So You Want to Be a Magical Girl? - Chapter 3

With Sariel’s help, I unpacked in my bedroom and learned my way around the villa.

I met my last roommate in the kitchen.

After meeting Siren, who had told me to drop out the moment he saw me, I had begun to suspect that Heaven defined *solitary* rather differently from humans.

To my surprise, though, the word might have been invented for our third roommate.

She was bending into the refrigerator when I entered. At the sound of my voice, her tall, slender back stiffened, and she jerked upright.

“Her name is Avila.” Sariel paused in the middle of noting down my dietary habits. “She is our final roommate, and her race is—”

“Don’t come any closer!” Avila growled, her expression glacial.

Her shout stopped my attempt to greet her. I stood there awkwardly.

Avila opened her mouth several times, but every attempt at speech died as though she had caught a terrible smell. At last, she clamped both hands over her nose and mouth, flattened herself against the wall, and fled through the other side of the kitchen.

I stared after her. “…Do I stink?”

I raised my sleeve and sniffed. Nothing.

Sariel leaned closer and sniffed too. “There is no unpleasant odor. You are not the problem.”

Then why had Avila reacted like that?

“Perhaps a succubus can smell something we cannot,” Sariel suggested.

Oh, I see. A succubus…

“A succubus?!”

Poisoned by years of Japanese manga, my mind instantly flashed through a catalog of extremely familiar titles.

Before my thoughts could slide all the way into the gutter, Sariel hastened to explain.

“Avila is an anomaly among her people. She refused to obtain power by their traditional methods, so she left Hell and enrolled at the academy… although she may have taken her rejection a little too far.”

In that moment, I understood why Dorm 001 had an isolated villa all to itself.

Never mind Sariel, God’s own favorite son.

One siren willing to live on land, one succubus determined to be vegan, and me, the first human student in school history.

Mystery solved.

This villa was a display case for secret-edition blind-box figures.

Sariel had been right about one thing. Apart from the unusual day I moved in, I rarely saw my other two roommates.

Avila fled whenever she saw me, as though I were a walking cloud of poison gas.

Siren barely left his room. He was as quiet as a dead fish.

Perhaps because he was the future lord of the ocean, however, the school said nothing even when he skipped class every day.

Compared with those two, Sariel was an angel.

Oh. Right. He literally was.

As one of Heaven’s seven mightiest seraphim, Sariel had no more need for classes than Siren. Before I enrolled, the academy’s student council president spent most of his time in the office, handling every matter large and small for his supreme superior, who had founded the academy and promptly washed His hands of it.

After I arrived, Sariel abandoned all official duties and devoted himself to attending class with me.

Teleporting straight into a classroom was wonderful. Having someone take notes and translate technical terms on demand was wonderful too. Whenever Sariel was present, the other students no longer dared stare at me as though I were a rare mutant…

But the hand now taking my lecture notes ought to have been drafting the *Revised General Protocol for the Peaceful Resolution of the Dryad–Ant Beastman Dispute*.

That dryad was sobbing into his suggestion letter!

The ant student had nearly gnawed him bald. Sariel, stop taking notes for one second and look at the poor dryad!

Not wanting the world to gain another tragic victim of premature baldness, I gently told Sariel that I was an adult human and perfectly capable of attending class alone.

Sariel looked unconvinced. “But you are only in your early twenties. If you were an angel, you would still be in Eden listening to Raphael tell bedtime stories.”

Was angelic childhood not a little too long?

“But I’m human.” I decided to correct whatever pirated child-rearing manual had filled Sariel’s head with misinformation. “Humans mostly stop listening to bedtime stories after five. We start school at six, become adults at eighteen, graduate from university around twenty-two, and then work to support ourselves…”

As I explained, tears actually welled in Sariel’s clear eyes.

The pity there was entirely sincere. “Even Hell no longer enslaves magical beasts, yet the human realm still oppresses its own kind?”

Please do not direct your compassion there.

And why did I suddenly feel genuinely miserable when he put it like that?

I rubbed my face and dragged us back to the point. “That’s not what matters. I mean I’m an adult. You don’t need to watch me like an angel chick.

“You have a lot of official work, don’t you? You don’t have to waste all your time on me.”

Sariel lowered his head, crestfallen. “Am I disturbing you? Did someone say something? I’m sorry. I only wanted to be your friend… If you dislike having me near you, I will keep my distance from now on.”

How could I describe the expression on his face?

It was the kind that would make me wake in the middle of the night and slap myself twice.

I immediately banished the poor dryad from my mind.

“No, no, no. Of course I want to be your friend. Aren’t we already friends? I was only worried about keeping you from important work. If you’re willing to waste your time attending class with me, I couldn’t be happier.”

Sariel studied me hesitantly. “Truly? We are friends?”

“Of course.” I paused, then added with professional caution, “Unless angels define friendship differently from humans.”

“We don’t,” Sariel said at once.

Realizing he had sounded too eager, the tips of his ears reddened and he smiled shyly.

It was nothing like his usual warm, gracious smile. It reminded me instead of the unfettered breeze that had scattered white feathers through the air when we first met.

“Since we are friends, may I call you Ying? The guide says friends should use affectionate names for one another.”

Me: “…”

What garbage guidebook was this? One day, I was going to find it and burn it.

But faced with Sariel’s expectant gaze, I could only grit my teeth and nod.

“Sure.”

Oh no.

Now I really had become a magical girl.