6 Magical Girl Learns Magic

Author: Kumanano
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n7313mj/6/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Once I received the magical girl outfit, I had to learn how to handle magic.
Even if you have mana, you can’t use magic if you don’t know anything.
In manga and anime, they use magic the instant they become a magical girl, but apparently it isn’t that easy.
You can’t do schoolwork if you don’t study, and you don’t get good at sports without practice.

“The basis of magic is image.”
“Image? You don’t say spells, or chant?”

In some anime and manga, you can use magic by saying a spell or chanting. And using magic without a chant often gets you respect.

“No spells, and no chants. You’ve watched too much manga and anime.”

I don’t want to hear that from the cat who based the magical girl outfit on anime.

“I told you there’s a mana core near your heart, right?”
“Yeah. We stretched mana lines out from there.”

It hurt a lot.

“Try gathering mana in your fingertips.”
“Gather it how?”
“Can’t be helped.”

The Cat God climbs onto my lap as I sit on the bed.
Then he puts a paw near my heart.

“Something’s flowing in.”
“That’s my mana. I’m going to push your mana out now, so try to feel it.”

When the Cat God says that, something flows out from near my heart.

“Once you feel it, try gathering it in your right hand.”

I move the something flowing through my body to my right hand.
Something gathers in my right hand.
It feels like something is covering my right hand, but I can’t see anything.

“There’s something on my right hand, but I can’t see it.”
“That’s mana.”
“Mana…”
“Mana works on magical beasts, youkai, and ghosts.”
“I can’t see it.”
“That’s up to you. Mana changes by image. If you give it a color, you’ll be able to see it.”
“…Give mana a color.”

I image the mana covering my right hand turning blue.
Then what covers my right hand becomes visible, a light blue.

“That’s mana. Even just slamming that mana into an opponent has an effect, but each opponent has something they’re weak to. Fire, or water, and so on. Think of it as: if you change your mana into whatever they’re weak to and attack, the effect goes up.”

Games have weakness elements too.
Even I understand that throwing fire at something that’s good with fire won’t do much.

“Also, that mana protects you, so be careful: once it runs out, you’re in danger. The magical girl outfit will protect you, for what it’s worth, but it has a limit.”

That’s so hard.
I don’t even know how to tell how much mana I have.

“For a start, practice until you can handle that mana freely.”
“When you use magic, do magic circles float up or anything?”

When I see magic in anime and manga, a magic circle appears when they use it.
It’s a pretty circle, sometimes.

“There are magic circles too, but learning those is still a ways off. First comes the basics.”

I spend several days practicing how to handle mana.
Thanks to that practice, I can move mana freely and change it into fire or water.
What made me happiest was becoming able to fly.
When my body floated, I was moved.
I’d only ever seen it on video, but it felt the same as astronauts floating around.
After that, I practiced making fire stronger, making water more powerful, and flying faster.
As I get able to use magic, it starts being fun.
At the same time as studying magic, I learn about magical beasts, ghosts, youkai, and miasma.

“There aren’t that many magical beasts or youkai, but they’re dangerous, so they have to be defeated. That’s you magical girls’ role.”
“There aren’t many?”
“If there were a lot, humanity would already be gone.”

That’s true.
There aren’t many magical girls.
If there were that many magical beasts, youkai, and ghosts, it would be dangerous.

“About magical beasts: when a living thing is tainted by miasma, it becomes a magical beast.”
“Miasma is bad ki? Bad air? Something like that?”
“People’s and animals’ grudges, resentment, and so on can become miasma too. For now, we call a being that an animal has been possessed by something that bad a magical beast. Magical beasts tainted by miasma turn vicious and attack people. Defeating them before that is a magical girl’s role.”
“Magical beasts are what you get when miasma possesses an animal, right? Are ghosts and miasma different?”
“Miasma is a clump of the evil of all kinds of living things. Ghosts are an individual’s malice, I suppose.”
“Then miasma is more dangerous?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. There’s nothing scarier than a person dying with a grudge.”

