Magical Girl · Conversa

The winds of April blow from four directions. In a basement in Tomoeda, a girl’s hand reaches toward a book glowing with golden light. She was just heading home after school when she heard a strange noise. The moment her fingertips touch the spine, cards explode like snowflakes, scattering to every corner of the sky. She stands frozen, unsure of what just happened, only feeling something in her chest being gently swept away by the wind, then softly set back down. The Beast of the Seal opens its eyes behind her, and she hasn't yet learned to be afraid. At the same moment, at a crossroads in Juban, a girl with hair in buns is sprinting with a piece of bread in her mouth. She’s late, her math homework isn’t done, and she overslept again after playing video games last night. She runs past the shrine steps, the neon lights of the arcade, and a calico cat sunning itself on a wall. She doesn’t notice a black cat lying by the road with a bandage on its forehead; its eyes reflect her running figure, as if confirming something it has waited a long time for. On the sports field in Verone, lacrosse practice is in full swing. An orange-haired girl slams the ball into the goal and turns to give her teammates a victory sign. She has passed the window of the science lab countless times but never stepped inside. There, a girl with long silvery-blue hair is looking down, mixing solutions as the colors in the test tube shift, as if searching for some non-existent formula. Their eyes meet briefly through the glass before they both look away. Soon, fairies from another world will arrive to bind their fates together. In the evening of Mitakihara, a pink-haired girl walks home. She had a dream today—a dream of a black-haired girl fighting in the darkness, lonely, stubborn, refusing to fall. When she woke up, there were tear stains on her pillow, though she couldn't say why she was crying. She looks up at the sky; it’s an ordinary orange-red, with clouds moving slowly. Four places, four girls, four doors about to be pushed open. The wind comes from four directions, finally converging at a single coordinate. You won't find this coordinate on a map, but at this moment, a pair of long white ears twitches slightly, a pair of golden eyes opens in the darkness, and a blank magic book waits for its first line of incantation. The world hasn't begun to tilt yet, but all the gears have locked into their first notch. From today on, the walk home from school will become very long—long enough to pass through moonlight, through time, and through all the fairy tales you ever believed in.