3_Chapter 2_ After School

CHAPTER 2 After SchoolBreak_Time. 1 “Wow! So this is that underground world I heard so much about!” “It’s an underground mall, not a world,” retorted Kamijou in his low-gear, sleep-deprived state to the effervescent Index. There were many underground malls in Academy City. Department stores, centered around train stations, would connect to one another underground, forming a labyrinthine structure. A lot of students were coming and going down here, but not quite as many as there were on the main road above them. Like the security robots and wind turbine system, these underground malls were an experimental feature of Academy City. Japan, both strapped for space and renowned for its earthquakes, demanded world-class earthquake-resistant construction technology. Many places throughout the city had been dug up to assist with practical tests for such technology. Kamijou had no particular reason for choosing this place to hang out, save for the simple fact that Index had never seen it before. “Let’s go get something to eat first. Index, any requests? Oh, err, nowhere expensive. Or with big lines.” “We don’t have to go to a place like that. We should go to a restaurant with cheap, delicious food and lots of it, and where people don’t go often.” “…That’s gonna be hard to find. Kazakiri, what about you?” he asked, turning to look at her over his shoulder. For some reason, her shoulders twitched, and she began to tremble. She tried to hide herself behind Index. “Uhh…” Did I do something? he thought to himself. “…Oh, no…I’m…sorry. I’m not…scared or anything…,” she answered, peeking out from Index’s shadow. “…I mean…you saw me…naked…so…” “Huh?” He couldn’t hear the last part. “Um, err…no, it’s…it’s nothing. But…you saw me…and your reaction was so…well, calm, and…umm…” She was essentially mumbling to herself at this point, so Kamijou didn’t catch any of it. Well, she’s hanging out with us already, so she’s probably not scared, right? She’s probably okay with this, but why the polite sense of caution? Then, Index gave him a rather cold look, as if she understood what Kazakiri hadn’t said. “Touma, you’re scary!” “Heh? How’s that?” “It’s those beastly eyes of yours. It’s like they’re eagerly watching for womenfolk. Your lips say you’re totally harmless, but your eyes say that they won’t let a single good-looking scrap get by them! It’s scary!” “Spouting nonsense like that is just gonna make her even more scared!” shouted Kamijou, causing Kazakiri’s shoulders to jerk once again. Then, very hesitantly, still hidden behind Index, she began, “…Um, well…” “See, Touma? Your yelling is scaring her!” “Uh, yeah, okay! I see, whatever! Fine, I guess I’m just a beast then! But once I accept it, I really will become an animal! You will behold the true form of Evil Kamijou and tremble” “…Umm…You’re not…scary or anything…but…lunch…” Kazakiri’s barely audible voice stopped the argument between the two of them, fighting half desperately. They turned toward her at the same time. She was pointing somewhere. They followed her gesture to a restaurant. 2 “Cafe-ter-ia restaurant?” “Yeah, a cafeteria restaurant,” Kamijou replied. Index’s face said she didn’t really understand what that meant. It was the same face she had when they’d entered the underground mall. The three of them had gone into a totally normal family restaurant. Kamijou and Index sat facing each other at a table for four, and Kazakiri sat next to Index. The cat was on Index’s lap, too. He thought a dining establishment would have refused them because of the animal, but apparently cats were fine. Apparently it was owned by the same company that owned the usual joint they frequented, which was also totally okay with pets. “Academy City is filled with schools, big and small. So some places bring all the delicious parts of school cafeteria menus into one place. Anyway, they have school food here, too. This way people don’t have to miss out on what kind of food people eat in other schools.” “Mgh. Touma, what do you mean by ‘cafeteria meals’ and ‘school food’ in the first place?” asked Index, giving the giant canvas of a menu a challenging stare. Kamijou, being an amnesiac, didn’t have any recollection of the school meals of his compulsory education. But he still had the knowledge of it, so he was pretty sure he knew basically what they were. “Well, putting it broadly, they’re both food that you can only eat at schools.” “W-wow, so they’re like limited editions!” “…Uhh, yeah, sure, let’s go with that. They’re rare.” “Umm…I don’t think you should leave the explanation at that…just because you think it’s a drag…” Kazakiri offered a nervous word in edgewise in place of Kamijou, who was sleep-deprived and thus fresh out of witty retorts. Index didn’t seem to hear her, though. She had her face buried in the needlessly large menu like a father reading a newspaper. She looked past it with her eyes on him. “Touma, can I get anything on here?” “Umm, nothing expensive,” he warned vaguely, but he wasn’t too worried. This restaurant specialized in school lunches and school store food. There wouldn’t be anything that expensive. Then, Index slammed the menu down onto the table and pointed at one part of a photographed meal so that even he could understand. “I think I want this.” “Hmm? Which one?” He looked at what her pale, slender finger was pointing at. There, he saw the words… Tokiwadai Middle School Lunch Set—40,000 Yen “…” Kamijou silently closed the menu, then hit Index’s head with the corner of it. “Oww What did you go and do that for?!” “I told you, you’re not allowed to get anything expensive! Wait, I thought you were asking for that one!” Just what kind of life is that Biri Biri living, anyway? he thought to himself, speechless. He fearfully opened up the menu again. The photo of the meal sparkled and shined. It looked like someone dressed up in formal attire trying to attract customers. “…U-umm…I think I’ll have…this…” Beside the arguing pair, Hyouka Kazakiri pointed to a meal on the same page of the menu. It was a picture of a completely and totally normal school lunch, including a peculiarly simple bread roll and a milk carton. He couldn’t help but feel a little bit moved. Maybe it was because Index had just picked the most expensive thing on the menu. “Do you see this, Index? This is what a true honor student picks.” “What? Hyouka, you have kinda boring tastes. I want to eat something flashier! More colorful!” He heaved a heavy sigh at the girl’s griping and said, “You need to choose foods based on their taste, not their appearance, Index. Also, don’t start recommending the Tokiwadai set to her by taking advantage of her confusion, stupid! If you call her boring, it might actually hurt her feelings and then she’ll rethink her choice! So knock it off!” he shouted. Kazakiri twitched and hid her face behind her giant menu. It seemed that her favor gauge had bottomed out. Raising any further flags appeared hopeless. After a little while had passed, their food was brought out. It consisted of a milk carton, a bread roll with margarine, a bowl of meat-and-potato stew, a salad, some fried chicken, and cups of yogurt for dessert. The waitress looked like an expert on school lunches. From what she told them, their selling point was the fact that they transcended national borders. Their food was slightly more expensive than normal school lunches because though they used the same recipes, they had to use different ingredients, thus