When did this girl get in? How did she slip by our senses undetected?

I slap another magazine into my K-2 assault rifle and draw back the charging handle to keep it at the ready just in case. As Antonia and I approach her, I call out in Korean:

"Who are you? What do you want with us?"

But the girl simply glances at us. She kneels down and picks up the Grief Seed that belongs to us.

"State your business with us! That Soul Gem belongs to us, not you!" I shout out, my temper irked by her touching our Grief Seed that we worked for, but as I begin to take a faster step forward, Antonia throws her arm over me.

"She's dangerous, Hae Eun," Antonia mutters in her breath, keeping her wide eyes glued on this strange new Magical Girl. "Don't rush in all willy-nilly."

I glance quickly at Antonia to reply indignantly, but the look on her face convinces me otherwise. It seems Antonia's sixth sense has detected something very important about this Magical Girl.

As soon as I turn to face this new Magical Girl again, I see her lift her left arm. There is a small, peculiar shield-like device over where her left wrist is supposed to be.

It turns a bit, clanking and clicking like a gear of a machine, and

she disappears.

Antonia and I stare off into the distance, hardly believing our eyes.

"Where...where the fuck'd she go...?" Antonia starts looking around wildly. "I can't sense her anywhere!"

"...she is gone," I murmur, feeling my grip on my assault rifle weaken, the barrel of my weapon bobbing downwards as if it were an extension of my mood. "She is no longer here."

Antonia twirls to me in growing fury. "W-What the fuck!? Who the fuck was she?! Why the fuck'd she jus' waltz in here like she was the one who killed this damn witch 'n jus' jack our Grief Seed!?"

I shrug heavily, sighing tiredly. "I know not either," I relent. "Let us return to our hotel. Even if she may not be present here, we ought to retire for the night, lest we run into her again."

"Ughhh..." Antonia scratches her gradient orange-blue hair frustratedly, "I mean...my sixth sense told me that she was a real dangerous Magical Girl 'n all, but - but still, this fuckin' pisses me the hell off! You don't jus' swoop in on another Magical Girl's witch fight 'n jus' steal their Grief Seed that they earned! It's like stealin' the loot from an AI mission in Epoch! That's jus' a fuckin' low blow scumbag move...if I fuckin' see her face again..." I can hear her teeth grinding together, she is that angry.

"Perhaps it is simply how they hunt witches here," I suggest as I dissipate my Daewoo K-2 assault rifle. "We are, after all, in a new land. While we may become angry with this, it may be commonplace in Korea."

"Yeah, well, okay..." Antonia scoffs incredulously, "but jus' 'cause everyone does it doesn't mean it's still okay! No matter how ya look at it, stealin' someone else's Grief Seed like this's jus' a straight-up dick move!"

I shrug again, this time tipping my palms up as well. "And what are we to do about it? That Magical Girl has escaped somehow. Let us return...I wish to retire for the night. Sleep with me so that you can regenerate the energy you have expended tonight."

Antonia pouts, but at the mention of sleeping with me, she drops the subject. We exit the witch's dimension, which collapses behind us as we exit, and we swiftly and quietly slink through the Busan night back to our hotel to take a shower and prepare for bed.

After finishing our shower together as I had promised and drying our bodies, Antonia is drying my hair carefully with the blow-dryer that is provided as part of the hotel room in the bathroom. It feels very nice having someone else caress my hair, something that I had developed with Appa, who frequently gave me pats on the head which I enjoyed. Having Antonia do this helps me relax in times when I cannot get myself to calm down or relax otherwise.

"You really like it when I play around with your hair like this, don'tcha?" Antonia says with a chuckle.

"Very much so, yes. I enjoy it very much, even more so because it is you doing it."

"Awww, that's sweet 'a ya."

"Would you like me to do the same for your hair?"

"Naw, I'm good. You know I only use hair dryers if I really need to get my hair dried quickly for somethin', but I like goin' to bed with hair a bit moist so that it keeps my head cool."

"But is that not why you always end up with bad bed hair every night after you take a shower?"

"Aw, that's nothin'."

We both giggle in unison. I feel Antonia burying her face into the top of my head and taking a big sniff.

"Even if we're usin' our travel shampoo, your hair still smells the same," Antonia laughs. "That's when I know I know a bit too much 'bout'cha."

"Nonsense. You know nothing about me," I tease with a playful smirk.

"Ya think so? Maybe we'll settle that tonight," Antonia coos into my ear suggestively, and I giggle again. Antonia goes back to drying my hair properly for a minute.

"But real talk, though," Antonia says, and I immediately detect the drop in tone in her voice, "who was she...? That Magical Girl we saw back there...?"

"You and I both, knowing such an answer would be quite convenient indeed," I mutter.

"Now that I'm a bit calmed down from that, I'm jus' worryin' about whatever magic she used ta jus' disappear like that. Honestly, I ain't never seen anythin' like that. You, Hae Eun?"

I shake my head to indicate my own inexperience with such magic.

"What do ya think she did? I ain't got a damn clue..."

I begin to muse such a question, now that I have some time to ourselves and my mind is in a relaxed state to think objectively. I close my eyes, thinking deeply about that Magical Girl...trying to figure out what her power was.

