chapter 05
They had to get out of here—immediately!
Without a second thought, Jin E’lis bolted out of the lounge, taking three strides in two, and violently shoved the closed door open. It slammed against the wall with a thunderous bang.
“Where’s the patient Doctor Zeng just treated?!”
“They’ve already been moved to a ward on the second floor. What’s wrong?” A nurse pushing a cart in the hallway nearly got knocked to the ground by the fiery red-haired girl charging past. Irritation flashed across her face. “Running and shouting are prohibited in the hospital—”
“The Purge squad is here! Tell me which room she’s in, now!” Jin E’lis spat out the lollipop from her mouth onto the floor, her voice rising several notches.
If she hadn’t been a whole head shorter than the nurse, she probably would’ve grabbed her by the collar to emphasize the urgency.
…!
The nurse was clearly shaken by the sudden news. Trembling, she stammered out the room number, repeating it three times before the girl finally understood.
“Mo, take the doctor and leave through the rooftop first. I’ll meet up with you afterward.”
“The rooftop? There’s nothing up there!” Doctor Zeng Yinying, barely recovering from her shock, was utterly confused by what she overheard from outside. “That’s a dead end! There’s a secret passage at the end of the basement—it’s behind the bookcase—”
“She’ll give you the feeling of flying. Just trust us.”
As Jin E’lis’s voice and hurried footsteps faded away, the young doctor gradually regained her composure. She hurried to the door and triggered the wall alarm, then grabbed her phone and, at astonishing speed, sent several text messages that looked like gibberish to any outsider.
“Doctor Zeng, where is the cold storage for medicines and equipment?” Mo’s voice rang clearly in her mind, standing out sharply against the blaring alarm.
“In the basement. Why?”
“Lis, go to the basement and take every last bit of medicine and equipment with you,” the silver-haired girl said to her companion over the earpiece. “I’ll handle that girl.”
“H-Hey! Wait, you can’t do that!” Zeng Yinying finally processed what was happening and turned pale with alarm. “Those are life-saving supplies! If you take them all, patients will die!”
“Seems like you’ve never dealt with the Purge before.” Mo removed the hairpins from her hair one by one and tucked them into the lace-trimmed cuff of her sleeve, then grabbed the doctor’s arm and pulled her along.
“Trust me. Those lunatics won’t leave a single survivor in this hospital. Instead of letting them destroy the medicine and equipment for nothing, it’s better to take it all. That way, we can save even more lives in the future. Isn’t that right?”
“B-But even so, even if you count everyone in the hospital, there’s no way you can move that much at once!”
Mo glanced back at the doctor she was dragging. After a brief pause, she scooped her up in a bridal carry. Ignoring her startled cry, she sprinted off like a gust of wind.
“We can, Doctor. And my companion alone is enough—because she’s a magical girl.”
“O-Oh… right…”
It was undeniably far more efficient than dragging her. In less than five seconds, the two arrived at the ward on the second floor—though Doctor Zeng looked like she’d just gotten off a roller coaster.
“What’s going on, Doctor?”
Several nurses were scrambling to calm the patients awakened by the alarm. The ward was in chaos.
“Did something catch fire? Or was there a gas leak—”
“Purge.”
The two clipped syllables struck like lightning. Everyone present trembled. One nurse, who had been feeding an elderly patient a midnight snack, dropped the bowl onto the floor and burst into tears, covering her mouth.
“B-Big sister’s… companion…”
Mo stepped to the girl’s bedside. The child was wrapped in bandages from head to toe like a mummy. Awakened by the alarm, she had been crying helplessly, but upon seeing a familiar face, she called out in delight—though her speech was still slightly slurred.
“You two, hold on tight. I’m taking you home.”
Mo set the doctor down beside the bed, shifted the girl to one side to make room, then—before the horrified eyes of everyone present—lifted the entire hospital bed over her head and strode out of the ward at full speed, bed and occupants included.
“W-Wait!”
A young man lying on a bed near the door reached out and grabbed the hem of Mo’s skirt. His voice was filled with desperate pleading.
“Please, little sister, take me with you! I don’t want to die here!”
“Full capacity.”
Without looking back, Mo dashed off with the bed balanced overhead. The man, gripping the skirt too tightly, was yanked off his own bed and dragged along behind her, nearly dislocating his shoulder.
This skirt’s really sturdy, he thought.
He grabbed the hem with his other hand to ease the strain.
The alarm continued to blare dutifully. Now it was joined by the heavy stomp of military boots from downstairs, officers barking orders, nurses screaming, and the sound of objects shattering.
There were no gunshots. That likely meant Jin E’lis had successfully avoided them and reached the basement.
“Stop right there—!”
At the stairwell, Mo collided head-on with a soldier rushing up to the second floor. He had just managed to raise his gun when she kicked him away in a single strike. He slammed into the wall and crumpled to the floor.
Another soldier who arrived moments later fired without hesitation. But Mo leapt high into the air, and the shot missed—accidentally striking the man being dragged behind her in the head instead. White matter splattered everywhere.
By then, Mo had already reached the third floor and vanished from the soldiers’ sight.
“What’s going on here?”
Half a minute later, an officer rushed up the stairs with a pistol in hand and furiously demanded answers.
“Didn’t I say you’re only to arrest hospital personnel—no firearms allowed?!”
“Report! A girl ran past carrying a hospital bed on her head and dragging a man behind her. She kicked Thompson unconscious. Suspected magical girl, so I opened fire.”
“Oh, I see.” The officer, furious a second ago, suddenly nodded thoughtfully. He glanced at his unconscious subordinate and the man whose head had been blown apart. “Looks like those two monsters haven’t left yet, though they don’t seem interested in fighting us. That’s fine. We can initiate the backup plan. You two—tend to the wounded. You two—search the body and question the nurses. Find out who that man was.”
“Yes, sir!”
…
On the hospital rooftop, Mo set the bed down and plucked a strand of her own hair, transforming it into a thick silver rope. She tied the two occupants securely to the bed to prevent them from falling.
“Mmm…” the girl murmured weakly. “Too tight… the rope… it’s tight.”
“The wind’s strong outside. Falling off would be worse.” After finishing the bindings, Mo glanced down at the dozens of military trucks below, lifted the bed flat over her head again, and said, “Get ready. We’re jumping.”
“It’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.” Though she herself was trembling with tension, the doctor gripped the girl’s hand and tried to reassure her. “We’re about to ride a roller coaster. Just think of it as a trip to an amusement park.”
“W-What’s that?”
The poor girl had never been to a real amusement park, let alone ridden a roller coaster. Before she could get an answer, she shrieked—
“F-F-F-Flying!”
They were indeed flying.
After a short run-up, Mo leapt from the edge of the rooftop like a launched cannonball, carving a long, perfect arc through the night sky. Against the bright moon, she soared gracefully before landing steadily atop a residential building dozens of meters away. Even flying squirrels would have been impressed.
Thanks to a magical girl’s physics-defying strength—and the soft hospital mattress—the two on the bed barely registered that they had already landed. They were still immersed in the strange sensation of weightlessness.
“We’re out. What’s your situation over there?”
But there was no response in her earpiece.
“Hello? Hello? Lis?!”
The communication had been cut.