Dying while holding a grudge.
Because of Dad, I sometimes watch crime news, and I hear about cases where someone wants money, goes into someone else’s house, and kills them.
If someone like that killed me, I might hold a grudge.

“But not every ghost is evil. There are ghosts who have attachments and are just there, ordinarily.”
“Do we defeat those ghosts too?”
“We leave them. In most cases they pass on by themselves, over years. Magical girls can’t be bothering with ghosts that don’t have malice either.”

I wouldn’t want to fight a ghost either, if it wasn’t doing anything bad.

“I sort of get magical beasts, miasma, and ghosts, but what about youkai? Are they different from magical beasts?”

The youkai I know are kappa, tengu, yuki-onna, zashiki-warashi, that kind of thing?

“You can think of youkai as magical beasts that have intelligence.”
“Intelligence…”
“A lot of youkai can talk. They mix in with people, and sometimes they kill people. Of course not every youkai is like that. A famous one would be zashiki-warashi—they’re friendly to people, so we don’t defeat them.”

I’ve heard zashiki-warashi bring luck to a house.
But I’ve also heard that when the zashiki-warashi leaves, the house has a hard time.

“Our role as gods is to protect people from things with malice. That’s enough to remember.”

If that’s the case, I can fight.
I can’t fight someone who isn’t doing anything wrong.
Dad is fighting bad people too.
He’s fighting to protect weak people.
I want to be like that dad too.

“Um, can’t the police or the Self-Defense Forces fight them?”

I picture Dad, and I wonder about the pistols the police have.

Can’t they defeat them with pistols or knives or weapons?

“I’ll say it as many times as I have to. First, ordinary people can’t see them. So they can’t attack.”
“If they could see them, could they attack? If I shot a pistol, for example.”
“That depends on the kind. Magical beasts happen when miasma gets into an animal. You can take down the animal that was taken over, but you can’t take down the miasma that got into the animal. It just goes into another animal. The only thing that can defeat miasma is magic.”

So unless you attack with mana, you can’t really defeat them.
Or you need a special weapon.

“Ghosts with no physical body are the same. Whether youkai can be defeated with modern weapons, I’ve never tried, so I don’t know. If you’re going to rely on something that uncertain, you’re better off relying on a girl who has mana.”

If you suddenly told the police you wanted them to fight magical beasts and youkai, it probably wouldn’t work.

“Um, I was wondering. You keep saying magical girl. Can boys not become one?”

A magical boy, or something?

“They can. I said onmyoji were that too, right? There were men as well. But boys who can use magic are rare. So it ends up being more girls, no matter what.”

Not zero, then. There are magical boys too.
I wonder what a boy’s magic outfit looks like.

“Then what about adults?”

He says magical girl.
Girl means a child.
When a child grows, they become an adult.

“There are some. But I think I said at the start: it’s a problem if magic is used with malice, so we don’t ask adults.”
“Then what happens when we become adults?”
“That’s…”

The Cat God hesitates.

“Don’t tell me we get killed or something.”
“I’m a god. I wouldn’t do that. As everyone grows up and becomes adults, they say they don’t want to wear a magical girl outfit anymore, and they quit.”

It’s true, if the lady next door put on a magical girl outfit…

“But I think there are adults who keep being magical girls too.”

I’ve seen adult women doing magical girl cosplay. It suited them really well.

“Of course there are. But as you get older you get busier: exams, club, work, and so on.”

I don’t go to cram school, but a lot of kids in my class do.
There were classmates who said they had cram school every day even over this summer break.
And when you become an adult, you can’t live unless you work, like Dad.

“Does magical girl work pay?”
“It’s unpaid.”

Even as a kid, I get it.
There are no adults who work for free.
The Cat God told me I don’t have to think about adult mages, so I decided not to ask any more.