It is not a power either of us have encountered before. There was no trace of any use of magical energy, otherwise both of us would have sensed the use of magical energy being expended in performing whatever act of magic that the Magical Girl employed to disappear as she did. She was within a range where sensing such magic being used would have been obvious.

I then recall seeing her little shield turn forty-five degrees just before she disappeared.

"Antonia," I say slowly, and Antonia turns off the hair dryer to listen. "Did you see...what that girl's shield device did just before she disappeared?"

Antonia eyes the ceiling in thought. "Come ta think 'a it...yeah, I think I saw her shield thing do somethin'," she confirms. "But I don't remember exactly what. It moved a bit, but..."

"Then would it not be an educated guess for us to make, to say that whatever that shield device is on her arm, that was what allowed her to escape without detection?"

"I mean...if ya wanna put it that way. But I ain't never heard 'a any Magical Girl havin' some sorta artifact or weapon that let them do somethin' like that. But it's obvious it wasn't like she jus' picked it up off some random street corner shop or Seven Eleven."

"My thoughts exactly. I think that shield plays some sort of role in her powers."

"Yeah, I guess it wouldn't be a bad guess, but that still doesn't explain how she got the hell outta our sight without leavin' some sorta trail behind."

"That is true..."

Antonia resumes drying the last wet strands of my hair towards the bottom. I continue to ponder the predicament...

No magic expenditure that we could sense and use to track the Magical Girl. A turning of a metallic shield-like device. Other than her physical appearance, we have nothing to work with to determine anything further...

I wrack my brain in deeply concentrated attempt to figure out what is going on here. It is very unlikely that the Magical Girl who stole our Grief Seed used some sort of magic power in order to escape without any detection whatsoever. Even if her ability was that which allows her the use of teleportation, I doubt anyone has a kind of teleportation in which by using it, they would be able to slip away so suddenly and so discreetly. I would imagine that teleportation powers would leave a telltale sign behind, such as an afterimage or a perspective image after-blur.

What could cause such a phenomenon as that which we had witnessed just an hour before?

Antonia finishes blow-drying my hair and hangs up the blow-dryer. "Still thinkin'?" she asks, and I nod slowly. I feel Antonia lifting the back of my long, white hair and taking a long whiff. My cheeks begin to seep a bit of red, for the sensation tickles gently, and I like it a lot.

"Yep, that's the hair I know Hae Eun's got," Antonia sighs with relief. "I can smell this from a mile away..." She takes me by the shoulders and very gently sways me back and forth. "C'mon, Hae Eun, let's go to bed. We'll think 'bout this shit later once we've got some sleep."

I sigh slightly and stand up from the chair that I was using to sit and allow Antonia to blow-dry my hair. We put on our pajamas, and while there are two queen-size beds, we simply crawl together into one of them. As I get comfortable underneath the covers, Antonia leaves the lamp on the desk in between both of the beds on for a moment as she checks her smartphone for text messages and the like. For a few minutes longer, Antonia text-messages back to our friends, who are spending their Thanksgiving break in various other ways, and I rest my heavy head against Antonia's left arm, hearing the soft taps and thumps of Antonia's fingers against the touchscreen of her phone.

"Man, sure feels like the semester's goin' by pretty fast," Antonia remarks as she finishes up her text messages. "I didn't expect it to go by so fast. I honestly still feel like it ain't even a month and a half into the school year, but here we are."

"The school year went by faster than you thought?"

"Yeah, for sure," Antonia nods.

"Funny, because most of our classmates think the exact opposite."

Antonia and I both giggle heartily.

"I know why!" Antonia grins and sticks up her index finger, all matter-of-fact. "It's 'cause we're both doin' everything together, ain't it? It's gotta be."

I look up at Antonia. "As in we are spending much more time together?"

"Yeah! What else?"

I smile. "It is certainly true that recently, we have been closer than we ever have been before."

"That's kinda hard ta believe, ain't it?"

"Sure is."

Antonia hands her smartphone to me, and I place it on the lamp desk next to my smartphone on top of the hotel alarm clock. I turn off the lamp, plunging our room into serene darkness, with the nightlights of Busan City sparkling outside through our window. I hug Antonia's left arm and tuck my head on top of her left shoulder, next to her head.

"You could almost say it's like a blink of an eye since we first met," Antonia sighs contentedly with the warmth and softness of our bedsheets. "I wonder how long we'll be able to go on like this, jus' bein' carefree high school friends."

"Let us hope for as long as possible," I reply simply.

"Yeah, well, duh," Antonia says back, "but I dunno. I can't help but feel a bit worried 'bout the future. Who knows - even though we're both really strong, we might not make it all the way like your mom did." I feel Antonia turn her head to look at me in the darkness. "Hae Eun, I don't think I've asked ya this, but do you wanna get married and start a family if ya had the chance?"

I stay silent for a while. During that while, we can only hear the hums of downtown nighttime Busan traffic in the streets below our hotel room balcony.

"Yes..." I answer very slowly, "eventually...I would like to start a family."

"You don't sound so sure."

"Because besides the fact that very few Magical Girls even get to reach an age when they can marry or have the chance to bear children, I do not know if having a family of my own is the wisest choice."

"Whaddya mean?"

