Reika took off her non-prescription blue-light glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose, which had grown a little sore.
She had already been working continuously for more than ten hours, from the small hours of the morning all the way to 1:00 PM.
She stood up slowly, walked to the coffee machine, and poured herself another cup of coffee.
That was one good thing about the Demon Hunting Division office building.
Quality coffee was supplied free of charge wherever you went.
She cupped the coffee mug in both hands, warming her faintly chilled fingertips, walked back to her desk, and began tapping at the keyboard again.
“Reika, still not off work?”
A steady male voice came from behind her.
“Good afternoon, Chief. I wanted to finish the work I have on hand first.”
The middle-aged man called Chief casually pulled over an office chair and sat down beside Reika.
The chief took a compact mirror from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and held it out in front of Reika.
“Look at how heavy those dark circles have gotten. It’s a good thing for young people to have drive, but don’t work yourself to death.”
Reika looked into the mirror.
The office-lady beauty in the glass wore thick dark circles under her eyes and looked more like a panda that had escaped from the zoo.
With a complicated expression, Reika handed the mirror back.
The fact that this weathered middle-aged man carried a compact mirror on him surprised her even more.
The chief had been transferred from Central Headquarters to the New Urban District branch of the Demon Hunting Division.
He acted decisively and moved like thunder, yet he put on no leadership airs and was very popular among his colleagues.
Except for that savage scar on his face, running from his jaw all the way to his right eye, which occasionally frightened newly hired young women.
“Still last night’s matter?”
The chief looked at Reika’s computer and asked.
“Yes. Especially Fox Mask.”
Reika passed over stack after stack of thick paper files.
The chief flipped through a few pages in rough strokes.
They contained the entire course of the Seika Tower incident and information on [Night Theater], and the passages about Fox Mask had been marked in red for emphasis.
“Chief, I propose reporting [Night Theater] and Fox Mask to Central Headquarters.”
Reika hesitated for a moment, then spoke anyway.
She had used her clearance to look into the chief’s background and knew the man in front of her carried considerable weight at Central Headquarters.
“You mean have Central Headquarters send directly-affiliated magical girls to annihilate [Night Theater] and uncover Fox Mask’s true identity?”
The chief looked straight into Reika’s eyes and spoke the words one by one.
Even through the layer of his eyepatch, Reika could still imagine that empty right socket.
The weight of the words “directly-affiliated magical girl,” in the new society rebuilt after the disaster, meant absolute military force.
Of the magical girls who had survived that war, some, because of psychological trauma, chose to live on as ordinary people.
Others were driven by hatred, joined the Demon Hunting Division, and spent their lives hunting those newly born monsters.
And the directly-affiliated magical girls were the strongest among that group of avengers.
Their anger was a natural disaster.
But who could quiet the anger of a host of the wandering dead?
They had lost almost everything in that war and had offered everything up for human civilization.
This was a tragedy no one could do anything about.
It was worth mentioning that the Demon Hunting Division of the present would never allow a similar situation to occur.
For magical girls who awakened after the disaster, the Division would try to establish a cooperative relationship, providing professional support, backup, and training for their battles.
And, more importantly, mental health counseling.
“That’s what I was thinking.”
After a long silence, Reika nodded.
“Three years ago, what were you doing?”
The chief did not answer Reika directly.
He threw out another question instead.
Three years ago had been the prelude to that war.
Monsters had begun to surge in like a tide.
The firearms, missiles, and even nuclear weapons humanity had been so proud of could not harm them in the slightest.
The defensive line had been torn open like a sheet of thin paper.
Reika’s family had been torn apart before her eyes.
Hideous, terrifying monsters opened their mouthparts, and severed limbs, flame, and bloody water spread everywhere.
A magical girl leading a government rescue team had found her after she had already lost consciousness.
She had entered an underground shelter, all alone.
That year Reika was 17.
She did not become a magical girl.