So You Want to Be a Magical Girl? - Chapter 4

Once I officially declared us friends, Sariel visibly relaxed.

It was as if the single word *friend* had struck a crack in a thick plaster mask, leaving a narrow gap through which the person beneath could finally be glimpsed.

At last, he was willing to leave me temporarily and return to his office.

The moment the new peace accord was issued, the dryad rushed to my desk, clutching his green hair and weeping as he thanked me.

I waved both hands. “I didn’t do anything. You should thank Sariel.”

At the sound of Sariel’s name, the already willowy dryad nearly collapsed.

He gripped the desk and sank weakly into a chair. “D-don’t say that name.”

I blinked. “What name? Sariel?”

The dryad turned into a noodle and slithered right off his chair, taking the entire desk set trembling with him.

Me: “?”

What was Sariel, their version of Voldemort?

It took the dryad ages to regain his composure. After looking furtively around, he lowered his voice to a horrified whisper.

“H-how can you be so brave? I wanted to ask when I saw you walking together. Do humans nowadays have no fear of death?”

I was thoroughly confused. “You’re afraid of Sa—of him? But aren’t you both part of the Light faction?”

Sariel had been tutoring me in otherworldly common knowledge. Dryads were light-aspected elves and belonged to the Light faction. Even during the war ten thousand years ago, they had fought beside the angels.

Why would he fear Sariel?

“Being in the same faction means nothing. When he starts fighting, he doesn’t spare us just because we’re allies.”

The dryad swallowed, apparently recalling some unspeakable horror.

“Trust me. Stay away from him. You’re new, so you haven’t seen—”

His nose twitched. His face went white, and he turned and fled.

Ten seconds later, white light shimmered through the air and Sariel teleported to my side.

His gaze swept casually toward the front of the classroom before he picked up my schoolbag as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

He knew my schedule better than I did. “I have finished my work. Your next class is *An Outline of the Modern History of Hell*. The instructor is an elderly scholar recruited directly from Hell, and he is not yet fluent in Common. May I attend with you?”

Sariel always spoke softly, but the entire classroom had gone dead silent from the moment he appeared, like an icebound coffin left sealed for centuries.

Against that silence, his ordinarily gentle voice sounded inexplicably chilling.

I instinctively looked up at him and met his eyes.

The tiny trace of apprehension hidden there made my heart melt.

“That would be wonderful.” Without thinking, I held out my hand and waited for him to teleport us. “With you there, I won’t have to spend hours fixing my notes after class.”

Sariel paused. Then, slowly and with exquisite restraint, he curled his fingers around my wrist.

He blinked, a smile touching his lips. “It would be my honor.”

After the dryad’s “warning,” I began paying attention to what happened outside class.

Until then, I had been so fascinated by magical lessons that I never questioned why a vacuum always formed around my seat. I assumed my nonhuman classmates disliked humans and only refrained from bothering me out of respect for Sariel.

It turned out they had been avoiding Sariel all along.

Sariel was amiable and so mild-tempered he hardly seemed to possess a temper at all. Yet apart from me, he truly had no friends.

Even his fellow student council members trembled whenever duty forced them to speak with him. At every moment, they looked ready to bolt.

Sariel never mentioned it, but the sadness in his eyes was impossible to hide.

He reminded me of a golden retriever that wanted nothing more than to approach people, only to have them scream and pelt it with stones.

Yet Sariel was every bit as gentle and harmless as a golden retriever. All he knew how to do was wag his metaphorical tail and please everyone.

I could not understand why they feared him.

I wanted to ask the dryad, but from that day onward Sariel grew even clingier. He preferred moving his work to the night over leaving the smallest gap in the time he spent beside me in class.

Unable to question anyone, I could only speculate in secret.

Maybe the problem was not Sariel himself. Maybe they simply feared angels as a race.

Angels were God’s favored children, absurdly powerful and nearly without weaknesses. Judged by combat strength alone, Sariel could wipe out the entire dryad race with one raised hand.

Perhaps their fear was the same instinct that made humans fear atomic bombs.

I had almost made the theory work when Sunday arrived.