"Should I start a family, this means that my would-be husband would have no idea what my true identity is. I do not wish to marry if it must mean that one day, there may be a chance that I do not return home because I am defeated and killed by a witch. Then my husband and children will most likely spend their lives forever lamenting the mystery of my disappearance. I do not wish for my family to suffer such a permanent pain as that. In addition, if magical powers can truly be passed down from mother to child, as in genetically, then I do not wish to have children. I do not want to witness my own children suffer the same fate as we do. I want my children to live safe lives, safe from the absurd reality of Magical Girls and witches and safe from the awful and grotesque scenes and acts that we as Magical Girls must see and do in order to survive and fight. I do not want that for my children or the children of anyone else."

Antonia shrugs. "I like ta think it'd be cool to have a family full'a kids with crazy powers. Kinda like the Incredibles. But I get what'cha mean, Hae Eun. Havin' superpowers is great 'n all, but I wouldn't want to know that my kids might die fightin' a damn witch. But if you could trade in all yer powers 'n shit for the ability ta start yer own family and not hafta worry 'bout 'em gettin' all caught up with Magical Girls 'n shit, would you?"

I nod. "It is not even a question. I would do so in a heartbeat."

"Awwww...you'd leave me behind, then."

"Well...I-I did not know you were also involved in the equation."

"I'm always involved in the equation, Hae Eun, I'm yer bestest friend...don't tell me we've already broken up..." My nose gets pinched lightly and shaken back and forth like a dog wagging its tail.

"N-No, that - that was not my intention..." I find myself getting flustered, afraid that I have hurt Antonia's feelings even though in the back of my head I know that she is only playing with me, and sure enough, Antonia lets go of my nose and taps my forehead with her knuckle.

"I'm jus' keeeeedin'. You're so cute when ya get all flustered like that, Hae Eun."

"...geez..."

We fall silent to go to sleep. But something is bothering me...not letting my worried brain regress into unconscious sleep.

Antonia mentioned a blink of an eye. A blink of an eye...

A blink of an eye...

...already this far into the school semester...

...before you know it...

...it's already...

I suddenly bolt upright, blinking rapidly as if to kick my brain back into thinking.

A blink of an eye.

The shield device turning.

The Magical Girl who stole our Grief Seed disappearing without a trace, before we knew what was going on.

Before we got a sense of how much time had passed.

How much time had passed.

Time had passed.

Time.

Time...

...time?

"Hae Eun?" Antonia asks out into the darkness, her voice concerned. "What's...what's wrong? Stomach hurt?"

I spin around in the bed and put my hands on Antonia's stomach and left shoulder.

"Antonia...what if that Magical Girl can control time?"

My eyes have adjusted to the darkness by now, so I can make out the outline of Antonia's eyes blinking blankly back up at me. Then, she processes it, and her mouth falls open.

"Time control...?" Antonia breathes. "A...Are ya...are ya fuckin' serious...?"

"I wish I were joking, but nothing else seems to fit. What if that shield device that girl had on her left arm was a device that she used to freeze time for a moment and escape without us realizing what happened? Pulling off something such as that would explain why we were unable to track her because we did not sense any magical energy being used in order to pull a trick like that off."

Antonia sighs and reaches up to drag me back down onto her, and I find myself burying my face into her ample breasts.

"I think we're both jus' a bit tired," Antonia sighs. "Jus' a bit tired..."

"But...I mean it, though," my voice comes out muffled because my mouth is still smothered against her bosom.

Antonia lets go of me so that I can get comfortable again. "Seriously...? Time control? And here I was thinkin' we were overpowered Mary Sue's or whatever the fuck they're called...goddamn internet hipsters..."

"Specifically, time freezing," I correct my friend. "Though she may be capable of other powers that we do not yet know..."

"I say let's jus' forget 'bout her bitch-ass 'n move on," Antonia says. "It ain't like we're gonna expect to meet again in the future, and if we do, we'll jus' remember to fuck 'er shit up before she can pull off that time freeze trick 'a hers again so we don't get fucked like last time."

I snuggle my hand into hers. "Perhaps. I'm sorry I said it now, right before we went to sleep."

"Gimme a kiss, then, so we can get over it."

"Okay. Where?"

Antonia puts her index finger on my lips.

"You know exactly where, don'tcha? I shouldn't even hafta ask."

I smile, then lean towards her and give her the kiss she wants.

"Good night, Antonia."

"Nighty-night."

We fall asleep with no further disruptions.

The next day, we head back over to the military compound outside of Busan so that I may resume my search for Appa's elusive flash drives, but this time, Major Kim is with us to assist.

"Welcome back, Lieutenant," Major Kim salutes me, and I snap to attention and salute back properly. "And good morning to you, Miss Ainsley."

"Mornin'," Antonia mumbles, not too thrilled to be back here in the land of boredom again. We had talked about it before we headed for the base, and I informed Antonia that she was free to do what she pleased in Busan, that she did not have to follow me to the base and lounge about bored all day long while I looked for my late father's possessions. But Antonia, being the stubborn friend that she is, said resolutely that she did not want to run the risk of me getting myself in trouble without her to come to my aid, so Antonia knew very well what she would be in for when she decided to follow me here.

"So were you able to find anything of importance while I was busy yesterday?" Major Kim asks me as we trudge over to Appa's old office on site.

"No. I searched all of the most likely places, but I did not find any more flash drives that resembled the ones I found in the package you sent me a month and a half ago."

