2_Chapter 1_ The Hex Suspect in the World of Sorcery

CHAPTER 1 The Hex Suspect in the World of Sorcery 1 Despite the reality before him appearing to be so ludicrous, time marched on. Touya, Index, and Mikoto immediately made plans to go to the beach, leaving behind Kamijou, who was still clueless. Confused, he’d been commanded to change into his swim trunks posthaste and come along. Then, he was ordered to go onto the beach and set up the parasol for them. He now sat underneath it, alone on a picnic sheet with his hands clasped around his knees, not altogether sure of when he had actually put it up. Is this okay? Is it okay to be lazing around here? It really seems like the world has gotten itself into a huge mess, but I have no clue how to deal with any of it! Thanks to the mass outbreak of giant jellyfish, there wasn’t a single other beachgoer on the sands. A hit song was lonesomely crackling out of the speakers stuck on the wooden poles placed at regular intervals along the shore. When he beheld it all, the world seemed so very peaceful. Unfortunately, though, he had seen pure mayhem on TV. No matter what channel he flipped to, all he saw were people with mixed-up clothes. The fact that the broadcast stations were like that meant that the disaster didn’t only encompass their beach house; the same thing was happening all over Japan. No, maybe, just maybe, it was the entire world. …Hmm. Or maybe I’m just seeing some weird hallucinations? A problem was occurring all across the planet, but its physical scale paled in comparison to the other thing: Everyone around him was forcing him to believe that this scrambled world was normal. It was toying with his emotions, even though he knew he was seeing clearly. He was letting himself be washed away with the current, like a truly useless Japanese person. As he sat there in exercise position, he heard the sound of feet crunching over the sand, coming up behind him. “Hey, Touma. Thanks for saving our spot. Though, well, since there isn’t anyone else here, I guess that means you didn’t do any work!” The male voice bellowed a “Wa-ha-ha.” Oh, it’s just Dad, he thought, twisting his neck to look behind him— —and he froze. “Hmm. What is it, Touma? Dad’s swimsuit strike your fancy?” Kamijou ignored Touya completely and looked next to him. He looked at Index, standing where his mother, Shiina, should have been. W-wait. What’s with that insane swimsuit?! Index was wearing a black bikini, unsuited to her childlike body. However, normally bikinis are constructed from both cloth and string. In Index’s case, though, the string was made out of transparent vinyl. So when you looked at her from far away, it looked like she had stuck fabric onto all the parts she needed to hide using double-sided tape. He’d put it bluntly. No matter what, that was an utterly stupid, utterly adult swimsuit. Damn! I guess this is the world of gaps and imbalance, though! No, wait, calm down—this is no time to be happy. Index has no money! Where did she get something like that?! As Kamijou stared in stupefaction, Index pressed one hand to her cheek. “Oh my. This outfit just isn’t convincing for you, Touma, is it…?” “No, there’s a bigger problem! What’s with that bathing suit? You had a different one yesterday!” “Oh my. I brought along two or three different swimsuits, that’s all.” “A-ha-ha!” laughed Touya. “Yep, your mother still has it in her, doesn’t she? Swimsuits sure are expensive, but this means that your father’s gift wasn’t for nothing.” The moment he heard that, Kamijou’s eyes flared up. “You jerk! Did you tempt her with money and buy stupid shit for her?! And wait, where did you learn Index’s sizes? Or did you go shopping for it together or something?!” “Oh my. Touma, if you press your thumbs against his carotid artery and squeeze his neck like that, your father will pass out, all right?” “Don’t stop me, Index. This lolicon is targeting you!” Kamijou howled, looking like he was about to send flames shooting from his mouth. “Damn, I knew it. I always thought it was weird, how Mom looks so young even though she’s the same age as you. I bet she’s actually only twenty-eight, isn’t she?! So how old was Mom when she gave birth to me?! You’re a criminal” “Bgh-ghgh. T-Touma, calm down! Here, I’ll give you this family household protective charm I got when I went on a trip to Ireland, so, so bghghagh!” “What the hell?! This is a figurine of a naked woman! Are you implying you know exactly what you’re doing?!” “N-no, I mean, this is apparently Sheela-na-Gig, the weather godde— Ugh! Guhghgh!” As Kamijou was on the verge of veering permanently onto the path of demons, Mikoto Misaka came up to him. “Huh? What are you fighting about, big brother? Is this one of those fabulous events where it turns out you weren’t related by blood?” “You…you…Don’t go forcing in a ‘not related by blood’ option here! And what’s with that getup?! This isn’t some chlorine-stinking school pool, so why are you in a school bathing suit?” “Huh? Is that weird?” “Kuh…So you plan on playing the flattering little sister character for good, huh…?!” What the hell is going on?! Unwilling to keep this up, he let his hands drop like an octopus’s down from Touya’s neck and sighed. Touya, coughing violently and holding his neck, looked at his own son’s face and remarked, “H-how careless of me…I never thought that you doted on your mother this much…” “Oh my. Freud said that boys unconsciously hate their father and love their mother. I guess it really is true, isn’t it?” “That’s not good. His long, lonely dormitory life may have created an eager need for familial love.” “…Every single one of you…” Kamijou bit down on his back teeth. “Quit it with your aggressively incorrect, amateurish psychological analysis and labeling me as some guy with an Oedipus complex! Everyone sit down right there! I will dig holes for you with this toy shovel and bury you all up to your necks under this blazing sun!” The three weirdos gave a squeal of glee and fled toward the water. Kamijou gathered up the shovel in one hand and was about to go after them with a “You shall not escape!” but then he suddenly realized he was forgetting about something. He heard footsteps coming up behind him again, making crispy noises as they touched down on the sand. That’s right, for some reason Blue Hair was in that beach house, he thought, and then he froze. Yesterday, Index had been wearing her tidy white one-piece bathing suit. Today, Blue Hair was wearing a white habit of the same design as Index’s for some reason. So what would Blue Hair’s outfit be here on the beach? No, wait. Could…? Where is this syllogism going—?! “Touma, Touma! Sorry for being late. Thanks for waiting!” That detestable, truly detestable, feline, male voice. Don’t turn around, he thought to himself. I bet Blue Hair is standing right there, and if I witness him, I’ll lose something important to me. That’s what he thought, but with slow, jerky movements and much trepidation, he turned around to face reality. The demon there in the white one-piece— “—Huh?!” The next thing he knew, the sun was somehow in a higher spot than before. In his hand was a sand-covered shovel, and at his feet was an unconscious Blue Hair buried up to his neck in the sand. Only his neck was visible, sprouting up out of the beach, like when they mounted heads on a pike after beheadings in the Edo period. Did I do this? Just what was I…? And judging from his head’s angle, he’s buried in a vertical pit! After thinking about it for a while, he decided not to dig his terrible friend out of the sand. If he saw his outfit right now, he’d probably lose something important to him. Oh, right, where’s Dad—damn, there he is! Look at him, playing with a beach ball by the shoreline with Index and Mikoto! And he’s got those beastly eyes of his set right on the Index route, ready to challenge it! D-damn it! I finally get to the beach, and this is the kind of summer vacation I get?! Anyway, I must destroy that lolicon not acting his age! he thought, running toward the beach in large, swaying motions, with the toy shovel in one hand. In the meantime, he internally wondered if it was all right to be worrying about something this peaceful and that maybe he was overlooking something pretty important— “Unyaa~! Kammyyy, I finally found ya!” Then suddenly, a strange cat voice flew at him. If you were to ask what about it was strange, it would probably be the fact that, besides of course being a cat’s voice, it belonged to a male, not a female. Wh-what, what, what is this? Wait a minute, hey, I think I know that voice! Kamijou stopped running and turned around, and there he saw a large man, possibly 180 centimeters in height, dashing toward him. “T-Tsuchimikado?” Motoharu Tsuchimikado. He was Kamijou’s next-door neighbor and his classmate (…apparently—Kamijou didn’t have any memory of it, so he didn’t really know). He had uniquely long arms that dangled all the way down to his knees. The blond hair atop his tall stature was spiked up, and he wore shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with nothing underneath. He sported pale blue sunglasses, and with the gold chain he wore around his neck to top it all off, he gave off the impression of a wandering, ill-bred boxer has-been. However, in reality, his delinquent nature was because he wanted to at least be a little bit appealing to girls. In addition, his younger stepsister with the standard-issue maid gear, Maika Tsuchimikado, made him an indulgent older brother. “…Hey, wait a minute. Why are you here?! How did you get outside Academy City? Is Mai with you?!” “I wish you wouldn’t give my sister a nickname so casually, but I don’t even have time to mention that. Kammy, just making sure, but…do I look like Motoharu Tsuchimikado to you?” Kamijou couldn’t tell what he was getting at. “Huh? What are you talking about? More importantly, how did you get outside the—” “But that means…nyaa, that can’t…” After mumbling to himself for a moment, he said, “Well, whatever. Anyway, Kammy, we gotta get out of here. It’s dangerous. What’s dangerous? Well, only the part about that angry lady about to attack us, that’s all!” “Huh? Lady…attack? Hey, wait, is there still something?!” “It doesn’t matter, just listen to what your neighbor is telling you, ’kay?!” Tsuchimikado seemed deranged, and his point wasn’t quite getting across. Kamijou tilted his head in confusion, and his neighbor started waving around so frenetically that his sunglasses slid down one side of his face. “Jeez! Haven’t you realized that something weird’s been going on ever since you got up this morning, nyaa?!” “Hm? Yeah, everyone’s acting kinda weird. It’s like their insides and outsides got totally swapped out or something, but…Huh? How do you know that?” Kamijou looked over toward the waves coming in. The group of weirdos was playing with the beach ball. “What I mean is—Sis thinks that you’re the criminal who used magic to make this substitution happen!” “Huh?” Criminal? Right as he thought about that one, puzzled— “I have found you, Touma Kamijou…!” He heard some sort of female voice filled with enormous animosity come at him from the side. “Whoopsie!” Tsuchimikado looked up at the sky. Kamijou turned toward where he heard the voice. A girl was standing there. She was tall for a female, upward of 170 centimeters. Her long black hair was done up in a ponytail, but the hair it bundled reached way down to her waist. She had style, and her skin was pale enough to make him think of a princess, but strangely he didn’t feel an ounce of fragility or weakness. Her clothing was the likely reason for that. The short-sleeve white T-shirt she wore had been tied with the excess cloth around her ribs, revealing her navel, and she had worn-out jeans on…but for some reason, one of the legs was boldly cut so far up one could see the end of her thigh. Her feet were clad in the kind of boots you might see in a Wild West film. In the same genre was the thick belt wrapped diagonally around her waist. It looked like it was holding up some sort of handgun holster. However, her waist revealed not a handgun but a katana. And it looked to be a special-order one, too, two meters in length at a glance. When combined with her long black ponytail, she looked like some sort of samurai who would appear in period films. And, for reasons he did not understand, the Bakumatsu swordsman romanticist was staring fixedly at Kamijou’s face. She closed the distance to him directly and rudely with a face filled with ire. The most dangerous part was that her right hand may or may not have been touching her sword’s hilt this whole time. “Touma Kamijou! We know that you caused this substitution magic—Angel Fall! Return everything to normal before I count to three!” The Japanese sword girl seemed ready to cut him down right this moment instead of counting to three. She came within an inch of Kamijou in the blink of an eye. He flinched back. Anyone would be scared if someone came straight up to them with a vengeful look and a gigantic knife. “Eh, what? What’s this person saying? Tsuchimikado, is this girl the ‘sis’ you were talking about? —Hey, don’t run away by yourself!” He’d only taken his eyes off Tsuchimikado for a moment, but in that time, he’d snuck over to the sandy beach. Kamijou’s yell made him stop short, and he turned back around, shivering. His pale blue lenses glinted in the sunlight like a cold sweat. Kamijou