Even if you're a corrupted magical girl, you still have to try to redeem yourself.

"Ha...ha...haah..."

Helica sat up abruptly.

Both the ceiling and the bedding looked familiar yet strange.

Is this a room at a hot spring inn?

"woke up?"

The voice came from behind Helica.

Or rather, in Helica's ear.

Helica, sitting on the tatami mat with its bedding laid out, grabbed the blankets covering her and moved a short distance to the side.

This distance was enough for her to see clearly who was speaking.

She could actually tell them apart just by their voices.

Yuuki Yukino, with her hair in a single ponytail and wearing the same jacket they wore when they set off together today, was sitting behind him. The source of the warm embrace he had just felt was self-evident.

Helica was about to speak when she felt a chill run through her body.

Thankfully, she pulled the blanket over herself when she dodged, otherwise her naked body would have been completely exposed to Yuuki Yuki.

Wait a minute, why am I naked?

As Helica regained consciousness, fragmented memories gradually came together, and what had just happened was pieced together in Helica's mind.

"I'm awake." After a long pause, Helica finally answered Yuuki Yuzuriha's question, rubbing her temples with her clenched fist and protruding index finger, as if doing so would help clear her mind.

Even though she was already quite lucid.

"Is it just the two of us?" Helica quickly noticed that there was no one else in the room besides herself and Yuuki Yuuki.

"Lin Jiezi has gone out, and the others haven't returned yet."

Yuuki changed her posture and knelt very formally in front of Helica.

"Don't you have anything to explain?" Helica asked.

"Don't you have any questions?" Yuuki Yui replied.

Why am I not wearing clothes?

Helica asked in a very serious tone.

"Heh." Yuuki Yukino couldn't help but chuckle: "Is this the first question?"

Seeing the serious look in Helica's eyes, Yuuki Yuuki stretched out her legs that were pressed under her buttocks, turned to the side and supported herself with her hands, tilting her head back slightly so that her pink hair would fall like a waterfall.

"You're injured, badly injured, and your clothes are dirty. Do you want to make you rest in dirty clothes with all your injuries?"

Helica looked down at her body, which was covered with scratches and abrasions of all sizes, most of which were probably caused when she broke through the group of nuns.

Apart from these wounds, there were no other obvious traces.

Helica initially thought that she was naked because Yuuki Yuki had exposed her identity and was going to kill her, so she stripped herself naked.

But if she really wanted to silence him, simply leaving him there would have been enough; that woman with the watercolor painting would definitely not let him go.

Doing something so unnecessary doesn't seem like you're trying to do anything to yourself.

Moreover, even if they were to do it, they wouldn't bring themselves back to the hot spring inn.

Yuuki Yuki blushed a little because she had misunderstood Yuuki Yuki.

But that's not the most important thing.

Just as Mizuno Yu had guessed, Yuuki Yuuki's image completely overlapped with that of the pink demon who had been fighting her all this time.

Herlica's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, finally died.

"Why did you..."

Helica only managed to utter a few syllables before swallowing the rest of her words.

She couldn't think of a reasonable way to ask the question, even though Yuuki Yuki was sitting right there, waiting for an answer.

Even such an opportunity, such a chance to sit down and talk together, may never come again.

Herlica had imagined countless times the scene of catching that pink devil girl's little tail, and she also remembered every time she was treated specially.

Being forced to play the drum in the street with tentacles by her own hands, being bullied to the point of tears, and being constantly causing trouble for herself out of boredom—every single thing made Herika want to tear that despicable guy to pieces.

Oh right, and on the night of the festival, I would fight with myself in bed.

In bed...

Why did Helica feel a long sigh of relief when she realized that she had only ever been replenishing mana for one person?

Thinking about all this, Helica sighed and shut her mouth even tighter.

"Why? To save you? To get close to you? Or to hide my identity from you?"

Yuki asked in return.

"No, it's nothing."

Helica shook her head to herself, dismissing the various questions that had arisen in her mind.

At one point, Herika seemed to understand why Nishio Reki had made that expression and reacted that way when he heard her questions.

However, Helica was unable to fully understand Nishio Reki's thoughts.

"I'd like to know, what do you think of me?"

Helica asked.