"Hmmm..." Major Kim blinks thoughtfully. "That is indeed very curious. Your father was not really known for being a secretive man, though his behavior did become more and more unexplained in the year leading up to his death...but it was not to the point of suspicion."

"Why? What did he do?" I ask. I realize that I have not really heard any recollections of what Appa had done in the months prior to his assassination, for I was assigned in a different location at the time, away from Appa.

"Normally I would reserve this kind of talk to someplace more private, but for you, it is urgent," Major Kim begins. "Your father began to...travel more."

"Travel?"

"Yes. On weekends, he would take off somewhere without telling anyone. If at all, he would inform me that he would be leaving for some 'research', but when I asked him what kind of research, he either would not reply or tell me that it was a private matter." Major Kim looks down at me. "Now that I know what kind of business we are involved in, I suppose I have an inkling what he was up to..."

"Where did he go?"

Major Kim's face darkens.

"At the time, very...strange places," he murmurs as we approach the office that Appa used to use, which is now Major Kim's. "He visited various history museums, like the National Museum of Korea, the Samsung Museum of Art, and the National Folk Museum. This was strange at the time because your father wasn't known as a huge history buff, so for him to visit history museums was...eccentric. He also visited random places that I wasn't able to track, and oftentimes he would come back to base with varying degrees of wounds."

"What kind of wounds?"

We enter Major Kim's office.

"Nothing life-threatening," Major Kim says as he takes off his military overcoat and hangs it up on a coat hook on the wall. "The worst injury he came back with was a cut on his left arm that extended from the back of his wrist up to his elbow, and that required a few stitches. But naturally, as you would imagine, it was enough to draw a lot of attention his way, so he stopped for a while before going on his little excursions again."

I recall the words of Appa's recordings, which, admittedly, I had been listening to over the weeks over and over again simply to hear my late father's voice.

"The same beings who have been impeding my progress will definitely come after you once they get the hang of what you're up to."

"Do you know who was responsible for hurting Appa like that?" I ask calmly.

"Figured you would ask something like that, you're his daughter after all," Major Kim shrugs as he seats himself with me. "No, we were unable to identify his attackers. No matter how suspicious your father's activities were, Korean military law states that it is illegal to physically attack or harm an active duty military member of the Korean armed forces, and even worse if you attack an officer, which obviously your father was."

"I see," I sigh, a bit downhearted that the "beings" that Appa mentioned were not identified. "Then I do not want to waste your time, Major. Would you happen to know where this second flash drive is kept? Because for all I know, it is not here in this base."

Major Kim shrugs again. "I've been digging around too, ever since you mentioned to me the existence of this second flash drive that your father left behind. But I have found no such thing here. I suggest Camp Eagle or Camp Castle, and if you must, go to Camp Hovey, I know your father had an office he had there, but he didn't really use that one unless he was called over to Seoul."

"Then do you suggest we leave for there now?"

"I suppose; I am under the assumption that you, too, have found nothing yesterday?"

I shake my head.

"Then if what you are looking for is so important, I suggest you head over there right away."

"Then which base do you suggest we go to?"

Major Kim taps his fingers against the top of the armrests on his chair.

"Personally, I would suggest Camp Eagle. I know that your father was assigned there before I began working for him as his second-in-command, so he has a bit of history with that base. However..." he eyes Antonia, who is lying face-down on a nearby couch, and her left arm is dangling off the couch, dragging lazily against the cold floor. "Perhaps for your friend's sake, checking Camp Hovey wouldn't be so bad."

I give a very small grin.

"Then Seoul it is," I quietly decide and stand up. "Then we will be going. May I ask for a vehicle?"

"Certainly. Remember, Lieutenant, even if your status may be decommissioned for now, you are still an officer."

"I was simply accounting for the possibility that others here may not realize that and deny me access because of my appearance and stature."

Major Kim chuckles.

"Why, yes, you would be right. Perhaps I have known you for so long that I no longer see you as a child. How strange."

We stand up again, and Antonia looks up from the couch to see what we are up to.

"Come, Antonia," I say as we prepare to leave again, "we are headed to Seoul."

Antonia's face lights up brighter than the star on top of the Christmas tree.

Half an hour later, the AH-6X Little Bird that Major Kim has secured for our swift passage to Seoul lands at Camp Hovey, and with the help of the commanding colonel there who recognized my name and my connection to Appa, Antonia and I are led to Appa's old office, which has since been used simply as a room to hold extra office supplies, desks, and chairs. Antonia and I spend some time moving things around before I begin to search for this elusive flash drive.

"Found anythin' yet?" Antonia calls, standing up from looking inside some old and dusty cardboard boxes.

"No," I call back. It has been another hour since we finished moving things away and started searching for the flash drive, but nothing has appeared to show for our efforts. "Perhaps they moved Appa's possessions someplace else after his death."

We take a break from looking around, sitting on top of a plastic folding desk against the wall.

"Man, I'm jus' lookin' forward to when we finally get ta screw around in Seoul," Antonia sighs. "I mean, no offense, but I really ain't feelin' this crap. It's Thanksgivin' break, after all. Not ta mention jetlag's startin' ta kick in for me..."

We fall silent for a moment.