looked over to the waterside. Index, in her bathing suit, and Mikoto were fooling around not even one hundred meters away, physically. However, it seemed to him like a paradise he would never, ever reach. I wanna run away right now, but things are just as absurd over there, he thought. The lady in front of him seemed to cool off a little. “Ah, yes. Yes, I see. I apologize. I was so intent on getting results that I forgot my manners. I’ll ask just to make sure. Whom do I look like to you?” Whom…? His neck twisted at the oddness of the question. With the way she said that, one would take it to mean that “who” and “I” were different people. Well, Kamijou was an amnesiac in the first place, so he didn’t know who she was. When confronted with a strange question like that, he had no choice but to return a blank stare. Then, as if the katana girl had read something in his expression, she snapped, “…My word, your acting is awful. Didn’t you just call me ‘sis’ before? I’m Kanzaki, Kaori Kanzaki. A sorcerer of Necessarius, of English Puritanism. Just because we’ve only met once doesn’t mean you can say you’ve forgotten me in such a short time.” Kamijou was surprised on two different levels at her exasperated tone. First was that he knew this weird, east-meets-west samurai girl. Second was that she casually referred to herself as an English Puritan sorcerer. Necessarius was something that Index and Stiyl Magnus belonged to as well. It was like an anti-sorcerer special ops team. Now that she mentioned it, her weirdo getup didn’t quite blend into modern society, and it made Index’s and Stiyl’s own clothing make more sense (though it was rude to them to think that). Nevertheless, there was one strange thing about this if that was the case. With a real sorcerer here, who was Tsuchimikado, who was acting like such a good friend toward her? Tsuchimikado saw Kamijou and sighed, then looked at Kanzaki. “Hey, hey, Zaky! You acting a little combative there, don’t you think, nyaa?” “What are you saying, Tsuchimikado? I am simply devoting all of my energy toward solving the problem in front of us. In the first place—and if you will allow me to say such a thing—you are the one who lacks a sense of being a sorcerer.” Kamijou couldn’t let that one go. “Wait, what did you say just now? A sorcerer?” In utter disbelief, he turned his eyes to his neighbor. He grinned playfully. “Yup, you got it. I’m a member of Necessarius, too.” Simply. So simply did Motoharu Tsuchimikado announce it. So it took time for Kamijou to understand what he had just said. Glare. The blue-tinted sunglasses reflected the sunlight with an eerie glare. “W-wait a minute. What? You? A sorcerer?” “Yeppers!” Tsuchimikado nodded meekly. “Did ya think there were no sorcerers in Academy City? It’s actually the opposite! The world of science is the enemy of the world of magic. So it wouldn’t be weird if there were one or two spies deep in enemy territory, would it? I think there’re a bunch more besides me, too.” “…But…” What he told him did certainly have some truth to it. However, the young man had been part of his completely normal daily life until now. The very fact that he had said something sharp and with some truth to it was already giving Kamijou an indescribably out-of-place feeling. “I mean, really. My being outside Academy City in the first place is weird, don’t you think? Good ol’ Tsuchimikado was with Zaky inside Windsor Castle in England until two hours ago. Of course, I didn’t have to fill out an application or have to get some tiny blood-borne machines inside me. I used a secret way out, nyan!” “…” Even coming from the man himself, Kamijou didn’t feel like it was real. For him, Motoharu Tsuchimikado was this: his dorm neighbor in the realm of his ordinary life; someone who forced himself to look delinquent in order to be popular with girls; someone who, despite that, would be in a panic whenever his stepsister Maika so much as came down with a cold, then go over to Kamijou’s room to ask him for advice—he couldn’t see him as any more than an average guy. He could never have thought of him being related to this magical parallel universe. Therefore, Kamijou unconsciously searched for a way to deny it. “O-oh yeah. Aren’t you taking the Curricula in Academy City? If I remember right, espers aren’t able to use magic, so—” “You got it, bud. Although it might be because I’ve infiltrated enemy territory…Thanks to that, the highest-ranking Onmyou professor’s days of magic are over. To put the icing on the cake, I’m a Level Zero who can’t even use the half-assed powers he got, nyaa. I’m sick of it!” His next-door neighbor grinned at him. “But there are some spies who will stay somewhere for fifty years in order to earn people’s trust. You act so surprised; you must really not know anything about the world, you catch my drift?” “You…” Kamijou’s next question vanished midway. Tsuchimikado saw his shocked face and quirked a slightly self-deprecating smile. “Well, what I’m tryin’ to say is, the one you’re lookin’ at right now is the real Tsuchimikado. I’m a listening device that conveys minute details of activities in Academy City to the Church of English Puritanism.” A spy. The very word was so far out of the scope of real life for him that Kamijou almost thought they were discussing a movie or something. Then, in spite of that, Kanzaki continued with a bored-sounding voice. “I will ask you again, Tsuchimikado, but was it okay for you to reveal yourself?” “Who cares? The higher-ups knew about it a long time ago, nyaa. They’re still lettin’ me swim around, though. I’m basically dancing in the palms of their hands and waiting to see what happens at the moment.” He narrowed his eyes behind his blue lenses. “Well, that just means that the information I’ve got isn’t valuable enough for them to need to do anything about me right away, is all…But things would certainly get unmanageable the moment I discovered the truth behind the ith School District, the Five Elements Society. Sorry, but even though they might pay me for it—or rather, because this is business—I’m making a clear decision. I need to pull out for now, y’see? Any further and I’ll get too deeply involved. That alone won’t make a useful card to play against Aleister. Man, Academy City’s hiding some pretty crazy darkness inside it.” “…” Kamijou shuddered at what he was saying. Not because he had gleaned anything from it. In fact, he didn’t know anything about that stuff. However, the fact was that he had revealed himself as a resident of another world by saying all that stuff he didn’t understand. That’s how he felt. “…So, then, Tsuchimikado, you’re a sorcerer, too?” “Yeah, though I’m slightly unique and somewhat strange, nyaa.” A spy. Even now that he knew this, the few mental images he possessed of Motoharu Tsuchimikado stayed intact. The image within him saying that he was ultimately his next-door neighbor, had a soft spot for his stepsister Maika, and sheltered her when she fled the girls’ dorm from time to time—his image of him as a useless older brother hadn’t been broken. The truly terrifying part, leaving aside him revealing his identity, was the surprisingly high degree of insight he had into Academy City while still continuing to be a part of Kamijou’s normal life. “Well, enough about me,” dismissed Tsuchimikado too quickly. “Right now we gotta do something about that. The body swapping, the substitution! Kammy, you’ve caught on to something, too, yeah?” “Wait a second. ‘Too’? Does that mean you’re in the know?” “Ah, yeah, reasonably. What I know is that the substitution isn’t the real issue. I just know that this substitution is just a side effect, nyaa.” “A side effect…of the real issue?” Kamijou frowned. The term substitution struck a chord, given how everyone was this morning when he got up, not to mention the crazy scenes on TV. But what was this about a side effect? And what would the real issue be? This was starting to sound like someone had started another incident. Kanzaki saw his dubious face and sighed. “Tsuchimikado, it is cruel to expect a comprehension of the truth out of one who does not even understand the tree of Kabbalah.” “I got it. But doesn’t that mean your own hypothesis was wrong, nyaa?” Tsuchimikado grinned. “This swapping of outsides and insides, the grand sorcery Angel Fall…You really think a magic amateur like Touma Kamijou could have caused this?” Kamijou looked at him. He couldn’t let that slide. “What? What do you mean by my being related?” he asked, but the one who answered was Kanzaki, with a dissatisfied expression. “…Once upon a time there was a young man. For some reason, incidents would occur around this young man quite often. Another incident has broken out this time. A single problem arose around this young man. Everybody under the world was affected. However, there was just one person who evaded difficulty. That young man had evaded difficulty and was at the center of the commotion. Is it so strange to think that this young man is suspicious?” “Hey, hey, hey, hey, wait a minute, stupid! This is messed up! What do you mean ‘a single problem arose’?! Are you trying to tell me this craziness is some man-made incident?!” “Well. Does that look like a natural disaster to you?” Kamijou grunted in spite of himself and fell silent. Tsuchimikado gave a wry grin. “Don’t clam up, Kammy! You’ll get false charges pressed on ya.” “Who is pressing false charges, Tsuchimikado? In reality, he is the only one in the world not under the effects of Angel Fa—” “Wait. Angel Fall? You mentioned that before,” he interjected, picking up on a term Kanzaki had said. The two sorcerers turned back to him. “Uhh, Angel Fall is, well…It’s hard to explain. Kanzaki, go for it, nya!” “Tsuchimikado, would you please stop saying ‘nya’ all the time?” Kanzaki exhaled in exasperation. “Putting it simply, this whole substitution was set up by somebody using magic. It’s a man-made incident.” “…Incident?” “Yes,” she nodded quietly. Kamijou’s face betrayed his lack of comprehension for the situation, so she continued. “There is currently a certain magic unfolding on a global scale. The case files in the British Library have nothing to say about the phenomenon, and the particular techniques involved and composition thereof are unknown. Because of its particular effects, we have opted to call it Angel Fall for convenience.” “…You know what’s gonna happen even though you don’t know how it works?” Far away… …by the seashore, he heard the merry voices of Index and the others. It sounded so, so very far away. “It’s simple. Just imagine a giant, unidentified sea monster attacking a city.” Tsuchimikado smirked. “The SDF investigates all sorts of things about the monster, but in the end it’s still unidentified. What they do know is they need to stop the monster before it causes a lot of casualties. I suppose it’s like that, nya? Well, for you, it’ll be A-OK if you just put aside your preconceptions of common sense and listen to us like we’re telling you the rules to a video game.” “? I haven’t the foggiest what your example means.” Kanzaki’s petite neck bent in confusion at Tsuchimikado’s explanation. I’m a little surprised that Kanzaki can make such a girlie gesture, thought Kamijou rudely. “Let us continue. Angel Fall is related to a concept in Kabbalah of something called the Sephirothic Tree. Have you heard of it?” “…I don’t think so?” Kamijou actually thought he might have heard it somewhere, but it was only a vague recollection, so he denied it. He had a feeling the sorcerer Stiyl had mentioned it during their fight with the alchemist, but… “The Sephirothic Tree is basically a ranking chart. It has the ranking of the souls of God, angels, and humans graded on a ten-step pyramid. Just think of it like that. “To put it bluntly, it’s like a map of God’s absolute reign that basically says that this territory is for humans and this territory is for God—so don’t go coming in all willy-nilly. “The number of people and the number of angels are all decided beforehand, so normally, a human cannot climb to the status of angel. It goes both ways; an angel also cannot fall to the level of a human. “Basically, all the ranks are filled to capacity.” “By the way,” Kanzaki continued after Tsuchimikado’s comment, “what we call Angel Fall is referring to an angel of a heavenly rank being forced down to the rank of humans. Like a cup that was already filled, if you pour in one more drop, if an angel falls to the rank of humans, then—I-is something the matter?” “Er, well…” Kamijou gave an extremely apologetic face. “Umm…angels?” “Yes. Specifically, not envoys of the heavens but envoys of a master. What about them?” Kanzaki answered with a serious look. Hmmm?…And there his thought processes came to a halt. The voices of Mikoto and the others playing with the beach ball reached the ears of the silent Kamijou. They were the only ones on the excessively spacious shoreline, so their delighted voices sounded a bit lonely to him. Well, he got it and everything. He understood that his scientific common sense wouldn’t work on Kanzaki and Tsuchimikado, who lived in a world of magic. Really, he nearly died one time in a certain incident involving a vampire, after all. But these were angels they were talking about. If some problem were to occur throughout the world, and he suddenly told a person that “It’s the fault of an angel!”