they couldn’t reduce production costs as much. “All right, then. Let’s eat before it gets cold. By the way, Kazakiri, how come you chose to eat from this menu? Is yogurt a favorite food?” This shop’s menu was divided among schools, creating an additional choice beyond just what kind of food you were in the mood for. You might, for example, want to try the menu of a school you really wanted to go to but didn’t pass the exam to enter. But Kazakiri didn’t appear to have put that much thought into it. She shook her head. “…Um, well…I…I’ve never eaten somewhere like…this…before…” “Hmm. You’ve never eaten a school lunch?” “Well…no.” She made an apologetic face for some reason, and Kamijou thought to himself, No relation to school lunch, maybe that means she eats a bento every day, maybe she makes it for herself, or maybe her dorm has a bento service or something, man, that sounds great, you could stare at the line warfare in the cafeteria without it concerning you, that would be a much more civilized mealtime, ah, I wish my dorm would offer a bento service like that so I didn’t have to do anything in the morning—but wait, there’s a freeloading girl living with me, maybe Index could work for them…no, that would never work, ah, no way, she can’t even use a microwave, I can’t expect her to know how to cook, what was I thinking? “Eheh-heh-heh…” He chuckled as a dark smile came over his face and a negative aura emanated from his body. “…Um, er, well…your eyes…they’re kind of…scaring me…” “Hyouka, Touma has a disease where he does this sometimes, so just smile and nod at him, okay?” 3 A woman in a black dress was walking through the city streets. Her name was Sherry Cromwell. She was a member of the English Puritan anti-sorcerer group Necessarius and used Kabbalah statues for her work. She weaved through the crowds of people, her mouth stretching into a smile. She had thought that her odd outfit, a lacy dress that was torn here and there, would draw curious stares, but it wasn’t evoking much of a reaction from these students. In fact, they seemed more interested in her age than her clothing. Students made up 80 percent of the city’s population, so the fact that she was in her late twenties was standing out more than her gothic lolita look. “—In the beginning, there was the earth,” she declared theatrically as she walked. She removed something, a white, chalk-like object, from a torn dress sleeve. It was actually an oil pastel meant for constructing magic circles, made from consecrated salt hardened by holy oil. “—God created His image from the earth and breathed into it life, and He named His creation ‘Man.’” As she recited, she twirled her oil pastel along the surface of a vending machine nearby with the speed of a master. On the machine appeared things that were somewhere between characters and patterns. “—God’s secrets were at last revealed to Man by the fallen angel.” Then onto the guardrail, and the trees lining the road, then onto a cleaning robot, and the support beam of a wind turbine…Sherry’s oil pastel danced over everything in her path. “—However, the works of God cannot be achieved by the hands of Man, and the fallen angel could not speak of it in the proper way.” At last, seventy-two inscriptions later, she brought her pastel into the air. “—Thus was the life created by the hands of Man mere rotting dolls made of mud…Now, Ellis, my muddy golem. Smile and allow me to use you to your fullest, for my sake.” Finally, she brought her hands together with a clap. A moment later… The squish of a pus-filled wound being broken echoed throughout her surroundings. Not just once or twice, either, but dozens of times. The sound was faint, so it did not reach the ears of the conversing students walking among the throng. Change, however, was certainly happening. The vending machine, the guardrail, the trees lining the street, the cleaning robot, the wind turbine’s support beam—out from everything that Sherry had drawn on appeared mud-like bubbles about the size of a ping-pong ball. Her brand of magic worked regardless of what materials she used. Every single thing in this place became her weapon. A crack appeared on the face of each of the ping-pong balls, slicing across the surface in a line. From out of that, as though they were grapes being peeled, appeared white, muddled eyeballs. Sherry removed a black piece of paper about the size of a postcard. “Automatic Clerk, is this my target? ‘Kaze,’ ‘kaza’…What is this? Is this country’s writing system hieroglyphics?” Her white oil pastel flashed across the black paper and scrawled characters on it. She couldn’t read kanji very well, but her brain processed them as pictures rather than meaningful characters. She scribbled them as one would the likeness of a person from memory. Sherry then gave a flick of her fingers, sending the postcard-size piece of black paper out of her hand. It flew through the air, spinning like a Frisbee, and gently landed on the ground. The name Hyouka Kazakiri was written on it. It was like characters written in a notebook in pencil had been stamped in photonegative onto the black paper. Dozens of the muddy eyeballs crowded in tight to it. The scrap was torn apart, ripped to shreds, and incorporated into their filth-bodies. Within seconds, the black paper had disappeared without a trace. Then, after they had absorbed all the thin paper fragments, the many eyeballs scattered in every direction, stiffly, like fleeing cockroaches. Some swam along the surface of the ground, while others sunk below the concrete, every one of them restlessly moving their big eyes around. “Don’t make me wait too long, Ellis.” Sherry smiled and disappeared back into the crowds. 4 After they finished their meals, Kamijou and the others left the store. Index looked a bit perplexed as she recalled the taste of her first school lunch. “It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t that good, either. Hmm. I wonder why that is? I don’t quite feel satisfied for some reason.” “That’s because school lunches are made to be eaten every day. Instead of trying to make it really good, they specifically make them so you won’t get tired of eating them. If you ate these grand full-course meals every day, you’d start throwing up within a week.” She put her index finger to her chin, then looked up to the ceiling and reflected on that. Then, she said, “No, I think I’d be okay with eating so many full-course meals that I threw up.” “…Right, well, maybe you would,” he responded, not really caring. It was now past one in the afternoon. Above ground, the roads had surely transformed into a veritable hell under the blazing heat of the sun. The room temperature down here in the underground mall was somewhat cooler because of the air-conditioning, but that also made one shy away from going back above ground until the harsh sunlight eased up a little. Hyouka Kazakiri looked at the two of them, both lost in their own thoughts, and said, “…U-umm…Where should we go now…?” She clearly seemed to be speaking to Index and not Kamijou. “I dunno. Touma, what do you do in underground malls, anyway?” Considering Index’s situation, she was probably fully satisfied just by standing here in the path. She ceded the decision-making to Kamijou, not unhappy with anything in particular. “Hmm. Well, it’s the underground mall…so I guess arcades?” There was a profuse number of arcades underneath Academy City, partly to reduce noise. Right as he was thinking about it, they