"Antonia," I break the silence, "would your sixth sense work in a time like this?"

"Work for what exactly?"

"Finding this flash drive. Would you be able to determine where it is?"

Antonia shrugs. "Well, I mean...if it did work, you'd'a think that we'd already've found it by now. And it ain't like it's somethin' I can fully control all the time. Sometimes it works when I want it to, other times it doesn't."

"Really. I always thought you were able to control it."

Antonia shrugs again. "Well...every time I've used it with ya, we were always in positions where it had to come through clutch, right? And also, remember that time when we fought that witch by choosin' from three or four whirlpools in the floor?"

I think a bit, and nod, remembering that fight.

"It was the one in which I kicked a pack of C-4 while we were in the water, correct?"

"Yeah, ya crazy lil' bitch, ya nearly killed me with that, too."

"I did not explode that C-4 anywhere near you, Antonia, stop lying."

"Yeah ya did! Anyways, yeah, so like, that time, it was simple for me to figure out which one we needed to go through, 'cause all I needed to do was look at it, and all the information's there. Here, I don't know what the flash drive we're lookin' for looks like, all this junk's still in the way, all this shit. I mean...maybe, if we had that USB stick back home - "

I immediately pull out Appa's flash drive from my military coat pocket.

" - goddamn it, yer always prepared, ain't'cha."

I smile wryly at Antonia. "Can you find it now?"

Antonia makes some uncertain gestures with her hands, like a botched shrug. "Eeeerrr...I...uhhhh, I mean...I guess I can try..." Antonia takes the flash drive and holds it in her own fingers slowly, uncertain if her sixth sense will work for a situation like this. A few moments pass before she frowns, staring intently at the flash drive.

"...it feels like...okay, the one we're lookin' for's the same model, same storage capacity..." Antonia slowly mutters, "basically a duplicate. But...where...where..."

I listen carefully, letting Antonia concentrate. A few more moments pass in silence, and just to tease Antonia, I whisper,

"The faster you find out, the faster we get to go on vacation."

Antonia giggles quietly. "Oh, stop it, that won't work..." Antonia says. "It won't...work...?"

Antonia blinks a few times at the flash drive before turning to me swiftly and placing it back in my hand. Without a further word, she gets off the plastic table and walks over to one corner of the room and begins to pull away the various boxes of old scraps of paper and other various junk.

"Hae Eun, help me," she calls, requesting my help, and I immediately obey. We can both tell whenever either of us are being serious, and this is one of those times. We stack the boxes in another part of the small room until we completely clear away the corner, but even after our work, the corner of the room we cleared is simply an ordinary, dusty, and dirty empty corner of a storage room.

"...Antonia...?" I ask uncertainly, but as if to answer me, Antonia walks over one of the square tiles on the floor in the corner and proceeds to stomp her heel into it until it caves in, much to my surprise. She reaches her hand down into the hole that she has kicked into the floor and swiftly draws out a small square black box.

A jewelry box.

Antonia hands it to me, and I take it hesitantly.

"How...?" is all I can say, and Antonia shrugs.

"I guess I jus' really wanna go have some fun," she mumbles. "Maybe it did work."

I open the box, and inside, I find a small ring and the other flash drive sitting inside, as if they have waited many years for me to finally uncover them.

So the first thing I do is close the box and give Antonia the biggest, hardest hug I can ever give her.

"Aggggghhhh - Ha - Hae - Hae Eun - you're - chok - ing - me - " Antonia chokes and wheezes as a result of my misunderstanding of my own power. "Let - let go - "

I simply loosen my hold around Antonia's waist and rub my face against her tummy instead. If there are many flying hearts flying off as a result of the friction generated between my cheek and her tummy from the rubbing, then it would be perfect. Antonia falls silent and simply puts her chin on top of my scalp.

"I thought I was the spoiled one here," she murmurs, her cheeks flushing a bit.

"Do you not like it?" I ask.

"I don't hate it."

I finally let go of Antonia. "I cannot bear to imagine the amount of stress and misfortune searching for this would have cost me had you not been my friend that you are," I say to Antonia. "For this, I cannot express how much I am grateful."

"W-Well...it's - it's fine, right?" Antonia stammers. She, like me, is not so accustomed to being praised, especially by her own friends and especially by me. "We came here and we found what we're lookin' for. Now let's go and play!"

I nod. "Let us depart for the day. If there is anything you want to do or anything yo want to buy, just let me know. We can go all out."

"Yay!"

Antonia pumps her arms in celebration, and we leave Appa's old office.

From the afternoon until midnight, we roam the streets of the capital city of South Korea, Seoul, doing all sorts of fun things. We watch Korean movies, visit a PC lab that Asian counties like Korea and China are well known for and spend a couple hours playing games there while drinking iced tea and Korean canned soft drinks, window-shop along the fashion districts, eat at various American fast food franchises like KFC that have been localized to cater to the Korean cuisine, eat traditional Korean food and barbeque, watch a few Starcraft games being played at an e-sports stadium as part of the GSL, and on top of everything else, buy many, many clothes and souvenirs. Normally both Antonia and I prefer to be economical when it comes to spending, but today is an exception, and money is the least of our concerns when all we want to do more than anything else is simply to have fun.