…And if they reacted like, “That’s terrible news!” then that person would seriously seem to him like they were just tired of life in general. “…Well, you’re just throwing the word angel all over the place. I mean, it’s not like you can see heaven if you go through the atmosphere in a space shuttle or anything.” “Mm. Heaven and hell aren’t a matter of altitude, of ‘up’ or ‘down,’ you know.” “Then what are they?” “Well, for example, people can’t see infrared rays or hear really high-pitched sounds. You understand that, right, Kammy?” “Huh? Well, yeah.” “The whole ‘high’ and ‘low’ here is like that. It’s the high or low of the range that humans are able to sense. If it’s too high, then you can’t detect it. Same if it’s too low. Like, if God were right next to you, Kammy, you’d never be able to notice it.” Tsuchimikado grinned happily. “Incidentally, when we say low, we mean things like hell or demons. It’s the ultraviolet rays in comparison to infrared light, and low-frequency waves compared to high-frequency ones. They’re of opposite phases. They just have different wavelengths, but they’re all the same waves. So normally, if an angel were standing next to a demon, neither of them would realize it. They would have to interfere with the wavelength in between heaven and hell, or Earth.” “Tsuchimikado,” objected Kanzaki, astonished. It seemed like she didn’t appreciate the analogy to infrared and ultraviolet rays. “On the other hand, if you shoot infrared rays into an object, it’ll heat up, and if you shoot high-frequency waves at glass, it’ll smash all over the place, right? To put it really roughly, divine punishment and miracles and stuff correspond to that, nya. Heaven may not seem to the untrained eye to have any point of contact with Earth, but depending on the time and place, it can still have effects on Earth. Even the opposite is possible.” Kamijou still didn’t understand anything. Tsuchimikado continued further. “And so, Kammy, in religions that worship an idol like Buddhism or Crossism, the power of God or angels is actually pretty close at hand, ya know.” “…” He gave a disbelieving grunt. “I’m not lying, ’kay? Like you know how there’s never not a cross on top of churches? Crosses have special power. But if you ask if one is the cross of Golgotha used for the saint’s execution, the answer would be ‘Absolutely not!’” Tsuchimikado waved his hands dismissively. “The ones on churches are obviously fakes. Fakes can have power, too, though. As long as its form and function are similar, it can contain a certain percentage of the real thing’s power. It’s a fundamental idea of religious worship. “To put it simply, it’s like how iron sword plus light magic gives you a magic sword of light,” he added. “The rules of religious worship apply to angels, too, nya. If you use some tricks, you can stuff angelic power, or Telesma, into various objects. For example, if you engrave the carving of an angel into a sword’s hilt, the blade will have its power, and if you inscribe the name of an angel into a protective magic circle, you can borrow the angel’s strength. Stuff like that…Although borrowed power can only be a certain percentage. A natural, pure one hundred percent angel falling is unheard of aside from in the Old Testament, nya.” “If you do not assume that angels exist from the outset, we can’t go on.” “…I know, but still…” Kamijou, though forever ignorant of it all, hesitated to reject it outright. After all, they were professionals. They weren’t joking or fooling around—they were speaking seriously. It was all the more serious for Kamijou, who had only listened to half of Stiyl’s explanations back when they fought the alchemist and had ended up having a damn difficult time. “Um, just a question. All of this…It’s not just some kind of wake-up prank, is it?” “I’m not sure what you mean by that question. Anyway.” Kanzaki gave a cough. “Because an angel has been forcibly moved from a higher sefira to a lower one via Angel Fall, because of the fluctuations it has caused, the four worlds creating the form of the ten sefira—specifically, Olam Atzilut (the shaping world), Olam Beriah (the creating world), Olam Yetzira (the formative world), and Olam Asiyah (the physical world)—are being affected.” “…Mr. Tsuchimikado, what on earth is this person saying?” “Hmm, how would you put it simply, nya? Like you said, everyone’s insides and outsides got swapped out. It’s essentially a game of musical chairs. At the start of the game, all the chairs and people who need to sit are scattered around, right? But there isn’t a chair for every single participant in the game. The one who gets bounced out would end up in heaven, sitting on the angel’s chair.” Substitution. Like the shore over there and what he saw on TV. Kamijou scooped out only that part, and Tsuchimikado grinned in a carefree way. “But really, the logic isn’t that important. Anyway, you just gotta know that something strange is happening, and we need to stop it.” “…Stop it? You can do that?” “You got it. Seems Angel Fall is still incomplete. If we’re gonna stop it, it’s gotta be now. Even with your right hand, Kammy, you obviously can’t take the ashes of people roasted with magic and return them to normal. It’s the same thing. If it’s completed, it’ll probably be too late.” “…” Kammy’s right hand. It’s not like it really mattered, but how did Tsuchimikado know about the Imagine Breaker? Seeing his mystified expression, Tsuchimikado explained, surprised, “Hey, man, we went over this already. The Index Struggle, the Misawa Cram School Takedown, the Level Six Experiment Prevention. That’s all stuff that was easily leaked. Actually, I was the one who collected information on the Index and Misawa ones, ya hear?” He brought the conversation back to its main course as naturally as he had said such outrageous things. “And the exact technique is unknown, but Angel Fall is a global-scale sorcery. It’s too much load for a single sorcerer to handle, so they’ve probably set up a ritual site that’s using a barrier or a magic circle or something,” he explained, amused. “Therefore, there are two options for stopping Angel Fall. One is to take down the caster. The other is to wreck the ritual site. We do have a time limit at the moment, but we don’t know when it’ll run out, so it’s quite the heart-pounding situation we’re in!” In the end, Kamijou didn’t really understand any of this, but the important thing was that someone made everyone’s insides get swapped out…right? At this point he might have just thrown it out as unrealistic, but unfortunately, Kamijou was a resident of a city with 2.3 million espers. On top of that, he already had connections with these sorcerer people. He had learned that there are problems one can’t just discard as “impossible” or “freaking stupid.” So he did his own thing and gave a long groan. The reason everyone was acting so strangely was apparently because of that substitution. He thought back to this morning. Ever since he’d woken up he’d had a terrible time. I mean, that Mikoto Misaka was calling herself my little sister and… “—Hey, wait a minute. That’s weird. She was saying she was my little sister. But I don’t have a little sister in the first place.” Even if this absurd “substitution panic” situation were real (which was extremely doubtful in itself), he never had a sister to begin with, so Mikoto substituting in for one would be strange. But then Kanzaki replied nonchalantly, “Who knows? However, since she is in actuality substituted, there would have needed to be a seat for her to begin with. Couldn’t it be that you have a little sister somewhere in the world and didn’t know about it?” “Eh?! What kind of place is this to unearth some kind of family tree mystery?!” Kamijou was in shock at this. However, the fact that he said something like that in such a carefree way could be viewed as evidence that he didn’t really believe it in the first place. “But, man, what could our enemy be thinking, pulling some crazy stunt like this, nya?” “There are two main groups we can separate predicted reasons into. One is to capture an angel fallen to the rank of human and place a collar on it to use as a familiar. Or perhaps they plan to usurp the now-empty heavenly rank.” “Either way, if it succeeds, the Kabbalah world will be in an uproar. Stella Matutina would go mad.” “Angelic power…With it, one would have enough power to destroy the Vatican alone, depending on how they used it. I certainly cannot think they carried this out to show off or on a whim. They may have some kind of overzealous plans.” “Umm…” Kamijou, left behind, timidly tried to ask a question. “I’d like to get back to the topic. So, what will happen to me now? What did you want from me? You came all this way, after all.” “Ah, right, that, nya,” answered Tsuchimikado in a tone that suggested it wasn’t important at all. “Like we mentioned before, when we investigated this event, we found that in every way, the ‘distortions’ had their epicenter right on you, Kammy. It’s spreading out from you, nya. But despite that, for some reason, you stand at the center, alone and unharmed.” “…Yes?” Kamijou’s pupils became tiny dots. “So obviously we’d suspect you, Kammy! I mean, look at computer hackers spreading viruses throughout the world. Their own computer would be the one thing they wouldn’t infect with it.” “Yes? Hey, wait a minute. You say that, but you two haven’t changed at all, either!” “In all fairness, Kanzaki and I got lucky. I told you that Angel Fall is centered on you and is emanating out. However, Zaky and I were both in London at the time the magic was activated, nyaa~.” “…So what. Europeans are fine?” “Not at all. Angel Fall isn’t that nice. We were attending Windsor Castle. It’s got a fortress-level barrier about as strong as that white Walking Church or higher than that. Other than us, it looks like people in Westminster Abbey and the Southwark Cathedral made it out better than we did.” He grinned. “Well, it’s the distance and the barrier. With both of them, we avoided the beginning difficulties. Most sorcerers were engulfed by Angel Fall. Only a very select handful even realizes something has happened.” “Huh. I don’t really get it, but in other words, I guess it was a blessing in disguise.” “Well, maybe not. Sis here aside, I wasn’t in the deepest levels. As the outer wall of the castle was holding off Angel Fall for around three hundred seconds, I somehow got up a barrier.” “…? Huh? But I thought you couldn’t use magic.” Kamijou still didn’t really have a realistic grasp on this whole magic thing. However, the very moment the student espers in Misawa School being manipulated by the alchemist used magic, it would cause their bodies to explode like a strong allergic reaction. Espers cannot use magic. Then, as if reading Kamijou’s intentions, Tsuchimikado pulled up the ends of his mouth and told him… “Yeah, well, I’m pretty wrecked in places you can’t see, you know? If I use magic one more time, I’ll die for sure!” The wind teased the front of Tsuchimikado’s Hawaiian shirt. Within its fluttering, expanding shape, there were dark blue bruises covering his left side caused by internal bleeding. It looked as if some unknown thing were corroding his body. “Well, I did all of that, but I still couldn’t avoid Angel Fall entirely!” Still, he laughed. “We’re all exceptions here. When others see me, I do look substituted. Incidentally, people think I’m the idol Hajime Hitotsui. Apparently a magazine disclosed him making a move on some famous actress, so I’m in the middle of quite a pleasant vicarious life experience. Whenever my eyes meet with a passionate dreaming lady idol fan, I get chased all over the place with a metal baseball bat. “Check it out, I’m in disguise,” he added, indicating his sunglasses with a finger. “So, in other words…” Kamijou looked at him once again. “When substituted people look at you, they see the face of a super-sexy idol?” “Yep, that’s about it, nya~,” he replied, boundlessly jovial. “The hell?! I’m going through all this trouble, but what, are you just enjoying the popularity?!” “Kuh. This is a pretty harsh life, you know, nya~. We’ve gotta settle things with Angel Fall as soon as we can, but if a mountain of people cluster around me, I don’t stand a chance, nya~.” “…I guess you have some professionalism,” Kamijou muttered, looking back at Kanzaki. “Umm, so let me get this straight. This lady here looks like someone else when a substituted person sees her, too?” “…” Kanzaki, who had been silent until now, gave a slight twitch of her shoulders. What? Did I accidentally hit a nerve that I shouldn’t have touched? he thought uneasily. “gnus.” “Huh?” Kamijou’s eyes became pinpoints, and Kanzaki explained in a resolved monotone: “I appear as the sorcerer Stiyl Magnus. Yes, apparently when people see me, they see a two-meter-tall, long red-haired man. So I get the police called on me whenever I so much as step inside a bathroom or changing room; I get mislabeled as a molester every time a train so much as wobbles; yes, it was extremely surprising; at first it looked like the entire world was trying to pick a fight with me, so I didn’t have any idea what to do.” Human emotions can be better understood through the presence or absence of facial expressions and the strength or weakness of their tone of voice. Then what is this?! wondered Kamijou. He never thought a flat voice and an impassive face could be this scary. It was clear to him. This lady was, for some reason, absolutely livid. Maintaining her cool, puppetlike expression, Kanzaki shot her hands up to grab Kamijou’s shoulders. “By the way, you really aren’t doing anything, right? You really haven’t done anything, right? Just confess honestly; I won’t be mad. Handing an angel over to a sorcerer is unprecedented. Do you understand the extent of the danger implied by that? I am done with this. I would like to resolve this right now. I am telling you that it is difficult to endure being called a ‘giant Englishman walking with an oddly girlish gait’ by people passing by.” “Ughghgh! D-do-do-do-do-do-do-don’t shake me around like that!” Kanzaki didn’t move so much as an eyebrow as she used an inhuman strength to jerk him back and forth pretty hard. His sense of self-preservation politely informed him that this could be all it took to snap his neck. “Anyway, Kammy, you’re here in the middle of the distortion. You’re pretty much the criminal in the minds of the sorcerers throughout the world who escaped hardship. They want you dead or, well, dead. You catch my drift?” “Quit acting so carefree and get this shaking demon offa me” he shouted, rapidly growing sick to his stomach. “Uugh…! W-wait, Angel Fall is sorcery, right?! Then how could an esper like me be using it?!” Kanzaki’s hands stopped abruptly. She stared into his eyes for a moment, frozen. Then her face gradually turned into a worried scowl, like ice melting inside a glass. “Then we are up a river without a paddle. We do not know what the criminal is trying to use the angel for, and yet we must check Angel Fall’s progress as soon as possible. Must I go on living the rest of my life as a ‘giant Englishman fluent in Japanese except he talks like a girl…’?” Urk. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but nonetheless, Kamijou couldn’t help but feel a guilt-like sentiment for some reason. What could this be? This sensation, where I feel like I’m seeing the weak, unexpected tears of the usually perfect-acting girl next door? Something’s telling me she’s different from a full-on caretaking girl like Index. “Now, now. This only means we have to start over from square one,” soothed Tsuchimikado in a catlike voice, perhaps harboring the same kind of feelings. “…Now that I think of it—” noted Kanzaki, looking at him, “—Tsuchimikado, you used magic even though you are an esper, right? Then…” Her voice, despite its quietness, froze his spine. Kamijou replied in a panic, “Wait, wait, wait just a minute! I don’t even know the M in magic” “Yes. However, you have Index by your side, do you not?” “Oh, that’s right,” Tsuchimikado responded in an easygoing way, with a bit of admiration thrown in. He sent a stabbing glare at Kamijou. Then, with a somehow insincere smile, he followed up. “But Zaky, when an esper uses magic, somewhere on their body must overload. Internal bleeding if it’s minor and visible destruction of the body’s makeup if it’s major—it was written in the Misawa battle report, too. See? Kammy seems totally healthy, doesn’t he, nya~?” “Hmm. Then I will check and make sure.” No sooner had she said that than she casually reached her hands out and lightly touched Kamijou’s sides. “Eehihaah! Wh-what are you doing?!” “Why did you jump? I am only confirming the presence of internal bleeding via palpation. However, you did respond in an overly nervous manner. As I thought. Is there not some wound within your body I just cannot see?” “A high school kid would jump at that by default! That’s how we’re built, so don’t touch me!” “Suspicious indeed. Are you afraid of being examined? If you are innocent, then you should not care about any kind of questioning, correct?” Kamijou looked back over at the seashore. He would definitely not want Index and the others seeing him be tickled to death by an older lady. He’d never be able to get off the ground again if such a thing were witnessed. “…(If he refuses, it’ll imply he’s the criminal right there, eh? I suppose I should have expected it from one of Necessarius’s Inquisitors, nya~.)” Tsuchimikado, who had knowledge of the inner workings of the occult world, was impressed, but Kamijou of course had no inkling of those house rules. “Guh…kuh…fine, okay? In exchange, if you don’t find any wounds or internal bleeding, you’ll let me off the hook for real this time—Hey, owaoah! D-don’t touch me so weirdly!” “? Just hold still.” Kanzaki’s long, slender fingers ran slowly across his chest and armpits. Despite her icy impression, her touch was gentle and warm. Perhaps it was because some sort of emergency sweat breaking out on his body was wetting her fingertips—he was attacked by an extremely unfamiliar sensation, like a small tongue was licking his body. Hey, wa…! Bad, whoaa! At this rate…at this rate, my summer will awaken some kind of perverted hobbies within me! “…” Then, after Kanzaki’s hands had examined him all over, they suddenly stopped. Her gaze turned down. She silently focused on Touma Kamijou’s swim trunks. Umm. Well, various places on the healthy high school student Touma Kamijou’s body were unconsciously reacting to Kaori Kanzaki’s completely unreserved physical exam, you see. And, you see, the epicenter of these reactions was, of course, inside his bathing suit. “W-wait a minute, Kanzaki! It was inevitable! This was an inevitable accident! An accident! I’m sorry, I really do apologize, so please spare me the katana!” shouted the startled Kamijou frantically. However, it seemed Kanzaki was thinking about something else. For a few seconds, her hands stayed still as a statue, and finally she said one thing. “…You are right. If I am going to do this, I should do so aggressively. I must examine inside here as well.” “The fu— Who the hell would let you do that?! Ah, but if I tell her not to do it, then I’ll be treated as a criminal! But no shit, I don’t want her to do it! Can’t a healthy young man get in one word of objection here?!” “Hmm.” Kanzaki raised her eyes from his trunks. “I see. I was somewhat impertinent as well. It would be obvious that you would feel pain when examined that far by someone of the opposite sex.” “Y-yeah, that’s right! Yeah, see? When we talk things out calmly, we can come to an understanding!” “Therefore, I will leave this in Tsuchimikado’s hands, as he is of the same sex.” “Wha! By Tsuchimikado? Touching me like you did Inside my bathing suit? N-no way! That’s even worse than before” “I see. Then, I will carry it out after all.” “Well, no. This isn’t one of those things where A is bad so B is okay. I mean, aren’t there any choices besides A and B?! Uh, excuse me, Kanzaki? What are those thin rubber surgical gloves for—Hey, wait! Wait, ah?!” Option C. He brandished the toy shovel in the air and shouted in rage that he would kill them. The angered, half-crying Kamijou distanced himself from his suspicious neighbor and the katana lady. Holding down and protecting his swim trunks for dear life, he looked at Tsuchimikado and Kanzaki like a wounded animal. There stood a pair of sorcerers who had gotten a little uncomfortable to be around. “S-see, it’s like I said after all, isn’t it, nya~? Kammy didn’t get substituted because he’s the criminal, it’s just because his Imagine Breaker canceled out the effects of Angel Fall.” “Hmm. That is problematic. This means we really are up the river without any paddles. If Angel Fall is completed, there is a possibility for a calamity of mythical proportions to befall us…If only we had some clues.” “Oh, but we do. At the very least, Angel Fall is happening around Kammy, you know? There’s a high probability the criminal is someone close to him, nya~.” “Even still, it is not a requirement that the criminal come into contact with Touma Kamijou.” “What a conundrum, eh? There’s always the bit about if I use magic one more time, my coronary artery will rupture and I’ll die. Oh, that’s right! What about putting Kammy to work in my place?” “What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous. You would make residents construct a house for lack of carpenters?” “Huh, but still. We can protect Kammy from the criminal, and we can have Kammy come with us when we go to destroy the ritual site where the magic circle is. I think it’s a wonderful give-and-take deal, you know, nya~? What do you think of that, Kammy?” No response. Kamijou just continued to draw in the sand, with his index finger, the words I’LL SUE YOU. 2 At eight PM, the summer night finally arrived. The members of the Kamijou family—well, all the weirdo substituted members, anyway—were all sitting around a circular table on the first floor of the beach house. Among these weirdo members was Kaori Kanzaki, here as Kamijou’s friend, quite naturally taking her seat at the table. Though, of course, she apparently looked to others like an “unkempt, red-haired Englishman punk friend.” He didn’t know whether they should be leaving Angel Fall aside when they weren’t even sure when it would be completed, but as long as all the commotion was centered on him, Kanzaki seemed to want to be his personal bodyguard, too. Parenthetically, Tsuchimikado wasn’t here. Maybe he was out playing with the wharf roaches behind the tetrapods or something—he did appear to the world as a problematic male idol, after all. It didn’t seem to be his forte as a professional spy to let a mountain of people besiege him and make it difficult to move. One way or another, there was a bunch of real characters at the table (on the surface, anyway). He wanted to get dinner over with quickly, but for some reason the shopkeeper was nowhere in sight. Melancholy news stories were being read off in Miss Komoe’s voice, like a death-row prisoner named Jinsaku Hino or something having broken out and yet to be found. They were the only things on TV, so that wouldn’t make for good conversation, either. Without a particular topic to broach one way or another, Touya addressed Kanzaki. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Touma’s father. To think we live in an age where Touma can be friends with foreigners—internationalization definitely at work! Oh, as a symbol of our acquaintanceship, here, have this Egyptian protective souvenir. It’s a scarab. They said something about never losing your way with it, even in a desert!” Touya brought out a container about the size of a saltshaker, and Kamijou looked at it aghast and shouted. There was some kind of clattering, dry bug inside it. “Wait, that’s a dung beetle in there, isn’t it?! Don’t take stuff like that out at the dinner table, stupid” “No, not at all.” Kanzaki, however, replied coolly. “In Egypt, scarabs are depicted as a ‘spiral image’—a symbol of samsara. I have heard that it is a favored souvenir from the country, along with the Eye of Horus and ankhs.” “? O-oh, by the way, Touma. Though I don’t understand the specifics one bit, you still shouldn’t reject other cultures just out of your own prejudices.” “Wha…? Why only me?! Am I the only one who thinks taking out a dried-up dung beetle corpse at the dinner table isn’t okay?!” Kamijou slumped down in shock. Mikoto, next to him, pulled on his clothes a couple of times. “…No, you’re right! I’d be scared if someone used something like that as a cell phone charm. It would clatter around when you have your phone on silent!” “I would like to thank you for your decent comment, but that flattering voice you keep giving me is forever a pain in the ass.” “What?!” retorted Mikoto with indignation. Kamijou smoothly ignored her. Then, he suddenly thought of something. There was no little sister in his family. Who did that Mikoto look like to everyone else? He moved his seat over to Index, playing the part of his mother, and whispered… “(Hey, can I ask you something? This has been bothering me. Who the heck is this little sister character?)” “Oh my, my. Is the little sister character a little too straightforward for you, Touma?” Kamijou gave her a light smack on the head, considering his mother’s bugged-out thought processes ought to be fixed. It was the sort of smack you might give a broken TV. “My, that one was a bit lacking in compassion. She’s your little cousin, Otohime.” “(…Cous—?)” “My, oh my, Touma, have you forgotten? Did you forget about your aunt and uncle Tatsugami, too? You haven’t seen them since coming to Academy City right after you graduated from kindergarten, but still, my, my. You used to sleep on the same futon as Otohime, too.” “B-but she wasn’t here yesterday.” “She came late and got here this morning, remember?” Meanwhile, heavy footsteps came thudding through the house and the shopkeeper arrived through the entrance facing the sea. “Hey, sorry for leavin’ the shop open like that. The cable broadcast on the beach broke, and fixing it ate up a lot of time.” Kanzaki, the closest to him, turned around at the voice and said, “Do not worry about it. It’s likely in place for tsunami information and disaster relief. People’s lives depend on it, so it should be prioriti—Wait, Stiyl? Wha…? That’s impossible!” “Stiyl? That some kind’ve new lingo?” The large man with the long red hair looked confused. “Havin’ dinner, I see. The menu ain’t much, but we can have it ready for you at light speed, so let us off the hook, eh?” “I mean, er…(Gah, how careless of me. Stiyl had been here in Japan hunting for some time.)” It seemed that Stiyl was completely and totally under the effects of Angel Fall. It was more than likely that most sorcerers were in the same situation