Their Sins

Ran Jiu’yi continued, “Oh, by the way, you probably don’t know Chiffli, do you? Let me give you a quick intro: she’s a very strong Magical Girl, just a notch below me.”

“But because of her job, she doesn’t have much time for front-line combat. Most of the time, she handles rear command and logistics. If there’s a chance in the future, I can introduce you.”

“Sure,” Meng Shan replied. “When there’s time, I have some friends I’d like to introduce to you as well. But after hearing your story, I have one question.”

“After doing all that… do you no longer hate yourself? Have you forgiven yourself?”

“You might want to answer that you have, but from what I see, there isn’t a trace of forgiveness in you.”

After a moment of silence, Ran Jiu’yi laughed. “Oh, what are you talking about? Why would I hate myself?”

Meng Shan called her out directly. “Because throughout your revenge, you forced yourself to do things you absolutely loathed. Because you hate everyone connected to Suzuki Tetsuya’s death equally—including yourself.”

“And most importantly, your ability. Don’t tell me a Magical Girl filled with ‘love and hope’ would manifest a power rooted so deeply in agony.”

A Magical Girl’s power is, in a sense, a projection of the soul. The parts of the heart that influence her most—her beliefs, her obsessions, her trauma—all reflect in her abilities. Most Magical Girls have powers that are radiant, flashy, or cute. Not like Ran Jiu’yi’s—cruel, torturous, and agonizing.

Meng Shan’s point was clear: a dark power like hers was normal for a typical superhuman, but nearly impossible for a Magical Girl. Furthermore, from her own story, hatred for others had never been the primary occupant of her heart. The only logical explanation was that her heart was filled with self-loathing that had never changed.

The smile froze on Ran Jiu’yi’s face. After a long silence, she sighed. “You’re right. I do hate myself.”

“How could I not? I am one of the most ruthless killers responsible for her death. I had three months, and I did nothing. Even now, I still wonder: if I had just gone to see her once, would she still be alive?”

“So you’ve been punishing yourself ever since,” Meng Shan interrupted. “Don’t deny it; I can see it. Your ability is less like a power and more like a constant, agonizing penance. You’ve clearly grown used to the pain, and I don’t believe that happened overnight. You likely designed it that way from the start.”

Ran Jiu’yi nodded. “Spot on. To pursue power—and to punish my own cowardice—I kept those needles buried in my flesh every second of every day. The pain reminds me of the magnitude of my failure and what I have to do to make amends. But I’m strong because I overcame that pain. Agony is my source of power. That’s why, in my Ascension Form, I can literally draw strength from suffering.”

Meng Shan sighed. “Well, you really are a lunatic. You’re far more aggressive than I am. If you’d gone through what I did, you probably would have slaughtered the entire high command of this country. Actually, after hearing all that, I feel it’s a bit unfair. Did I share too little?”

Ran Jiu’yi tilted her head. “Too little? I think it was plenty. Though I can tell you’re hiding things. For instance, you never mentioned what the ground troops under your command were actually doing.”

“Can’t hide anything from you, can I?” Meng Shan answered frankly. “You understand, don’t you? To figure out a superhuman’s ability, someone has to be the test subject. I didn’t want my teammates doing it, so someone else had to.”

“Hahaha…” Ran Jiu’yi laughed. “So, to keep your teammates alive, you sent other people’s children to their deaths? Ever wonder what those soldiers’ parents would think of you? Maybe what happened to you was actually quite fair.”

“Haha,” Meng Shan laughed along. “And didn’t you wipe out an entire clan to avenge one girl? Even putting her parents aside, surely there were innocent people in that family, or people who had helped her. They must have begged you for mercy. Did you think about them when you killed them?”

“I didn’t. Did you?”

“I didn’t either.”

The two fell into silence, looking out at the glittering night city.

After a while, Ran Jiu’yi spoke up. “Actually, I did think about it. I knew there were people in the Suzuki house who helped Tetsuya. As for her parents… I killed them partly because they attacked me, but mostly to pull the weeds out by the roots. I had killed too many of their kin and destroyed too much of their legacy. I turned them from high-ranking nobles into beggars. They couldn’t help but hate me. I was terrified that such hatred would create another monster like me who would kill me one day. So I killed them all.”

Hearing her confession, Meng Shan said casually, “I see. You really are a bastard.”

“But I’m no better than you. I marginalized Wyatt partly because his talent outshone mine, and partly because he was far more noble than I could ever be. I never told my team that I used allied lives to test enemy abilities. I used secrecy as an excuse and forbade them from contacting the ground units. As for where I got my intel? I made up excuses—old reports, spy data, whatever worked.”

“But Wyatt was different. He was bright and observant. It took him about six months to find the trail. When he realized I was using allies as fodder, the kid tried everything to report me and stop me. But it was useless. I had the connections, and his General father was my partner. No one was going to help him. Compared to my results, a few soldiers were just ‘routine attrition.'”

Meng Shan took a heavy swig of beer. “But Wyatt cared. He cared about the things no one else did. Even when no one would help, he tried to fix it himself.”

“So he tried to go public?” Ran Jiu’yi asked.

“He did. He told the rest of the squad first, but it didn’t go the way he hoped. We’d been fighting together for three years; the others had already guessed. They accepted it because it kept them alive. Wyatt was devastated. He called us heartless bastards. He was right. We were heartless bastards who paved our path with other people’s lives.”

“And then he tried to take it to the whole country? The world?”

“Yes. A foolish move, right?” Meng Shan replied. “The government blocked him, of course. Information control is tight here. That’s why, when I knew someone was going to set him up, I didn’t help at first. I was jealous of his background, and I knew he’d offended too many powerful people. I thought he was dead anyway.”

“But you went to save him in the end. Why?”

Meng Shan smiled. “Why indeed? It saved the Warrior Squad from total annihilation, but at the time, it was an irrational choice. Why save a man who was already marked for death?”

He took another drink, sounding a bit tipsy now. “I only figured it out much later. The battlefield is a heartless place. Long-term combat flushes your conscience down the drain. it turns you into a killing machine because only machines survive. Everyone in the Warrior Squad became a machine. We’d do anything to survive, anything to finish the mission.”

“But Wyatt was different. He still had feelings, a conscience, a sense of ethics, and an infinite future. I thought… if someone like him could climb to a high position, maybe there would be fewer bastards like me.”

Smelling of alcohol, Meng Shan spoke from the bottom of his heart: “So… don’t you think a bastard like me should have died a long time ago?”