could voice either sympathy or guilt for nearly getting Kyoko killed, Kyoko dropped Kyubey and ran.
"Hey!" Sayaka chased after her.
She didn't really know why she was chasing. Guilt, probably.
She didn't have to chase far. Maybe Kyoko had intended to let herself be caught, because Sayaka caught her wrist on one of those bizarrely designed elevated loop bridges.
"What?" Kyoko turned back, irritated.
"You looked like you were about to do something stupid…"
Kyoko gently pulled her hand free. "And what about you? After hearing that, you're acting like it's no big deal."
"I'm… probably different, I guess." Sayaka didn't elaborate. Projecting hope onto Yimi without permission wasn't fair to that child.
Kyoko laughed once. "You think I can't handle something like this? You're wrong—I couldn't care less about any of it!"
"…"
The red-haired girl stood at the edge of the overpass and looked down. "Actually, I didn't come looking for you just to track a Witch. At first I thought the one clearing Familiars in there would be Mami."
She'd been stewing over what Mami had said to her last time and wanted to settle the score. Then it turned out to be this blue-haired girl instead.
"The look on your face told me everything. You've probably been regretting the wish you made for someone else. What an idiot—just like me."
It was like seeing her past self. She couldn't just leave it alone. She wanted to do something.
Because she'd recognized a kindred spirit, she'd talked so much with Sayaka. If it had been Mami here, she would've fired back no matter how gently the woman spoke.
"Why would you think I regret it?" Sayaka had been about to comfort her, but her mood soured instantly.
"Kyoko Sakura is quite a remarkable girl," Kyubey observed from the distance.
Probably because she'd decided she had nothing left, she'd resolved to think only of herself from now on. Whatever had happened to her body, whatever anyone else thought about it—she didn't particularly care. Probably.
The truth about Soul Gems had shaken Kyoko, but not enough to push her over the edge.
Honestly, from the moment her father had forced the entire family into that murder-suicide, Kyubey had expected Kyoko to become a Witch. He hadn't anticipated she'd hold out this long.
"Mew." Yimi opened her little mouth and bit Kyubey.