Episode 17: Surgery
“Today. I’m having sur-gery.”
Clutching her stuffed animal, Chihuahua Yellow told Momotsuki Haruka this in the little clearing where the sunlight felt warm against their skin.
“My Magus Engine is more synchronised, and my… anti-rejection… suppressants are working better, so…”
Chihuahua Yellow struggled over the difficult words, stumbling through their pronunciation in her childish voice.
The girl hugged her pink teddy bear tightly, her round golden eyes lowered anxiously. Even those bright, sparkling eyes seemed dimmer than usual today.
“I see.”
That was all Momotsuki Haruka said in reply.
Thinking was forbidden.
So she behaved accordingly. Momotsuki Haruka did not think. She did not think about the feelings of a girl who was merely her junior, a roommate, a teary-eyed child she had spent only a week or two with.
“Isn’t that sad?”
She drowned out the intrusive thought with strawberry milk.
Cow’s milk.
She swallowed even her revulsion at the thought, washing it down her throat with a sweetness so overwhelming it was almost astonishing.
“…Senior, weren’t you scared?”
“That sort of thing gets removed during surgery.”
“What about before the surgery?”
Thinking.
Reset with strawberry milk.
“[Reminiscing] is forbidden… Can you manage it properly, Yellow?”
“Eep! I-I’m sorry… Uuuh… It’s difficult…”
“It’ll be all right. Once you’ve had the surgery, everyone becomes like that on their own.”
She had not thought about reassuring the girl.
She had merely stated the facts.
Simply and calmly, she had conveyed those facts to a girl five years younger than herself.
*
“…Is it true that you forget your name, too?”
“Yes.”
“And your father and mother, and Yu… your family, too?”
“Yes. [Reminiscing] is forbidden, after all.”
“…But… doesn’t that…”
Momotsuki Haruka manipulated the M-particles and severed the connection between her brain and her hearing.
“—ISN’T THAT PAINFUL?”
She reconnected her hearing.
“Never make that statement again. Not in front of me, and absolutely never in front of an adult.”
“Huh? Ah, I… Uuh… I-I’m sorry, Senior…”
“You don’t need to apologise.”
Momotsuki Haruka drank her strawberry milk.
That was a pointless thought.
It was not a thought.
That was simply how things were.
And because that was simply how things were, Momotsuki Haruka decided that this was not a thought.
“Your name…”
“Hm?”
“…At least your name won’t disappear.”
That was the last conversation she had with the girl before the surgery.
＊
The girl returned in a wheelchair.
They had operated on her brain. Naturally, there was no way she could walk again straight away.
It would take a long, long time for her body to catch up. Magical girls were given a boost by drugs, which was why the process took only a few weeks for them. For ordinary people, it was not uncommon for them never to adjust, even over the course of an entire lifetime.
The beat of a new heart, the Magus Engine.
The shape of a new brain, one without thoughts.
“Uu…”
Her fluffy golden hair had been shaved away, leaving a round head.
Her golden eyes were vacant.
Even her language centres had yet to come online.
A small girl sat in a wheelchair in the hospital corridor, pushed along by an adult.
Momotsuki Haruka crouched down in front of her and performed that thing.
*
“Welcome, [Chihuahua Yellow].”
“Ah…?”
“[Kizuki Natsuki]-chan.”
*
Yellow, because she was Yellow.
She was affectionate by nature, and because she came after Haru, she was Natsu.
Momotsuki Haruka did not know why the name contained the character for moon. She did not think about it. Ever since the days of Viola Purple… [Shizuki Fuyumi], things had always been simply how they were.1
*
“…You’re not alone.”
*
That was simply how things were. A set phrase.
Momotsuki Haruka was not permitted to think about the meaning of the gentle words she murmured, the warmth of the girl she held in her arms, or even the beating of the heart she could feel against her skin.
-
The name is explained through a childlike association: Yellow gives rise to Kizuki, while Natsuki follows Haruka in the seasonal sequence, with haru meaning spring and natsu meaning summer. The precise reading and naming logic are stylised rather than straightforwardly conventional. The character 月 (moon) in Kizuki is itself something Haruka does not understand, and she refuses to question it. ↩