Today has made me realize more vividly than anytime before that I have not adequately been enjoying my time with my best friend. All of the "vacations" we had taken prior to this in our short time together were not necessarily "vacations" in the truest sense of the word. They resembled business trips, in which Antonia and I only traveled to someplace far because we needed to defeat a witch that Kyuubey requested that we go take care of. Because of that, we would oftentimes be exhausted throughout the trip and not really be in the mood to go out and shop and relax and simply be normal high school girlfriends.

Antonia has mentioned to me before that the way I speak, behave, and generally conduct myself is out of place with current American society. Perhaps this has been mentioned before, but in her words, I am something of a nineteenth century English noblewoman plucked straight from the history books and plopped in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Thus, she argued, it would be difficult for me to simply kick back and be a normal fourteen year old girl for a day or two. It is not that I do not know how to have fun in the way that a typical American high school girl knows how, but it is because I feel that enjoyments such as these are best enjoyed with the company of friends. Before I met Antonia, there was no one to indulge in petty, simple pleasures as the ones we indulged in today. Perhaps going with Matty, Jonah, Haley and Lucy would have been fun, yes, but while they are certainly friends, they are nowhere near as close to me as Antonia is as my friend. It is why I call Antonia my "best" friend, because when I say that she is my "best" friend, I mean it with all my heart.

It is why a penny-pinching, frugal girl like me doing her best not to squander her late father's small fortune that he has left behind for his daughter is willing to spend however much money on her best friend and herself in the name of having fun.

I recall in one of the sermons I have attended in the past that my pastor gave us the maxim of "practice everything in moderation, including moderation". At the time, I thought I knew what that meant. I told myself I knew what moderation meant. I was the epitome of moderation - unassuming, modest, and quiet. But clearly I did not. I did not practice moderation in moderation. I was moderate in most things but moderation itself - and the things I did not practice moderation in were my feelings and emotions, and oftentimes my own actions. I would let my feelings dictate my actions many more times than not. I isolated myself after the death of my father, my one friend in the world.

In short, I practiced everything that was trivial in moderation - and everything that mattered in extravagance and childishness.

But ever since Antonia became an essential part of my life and soul, things have changed. You could say that when I closed my heart off to the world when Appa died, Antonia was the one who unlocked it again. A cheesy claim, but true nonetheless. She was the one who taught me that it is alright to let someone know about the deepest recesses of the abysses that the months of emotions that I kept the lid over for what felt like decades had become. She taught me that sometimes, it is okay to cry. Sometimes, it is okay to kiss the person I love.

Sometimes, it is perfectly acceptable to let the God and the whole world know that I am happy with the way things are now - my imperfect self and my life in an imperfect world.

It is an hour after midnight. Antonia is fast asleep on our hotel bed in Seoul, and I have already made my preparations for bed. However, my curiosity over the small black jewelry box that Antonia has recovered for me earlier in the day can be contained no more. I take the box from underneath my pillow, ease out of Antonia's arms as she snores as she sometimes does when sleeping after an action-packed day, grab my laptop from my suitcase, and sit at the desk. I boot it up and insert the second flash drive into the USB port and open the folder. There is only one audio file inside, along with a simple notepad file titled "Unnamed". I double click on it to open the file, and I pull on my headphones to listen. The sweet, familiar, and nostalgic sound of Appa's Korean fills my ears, soothing the soul inside my heart that longs for him to return.

"Hae Eun, I will assume this is you listening to this right now, because the box that this was in can only be found by you and your friend. I - "

My eyes almost pop out of my head as my finger jams the left click button on my laptop to pause the audio file.

" - and your friend - "

How in God's holy name does Appa know about Antonia?

How does my dead father who was killed by an assassin's bullet to the heart two or three years ago know about a friend I made over a year after his death?

My hands start to shake and my eyes begin to blink out of control, but I shake my head and compose myself. Perhaps he will explain...Appa never says anything ridiculous unless it is for good reason.

" - I made sure of that. As for how I know about Antonia Ainsley, your best friend, you're going to have to allow me to explain. Please listen carefully...everything I say from here on out is the full truth. I am not making any of this up, so please let me explain.

"Last year - and by that, I mean the year prior to this recording, so 2010, I had to be reassigned for a bit to Mitakihara, Japan. Do you remember those two weeks that I left suddenly while we were both on deployment? Those were those two weeks. What happened was that a local politician there had recently committed suicide after he got caught embezzling money for his reelection campaign, and people got pissed off because they thought he killed himself to escape prosecution, so a mob was threatening to break into his home. Apparently the local Japanese police force had trouble dealing with them, and there weren't any other available police forces anywhere else to support, so they asked a foreign detachment to provide crowd control in exchange for some Korean territorial rights in the Sea of Japan. So the Korean government accepted and sent me and a couple squads over to help with the situation. I was to be said politician's family's bodyguard, but at the time only the daughter of the politician was still in the house. Her mother was traveling abroad and wouldn't make it back home until later. That girl's name was Mikuni Oriko.

"Oriko was a Magical Girl. Well, is - if she is still alive and well, which I hope she is, she was a good girl who was jaded by what her father had done and the consequences that followed. Long story short, she was the one who told me about everything, because her power was the ability to see the future. In exchange for me protecting her, she offered to tell me anything important I ought to know about my future, so I accepted, in the hopes that I would be able to provide for you, and thank God I did.