and that those like Tsuchimikado and Kanzaki who had noticed something was wrong were in the minority. Kanzaki grumbled something to herself, but nobody noticed. Everyone went on deciding what they’d get from the menu, which contained only ramen, yakisoba, and curry. The footsteps thudded away again into the back after the giant shopkeeper took orders, and Index put her hand on her cheek and looked at Kanzaki. “My, oh my. You sure are skilled at Japanese. I’m beside myself in admiration!” “Eh?” Kanzaki’s shoulders twitched for a moment. “Oh no. Yes. Please, don’t worry yourself over it.” While Kanzaki was someone from English Puritanism like Index, a certain incident had caused them to break off relations, so she wasn’t sure how to deal with her addressing her so suddenly. However, nobody knew about her circumstances (including Kamijou, who had lost his memories). “My, oh my. And your demeanor is so polite, too. You have such a large and firm build, so I must admit I had a different impression of you at first.” Twitch. Kanzaki’s shoulders moved slightly. She was taller than the average Japanese person. Nobody around noticed, though. This time, Mikoto said something. “But you’ve got the nuance a little wrong in your word choice, though. I mean, those are words girls use! You have such a sturdy body, so you’ve gotta fix your talking to sound more manly. You’re acting just a little girlie, you know?” Twitch-twitch. Kanzaki’s cheek muscles pulled back slightly. She was more sturdily built than an average girl. Oops, that’s bad, thought Kamijou, catching on to something. Before he could do anything, Touya continued. “Hey, now, give it a rest, you two. In language, all that matters is that the proper meanings come across. He probably just speaks this way because a Japanese woman taught him. His looks are one thing, but they’re not important.” Twitch-twitch! Various places on Kanzaki’s body were trembling. Kamijou frantically covered for her using body language. “(Miss Kanzaki! Miss Kanzaki! That’s not it! Everyone sees you as Stiyl Magnus, that’s all! So they’re not saying your body is large, or that you have a good build, or that you’re a guy no matter how you look at it, or anything)” That moment, Kanzaki wobbled up to her feet. She grabbed Kamijou’s collar, who didn’t realize he was saying the worst thing of all. “… (Oh. I get it. So that is your opinion. I see.)” As she whispered in his ear, she dragged him across the floor and away from the round table. “(Hey, wait…Where are we going?! Are you going to strangle me? Wait, that way is the bath…Wait! I’ve heard stories about an old form of torture in U.S. prisons where they give you a steady cold-water shower and take away your body temperature; is that what this is?!)” No response. She dragged Kamijou on like a body bag. 3 When he asked where they were going, her answer was the back of the shop. It didn’t seem like Kanzaki had a destination in mind as she dragged Kamijou there, complaining and objecting to him the whole time. After getting to a place away from the eyes of others for the moment, Kanzaki suddenly seemed to discover the frosted glass sliding door nearby. “Now that I think of it, this beach house has a bathroom, doesn’t it? I find it hard to admit, but with all the trouble that has been going on, I haven’t been able to take an actual shower.” Yes, the beach house had a bathroom. It was for the same purpose as the simple showers built on the beach—to wash the saltwater off one’s skin. Kamijou slightly turned back to where they came from. “But a bath…You’re pretty laid-back about this. What about Angel Fall? I thought you said there wouldn’t be any going back if that thing gets finished.” “Yes, well…” She hesitated at something there. “…I understand that personal feelings don’t enter into this situation, but I can’t do it. I simply cannot get used to that girl smiling at me. I haven’t the right.” Said she, as if reflecting on something. Said she, averting her eyes from something. “…” He fell silent. Back when they had invaded the alchemist’s fortress, Misawa Cram School, Stiyl, too, had made that kind of face when speaking about Index. It was probably a deep wound, and one he shouldn’t dig up. Kamijou decided to therefore not say any more. “Hmm. So why did you drag me to the baths? Is this a strategy meeting for what to do from here on out?” “…” She lightly shook her head. “No, the favor I’d like to ask of you is, frankly, to keep a lookout. That bath is for communal use, like hot springs and bathhouses are, right?” “Mm.” He stopped again. In such a small beach house, there was no distinction between a men’s bath and a women’s bath—there was only one bathroom. Kanzaki looked to everyone else like Stiyl Magnus. Therefore, even if someone were to know from a silhouette that she was on the other side of the frosted glass, they’d think, Oh, a guy is in there, and there was a possibility that other guys wouldn’t hesitate to barge on in. Yes—for example, the guy running the beach house. “…I am sure you did not just think it seemed fun, correct?” “Don’t be absurd! Not a hair on my head is planning to make any jokes to a Japanese katana when my life is on the line, ma’am!” After giving him a slightly dubious glance, she left him with a “Then I’ll leave it to you,” and entered the changing room beyond the frosted glass. Even through it, one could see a silhouette. The half-baked silhouette was actually more vivid than the real thing would have been. Whoa, whoa, thought Kamijou, turning his head around. He rested his back against the frosted glass door and sighed. “Heya, Kammy. Whatcha doin’ here?” Suddenly Tsuchimikado came walking right down the hallway. He didn’t seem to want to take off his blue sunglasses, whether he was inside or it was night out, to keep his disguise. “Wait, don’t people see you as an asshole idol in a lot of trouble?” “What? As long as I’m not found out, I’m fine. I mean, that’s good ol’ Tsuchimikado’s fundamental motto,” he answered, the same as always. Kamijou saw everything about him the same as always. “…Sorry, Kammy.” “About what?” he asked. Tsuchimikado showed him a slightly lonely grin. “I’ve actually known that you’ve been in a lot of trouble until now, like with the alchemist’s stronghold or with the twenty thousand doll-murdering experiment. All sorts of stuff. I knew about it and let you alone, without helping. So I’m saying sorry, nya~.” “…” “I guess there’s a huge difference between not being able to do anything because you have no power and not doing anything even though you have power. I may look like this, but I’m actually pretty sorry for a bunch of stuff.” “Hey, it’s whatever.” Tsuchimikado looked somehow tired, but Kamijou replied in exactly the way he always would. Tsuchimikado looked a little bit surprised, but Kamijou didn’t say anything else. He didn’t think there was a need to get all panicked and explain something to try and keep up appearances. However “far” Tsuchimikado went, he was still Tsuchimikado, and that wouldn’t change. In the end, to Kamijou, he was still the same dorm neighbor and classmate as always. “I see.” He grinned. “Well, then let’s quit it with this gloomy appetizer, nya~. Let’s get to the main course.” “Main course?” “Ta-daa! It’s the summertime, heart-pounding Kanzaki clothes-changing peeking event!” “Wh…? Are you insane?!” “…Look here, Kammy. Lately cell phones have been shipping with cameras in ’em.” “Listen to me! Wait, that’s terrible! That Bakumatsu swordsman romanticist absolutely hates jokes! If you get caught, she’ll definitely cut you in half with some kind of secret technique passed down from her master or something!” “…How paradoxical. So you’d peek on her if there was no risk, nya~?” “…” “…Kanzaki’s probably pretty amazing naked, you know.” Ama—?! Kamijou caught his breath but shook his head hurriedly. “B-but…we can’t! Besides, you’re Kanzaki’s comrade, aren’t you? You can’t betray her like that!” he cried desperately. However, Tsuchimikado’s blue sunglasses lit up. “Hah, what is this man saying? When the Church of English Puritanism talks about the Necessarius’s infiltration expert, when they refer to the ‘backstabbing blade’ or the ‘villager from the village of liars,’ they’re talking about me, Tsuchimikado!” “Whoa! Remind me not to cross any dangerous-looking bridges with you!” While Kamijou stubbornly maintained his stance of denial, Tsuchimikado said in a bored tone: “Pfft, you’re so boring. Well, you did almost get killed by her one time, so I guess there’s no helping you being a scaredy-cat. Zaky isn’t a scary girl, you know. She’s actually pretty cute.” “C-cu…?” “Yeppers. As you know, I came to Academy City after entering middle school. So before that, I was in London, nya~. At the time, I was one of only a few who could speak both English and Japanese, see? Then Zaky, a Japanese native, arrives at the Church. So whenever an English person would start rattling on about something or other, she’d have to resort to all this crazy body language, and man!” Tsuchimikado hit the wall lightly. “Back then I was the only Japanese person in Necessarius. When Zaky would come to me all worried, looking for help, with an English textbook in her hands, wow, did she score high with me.” “…I can’t believe it. I can’t believe there would be a situation where someone’d rely on you.” “Stop worryin’ about it already, and let’s get to the peeking.Let’s go get that cute lady!” “I told you, don’t use your cell-phone camera!” “Kammy, you should be more honest with yourself, you know?” “Why are you totally willing to do this?! Besides, I thought your fielding range was a lot smaller and younger, Sergeant Sister-Complex!” “You take that back! Do not call me by that name! Besides, what grounds do you have for saying that?!” “Well, loving a real stepsister like that isn’t normal, stupid!” “Bghah! I’m not in love (please note the difference) with her; who said anything like that, nya~?!” “I mean, it’s not like you can do anything just because it’s legal, right?” “Do?! D-d-d-d-d-d-d-do, do what? Do what?!” “What was that? Why are you so agitated? Hold on a second. Tsuchimikado, I was just joking, but could you be for real…?!” “Stop it, don’t pry any further, one more word out of you and I’ll kill you and put you on display” Tsuchimikado was forcefully pulling on Kamijou’s collar to get him to be quiet, but the moment they heard a new step-step in the planked hallway, Tsuchimikado darted from shadow to shadow like a ninja and disappeared somewhere. Ah, I guess if someone were to see that situation, they’d have perfect pictures for an article about a performer grabbing a boy’s collar, huh? As he thought about it in a relatively calm way, he turned around to where the footfalls emanated. “Hey, ’sup, big brother! Whatcha doin’ here?” It was Index and Mikoto. Or should he switch that to “my mother and cousin walked toward me”? “Huh? Wait, are you already done with dinner?” “My, oh my. Not at all, Touma. It seems that it’ll be a little bit until things are cooked, so we just thought we’d come take a bath in the meantime.” Then, Mikoto turned her eyes to the frosted glass door and said, “…Big brother, is there somebody in there?” “Ah, well, yeah. I’m here on lookout duty.” “Lookout? I don’t get it. You don’t need something like that. It’s probably just your friend in there anyway. So you should go in there with him.” “Eh?” Kamijou was without a clue what to say back. It easily took five full seconds for the meaning of those words to fully sink into his mind. Oh, that’s right, Kaori Kanzaki looks like Stiyl Magnus to other people. “W-wait, hold on! I didn’t say anyone was in the bath! In addition, there is no rule stating that I must take a bath with my friends! It’ll be okay if I just wait for him to get out—” “Ehh? If we start waiting for every single person, dinner will be ready in the meantime. You’re both boys, so get in there!” “Nabhah?! Hey, wait! Wait, seriously, wai AAAAHH” “Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry!” They unhesitatingly threw open the sliding door and mercilessly threw Touma Kamijou into the changing room. There, before his eyes, Kanzaki was standing there in such a way unbefitting of description in prose. Had she been the type to take long baths, this tragedy likely wouldn’t have happened with this timing. There was a second door barring the way to the bathroom on the other side of the changing room, after all. But it seemed that Kanzaki had just gotten out of the bath. There was nothing in particular on her body; her hands were, anyway, around the back of her head to tie her wet hair. As she stood there with her ponytail string in her mouth, it seemed like time had stopped for her. Directly behind Kamijou, the sliding door slammed shut. “…” “…” A silent, heavy pressure fell over the secret room. If she broke out in tears or flew into a rage, Kamijou would have also been able to offer several different reactions, but there was not a shard of an expression on her face at all, nor was she concealing anything. All she did was reach her hand, swaying, toward the long black sheath standing up against the wall. Her eyes, however, spoke volumes. Her eyes, sparkling black like obsidian, were speaking for her. They asked him: Do you have any last words? “Ne—” Kamijou figured an apology or excuse would doubtlessly send him to the grave. His mind now in a state of extreme chaos, he cried without thinking: “New, sensational katana-thrusting action?!” Directly after came a single, unremitting glint from the black sheath. 