Alright, what happened?

That was my sole question about what I saw before me.

It was so sudden that I couldn’t take what had happened to me. To my body, to be exact.

I was standing in front of a standing mirror in my room, looking at my reflection. No, to be honest, I couldn’t even call it my reflection, as what stared back at me was an unknown cute girl, around 145cm in height, wearing a faux 19th-century military uniform with its hat and cape.

Two pairs of white and black horns crossed with each other and went through the cap of the hat. I recognized her.

“What is this?”

The voice that came out of my mouth was also different from what I usually heard. It was softer and had a higher pitch. Rather, not only my voice, everything about me was strange. It shouldn’t be possible.

“This must be a dream.”

Because if this wasn’t a dream, I never thought this would happen to me. It was like a dream come true. Why? Because…

“I become my Magical Giants game character!”

***

Let us rewind the time for a little bit.

It happened last night when, as usual, I – Arisugawa Asa – was bored to death. I was just a typical and ordinary teenage girl who often got bored.

Tonight was the same. Lying on my bed in my pajamas, I looked at the laptop screen while scrolling a Magical Girl forum to find something interesting.

It was lagging because my laptop was already five years old. I had no money left to spend to buy a new one. Though, I still used this laptop because it still worked. I just needed to be patient.

This forum often made a thread about Magical Girls, a girl who made a contract with a creature called Giant and fought against Beasts, the enemy of humankind, that suddenly appeared three years ago.

Yes. I was talking about real Magical Girls with real Magic. They were no longer a fantasy as Giants brought something called Mana to this world. Some of the lucky girls were given a wand by a Giant and became Magical Girls.

Though even when they were called Giants, they could change their body shape to anything they liked because their bodies were entirely made from Mana.

Almost all teenage girls like myself dreamed of being one of them. I especially admire them. I had many posters and figurine collections of Magical Girls in my room. They were on the desk, wall, and even the ceiling.

Magical Girl's things filled my room, decorating every part of it. That was the reason why I was always low on money and couldn’t buy a new laptop.

To be honest, I remembered hearing the name Giants and Beasts. The way they gave a wand to a girl to make them Magical Girls also seemed to be familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember where I heard it. It must have been long ago, but that didn’t seem to be important because I had forgotten about it.

After scrolling for a minute, a thread caught my attention, and I read it out loud.

“Magiya Blaze defeated a Bear Beast in Tokyo! That’s cool!”

I exclaimed happily by myself as I saw the news of one of my favorite Magical Girls. She was called Magiya Blaze, a Magical Girl with blazing red hair. She was a tall, cool girl type and had a lot of female fans, me being one of them.

Heck, Magiya Blaze figures and posters dominated my collections. I loved her that much.

But that only made me forget about my boredom for a second. Fangirling was good and all, but it was just a momentary satisfaction in the end.

I continued scrolling down the forum to find something more interesting. However, it was useless. The forum was so quiet tonight because almost all the residents were chatting in the Magiya Blaze thread.

“Haa… another average night.”

I closed the web browser before my hand crawled around, trying to find my Magiya Blaze body pillow. No need to mention, but the image of Magiya Blaze on my body pillow was her in her birthday suit.

After I got it, I hugged it and rolled around on my bed in boredom while whining loudly.

“Aaah! I want to be a Magical Girl too! I want to play with Magiya Blaze and the others! Fighting those Beasts sounds fun! Maybe becoming Magiya Blaze’s enemy will be fun too! That way she will think of me all the time!”

After whining and rolling around for a while, I returned to my laptop.

“Let’s just play a game. Let’s see, do I have any games? There is a folder named ‘Games’ on my desktop. Surely, I have installed some in the last five years. I totally forgot about those because I was too focused on Magical Girls. Well, let’s take a look at it.”

Surprisingly, I had a lot of games.

I guess I loved games that much at that time, huh? Totally different from me today. Well, it must be so. Because Magical Girls hadn’t appeared yet, the best way to spend free time was to play a game.

“Let’s see…”

It seemed like I owned a lot. I meant lots of games. In just one folder, there were at least 50 shortcuts of games. Most of it was an offline game, with some even VR-supported.

I sorted the shortcut from the newest shortcut that I opened. Surprisingly, I was able to find something that caught my attention on top of the list.

It was a game with a wand icon. The wand was very similar to the one that Magical Girl used, and then I read the name of the game.

“Oh, what is this? Magical Giants?”

Even the name caught my attention. It was a combination of two words, Magical and Giants, something that I was very familiar with.

My memories of the game also returned with a tingle of nostalgia. This game was a yuri eroge game about Magical Girls and Giants. The premise of the game was also about Giants trying to save the world from evil by giving teenage girls a wand to transform into Magical Girls.

“That’s why I seem familiar with the terms Giants and Beasts. It’s from this game. My young self must be afraid of Beasts at that time to forget about such an important thing. Let’s see… Last opened 5th July 2020? Isn’t that a year before a Magical Girl first sighted in the world?” I involuntarily raised my voice as I saw the date.