"She was the one who revealed to me about how Magical Girls turn into witches once the Girls reach a certain emotional or physical threshold, first and foremost. She also told me about my imminent death. She said that I would be assassinated within a year. She said she didn't know the exact timing, but she told me that I didn't have much longer to live. She told me that you would become a Magical Girl after I dismissed you from active duty, an extremely strong one, at that, and that you would make another friend, a powerful Magical Girl, by the name of Antonia Ainsley. That's all she could say about you. She said that Antonia would be the best friend that you would ever know, and that she will stay with you until the end...whatever that ends up meaning.

"So after my assignment there was done and the incident regarding her late father's political scandal had boiled over to the point where Oriko's life wasn't in immediate danger anymore, I returned back to Korea and started my research. What what the purpose of my research, you might ask, and if you've been holding that question for a long time, then it's time to tell you.

"I wanted to see if there was a way to completely destroy all the witches in the world. Oriko had been a Magical Girl for a while at the time that I was her bodyguard, so she knew what fighting witches meant. And with the experience with your mother, everything just...started to come together, to be cliche. So I wanted to know if there was a way to destroy all the witches without killing the Magical Girls too, if that makes sense. I wanted to see how far I could get with the year or so I had left at the time - now it's probably more like a few months or something."

I quickly pause the audio file and check its creation date.

It turns out to be a mere two weeks before his assassination.

"But when I returned to Korea, obviously I didn't know where to start. Oriko couldn't help me, she had already gotten me started enough on her own, and her future foresight ability thing couldn't provide for me with this kind of a thing. And to begin with, researching something like destroying all the witches in the world and making it so that they never come back is obviously really crazy and unthinkable, but assuming that I didn't have much longer to live, I thought what the hell, I'll try anyway.

"Eventually I decided to see what kinds of crazy powers other Magical Girls had in the past, because if there are Magical Girls around now, there must've been some in the past, right? Then, all of a sudden, when I started looking through the history books and picking out famous female figures in history, it started making sense. How the hell did Joan d'Arc manage to lead France's armies against the British in the Hundred Years' War? Because she had the powers of a Magical Girl. What about Cleopatra? Same thing. Anne Frank? Anne Hutchinson? Queen Elizabeth I? I'm not saying all of them were Magical Girls, don't get me wrong, but if you were to consider their positions, in their individual contexts in history, and what they accomplished, and consider just how astronomically low of a chance they all had to succeed in their respective places in history, you start to realize, yeah, if they were Magical Girls, they'd've pulled that off. And who knows how many tens of thousands of other unnamed Magical Girls that have existed throughout history have existed, the ones who didn't make it on the history books.

"Then I visited the National Folk Museum in Seoul, and it was there that I found out about how one of our ancestors was a Magical Girl, the princess of Baekjae, if you listened to my other audio files, which I'm assuming you already did, because that's the only way you'd know about this one, you'd know about that whole story. How it happened was that they had a big book of Korean genealogies and family trees and the like on display there, so people could find out who their old ancestors were, see if any of them were famous or something. I traced our ancestor's name all the way to the present, and the latest entry it had was my grandfather. Then again, I don't know who exactly put that book together, but it's very well known for being very accurate, because they've done some DNA testing on sample people listed in that book on their descendants and every single time they tried a test like that, the testing turns out to be positive.

"So anyway, at the same time, I was talking with other Magical Girls who were in the Korean Army as cadets or as staff. I had gotten to know them after your mother died, because all Magical Girls have a habit of going witch-hunting out at night, and it was really easy to tell who the Magical Girl were, and I kept in contact with them because your mother was also a Magical Girl herself. I asked them if they knew whether or not Magical Girl powers were genetically related, as in if they could be passed down from generation to generation, and they said maybe. There were certain cases that would suggest that, but there are other cases where powers in the family are radically different, mainly because Magical Girl powers apparently are more personalized towards the individual, not necessarily a bloodline or something like that. I also asked them if anyone they knew or could think of had some sort of power that was completely ridiculous, like a power that could destroy entire worlds or something, but they couldn't think of one. the strongest they could think of was one girl who could snap people's necks without touching or looking at them, but that was about it.

"Then one of the Magical Girls from my little pool of contacts within the army referred me to another Magical Girl she knew and was friends with a long time ago, so I sent that girl an email. Turns out she was a Muslim Magical Girl whose powers were deeply rooted in Muslim faith and stuff like that. She told me that in the Quran, there is solid evidence of the existence of Magical Girls stated explicitly there. Now, I can't confirm that, obviously, since we're Christian, but that prompted me to think if there was anything like that written in the Bible as well. So I read over the Bible again. Now, I'm no religious theorist or a monk who studies the Bible all day - perhaps you know more about the Bible than I myself do, Hae Eun - but I did find some verses that certainly seemed to suggest that the Bible knew about Magical Girls. I read one time back in the day that there's this theory that Mary Magdalene was the concubine of Jesus Christ, and when I realized just how important Mary Magdalene was in the New Testament, I thought wait a minute, she might even be a Magical Girl herself, weird as that sounds. If anyone else heard this, they'd want me excommunicated. Oh wait, sorry, wrong religion.