“Not a magical girl, not Nijisanji, and we don’t even consider our relationship… no, we have to take that into account. Anyway, how do you, Yuuki Yukina, view Tenrai Herika?”

The soul-searching question left Yuuki Yukino speechless.

How exactly do I view Helica Tenryu?

This was actually the first time Yuuki Yukino had ever thought about this question.

In the game, she's my favorite character, and when I'm joking, I'll say she's the kind of girl I want to marry.

In reality, she is a good friend who hangs out with me in the same club. Although she is sometimes impulsive and headstrong, she is also a very good and hardworking girl.

As a magical girl, she was the quintessential one, the most dedicated and earnest in upholding justice. She was also the one who had to take the necessary steps to redeem herself… at least she once was.

Helica, who has let go of everything, is the silly girl who secretly bragged about eating eel rice when she unexpectedly met him, the little hedgehog who became withdrawn due to family reasons, and the ordinary girl who would lie next to him and watch the stars together.

Stubborn or weak, she was simply the ordinary Helica, who showed herself everything she possessed.

"Is your treatment of me an act? Or is it genuine?" Helica asked again.

Then, Helica shook her head and took the question back.

"No, none of that matters anymore. It doesn't matter what your mindset was when you did those things or said those words."

"Even if everything is fake, the time we spent together is real, and my feelings for you are real."

"I like you." Helica wrapped herself in the blanket and sat facing Yuuki Yuuki, her two fair arms resting on her knees, which were covered by the blanket.

"Yuki Yuki, I really like you. This isn't a confession made on impulse, nor is it the kind of feeling that's just a misunderstanding between friends. I've been sure of my feelings. I just like you, and I want to be your lover, to be with you forever."

Helica spoke very simply, calmly narrating her feelings, honestly pouring out everything that belonged to her to Yuuki Yukino.

"How should I put it? Ah, let's just say it directly. I've been struggling with this since this morning. If you really are a corrupted magical girl, how am I supposed to face you?"

"I can't think of anything. I feel like I might have a lot of ideas, but I can't feel them. I should also have a lot of questions, but I can't ask a single one."

After a brief silence, Helica spoke again.

"I... am very calm. I don't even know I can accept this so calmly."

"You are my enemy, aren't you? I should execute you, isn't that right? We shouldn't be lovers, let alone friends, we shouldn't even sit together, right?"

Helica let out a long sigh: "But I can't feel it, no sense of responsibility, no aversion, no sense of mission, I can't feel anything. Thanks to this, I can think properly about everything that happened between us."

"Looking back now, it's really incredible that even after so much has happened, I still love you so much."

What can Yuuki Yukino do?

She couldn't do anything, and she couldn't even say a word.

She didn't know what she should do.

Yuuki Yukino simply felt that she should give Helica an answer.

This can also be seen as giving myself an answer to the time I spent with her and Nijisanji in the past.

What Yuuki Yuuki wanted to hear was not Helica's calmer, more sincere confession behind that calmness.

"I shouldn't have liked you, right?"

Herlica smiled wryly, lowered her head, and golden hair brushed against her smooth shoulders, falling onto the back of the girl's hand.

"Yes, I shouldn't have liked you. I should have kept my feelings hidden long ago."

pat.

The crisp sound of water droplets falling on the back of my hand was exceptionally clear in the silent room.

Herlica raised the back of her hand and wiped her nose hard, sniffling to hold back the tears that were welling up in her eyes.

After blinking hard a few times, Helica returned to her previous narrative expression, only her eyes were redder than before.

“A long time ago, someone warned me that relationships with magical girls always lead to tragedy.”

As Helica spoke, she sniffed again and met Yuuki Yuuki's gaze directly.

"But I didn't listen to her. I felt that I could solve everything. As a magical girl, I could solve all problems."

The blonde girl lowered her long eyelashes, a bitter smile playing on her lips.

"But no, that's not a problem I can solve. I can't change anything at all."

"I misunderstood. I misunderstood what she meant. I thought she had seen through my magical girl identity, which is why she told me those things."

"No, her statement 'relationships with magical girls always lead to tragedy' was never referring to me from the beginning. The magical girl she was talking about was you, and the one who suffered the tragedy was me."

"Sister Huan isn't protecting her own sister at all; she's protecting me, who knows nothing about this, from her already corrupted sister!"

Chapter 106 Roses