4 Ten o’clock PM. Kanzaki was standing on the beach house’s second-floor balcony. Despite it being the middle of summer, it was a fairly chilly night, perhaps because the sandy beach has difficulty retaining heat during the nighttime, like in a desert. Then Tsuchimikado arrived, having wriggled his way up one of the balcony’s support pillars. Because everyone around him would see an oft-talked-about performer, he couldn’t adopt a normal route to get there. He looked at the quiet Kanzaki, her hair being whipped by the night wind, and asked, “What’s wrong, nya~? Your face is all red. Still bothered by it, nya~?” “…It would be strange if I wasn’t.” “Ack. Smokin’ hot body and happy you got seen—that was a joke, okay? Zaky, you seem pretty quick to anger despite all the responsibilities that come with wearing a sword at your side, you know?” Kanzaki replied with a dismissive “I understand that” and, heaving just one sigh, continued, “However, well…It certainly seems he hasn’t much to do with Angel Fall. How do I put it? He doesn’t have the proper personality to be a sorcerer.” “And he doesn’t have a motive for putting this in motion, either, nya~. Ditto for everyone around Kammy, too, though, eh? Even if one of them was able to capture an angel alive, I can’t see them knowing how to use it.” They weren’t looking down their noses at them or anything. It was a simple matter of differing classifications. An angel, possessing vast power indeed (supposedly, anyway), would be as pearls before swine if the holder were to harness one without knowing anything about sorcery. It’s very much like saying Japanese appliances are excellent, but they can’t be used overseas because the outlets are different. The outlets certainly aren’t a determining factor in which of them was “superior.” Unfortunately, when it came right down to it, they had no other potential suspects. They didn’t know what steps should be taken next. Their indecisive line of thought was at a standstill, and the topic slid to something else before they knew it. “At any rate, I wonder if it is really all right to leave Touma Kamijou at her side. In a day—no, in just half a day—we’ve already had that unexpected situation. In this age not even an eight-year-old would laugh at charging into the women’s bath. There might be a situation occurring between the two of them that is also unexpected, maybe even more so…” “Hmm. I think Kammy is doing his best, though. I mean, he’s not the type to go charging in on someone sleeping.” Tsuchimikado folded his arms. “For certain, he’s no professional. You understand? He’s not a professional. He has a reason to fight, like we do, and he doesn’t try and falsify the sin of killing an enemy. He doesn’t place his own blame on anybody else. He accepts it, and still he advances toward you. Can’t you see the value in that, nya~?” “…Well, that is…” “In the first place, Kammy is the one who saved the archive’s life. You’re getting furious at him, to say nothing of the fact you haven’t thanked him. Seems to me like you’re barking up the wrong tree.” “I understand that much, at least. I do.” Yes—it was Touma Kamijou who once saved Index’s life as she was on the verge of death. It was not Kaori Kanzaki, nor was it Stiyl Magnus—it was Touma Kamijou. By all rights, it was an act worthy of gratitude. No, simple words of thanks would be too petty. The logical thing to do would be to repay the debt with an equal act by her own action. Even cranes and turtles can repay their obligations, after all. “…However, well. The timing is just so poor.” Admittedly, although it had been difficult because of her job and position, she hadn’t been able to properly thank him ever since the Index incident had been resolved. It was enough for Kanzaki to feel a sense of indebtedness. “And despite that, right as I was about to…My word, I can’t even bring up the suggestion of having to repay the debt—” “What? Kanzaki, you’d forget your debts just because he saw you naked, nya~?” Kanzaki grunted and fell silent. “Wait, what? Kanzaki, is that all the debt you carry counts for, nya~?” Kanzaki groaned and looked at Tsuchimikado, biting down on her teeth. At around that time, Touma Kamijou was alone on the first floor of the beach house Wadatsumi, getting some thinking done. The lights were on, but no one was here anymore. From what he could hear of the girlish laughter coming from upstairs, Index and the others might be playing cards or something up there. The nightly news was streaming by on the TV, which was still on. Nightly news is basically just a rerun of daytime news with some needlessly detailed sentences thrown in to pad it out. “The inmate who broke out of Shinfuchuu prison, Jinsaku Hino, has still not been located. Hino has spawned many enthusiasts and copycats because of his unique, ritualistic killing style, and the police have reported that it is possible they were involved in the breakout as well…” Kamijou stared lazily at Miss Komoe, reading off the script on the other side of the CRT screen. “…In addition, there are records of Jinsaku Hino’s stay at a mental hospital, and even during the last hearing, they judged him to have multiple personality disorder. The question of whether or not he should be held accountable created much uproar, but…” Jinsaku Hino. Without any memories, he didn’t know anything about the time when the murderer was actually active. However, his name tended to get dropped whenever any kind of atrocious incident happened. Talk shows and magazines would still occasionally show a mug shot, too, so he could guess that what the murderer had done had been proportionately shocking. Watching this wasn’t doing much for his mood, so he changed the channel. As he stared at a variety show introducing surprising weight-loss methods hidden in health foods, his mind clung to the news he had just seen. Split personality, huh? Part of my summer makeup lessons was on this, wasn’t it? Something about split personality espers or something. Kamijou thought about it, still watching the television with glazed eyes. Even if the term multiple personality disorder sounds fairly specific, it doesn’t always manifest itself in a situation where personality A and personality B would cleanly swap out. Other patterns of “coexistence” have been reported, such as a different personality controlling each hand, or personality B moving both hands while personality A was busy thinking. —And that was all something he’d learned during the summer classes he’d taken about a week ago. He’d heard that for a while, there was research being performed regarding whether someone with multiple personalities would have multiple abilities. There is a wealth of data regarding things of this nature! went Miss Komoe’s explanation. “…Blech.” He dropped his head to the table, remembering how much he hated his studies. There sure has been a lot that’s happened today, he thought, mentally organizing everything that had happened thus far. A sorcery called Angel Fall had activated. It was apparently a technique through which one could obtain an angel possessing enormous power. As a side effect, everyone in the world had swapped outside appearances. Its effective range was large enough to cover the whole world. Angel Fall was in an incomplete, temporarily active state, and the commotion might still be fixable. However, he was given to think that when Angel Fall completed, there would be no repairing it. In order to stop Angel Fall, they apparently either needed to take down the practitioner or destroy the ritual site. The distortion’s epicenter was apparently Kamijou, and it seemed he was being mistaken for said practitioner. Because of that, the handful of sorcerers who understood Kamijou’s situation might come for his life. Therefore, Kamijou needed to uncover the true criminal before Angel Fall was completed, and either take down the practitioner or disrupt the magic circle at the ritual site. “…Hmm.” Kamijou, still flopped down on the table, considered it alone. It was quite a defenseless act for somebody whose life was under threat. But still, there’s not quite the same sense of tension, huh? Yes—this time, he wasn’t leaping into a building where the killer was hiding, like Misawa Cram School last time. He also wasn’t trying to settle a situation as fast as he could lest twenty thousand people be killed. The problem occurring across the planet was certainly preposterous, but what was with the dumb, comical vibe he was getting from all of it? And besides, there’re two magic pros with me this time. He still strongly saw Tsuchimikado as his neighbor, but the two of them were professionals of their trade (apparently). The fact that he had specialists on his side for some reason caused him to feel an unconditional sense of security. In actuality, he, the amateur, was only shoving responsibility for the problem into the hands of Kanzaki and Tsuchimikado, the experts—he did not realize this, the small, small high school student that he was. The “watchful eyes” stared fixedly at that defenseless boy. Those “watchful eyes” were hidden underneath the floor of the beach house Wadatsumi. In order to prevent sand and moisture from trespassing into the house, there were approximately seventy centimeters of empty space below the floorboards. From between the tiny gaps between each board, the “watchful eyes” watched the boy. “…My Angel, my precious Angel.” The mouth from which those words came belonged to an unhealthily skinny middle-aged man, and yet his voice was as high as a prepubescent boy. “…Oh, my precious Angel. Please hear me.” Scritch-scratch. A faint sound, like a nail clawing at a wooden board. These “watchful eyes” had, in reality, been driven into a corner. Even he didn’t want to be hiding himself in a place like this. His actual plan had been to visit his former associates, but his movements had been restricted because the police had moved more quickly than he had anticipated. “My Angel, please listen, my precious Angel.” However, on the face of those “watchful eyes,” there was none of the unease, none of the terror that should have accompanied somebody on the lam. In his right hand was an oddly shaped knife. In his left was a notebook-size wooden plank, upon which were many cuts. Scritch-scratch. He gazed in jubilation as the knife’s tip flew across the plank. “My precious Angel. How can I hide from the police and arrive safely where my friends are?” Scritch-scratch. The “watchful eyes” followed the fingertips of his right hand, which, as if in response to his voice, were moving of their own accord. All those cuts were engraved letters. It was a message from his Angel. “My precious Angel, again? If I offer a sacrifice, I will be saved again?” Scritch-scratch. The “watchful eyes” always obeyed the carved-out letters. Angel is always correct. If I do as Angel says, I can’t go wrong. Angel sometimes orders me to do things I don’t want to do, though. I killed twenty-eight people because of it. “My precious Angel. Then would that boy make a good sacrifice?” Scritch-scratch. Three letters carved out the word YES. The face of the “watchful eyes” clouded over. Will I kill another? I don’t want to. I don’t, but…I suppose there is no choice, because that’s what my precious Angel told me. It isn’t my fault anyway. “My precious Angel. I will have faith in you this time as well.” So saying, the owner of the “watchful eyes” stuck out his fat, short tongue and slid it across the oddly shaped knife. Then, the “watchful eyes,” which belonged to the escaped death-row prisoner Jinsaku Hino, stabbed the knife into the thick electric cable running under the floorboards. Click-bzt. Suddenly, all the power went out. A blackout? Kamijou thought, frowning in the dark. The entrances to the beach house were wide open, so enough moonlight was shining inside to make it not pitch-black… When the power goes out, perhaps you have a habit of unconsciously turning to look at the silenced appliances. Kamijou casually directed his eyes up to the fluorescent lamp on the ceiling that had abruptly lost its light— —scratch. He heard a sound from underneath the floor, beneath his feet, like something lightly scratching its wooden planks. What’s that? He stood up in spite of himself and immediately looked down at the floorboards underfoot— —craaack! The blade of a crescent-shaped knife pierced up through the floor under his feet. “…” Kamijou’s throat dried up. There was a knife sticking out of the tiny space between his two feet. If his attention had been on the dead lights above for just two more seconds…If he had ignored the noise and stayed sitting down…Just the thought of it caused a gross sweat to break out all over his skin. A knife blade. It was long and thin, the shape of a crescent moon, and about thirty centimeters long. However, the blade itself was not on the outside of the crescent but on the inside. It seemed more like a claw or a sickle rather than a knife. Scritch-scritch. The blade wiggled back and forth a little, then finally, slowly, disappeared back underneath the floor. Kamijou knew he needed to get out of here right away, but he couldn’t move. The back of his head was sizzling like a suspicious drug had been poured into his veins. Shaking, his heart about to beat out of his chest, he stared in stupefaction at the