happened to pass by one. Index’s eyes widened at the flood of electronic noises drifting to them from inside. “Whoa, whoa, what’s that? There’s, like, a ton of televisions in there!” “Ah, they’re not televisions, but…well, whatever. If I sweat the small stuff I’ll be done for. Yeah, they’re televisions. TVs.” “…Umm…Like I said, you’re not trying hard enough…” Arcades were generally split into two different types. One was the “outside type,” and the other was the “inside type.” The first was the variety of shop with games imported from outside of Academy City, and the second referred to arcades featuring games developed within the city. In terms of civilization and technology, Academy City was twenty or thirty years ahead of the rest of the world. That applied to video games, too. Most game companies in the outside world weren’t up to that level of technology (or the technology hadn’t been released publicly), so even if they developed a brand-new game cabinet, they would probably be lacking in the software department. What they had found was one of those “inside” varieties. It looked more like an indoor amusement park than an arcade. Large, immersive cabinets made with all the latest tech lined the shop, giving it the additional impression of a futuristic exhibition corner at a science convention. Most of these sorts of games had been developed independently by university research teams with no thought for making a profit. To sum it up simply, the city had a system where laboratories that had made popular games would receive more in the way of development funds. This resulted in many works with a strangely high level of effort put into them. Of course, there were plenty of stupid games that took that effort in the completely wrong direction, too. “A-amazing! Everything is all sparkly, and glittery, and crackly! T-Touma, I want to go there! I want to experience all those bleep bloops!” The three of them went inside, prompted by Index’s insistence. As soon as they passed through the automatic glass doors, they were slammed by a flood of sounds that was double, even triple the intensity it had been outside. There were a lot of unique, large game cabinets in this arcade. There were some high-def virtual reality games using 3D goggles, of course, but there were also a handful of irregular games, like shooters on rails that would measure your heartbeat and brain waves to display how scared you were at any given time. “Index, is there any game you want to play?” he asked casually. He got no answer. Dubious, he peered into her face, but she had completely stopped. Her eyes were quite possibly the happiest things he had ever seen. They were positively sparkling. “Uhh, shoot…,” he muttered to himself. She had taken the bait—hook, line, and sinker. He hadn’t seen her like this since she first met the cat. She turned back to him energetically and responded, “All of them! I wanna play all of them Touma, Touma! I wanna start with that one first, I think” No longer able to restrain herself, Index pulled his arm along. Their destination appeared to be a kart-style game where you would ride walking, two-legged robots like a chair in a circular arena. She was done for. No words of his would sway her at this point. He breathed a heavy sigh, worried about his wallet. He looked beside him to see Hyouka Kazakiri smiling at him sympathetically. 5 “Ah-ha-ha! I see, Kamijou, is it? Man, Ms. Tsukuyomi, you’re so fortunate to have a whole class filled with little brats, you know that? My entire class is just honors students, so it all gets so boring!” It was after school in the empty teachers’ lounge as Aiho Yomikawa opened her mouth wide and laughed heartily. She was an attractive adult woman with long black hair tied back into a ponytail. If she were to put on a stiff gray suit or something, she’d immediately turn into the classic sexy English teacher. Unfortunately, she was a gym teacher, so she wore a green jersey all year round. Everything was just wasted on her—in more meanings than one. Yomikawa put her hands to her hips then stuck out her chest; just one of her breasts was probably larger than Komoe’s head. “Wow. So he met with an outsider and they were having a secret tea party, huh? Sounds fun! None of the little squirts in my class would ever dare to do something that bold. I’d be so affectionate to any of them if they were like that, too! I’d basically treat them like a pet!” Incidentally, as a member of Anti-Skill, her definition of affection had some of that old-fashioned, sporting violence sense. She was proud of the fact that she would never point a weapon at a student, even if it were a Level Four pyrokinetic who had gone crazy. Aside from that, though, she would gladly take any other equipment that riot police normally used, like a specially constructed helmet or transparent, polycarbonate shield (since, by her logic, they were only for defense!) and beat the berserk esper over the head with it. Her peers had taken to calling her “the woman who makes the serious comical.” Miss Komoe, however, was more pacifistic. She glared at the violent teacher, though without very much force. “Jeez! Anti-Skill is partly to blame for an outsider getting into the school in the first place! What would you have done if someone more dangerous than her had gotten in?! And don’t go laying a hand on Kami! If you hit him on the head any more, he’ll turn into such an idiot that I won’t be able to change him back!” “Ah, right, I’m just joking, just kidding, ’kay? Even I can tell the difference between a good idiot and a bad one! Man, you still have that habit of falling in love with all your students. Haven’t grown out of it yet, have you?” “Huh?! D-d-d-don’t put it in those terms! Y-you see, I, well, each and every child is precious to their guardians, and I’ve been entrusted with them!” “Oh, come on, don’t cry. If that’s all it takes to make you cry, then you’ll be bawling your eyes out during graduation!” “Grr…rr Wh-what’s the matter with crying?! Every single year, the tears just come out on their own! I can’t help it!” “Ah-ha-ha, there, there.” Yomikawa soothed her, rubbing a hand through her hair. Miss Komoe flailed her arms around and pushed it away. “By the way, Teach. About the outsider—I heard there were two of them, but…” Miss Komoe gave a start. In recent years, many schools had been outfitted with security cameras around the premises. Any suspicious persons couldn’t complain about their backgrounds being investigated. Incidentally, Miss Komoe had announced to the teachers’ lounge that nobody needed to look into Index personally. She was acquainted with the sister in white, so the nun wasn’t technically an outsider. Miss Komoe also suspected she was the victim of certain circumstances that she couldn’t tell anyone about. “What about it?” “Yeah. I just wanted to confirm one thing—were there really two people there?” “Hmm?” Miss Komoe tilted her head for a moment. She didn’t understand the question. Then, they heard an even knock at the teachers’ lounge door, and it opened. Yomikawa blinked one eye closed. “Anyway, this problem could be a wee bit messy, so don’t mention it to the kids. Right, I’ll get a report from you later. I’m busy with my own stuff, after all.” “Hmm? Do you have something to do?” “Well…This is a secret to the students, too, but oh well. It’s my other job. We’ve got a big fish to reel in this time. Some of this, some of that. You know how it is. I’m gonna go take a stroll through