Was it a coincidence? It must be a coincidence.

Well, the developers of this game must be some prophet or something because Magical and Giants are something popular today. I thought.

I also remembered that I found out about Magical Girls and about some dirty things from this game. What did I do? Why did I play an eroge when I was clearly underage? My parents were indeed carefree people, but it was too much!

I felt rather guilty from doing it. But well, it was the past.

Anyway, let’s just play it.

I opened the game, and a cheerful ringtone rang from my laptop’s speaker. The loading screen said that the game was VR-Supported, and my eyes widened.

“This game is VR-Supported too? I totally forgot about it.”

I quickly opened the drawer beside my bed and took out my VR goggles. Even though it was called goggles, the appearance was more like a helmet. It was the latest VR device that was released just a year ago.

You asked why I bought such a thing when I didn’t play a game anymore because I used it to watch videos! Watching it through VR gave me a different sensation from watching it through a screen. Yes, I was certainly a girl with priorities. VR goggles were more important than a new laptop. It was still running without a problem.

I connected the VR goggles to my laptop and put them on my head. At that moment, I saw the game's loading screen, and my vision suddenly blurred.

What happened? Is it a bug? Or is my game corrupted because I didn’t play it for four years? Or is it because of my old laptop? Damn! I should’ve saved my money and bought a new one! Stupid me! Stupid past me!

The loading ended, and I saw a purple-haired girl wearing a black military uniform and a black cape with a white fur collar. My memories about this game returned little by little. I knew the girl that I saw. It was my character, Arsy.

Right, I was addicted to this game. This game was the reason why I loved Magical Girl so much, but I soon abandoned my final test. I wanted to change myself at that time after losing someone important, someone who introduced this game to me.

Big Brother Yumie. Why did you leave me? Where were you hiding? I remembered the kind guy who played with me and taught me about Magical Girl. Sadness washed over me, but it was quickly replaced by happy memories.

Yeah, I left the game after he was gone.

Surprisingly, even though I didn’t really remember the game, I still knew my character's name and all of her skills.

Arsy.

That was the name of my character. I made her a cheeky girl who wore a military uniform. The girl loved to have fun, and I designed her similar to big brother Yumie’s character, but with purple hair and cat-like golden eyes.

“Well, let’s play, shall we?” I muttered to myself as I took a controller and pressed the Continue button.

However, as soon as I pressed it, I felt dizzy and felt like I was stung at the back of my head, right where the cable that connected my VR goggles to my laptop was located. Next, what I saw was black, and I lost consciousness.

That was my last memory from last night.

***

“Alright, that doesn’t explain this situation at all! What the fuck is happening? I am happy, but what the hell is this! Explanation! I need an explanation!!” I shouted loudly in my room as curses came out of my mouth without stopping.

As if it was waiting for me to shout like that, a sudden voice answered from behind the mirror.

“Sure! I will answer your question!”

Following the voice, a cute golden ball rolled out from behind the mirror. The ball had two triangle ears, two blue cat-like eyes, four legs, and a short but fluffy tail. It looked like an obese cat.

But I knew what it was. It wasn’t a normal cat, I guess. It was something that always appeared out of nowhere and offered a contract with teenage girls.

As their bodies were made of Mana, they could change their body shape into whatever they wanted to. However, I never thought one of them would appear in front of me while looking like… this…

“Rejoice, Arisugawa Asa! My name is Titan! The strongest Giant in Deepland! For a secret reason, I was transported here looking like this, but I still managed to fulfill that person's request! I was able to give you your original power from that land due to you making a connection to the other side!”

The obese cat exclaimed. Titan, surely it was kidding. I knew that name. Heck, it came from the Magical Giants as the last boss, the strongest Giant, Titan.

It said it was transported here? Surely it was kidding. No way the boss of Magical Giants was coming to the real world. The game was just a game. A fantasy.

However, for some reason, I couldn’t deny that the being from the games entered the real world. My lips twitched uncontrollably as I thought of a rather stupid possibility.

There is no way, right? There is no way those Beasts and Giants came from the game world, right?

But the cat said something about me making a connection to the other side. It also knew my name. Then it continued.

“I have been observing you and waiting for three years for you to make a connection to your Magical Girl self. And now it happened. I have fulfilled the deal. From now on, I will be your partner in your adventure as a Magical Girl! Today is the birth of a new Magical Girl, Arsy! Don’t overthink it, and just enjoy your new life. After all, it’s your dream, right? Becoming a Magical Girl, it is.”

Yes. What he said was true. Whether the Giants and Beasts came from the Magical Giants game or not, the most important thing was I became a Magical Girl.

Not only that, I was Arsy! A game character that I nurtured with big brother’s help. And by being a Magical Girl, I would be able to do that too.

“That’s right. I will surely have fun with this.” I smiled, looking at my reflection in the mirror once again.

“That’s how it is!” The cat, Titan, exclaimed.

“But…” I turned to Titan that looked at me from the floor with a cold smile. “Detailed explanation is required. Tell me what the hell you did to my body!”