hole in the floorboards created by the crescent knife. Then he saw something. From inside that slight hole in the floor…as if peering inside a room through a keyhole…down in that damp pit of darkness…bloodshot, muddied— —eyes filled with madness. “Hee…” Kamijou let out a pathetic yelp and backed up. A moment later, as if following him, the knife stabbed up from the floor, just grazing past his foot. His feet tangled. He fell to the floor. The knife blade disappeared into the crawl space once again, taking aim for yet another strike. Calm down, calm down he repeated like a mantra, but it only caused his body to lock up even worse. He tried to think; his head was numb. In any case, it was way too dangerous to fall on the floor. I only need to jump up on the table to get away from the attacks coming from the floor. So he thought, but as he tried to stand up— —Criick The floorboards burst open and an arm thrust upward, grabbing onto Kamijou’s ankle. “Hee…eee?!” The strange shock caused Kamijou’s heart to leap into his mouth. He tried as hard as he could to move his leg, but he couldn’t remove his ankle from the iron grip. It wasn’t as if his foot were being held down by capstan-like, superhuman strength. It just wouldn’t move for him, as if it were numb. Calm down; don’t panic. Don’t be afraid. I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s not some unidentified being. Sticking a knife through the floor or punching through it with your fist is definitely not something impossible for a human to do, so calm dow— —then, after he thought that far, he suddenly saw it. The hand grabbing his ankle. Some nails were split, some were torn off, and some were blotted by hardened black blood. The fingers were turned the bluish-brown indicating internal bleeding, and on the back of the hand, large dried-up scabs had been ripped open, exposing the mushy, flesh-covered black wound beneath. It looked like a rotten fruit, covered with a translucent mucus. It looked like the hand of a corpse, eaten away at by queer, human-devouring bacteria. “Ah, wha—! Ee, hee, ah…” His breath twisted within him. His heart moved in strange ways. Each of his assailant’s actions was, individually, well within the realm of possibility for humans. It wasn’t anything to write home about compared to the “One-Way Road” Accelerator or the alchemist Aureolus. If he took a step away, he might even get a sense that the commotion, this confusion, wasn’t worth his breathing difficulties and heartbeat irregularities. But consider this example. Say a person has a live cockroach inside a clear vinyl bag. Even though they know they won’t be directly touching the cockroach because of the vinyl separation, would they be able to bite the bag and crush the cockroach inside with their teeth? It was the same thing. He knew all of these things logically, but this chill, this trembling—they weren’t something he could deny. His assailant used physiological revulsion and discomfort to bind his prey. “Ha, ahi, a, egh, ugh…!” Kamijou desperately worked his legs and attempted to pry his foot free from the assailant’s arms. However, he couldn’t put any strength into it. It was like it had been numbed with anesthetics. He couldn’t get rid of the black revulsion that had seeped into his mind. As he lay on the floor, his foot confined, he began to hear the scritch-scratch of a knife tip shaving away at a wooden board from the planks near his chest. And then. Another set of watchful eyes, lying flat on the dark, dark beach 150 meters away, observed the situation in the beach house Wadatsumi. It was a red nun. She was a girl, thirteen years old. Her long, wavy blond hair and white skin seemed to reflect the moonlight. Her appearance was cute, but everything on her body was out of the ordinary. She wore only an overcoat slung over the underclothing normally worn beneath a religious habit. It was, however, essentially one-piece underwear, even appearing to show off her delicate body lines. To add to that, there were black belts and metal fixtures in various places. It looked like something created to serve the same purpose as a straitjacket. To top it off, reins extended from her thick choker, and many things stuck out of the belt on her waist, such as metal pliers, a hammer, an L-shaped nail puller, and a saw. They definitely weren’t for crafting. They were torture instruments used in witch trials, meant to crush human flesh, grind human bones, and cleave human bodies. At a closer look, one could discern that they had slight modifications from the normal implements. The girl was decorated with countless of the torture instruments, but her face was absolutely impassive. Her head was down, so her bangs covered most of her face, but her small mouth, the only thing visible, gave a sigh. She searched for signs of life. There were multiple people present on the second floor of the beach house Wadatsumi. They seemed to have realized something was going on, but it would likely take six seconds for them to descend to the first floor. Given that much time, the assailant under the floor would easily be able to pierce through the floor and through his victim’s heart. Beneath her face hidden by bangs, the girl sighed once more. Slowly and dully, she rose. Without any preparatory motions, her petite shadow closed the 150-meter distance in far less than six seconds. Fifty meters per second. Her speed was the same as a crossbow bolt, possibly even faster. That moment… With alarming speed, the sister in red burst into Kamijou’s vision suddenly from the side. She went so fast that he couldn’t even see that it was a human girl. The figure in red ran so low to the floor she could touch it with her tongue. She took out the L-shaped nail pullers on her waist and drove them with all her strength like a bat into his assailant’s wrist, which was sticking out of the floor. Crunch! With an amazingly dull sound, the assailant’s wrist twisted around in an unnatural direction. It wasn’t just broken. It was nearly torn asunder. “Gi, bih! Gigah” With a shout, the hand gripping Kamijou’s ankle fled back under the floor. Rustle-rustle. He heard the sound of rubbing against wood, the noise of his assailant trying to move away. “…” The nun in red tossed her nail pullers aside and removed her hammer this time. Then, she slammed it down hard into the floor underfoot. The wooden planks broke, making way for a large hole about seventy centimeters across. The girl with the gently waving blond hair dropped the hammer, took her pliers, and leaped into the hole. One second of silence, then… A great thump-thump sound roared up from under the floor. Something was raging down there. It felt kind of like a beast stuck in a cramped cage struggling to break free. Kamijou let the sounds of battle underneath him slip into his ears, dazed, but… Crash! Suddenly, a floorboard five meters in front of him shot up into the air like a geyser. It jumped like a dolphin leaping above the water, and a black shadow burst out from underneath. A black shadow. It wasn’t the sister in red. It tumbled onto the floor, then rose—the shadow was a skinny, middle-aged man. He could tell at a glance from his unhealthy skin that his organs were in a bad state. He wore beige work clothes stained with sweat, mud, blood, and oil. In his right hand was a crescent-shaped knife reminiscent of an iron claw. His left wrist was broken, his blood congested in blue. A line of redder blood hung from his lips. A front tooth and a canine had been pulled out of his mouth. “Gebeh, gah” The injured beast brandished the knife and attempted to fall on top of Kamijou, who was still sitting there. Kuh… Kamijou reflexively examined his surroundings, but there were no weapons in sight that could stop the blade. Backed into a corner, he dove into his pocket and there his fingertips touched upon something solid. He brought it out—it was his cell phone. He swore. It wouldn’t be of any use against a knife…but then it hit him. After flipping open the phone with his thumb, he aimed its camera lens at the enemy figure running at him. Pshee! went the camera’s intense flash through the darkness. “Bweeeh” The crescent knife in the blinded man’s hand stopped. Kamijou didn’t waste any time trying to get away, but he couldn’t get his leg to work. He managed to roll across the floor and put distance between him and his assailant. The middle-aged man readied his knife but didn’t follow up with an attack. He swayed. His body relaxed and he muttered something to himself. “My precious Angel…” Something around the chest of the work uniform glinted in the moonlight. It was a name tag. “My Angel, my precious Angel!” The plastic name tag, sewn firmly onto his clothing, had this written in inorganic letters: Prisoner Number 7-0687, Jinsaku Hino “My Angel, what’s happening? My precious Angel, I listened to what you said, so you can’t be wrong! What’s going on, my precious Angel? I’ve faithfully offered up twenty-eight to you!” the man in the prisoner’s clothes screamed. He screamed like he was broken, like he had gone mad, like it was all over. At long last, Kamijou remembered the news being run the entire day. “Yes, this is Komori at the scene. Jinsaku Hino, the convict on death row who broke out of the Shinfuchuu prison in the capital early this morning, has still not been located. There’s a tense atmosphere here, as schools in the vicinity, such as the middle school, have issued an emergency cancellation on all club activities.” But… He looked at the confused, screaming man. He could tell he was a criminal. And from the clothes he wore, he could figure out that he was Jinsaku Hino, broken out of prison. But if that was the case, then why wasn’t Jinsaku Hino swapped with somebody? It was so odd that not everyone had swapped because of Angel Fall. And who is the “Angel” he’s been yelling about this whole time? What was the Angel Fall sorcery ultimately trying to achieve? This guy…Could he be…? The moment he was about to forget himself and ask, Jinsaku Hino waved his knife in the air and screamed: “Answer me, my precious Angel! What do I do? What should I do from now on?! My Angel, you’d better take responsibility for this! Answer mee” He brought it down. But not toward Kamijou. He stabbed his own chest with the crescent knife. Scratch-scratch. The blade’s tip moved all over the place. The knife he was so absurdly wielding sliced through his work outfit, cut into his sweat-soaked shirt, and immediately began to draw blood. At a glance, the countless wounds seemed random, but they were in the form of letters, like scribbles carved into a desk. GO ESCAPE There was no grammar to be seen, just two English terms next to each other. However, when Jinsaku Hino saw those words, his blood-covered face turned into a grand smile. In the next moment, the floorboards between Kamijou and Hino shattered all over and the nun in red jumped out. The pliers she held in her hand were gripping something small and white. It looked like human teeth even. She gripped the pliers and smashed them to bits with ease. Jinsaku Hino, who happened to be without his front teeth, took one step back, then another, without paying any mind to what the red sister had done. Then, he took out a moist leather cloth, wiped the blood from the blade, and hurled it at the nun. The red sister smoothly moved her head out of the way to avoid it—so smoothly that the word whoosh would be appropriate. Having lost its target, the hurled weapon came straight for Kamijou’s face. “Eh?” he grunted in spite of himself, then realized how utterly idiotic he sounded. While he was doing that, the crescent knife was flying toward his eyes with the force of a hammer about to drive in a nail. “Uwah” He attempted to roll to the side right away, but the knife grazed his cheek. That was all. Even so, however, in the next moment, his sense of balance got muddled. He was lying down, and now he wasn’t able to get up. An unpleasant sweat broke out all over him, and a seasickness-like urge to vomit came upon him. Poi…son? Damn, he put something on that knife…! He had wiped the knife’s blade with that leather cloth in order to paint it with toxins. A small handful of tribes around Africa apparently hunted wild beasts with wooden spears covered in the juices of crushed venomous insects. Was it like that? He should have a certain amount of resistance to drugs because of Academy City’s Curricula, but none of that seemed to make a bit of difference. His vision blurred and darkness began to creep in. Along with an unbelievably happy voice, Jinsaku Hino ran out of the beach house—that much he could understand. The sister in red hesitated for a moment on whether to follow, but then ran over to Kamijou. That’s when he blacked out. 5 Had it been one minute or one hour? Kamijou awoke to a dry throat, like he had come down with a fever. He was resting on a hard floor. As he lay there, he looked around and saw various pieces of the floorboards blown out. This was the first floor of the beach house Wadatsumi. It seemed he hadn’t been carried off anywhere, so maybe it hadn’t actually been that long since he passed out. Tsuchimikado and Kanzaki were crouching near him. Despite all the commotion, Mikoto and Index hadn’t come down. Ordinarily they would have noticed something even if they were asleep. That means that maybe Kanzaki used some magic like the one Stiyl uses to keep people away? Kamijou thought, his