an underground mall. Okay, see ya later!” Yomikawa finished, then walked by the female student who was entering the room and left. Miss Komoe’s face retained its mystified expression, until finally she directed her attention to the student. “I’ve brought you. The thing you asked me for.” “Oh, Himegami! Thanks for your hard work.” Miss Komoe stayed in her chair in the now-deserted teachers’ lounge and waved her arms happily. Today was a half day because of the entrance ceremony, so the only people still here were students with club activities and those clubs’ advisers. Miss Komoe was an exception—she was working after-hours to help her friend write her report. You can only find rank B terminals for faculty at school, after all. If only you could register terminals at your house! I’d be able to make a lot more progress that way. Academy City’s network-enabled devices were each given a ranking, which determined what information it had access to. It wasn’t very convenient for those who preferred working at home. “Sorry for asking you about it. I know I shouldn’t really get students to do things for me, but I just couldn’t take my hands off of this.” “It’s okay. Is this the technical book you needed? There are so many books at your apartment. They all look the same. I was a little worried.” “Yep, yep! It’s this one. You got it right!” answered Miss Komoe, taking the thick, leather-bound book from Himegami and rubbing her cheek on it. The cover was hot-stamped with the title Involuntary Diffusion Fields And Their Possibilities in gold characters. “Involuntary diffusion fields. What is that?” “Ah-ha-ha, Kami asked the same question!” Miss Komoe laughed brightly. “Involuntary diffusion field is the term for the weak power that espers unconsciously emit from their bodies.” “…” Himegami fell silent. A power given off unconsciously. For Himegami, that almost certainly corresponded to the smell of death that lured vampires to her. Miss Komoe overlooked the quiet Himegami’s queer expression and sat back in her chair. “Oh, also, Himegami, I apologize for today. I had to leave homeroom to another teacher so I could punish Kami for skipping out on the entrance ceremony. I was worried about you being suddenly thrown into a room filled with people you didn’t know.” “I was fine. There were no problems. But that aside. Did Kamijou do something bad?” “Oh, right! That’s right! Listen to this, Himegami! Miss Komoe could still forgive him if that nun followed him to school. And yet, can you believe that he took her and another girl into the cafeteria and was chatting the day away with them?!” Himegami’s eyes narrowed at her usage of the words another girl. The image of the girl standing with Index at the front gate crossed her mind. “That other girl. How was she dressed?” “Are you interested? Mu-hu-hu.” “…” Himegami’s silence spoke volumes, and Komoe’s smile strained a bit. “Um, hmm. She stood out quite a bit. She had crooked glasses and hair coming out the side of her head. And she wasn’t wearing our school uniform, either—it was a short-sleeve blouse, a red tie, and a blue skirt. She was kind of like…well, she seemed sort of weak-willed, or like she was really worried about other people, or something like that.” Himegami averted her gaze and thought about her. What had her name been? “Miss Komoe.” “Y-yes?” “Is there a student. Named Hyouka Kazakiri. In this school?” 6 They had used 8,000 yen in just one quick go-around in the arcade. Index exhaled. “Wow, that was a lot of fun! I think I’m totally satisfied and content now, Touma.” “…Aye. Mr. Kamijou is also worn out and exhausted, you know. Hey, cat. It looks like starting today we’ll only be eating bread crusts. You okay with that?” asked Kamijou, exhausted. The cat hissed like an angry snake, stubbornly refusing that idea. “Touma, Touma! What should we play next?” “…Why don’t we play the let Kamijou take a break game?” “Touma, you want to go around again?” “No, please, anything but that! I’ll go completely bankrupt if we do!” he cried. Then, as if timed, his cell phone began to play his ringtone, though it was pretty crackly. It wasn’t a bad phone, it was just that it had been treated so roughly that its speakers were out of whack. Of course, anyone who knew about his fantastic summer break would think it amazing that it was still working at all. He looked at its screen. It wasn’t a text message—it was a call. He didn’t know whose number it was. He turned away from Index and Kazakiri and began to manipulate the phone. The latter noticed him. “…Do you want…to go drink some juice?” “Huh? Well, Touma should come with—” “We’ll buy one for him, too, okay?” She took Index’s hand and walked away from him. He gestured with his empty hand in apology, deftly took some coins from his wallet with the other, and tossed them to Kazakiri. This startled her, but she managed to catch them. After watching them leave, he concentrated on his phone. Unfortunately, despite finally getting away from Index for a minute, the only thing he heard from the speakers was static and the fragments of a voice. “…zzz…hello…zz…this…can you hear…zzz…meg…mi…” The flood of sounds from the arcade was making it even harder to hear. “…is…kaz…ri…zz…you? Zz, zzz…this…tant…can you…zzZZzzZzzZzz” Suddenly, the connection cut off with a click. He thought he’d just barely made out a girl’s voice, but that was it. He also thought he had heard the voice before, but he couldn’t put his finger on it because of all the static and noise. “Well, this is the underground mall, I guess…” There were cell phone antennas set up underground, too, but it didn’t take very much distance between one of them and the phone to render it essentially unusable. “I wonder what that was about,” he wondered, folding his phone up and sticking it back into his pocket. “Touma’s not a scary person, okay?” said Index, in the back of the arcade where the vending machines and café were. Hyouka Kazakiri looked at her from behind her glasses. “…Huh?” “I mean, you seem really afraid of him, but Touma is actually a nice person, okay?” “Oh…yes.” She looked down slightly. “…That’s…not it. It’s not that…he’s scary, or I don’t like him, or anything…” “?” “…I don’t really get it, either…It’s like…he has a lot of static electricity…It’s like trying to touch a sweater, kind of…” “Hmm.” Index nodded along with her. She didn’t know what static electricity was in the first place. Kazakiri saw her worried expression and said, “…Maybe it’s because…this is my first time…talking to a boy…” Their conversation ended for a moment. After a while, she changed the subject. “Anyway…that game before was really fun…You were having such a good time…” “You looked like you were having fun, too! Do you come to this kind of place a lot?” “No…today’s my first time.” Kazakiri gave a forced smile, took out her wallet, and removed a few hundred-yen coins from it. “What…what would you like to drink?” “Urk. I don’t want to ask vending machines for things anymore, I think. They’re impossible for me to use.” She pouted. “Hyouka, you do it!” Kazakiri smiled painfully again. Index’s total defeat to the ticket machine in the cafeteria still seemed to be weighing on her. “…This is…my first time…so I don’t really know what kinds are good…I’ll push the button, so you choose.” “Hyouka, you’ve never had juice before?” Index asked casually. Her lack of modern sense and knowledge was probably why she didn’t think Hyouka’s words strange in the slightest. In response, Hyouka Kazakiri said, once again, in a normal tone of voice, “…No, today’s my first time.” 7 Kamijou racked his brain trying to figure out who had called him. Suddenly, though, he stopped thinking when he noticed that Index and Kazakiri seemed to be taking their sweet time coming back here. Lost?