"Religious jokes aside, it began to occur to me that there might be a religious correlation between Magical Girls and...well, religion, obviously. So I let my mind wander and thought of the most ridiculous crap I could think of just as food for thought: like, what if God was the one who sent that Kyuubey thing or whatever to earth? I hope I got his name right. What if Christ died for something else...not for everyone's sins, but for something else? And if Christ could do that without being a Magical Girl, what's the extent of Magical Girls' powers? It could be colossal, even universal.

"After that, I went to visit this guy named Savior. You don't know him, but he used to be part of this terrorist organization called the A.A.H.W., or the Advanced Administration of the Holy War. Savior is kind of what he sounds like: he looks like Jesus and even has a halo on top of his head, but ordinary people can't see it. The only reason why I could see it was because my wife was a Magical Girl, and I've been exposed to the supernatural because of it before. I hesitate to call him 'Christian', but he knows the Bible front to back and is very knowledgeable in religious matters. Anyways, at first, Seal Team 6, the group that your mother and I were a part of spent a lot of our time fighting them, but things changed for the better when Savior, who was one of their top guys, broke away from them on conceptual issues and began to fight with us in exchange for the promise that we would let him travel the world for the rest of his life as a simple traveling monk, which we accepted on the grounds that he wouldn't revert back to his terrorist ways again. The A.A.H.W. was defeated, and sure enough, Savior began wandering around and visiting places like an ordinary traveler.

"I managed to track him down and paid him a visit in southern India. I asked him about my situation, my whole quest to see if it's possible to destroy witches altogether, and if he knew about the existence of Magical Girls and witches, which he did. Now listen carefully, because this is what he said, and it's going to sound absolutely crazy, but it'll make sense:

"He theorizes that Kyuubey may be some form of demonspawn created by Lucifer, the embodiment of evil or Satan, if you prefer calling him that, in order to secure a never-ending energy for Lucifer's existence. That explains why Magical Girls become witches if they let their emotions get out of control or simply become too physically weak to handle their negative emotions. However, Savior also theorizes that with the whole story with Noah's Ark and how God killed everyone with the giant flood to start the world over from scratch, not only did God create the rainbow but he also took Lucifer's creation of Kyuubey and recreated him so that whenever he makes contracts, all the Magical Girls he would contract with will gain much stronger powers than they did before, but they will still suffer the same misfortunes because of the concept of Original Sin, that part of it says that because it's Eve's fault that she tempted Adam with the apple, Magical Girls to this day still suffer becoming witches and everything else they need to suffer in order to prevent Magical Girls from becoming too powerful. I asked him how this theory would work if Kyuubey and his kind are an alien race, and Savior just told me that it was only a theory, not a fact.

"Now these are the most radical theories that he gave me: first, because it's stated that in the Bible, women are to be inferior to men because of Eve's original sin, Lucifer balanced this gender inequality out by making it so that only females can be contracted into Magical Girls in order to spite God. Second, when the Flood happened, God not only gave Kyuubey existence again but he also organized Magical Girls by class, named after each book of the Bible. He didn't tell me what any of these classes meant, so I can't tell you that myself. Instead, he asked me if my daughter was a Magical Girl, and I told him that someone else had told me that she would be, and so Savior told me to tell you to go pay him a visit.

"And this's where I'll leave you, Hae Eun. My orders for you are to track down this man named Savior and talk to him and learn what he knows. He told me that he would tell you the answers to what I wanted to know, because these answers do me little good if I know them myself, and that only you will make good with the knowledge that I seek. Savior's contact information is provided in the notepad file in this flash drive.

"Hae Eun, my daughter, you don't know how much it pains me to not tell you that I am running out of time to live. Had I known about this sooner, I would have done everything in my power to be the father that I wanted to be for you. Instead, I chose to sacrifice our own personal happiness with each other for the happiness of every other Magical Girl in the world. I know what a Magical Girl must suffer - my wife, your mother was one, and you are too, and I assume that you know what it feels like as well. Knowing this, I cannot bear to work for my own happiness when I know that there are potentially millions of other young girls who are robbed of their own childhood, much as I feel about your own. Resent me all you want if you think that I have sacrificed our time together for this lofty ideal of trying to provide happiness for the rest of the world, but I feel I cannot call myself a man if I do not do what I think is ultimately right. And perhaps one day, God will reward us with eternal life in heaven...if you so choose to believe that is the case. Hey, we all have our reasons to hope, right?"

The audio file ends.

Not knowing what to think, my mind numb and silent, I brainlessly double-click on the notepad file. There is listed a few phone numbers, presumably for the man named Savior, and underneath it is a note:

Hae Eun, in this box you should also find a pair of rings. I do not have time to explain what they do, but take one and wear it. It will help you.

A pair of rings?

I look inside the small black jewelry box. I pick up the ring and hold it up in the lamp light.

There is no second ring...

...but this ring looks familiar. Where did I see it?

Where...

Where...

Where...

Without thinking, I slip the ring into my ring finger. For some odd reason, it fits perfectly.

I gaze it the ring on my ring finger for a time before it hits me.

It is Appa's wedding ring.

Before I know it, the lamp light is fading away into darkness by itself, and I find myself swaying in my chair. I do not feel any sensation as my head hits the carpet floor of our hotel room, and the last thing I see is the dull light reflecting from the dim lamp light against my father's wedding ring on my finger.