mind hazy. As he thought that, though, he saw Little Misaka in a T-shirt, shorts, and an apron among the sorcerers. She was looking around the destroyed shop quite nervously. Of course, she was an employee here at the moment. “I set up Opila on the second story, but…Apparently the employees sleep on the first floor, so…you were witnessed. Fortunately, the shopkeeper was doing some work upstairs,” Kanzaki said, causing Little Misaka’s shoulders to jolt. After all, she had witnessed a criminal organization’s crime scene. Her expression was waiting for what kind of “punishment” awaited her. In any case, Kanzaki touched the hilt of her ridiculously long katana and said, “I will caution you just in case for now. Please do not tell anyone what you saw today. If this katana doesn’t look like the real thing, you may ignore it at your own peril.” Her voice was terrifyingly sharp, but Kamijou noticed that Tsuchimikado, next to her, was trying to hold in laughter…Were they not being serious? On the other hand, the sister in red was hiding herself in the shadows a bit away from them. Who is that? he thought. He thought about it more carefully. She intervened with extremely good timing, but who on earth was she? “Oh, that’s not an enemy,” Kanzaki said, realizing where he was looking. “She says she’s a member of Annihilatus, of the Russian Orthodox Church.” There were some indecipherable foreign words mixed in there, and Kamijou didn’t really understand. Tsuchimikado read him there as well and said: “Well, if you take the English Puritan Church to specialize in witch-hunting, then the Russian Orthodox Church specializes in ghost-hunting. Whether it’s jack-o’-lantern, Ustocc, Shinnaterao…They’re basically ghostbusters, experts in all sorts of nonexistent things.” Kamijou looked again at the blond-haired girl blending in with the darkness. She didn’t move a muscle, despite the conversation turning to her. Kanzaki continued to speak, as if that lack of social-interaction ability wasn’t too unusual in the occult business world. “She says her name is Misha Kreutzev. She is apparently the one who sucked the poison out of your wound, so how about thanking her?” She sucked the poison from my wound. He calmly listened to those words, but then suddenly flushed red. The wound was on his cheek. It was excusable as an appropriate act of medical care, but he still got this weird sweaty feeling. “I-I see,” he offered, the sides of his throat feeling like they were stuck together. “Thanks. If you hadn’t jumped in right then, I’d probably be dead right—” The smile he managed to put on his face suddenly froze. He thought Misha was standing a way off, but she had instantly stepped right up next to him. Her right hand went to her belt and took off a tool—the saw. Before he could blink, she was standing over the top of him with that jagged blade pressed against his neck. Nobody reacted. Kamijou was still, of course, but even Tsuchimikado and Kanzaki, whom he thought were beside him, didn’t move. The sensation of the cold blade coiled around the skin on his neck. He looked up at Misha Kreutzev, who was holding the saw. Her eyes were absolutely steady as they peered at him from the gaps in her long bangs. They only contained exceptionally cold emotion even chillier than the blade. “Question one. Are you the one who caused Angel Fall?” she asked in a machinelike, level voice. Kamijou was at a loss. Tsuchimikado and Kanzaki looked at Misha with confusion in their faces, too. “W-wait a moment. Misha Kreutzev, did you not defend Kamijou from the assailant and suck the blood from his wound based on the fact that you thought he was not the one behind Angel Fall?” Misha rolled her eyes straight to Kanzaki when she heard that and stared at her face. “Answer one. I came here to prevent Angel Fall. I withheld judgment because I was not able to ask for an explanation on whether this boy was the criminal or not. That’s why I’m questioning him now.” Kamijou, saw blade still up against his neck muscles, looked at her. She took her gaze off Kanzaki and brought it back to him, and stared like she was observing his eyeballs. “Question one, once more. Are you the one who caused Angel Fall?” “…No.” “Question two. Do you have any way to prove that?” Misha shot another question at him as if she had predicted his answer from the outset. She was probably thinking something like…he was lying for the moment to distance himself from harm. “I don’t…have any proof. Besides, I don’t even know anything about magic anyway.” She tilted her head slightly as if to give voice to her internal doubts. Kanzaki sighed. “If you need, I can answer as to Necessarius’s official stance.” So saying, she began her explanation to Misha. About how Kamijou wasn’t a sorcerer, and how they didn’t believe that he brought about Angel Fall. That espers using magic put a load on their bodies, but that they found no signs of it. That the reason Kamijou wasn’t under the influence of Angel Fall was likely because of the effect of his right hand, the Imagine Breaker, which could erase anything occult just by touching it, and so on. Misha nodded shortly with an “uh-huh” many times, as if checking off items on a list one by one. Then, at the end, her eyes rolled back to Kamijou—to be more specific, her gaze fell to his right hand. It seemed that she was stuck on the phrase “Imagine Breaker” from Kanzaki’s explanation. “Valence. Forty, nine, thirty, seven. Eighty-six in all.” Crash! came the sound of a water stream erupting through the floor behind Misha. It looked like an underground water pipe had burst. “MEM TETH LAMEDH ZAYIN (Correspondence. Water, assume the form of a snake and lunge like a sword.)” Misha continued to move her mouth, and like a snake, the spray raised its sickle-shaped neck. It was a watery serpent split into many branches, like a hydra or a Yamata no Orochi. Before the back of his mind had time to put up warning flags, the flows of water turned into spears and powerfully shot straight for him. Gush-gush The liquid lances pierced through the floor near Kamijou one after the other. One of the streams, without hesitation, came right for his face. “Whoa?!” He immediately used his right hand to block it, and the javelin burst in every direction like a water balloon. As if safeguarded by an invisible shield, not a single drop of it hit him. Misha, very carefully observing the water that had scattered onto the floor, said, “Correct answer. The opinion of the English Puritan Church matches the results of this experiment. I will acknowledge this explanation as a method of proof for revocation of suspicion. Young man, I apologize now for having pointed my weapon at you due to a mistaken explanation.” “Pointed your weapon? You nearly stabbed me with it! Also, look at the person’s eyes when you’re apologizing to them!” “Question three. If you are not the criminal, then who is the one who executed Angel Fall? The epicenter of this havoc should indeed be here. Do you have any ideas?” “Listen to me, you…! Wait, you’re not sorry in the slightest, are you?!” Kamijou looked at the big hole in the floorboards from his laying position. Then, Little Misaka, who had been trembling the whole time without a clue what was happening, fearfully addressed him. Perhaps she was regaining some presence of mind. “Hey, is this…is this filming for some kind of tokusatsu hero TV show? And that guy who ran away before, wasn’t that the Jinsaku Hino guy who escaped from prison? Could you all be one of those police bait teams they show on TV all the time?” “It would be for your own benefit not to investigate us any further.” Kanzaki flat out refused her question. However, something about what she said bothered Kamijou. “Hey…wait. Did that look like Jinsaku Hino to you?” “Who else would it look like? Anyway, who’s gonna reimburse the shop? Hino? The police? The TV station?” Kamijou was speechless. Take Blue Hair in the nun outfit, for example. He looks to everyone like Index, and Kamijou sees him as Blue Hair. If his inward and outward appearances were the same, then… “He’s…not substituted?” He explained his thought process to the sorcerers, and their faces all stiffened very quickly. “Question four…You mean the person who escaped before?” Misha stared in the direction that Jinsaku Hino had fled in. She was about to run off that way, but Kanzaki grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. “Wait. If we follow the same prey, why not act in concert?” “Question five. What merit would that have for me?” “I’ll answer your question with another. Are you practiced in hunting humans? Those weapons are the Seven Implements from the Tower of London, aren’t they? Someone local wouldn’t be using brand-name goods like that. A normal ax is more practical than a golden ax or a silver ax, after all,” alluded Kanzaki smoothly. “The Russian Catholic Church’s specialty would be spectral extermination. If you are to go man-hunting, with which you are unfamiliar, I don’t think having an expert English Puritan guide with you would be a bad idea.” “…Wise answer. I thank you for your question.” Misha abruptly held out her small hand to Kanzaki. The latter looked taken aback at first, but then, when she realized Misha wanted to shake hands, smiled a little and took it in hers. Kamijou, watching this, asked, “So what do we do? Should we go chase him down right away?” “Your enthusiasm is splendid, and Tsuchimikado could learn a thing or two from you, but in your case, regaining your strength takes priority, I think. It may be safer if we protect you while you recover. We do not know Hino’s objective, but there is a nonzero possibility he could come back later tonight and attack you in your sleep.” When she heard that, Misha asked: “Question six. There is little necessity for us all to protect him. Am I able to pursue the suspect alone?” “Without knowing the enemy’s forces, splitting up does not seem like a good plan. In the worst case, he may be in possession of an angel, right?” Misha fell silent, looking unsatisfied with the answer. Maybe she was already regretting having made an agreement with them. However, Kanzaki didn’t stop to think about it, and continued. “In accordance, we should have a discussion about our next move with you, Kreutzev. We must next somehow repair this disaster. Once that is over, we will return to our positions as bodyguards…Tsuchimikado, you’re making a disagreeable face.” Kamijou thought, I’d like it if you waited a moment. If they went ahead and did that, they wouldn’t get an ounce of sleep. He didn’t want to indulge himself in indolent sleep by himself as the others whittled away at their energy and morale. Whether he was injured or not, it was his own fault for not being cautious, so that was no reason. That’s what he was thinking, but he didn’t give voice to his concerns. A burning pain developed in his dry throat. Kanzaki looked at him with uncharacteristically pained eyes. “We’ll explain the results of our discussion with Kreutzev afterward. You really should go to your room and get some rest. Letting an amateur suffer any more grave wounds would put our own positions at risk, too.” “Well, we’re not wretchedly professional enough to live while letting an amateur die,” Tsuchimikado said in an unusually distant tone of voice. They have their own obligations. Kamijou sighed shallowly— Hm? Go back to my room? Then, he felt himself get caught up on the voice of his own mind. “Ah, aahh! Wait, Index?!” He flashed up and sprang to his feet as if the damage he’d taken was nothing. Leaving the flabbergasted group behind, he hurried up the stairs and burst out onto the second floor. Strange symbols were engraved on the railing that looked like they were from a sword. As soon as Kamijou grabbed it with his right hand, he heard a sound like glass breaking. Was that the human ward or something? he thought, but this was no time to be paying attention to that. His destination was not his own room, nor was it Mikoto’s. The door he suddenly pulled open was the one to Touya Kamijou’s room, with the intent to bust the thing down if it had been locked. He threw open the door with a bang, and there was a double futon laid out on the floor in a room with the lights out. And was that Touya Kamijou, about to dive straight into the futon in which Index was currently sleeping? Of course, from Touya’s point of view, she was his wife, Shiina, so there was nothing shameful about it. However, the vision of his own father in his midthirties about to charge in on Index, who he was doubtful didn’t look to him to be fourteen years old, could only appear to Kamijou to go beyond the surreal and into a nightmare. “Stop, stop, stop, stooopp! Wait a minute, you bastard!” So Kamijou ignored the dizziness from the poison remaining in his body and hurled himself right into it, diving straight into the middle of the futon. Touya was the one who was surprised. Incidentally, his mother, or Index, was tough enough to keep on talking in her sleep despite the ruckus. “…(Wha—! T-Touma! Don’t barge in like that at such an embarrassing time!)” “Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet! We’re sleeping like this tonight, with me in the middle! Special technique: special operation ‘family bonds’!” Thus began their battle in the dead of night. Without any regard for Kanzaki’s consideration toward him, a sick person, Touma Kamijou did not get a wink of sleep that night.