…Nah, couldn’t be. His common sense rejected that possibility. However, as he thought about it sensibly, he remembered that common sense didn’t necessarily apply to either of them. He decided to search for them just to be sure. “Heeeey, Index! Kazakiri?” He made his way toward the back of the arcade, looking to and fro as he walked. The “inside type” of arcade had many large games, some the size of passenger cars, so there were blind spots in his vision here and there. As he continued to search for the two of them, he made sure to peek into the game cabinets’ shadows, drawing hostile stares from the students waiting in line for their turns. It brought him to the rest area, where there were three vending machines set up. Hmm? I thought Kazakiri said they were going to buy juice…Did I miss them? Kamijou looked around again, a shade of worry crossing his face. Suddenly, a group of five high school girls walked past him wearing bunny suits. “Huh?” His shoulders jerked at the shocking sight, but the girls walked through the shop with an air of nonchalance. They arrived at an old, somewhat beat-up sticker-printing booth, gathered around, and began smiling and taking pictures of themselves. Wh-what? Is this place lending out clothes like that or something? Upon closer inspection, he saw various ornaments on the bunny suits, like small ribbons and shoulder pieces. They must have been the outfits of some kind of characters, though he didn’t know whom. Their designs all had clear, easy-to-understand motifs. Judging by that, and despite how much bare skin was involved, they might have actually been female characters from an anime targeted at children. They seemed to be having fun, so he decided to let them be and looked away. Index and Kazakiri didn’t seem to be anywhere around here, so he turned on his heel, ready to return to the entrance or the front counter… …when suddenly he heard a couple of familiar female voices. “…Umm, well…Again, are we…really going to do this…?” “Yeah, we are! Come on! Wow, this is amazing! They have Magical Powered Kanamin’s dress here!” “Umm…are you going to…wear that?” They were, without a doubt, the voices of Index and Hyouka Kazakiri. Where, where, where are they? He looked around. They seemed to be on the other side of the three vending machines. ? He frowned and went around behind them. There, hidden in the shadows, he found what appeared to be a changing room, cordoned off by a curtain. It was bent diagonally, as if it hadn’t been treated with the utmost care. Its fabric also looked a bit dirty. Their voices were coming from there. “But this is too small. I don’t think I can wear it. All the clothing here seems like it was made for babies.” “Mmm. Well, there’s…Around your waist, there’s a dial…that you turn. It should change the size.” “Huh? Ah, whoa! What is this? The clothes got big all of a sudden?!” “Umm…it’s not quite…shape memory…I think it’s using air. The threads in the fabric…are like pipes, and you can push air through them to get them to expand and make the clothing size whatever you want…At least, I think that’s how it works, anyway…” Wait. Haven’t I been in this situation before? Kamijou instinctively began to dig through his memories. Yeah, it was the same. Index was gone, he was looking for her, then he found her, and when he opened the door, he came face-to-face with the two of them fully naked. It had just happened back at school, in the nurse’s office. He walked up to the front of the changing room and stopped before the curtain. He was pretty sure it was the two of them in there, but he didn’t want to mistake them for someone else. “Index, are you there?” Instantly, he heard two short yelps from the other side. It sounded like someone had just dumped ice into their clothes. “T-T-T-T-T-Touma! What? Are you there?!” “Umm, er…don’t open that right now…I mean, really!” Their voices sounded terrified, despite the fact that they were both behind a curtain. Having a man talk to them from the other side while they were changing must have been causing them to panic. Even Kazakiri’s voice, usually soft as a fly, was loud this time. She was probably in a state of complete defenselessness, or something close, at the moment. “Okay. Don’t worry, Mr. Kamijou won’t come into the nurse’s office a second time. Opening the curtain right now would be awful. Accidentally falling into the curtain would be even more awful. I got it, I got it. Mr. Kamijou is going to withdraw from the combat zone.” “Ah, right. Okay, Touma. See you later!” “…Umm…I would rather…you not see me in this outfit, either…” As he heard their voices, he slowly, quietly stepped back about three meters. No problems. The changing room curtain was guarding the two of them like an iron wall. Thank God nothing happened, Kamijou thought, putting a hand to his chest. He was about to turn away, when… Swish. Without any warning, the curtain fell straight down. “Huh…?” The curtain was already pretty beaten up in the first place, but the rail holding it up had come off. The changing room was now fully open, like a cloth being pulled off a fabulous prize. His mind went completely and utterly blank. The two girls stood frozen in place. Index was wearing floppy clothing based on the white outfit of Magical Powered Kanamin, which they had seen the rebroadcast of the day before. However, the clasps on the skirt were still undone. Parts of her that couldn’t be expressed in writing were now in and now out of sight. He had to give most of his condolences to Hyouka Kazakiri, though. She had chosen the outfit of the female villain from Kanamin (who, midway through the story, joined the main character’s party)…except Index had probably chosen it for her. It was one of those sexy suits of armor with zero defense—basically just a black bikini. (It came with a long pareo, but it was fully open in the front, so the pareo was really just decoration.) In terms of revealed skin…Well, it was the kind of clothing you apparently needed to remove your underwear to put on, but the front hooks on her chest armor (read, a pseudo-bra) were undone. She was bent over, and her hands were on each side of her waist armor (read, false panties), paused in an awkward spot between being pulled up all the way and being not quite there yet. The next few seconds of silence felt like an eternity, but finally, time began to move again. Index bared her teeth in rage and her eyes flared up. Kazakiri went red all the way to her ears and began trembling. Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes. “Hey, wait. Just wait. This isn’t fair. Let’s consider this calmly, all right? I am three meters away from the changing room. My hands can’t reach that far, and I don’t have an ability that lets me drop curtains without using my hands. See? This isn’t…my fault…I think…” “Touma, why were you looking this way when the curtain fell, then? Isn’t that your fault?” “I-if you had been turned away…I-it wouldn’t have been…this bad…” Kazakiri was teary-eyed and looking guilty, but she was mad at the same time. Kamijou briefly reflected that it was a new expression for her in a vain attempt to escape reality. “Umm, so…you’re gonna do that, huh, Miss Index?” “Yup,” Index replied, firmly locking the clasps on her skirt. “There’s no use in arguing, Touma.” In the far reaches of his mind, he heard the reveling of girls. “Photo stickers…Hyouka, Hyouka! How do you take these pictures? What do you do?” “Umm…You put money in here…Then you push the button, and five seconds after…” “Hmm. Hyouka, you look kinda bothered. Are you worried about something?” “Um, well…Do we really have to take pictures? I’m, err…Ah, wait! Don’t push the button! I-I decided I don’t want to—” “Come on, I’m taking it, okay, Hyouka? If you struggle too much, your face will come out weird.” “Ah, urgh…You’re not…listening…” Meanwhile, Kamijou was on the floor in the shadows three meters away from them, reduced to a ruined pile of human garbage. 8 Index and Kazakiri changed into their regular clothes. They looked like complete opposites. Index was in very high spirits as she gazed at the photo stickers they had made, but you could almost hear the depressed, bell-like gong sound effect behind Kazakiri. Her mind was in tatters, having suffered the double shock of being seen naked and having terrible pictures taken of her. “Okay, Hyouka, here’s half!” Index paid no mind to any of that, though. She split the block of sixteen photo stickers along the perforation lines into two halves, each with eight, and handed one to Kazakiri. She was probably deathly embarrassed about what she looked like in them, but she still wanted to treat them as a treasured memory of her time with a friend. She was making a pretty complex facial expression. “Wow, it feels like the whole day has already gone by, huh?” remarked Index, looking at both of the split sheets. “So this is school life! Yeah, it’s really cool.” “Actually, no, in reality you have to take boring classes and suffer through these horrible tests and stuff. It’s nothing like this.” Kamijou, the amnesiac, had never experienced either of those things, but he still carried on the conversation acting like he knew. She grinned at him. “If you can call it boring, then that probably means you’re happy.” He thought for a moment. “…Yeah, maybe.” He nodded. Index was, of course, not a resident of his world. He didn’t know whether they had mandatory public education in her world. At the very least, the whole “go to a good school and get employed at a good company” pre-charted future probably wasn’t part of it. Maybe she saw his insignificant school life as a treasure she could never reach—a peaceful world, without war…and comfortable times they could call boring. It was a law of nature that the longer you stay in an arcade, the more money disappears from your wallet, so Kamijou and the others decided to leave. Hours had passed since then, but the activity in the underground mall was showing no signs of waning. However, the school uniforms in the crowd were steadily changing to personal attire. The students who had gone home to change were coming back at this point. No sunlight got down here. The brightness was kept constant by fluorescent lights, so cues like these were all that gave you a sense of the passage of time. As he was talking to Index and Kazakiri along one of the walls, conscious of the flow of traffic, a female high school student ran past them. She wore the Judgment brassard on her arm. “…Hmm?” He casually tried to look away again, but then suddenly realized the Judgment girl had stopped and was glaring at them. She walked straight toward the dazed Kamijou without hesitation, looking quite mad about something. She drew herself up to her full height before them and said, “Hey, you there! Everyone else is paying attention, so why are you just hanging around? Run away, quickly” Not only Kamijou, but Index and Kazakiri as well were surprised by suddenly being yelled at. Um, but did…did she say something earlier? He was confused. He was pretty sure she hadn’t said anything to him yet. The Judgment girl scowled. “My telepathy! Don’t you hear it? How about now?” The girl’s face went red with strain. Then, Index and Kazakiri cried out at the same time and looked around. “H-huh…? Where did that voice…?” “Mgh. I think we heard it come directly into our heads.” Beside the flustered pair of girls, Kamijou still stood there with a blank face. “Oh, right, telepathy, huh? That power that lets you talk to people from a distance. And there’re a bunch of different transmission types, too. I remember Miss Komoe talking about this stuff during my remedial classes. Reading and writing bioelectric fields, using low-frequency sounds beyond the range of human hearing…but no, I think this is the string telephone one. See, watch.” Kamijou stuck a hand in front of Index’s face, and another look of surprise came over her face. He had probably intercepted the telepath’s power and silenced the voice in her head. The string telephone. As its name implied, it was a type of telepathy that created an invisible string by changing the transmission rate of the vibrations in the air. This string worked like a speaking tube. The voice would be conveyed through the pipelike cord of air vibrations and only come out of the very end of it. Kamijou couldn’t see what path the strings were taking—since they were invisible—but his right hand had probably touched the string linking him and the telepath girl, which is why it couldn’t reach him. “Although, telepathy is still under active R&D. I heard that it was disappearing with the popularity of cell phones now, kind of like pagers…” “…You…” The Judgment girl’s temples twitched and convulsed, but she continued. “I wonder why my voice isn’t reaching you? Well, whatever. I’ll explain orally.” Slide. She took one step closer to Kamijou. “Huh?” “There’s a terrorist somewhere in this mall right now. Code Red is in effect. They’re going to seal off the gates to the underground mall so they can begin a capture operation in…umm, nine hundred and two seconds. It’s going to turn into a shoot-out, so I’m going around asking everyone to get out of here quickly. Understand?” Kamijou flinched. Index didn’t know what Code Red meant. Even though Kazakiri would have known, the reality of such a rare occurrence probably hadn’t set in just yet. She returned the Judgment officer’s words with a blank stare. “If the terrorist knew about the operation, they might flee. That’s why they requested I use telepathy, since it doesn’t rely on sound. Don’t cause a stir. Please evacuate as casually as possible.” “Hmm. So you’re telling everyone except the terrorist. Huh? Wait, so does that mean you already know what they look like?” “There’s no need for a civilian like you to worry about that. We’ve all gotten search instructions, complete with mug shots, so there’s no problem.” The Judgment girl flipped open her cell phone. On its screen was a picture of somebody’s face. Is it the terrorist? thought Kamijou as he tried to look, but she closed the phone again with one hand. “Okay, now, if you understand, please evacuate. Less than eight hundred seconds remain before they close up.” With that, the Judgment officer left. He looked around him again. The students now all seemed slightly worried, as if they had heard her voice. They were heading for the exits as naturally as they could manage, just as she had told them. From a distance, though, it still had that strained, tense feeling like during an evacuation drill. “Hey, this is pretty bad…Let’s get out of here, Index.” He didn’t need to get involved in any kind of unfortunate trouble. It