Let's turn the clock back to the beginning.
The moment the stage lights dimmed, Rei grabbed her sleeve, her nails digging gently into her wrist through her jacket. Too excited to speak, she could only shake her hand vigorously.
Qiluo was shaken so hard she almost dropped her glow stick. She turned to look at her; Rei's eyes were shining incredibly bright in the darkness, reflecting the spotlight on the stage that had yet to light up.
She was making her entrance.
Before the spotlights on stage lit up, Qiluo rested her glow stick on her knees.
With her vision enhanced by magic, she could see much better than an ordinary person. Even though the auditorium was pitch-black, she could clearly see the light purple figure at the edge of the wings, her head lowered as she took one final deep breath.
Kizuna stood in the shadows of the wings, repeatedly tightening and loosening her grip on her bow.
She was doing the exact same thing she did last night while hugging Star-trail in bed and muttering to herself.
Beside her, Rei was softly chanting, “Seisou, Seisou,” the glow stick in her hand already shining a light purple.
The instant the lights cut through the darkness, the entire performance hall was dyed into a sea of stars.
Seisou stood right in the center of the light, bow already in hand, as the first melody rippled from her fingertips.
Qiluo sat quietly in her seat, her glow stick resting unlit on her knees.
With every step Kizuna took on stage, Qiluo could feel the slight trembling of her fingertips through the contract link.
As the chorus began, Kizuna drew her bowstring to its limit, an arrow of light forming on the string.
The spotlights converged on her in a blazing white column of light. Standing right in the center of the beam, she drew her bow fully, the tip of her arrow pointing straight toward the ceiling.
In the next second, the arrow of light shot off, bursting at its highest point and splitting into dozens of tiny beams of light that fanned out to cover the entire space above the stage.
While the beams of light were still spreading into a fan shape in midair, the cheers of the audience surged through the entire performance hall like a tidal wave.
But Qiluo's hands tightened slightly on her knees, her pupils contracting.
The magic in the air was falling out of balance.
Driven by the music, the emotions of the thousands of people in the performance hall continued to rise. This emotional energy itself would attract Erosion Bodies, much like moths to a flame.
And right now, a moth was silently spreading its wings behind the curtain.
On stage, Kizuna had just finished the final repetition of the chorus.
Her fingers were still on the string, and the corners of her mouth still held her performance smile, but her eyes flickered under the glare of the lights.
She must have felt it too, but she couldn't be sure yet.
But standing beneath the spotlight, she was currently the focus of everyone's attention.
The poor girl had to be incredibly nervous. She had to maintain her performance state in front of thousands of spectators while simultaneously trying to figure out how to take down the Erosion Body without causing a panic.
After all, this was her debut performance; she would probably assume that the unsettling feeling was just an illusion born of her anxiety.
The situation was urgent. Kizuna's debut performance absolutely could not be interrupted. That Erosion Body had chosen the worst possible time to show up.
Qiluo stood up from her seat.
Rei was still immersed in the afterglow of Seisou's fanned-out beams of light.
Clutching two glow sticks in her hands, her cheeks flushed under the lights, she stared unblinkingly at Seisou as she walked toward the center of the spotlight.
She heard a very quiet “restroom” from beside her.
“Tian Gong?” She looked up. The glow stick she had originally handed to Qiluo had been gently placed on the seat, which still held a lingering warmth, while Qiluo herself was already squeezing sideways through the gap between the seats.
She watched Qiluo's back move along the wall of the dim auditorium toward the side corridor, keeping her posture low so she wouldn't block the view of the rows behind her. She did it so skillfully it looked as if she had done it many times before.
Rei wanted to chase after her to ask if she needed company, but Seisou happened to change positions to the right side of the stage, pulling her attention away for a few seconds.
By the time she looked back, Qiluo had already vanished from sight.
The corridor was long, and there were no audience members at the corner at the end.
She had to find an empty spot to transform.
Well, some might ask, where could she find such a place?
She already knew from her time sleeping at the hospital.
Buildings in this world always had fire exits that were usually deserted.
The iron door of the fire exit utility closet closed softly behind her, shutting out the deafening cheers from the performance hall.
Qiluo leaned against the cold iron door and closed her eyes.
A warm white light surged from the back of her hand, illuminating the dim utility closet like a small patch of daylight.
She felt the tips of her hair lift gently as magic flowed through them, the red highlights glowing faintly in the darkness.
Lightweaver opened her eyes and pushed open the back door of the utility closet.
The equipment corridor behind the stage was narrow and dim, with various cables snaking along the base of the walls like vines.
She could feel the distorted magical fluctuations not far behind the curtain.
It was a medium-sized Erosion Body, likely slipping in while the venue's mana concentration was fluctuating.
An Erosion Body of this level was nothing to Lightweaver, but she had to deal with it before it could enter the audience's line of sight.
She raised her right hand, and threads of light slid silently from her fingertips, tracing thin, warm white trails in the darkness.
Behind the curtain, a medium-sized Erosion Body was slowly taking shape in the shadows.
Its surface still bore a dark purple glow left over from its spatial transition, and its core had not yet fully lit up.
Lightweaver gave it no chance to fully materialize.
The threads of light wove a dense net in the air, enveloping the Erosion Body along with all the shadows within half a meter of it.
With a flick of her wrist, the threads of light tightened, dragging the Erosion Body—which had not even realized what was happening—violently out from behind the curtain.
Black mist burst apart the moment the threads of light tightened, only for her to casually fling and pin it to the corner of the wall.
From the perspective of the front-row audience, the curtain had only quivered slightly.
The Erosion Body struggled within the net of light, its friction against the threads producing a piercing screech, but the sound was completely drowned out by the notes exploding on stage.
Seisou maintained her performer's stance, but her gaze was already locked onto the wings of the stage.
Lightweaver was standing beside an equipment box, the fingers of her right hand slightly splayed.
Her short, warm white hair took on a cool tone under the light filtering through the gaps in the curtain, the red highlights at the tips glowing in the dimness.
Their eyes met in the dim wings.
Seisou's fingers remained steady on her bowstring as the final line of the chorus left her lips.
The spotlight cast her long shadow across the stage, the beam of light extending past the edge of the stage and landing just a few inches in front of Lightweaver's boots.
Standing on the dividing line between light and shadow, Seisou clearly saw how the Magical Girl had silently materialized in the darkness.
There had been no warning, no sound—she was like a shooting star that crashed down precisely when Seisou needed support the most.
Seisou's pupils dilated slightly, her heart skipping a beat.
She didn't recognize this Magical Girl with white hair and red highlights.
The Magical Girl's movements had been incredibly swift.
From interception to containment, the entire process took no more than a few breaths, and she hadn't made a single sound.
An urge to thank her welled up in Seisou's throat, but the music was still playing, and applause was starting to surge from the audience.
She couldn't stop. She couldn't interrupt everyone's expectations at this moment. Holding back the “thank you” on the tip of her tongue, she blinked gently toward the wings.
This was the absolute limit of what she could express right now.
Lightweaver withdrew the threads of light back into her fingers and took half a step back, preparing to slip back into the darkness.
But at that exact moment, Seisou did something.
In the brief gap between changing her stage positions, she quickly nodded slightly in Lightweaver's direction.
It was like a little bird giving a gentle peck to the branch that lent it wind before taking flight.
Lightweaver stood in the darkness for a moment, then turned to push open the door to the fire exit, leaving the newly brightened spotlights of the stage behind her.
Rate on N.U.