was dangerous here. He figured he should take Index and Kazakiri and get out immediately. However… …Huh? Wait a minute, wouldn’t that be bad? He stood there without moving, at the side of the department store staircase. The two girls looked at him questioningly. There were four or five armed Anti-Skill men near the exit. They were clad from head to toe in black body armor with helmets and goggles adorning their heads. They looked sort of like robots, gripping rifles he’d never seen before. Index didn’t live in this city. She did have a temporary guest ID, but he didn’t know who had issued it, and it didn’t change the fact that she was here illegally. If they investigated her more thoroughly…couldn’t she be arrested? If this had been a normal situation, it wouldn’t be worth thinking about. Index was probably fine walking around the city anyway. But this was an emergency, and inspections were commonplace. They would closely examine anyone they found even a little suspicious. They might end up discovering that she was an outsider. In reality, the tighter security for events like the Olympics or the World Cup was done to round up large numbers of drunks and others who weren’t obstructing the actual events at all. The relationship between the current security setup and Index was close to that. He didn’t know who this terrorist was, but he wanted to give them a piece of his mind. If Kamijou and Index approached the exit carelessly, they could be caught by Anti-Skill, but if they stayed here, they might be caught in the crossfire. But I guess we don’t have any choice. I’d rather be inspected by Anti-Skill than stuck in a gunfight any day. Damn it, I hate lose-lose situations! Kamijou decided to leave, risky though it might be. However, something put an end to those thoughts right then and there. The hands of something strange had wormed their way into his reality. “—I’ve fooound youuu.” It was a woman’s voice. But he heard it from the wall; there shouldn’t have been anything there. When he looked over, his whole body stiffened in shock. On the wall, at about eye level, was a clump of brown mud about the size of his palm. It kind of looked like chewed gum someone had stuck on there. But in the middle of that mud, there was a human eyeball. It darted back and forth, looking around, rolling, restlessly moving like a camera lens. Kazakiri just looked at it blankly. It didn’t seem real to her. It might have just been a fake eye made of glass. Kamijou was in a similar spot. Something in the back of his head was tingling, and his mind couldn’t quite process the visual information being sent to it. Index, however, looked at the eyeball calmly, without being surprised. The surface of the mud rippled subtly, and those vibrations created a voice. “Hee. Hee-hee. Hee-hee-hee-hee. The Index of Forbidden Books, and Imagine Breaker, and the key to the Imaginary Number District…Which one should I choose? Can I have any of them? Tee-hee-hee. I don’t know! So many options to choose from!” Her voice was both bewitching and husky at the same time. The decadent voice was reminiscent of a songstress who had ruined her throat with tobacco—but then it became something altogether different, harsh and crude, a voice that you would be hard-pressed to find even in the dingiest of pubs: “—Guess it’d be fastest just to kill ’em all, eh?” Kamijou couldn’t figure out what this strange voice intruding on them was. Was the strange mud the product of some supernatural ability, or was it sorcery? He couldn’t tell. However, Index cut the question down without waiting a second. “A false human image created from the earth—the arrangement on this Kabbalah technique is pretty similar to ours. Especially the part where it substitutes the golem, guardian of Judea, for England’s guardian angels.” He couldn’t keep up with Index’s abrupt attitude shift. He tried to parse what she had just said, but it didn’t help. So he decided to venture a question for now. “A golem? You mean that eyeball?” he asked, pointing out the mud and the eyeball stuck to the wall. It was so disgusting he thought he might throw up, but he didn’t feel any threat to his life from it. And besides, the golems he knew about were these giant, clumsy puppets made of giant boulders. They were in all sorts of video games. Index kept her gaze on the muddy eyeball, however, and replied, “There is an oral tradition, passed down through the ages, that says that God created man from the earth. Golems are a subspecies of that concept. I think this sorcerer made just the eyeball part so she could have it specialize in searching and observation. Creating even a single golem is quite a feat, so I guess only making the eyeball reduced the cost and let her control a lot of them like pawns.” At Index’s explanation, the eyeball sent ripples through the surface of the mud again, and the voluptuous voice gave a laugh. Kamijou didn’t know how this worked, but he understood, at least, that this mud and the eyeball were like a radio-controlled car. Somebody was controlling them. “So that means…that this sorcerer is the terrorist, then?” “Hee-hee,” laughed the mud. “A terrorist? A terrorist! Heh-hh. Does the word terrorist refer to people who do things like this, I wonder?” There was a splash as the mud and the eyeball burst open, then melted into the wall and disappeared. Then, a moment later… A loud ga-thunk shook the entire underground mall. “What…?!” The tremors shook the structure like a small boat in a storm. Kamijou nearly toppled over. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kazakiri catch Index in her arms before she fell. Then, another quake rocked the mall like a pirate ship hit by a cannonball. The point of impact was far from them, but its shock waves immediately spread throughout the whole underground. Dust sprinkled down from the ceiling. The fluorescent lights flickered twice, three times—and then suddenly all light sources went out at once. A few seconds later, dim red emergency lights began to illuminate their surroundings. The once-orderly wave of evacuating people erupted into a panic. Kamijou’s eardrums were overcome with the loud, stamping footsteps of a stampede of enraged bulls. The next sound he heard was a low, heavy one. The Anti-Skill officers had begun lowering the partition at the entrance ahead of schedule. It was thick as a steel castle gate—maybe it was for preventing the underground from being flooded, or maybe it was designed to be a tight shelter door. In any case, it descended from the ceiling to block the exit. It crashed down to the ground as if to bite the tails of the crowd. The students at the front were very nearly crushed under its weight. Now, having failed to flee, they started banging on the steel wall in a state of complete panic. Even a few of the Anti-Skill officers who had been doing inspections nearby began to try and draw near to it. They were trapped. People were packed like sardines into the narrow exit, forming a wall that prevented Kamijou and the others from getting close. He didn’t want to think it, but if the enemy had anticipated this, then they’d immediately know where everyone had gone. She may have known where they were, as well as the overall layout and state of construction. She might have figured it all out from those muddy eyeballs she’d dispatched. “Now, let us begin the party…” They heard the woman’s voice from the squashed mud. The already destroyed eyeball, in its final moments, acted as a broken speaker. “…Scream all you want from your fetid grave in the earth!” Then, once again, an even stronger tremor shook the underground mall. 9 Kamijou looked around for other exits just to be sure, but his efforts were in vain. All the staircases and elevators were sealed off by partitions, and the ventilation ducts weren’t big enough for anyone to fit through in the first place. The temperature underground was rapidly increasing, perhaps because the air-conditioning had been shut off. With the red emergency lights, it felt like they’d been thrown into an oven. He even started to feel like the air was getting thinner, though he knew that was impossible. He felt sick; it was like they’d been buried alive in a giant coffin. As he looked around the dimly lit hallways, he spoke in an annoyed tone. “…They attacked when they saw us, so I have to go looking for her first. Index, take Kazakiri and hide somewhere.” The enemy knew where they were. However expansive this closed-off space might have been, if she searched thoroughly enough, she would eventually find them. The enemy was after their lives. Now that they couldn’t flee, they had only one option. I’ll go out and take her down before she lays a hand on Index or Kazakiri. Damn it. If only I knew how many of them there were, I’d be able to come up with a plan… Kamijou racked his brain thinking about it. Index, holding the cat, puffed up her cheeks in annoyance. “No, Touma, you go hide with Hyouka. The enemy is a sorcerer, so this is my job.” “Are you dumb? You can’t fight with noodles for arms! Go ahead, hit someone with your fist. You’d just hurt your own wrist. Go with Kazakiri and hide somewhere!” “Mgh. Touma, I think you’re getting a couple of lucky breaks confused for actual abilities. It doesn’t matter how crazy a power you have if you’re just an amateur when it comes to magic! So do as an amateur should and go hide somewhere with Hyouka!” “Hah! What sayest thou? I am the gentle Kamijou, the very personification of rotten luck. I’ve never gotten a lucky break in my life…Urgh, that stung, and I’m the one who said it…” He began to sink into self-hatred. Hyouka Kazakiri was flustered. “…U-umm…I don’t know what’s going on, but…Isn’t there…anything I can…um, help with?” No! said Kamijou and Index at the same time. Kazakiri hung her head, dejected. The very next moment, they heard footsteps approaching from around the corner. “?!” Kamijou tried to put himself in front of Index and Kazakiri, and Index tried to put herself in front of Kamijou and Kazakiri—as a result, they ran into each other, and the two of them crashed down to the floor in a tangle. Kazakiri remained unharmed, but she was frozen, having drawn her hands to her chest. The click-clack of footsteps was getting closer. The cat, close to being crushed in Index’s arms, cried out and frantically waved its front legs. The click-clack-click-clack of footsteps sounded like an antique grandfather clock. They heard girls’ voices from around the corner. “Oh, my. I believe I hear a cat crying out for help!” “Kuroko, I thought you didn’t have any interest in animals.” “Yes, but I know that you do, Big Sister.” “I-I don’t…” “Oh, my. I know all about it. You feed the stray cats behind the dorm on a daily basis. But the weak electromagnetic waves your body gives off always make them all flee, and you end up just standing there alone with a can of cat food in your hand!” “Why do you…?! Wait, Kuroko, have you been stalking me again…?!” The two girls turned the corner and stopped when they found Kamijou and Index there on the floor. It went without saying, but Mikoto Misaka and Kuroko Shirai were not the enemy. I got all nervous for nothing…, thought Kamijou, his body loosening up. Mikoto looked at him strangely. “What exactly are you doing here with a girl on top of you?” “…Oh, oh my. At a time like this, too. How very bold of you.” For some reason, there were little sparks crackling out of Mikoto’s bangs, and Shirai spoke in an oddly icy voice. However, Index made no move to get off of him. “Touma, just who are these unrefined girls? Do you know them? What are they to you? That one with the short hair looks like the cool beauty from before, but she’s a different person, right?” “Wha…” Shirai caught her breath in surprise, and Mikoto began to give a smile—a dangerous one, which almost looked peaceable—to Index, who was clearly raring for a fight. Oh, right. Index and Little Misaka met before, didn’t they? Thought Kamijou, trying to escape from reality. But, wait. Why does the air around them feel so…strained? A few moments later, he came back to reality. Index and Mikoto exchanged stares. “So you and Touma know each other, huh?” “Touma…? Wait, so you know him, too, then?” “…Umm. Well, I guess he saved my life and stuff?” “Oh…Did he come running to save you, too? Even though you didn’t ask for it?” The two of them stayed silent for a moment, then they both sighed. Ah! It looks like the tension resolved, he thought optimistically. Hey! I want an explanation! What have you been doing while I wasn’t looking?! No, they’d simply changed their targets. To him. Eek! Kamijou slammed shut the door to his mind that was just beginning to open. Kazakiri watched him get scolded in stereo and, hands at her mouth, started to wobble around uncertainly. She looked like she felt bad for him, but she didn’t have the guts to stand on the front lines in this battle. She looked to and fro, quite worried, then finally noticed that Shirai was standing a couple of steps away from her. Kazakiri considered pleading for Shirai, the lone neutral party, to intervene and make peace, but… “(…My goodness, I see, she owes him her life, I knew it was suspicious the whole time, when that man came to Big Sister’s room, something happened that day, didn’t it, and she didn’t say a word about it to me, and yet she revealed everything to this…urchin…is that it, is that how I should read into this, heh-heh-heh. Oh, my, how strange, heh-heh-heh-heh.)” Kazakiri’s glasses slid down on one side after hearing the girl’s all-too-calm muttering. It seemed the girl with twin pigtails was not a neutral party, but a separate faction altogether. Kazakiri, now all alone, was frozen in place, unable to do much of anything. She knew that it would be impossible for her to get in the middle of such a complex map of political fissures. Kamijou, when he was finally released from their protracted stereo lecture, managed to crawl out from beneath Index. Then he explained in simple terms their situation to Mikoto and Shirai. Of course, he spared the details regarding the sorcerer, since he knew they wouldn’t believe him. “Hmm. I don’t really get it, but what this really is…is that you got wrapped up in trouble again, huh? But a terrorist this time, huh? A terrorist…Kuroko, think it has anything to do with that goth lolita from earlier?” Mikoto looked at Shirai cheerlessly. “It may be. Would it not be appropriate to consider it related just based on the characteristics of the voice you claim to have heard? Still, I cannot believe that an esper has attacked Academy City from the outside. It would not be strange were a natural esper to exist, but…” “Maybe they do ability development in other places than Academy City. Though I suppose rumors of outsiders having supernatural abilities are about as trustworthy as government UFO conspiracy theories.” Neither Shirai nor Mikoto knew about sorcery, so they seemed to be basing their speculation about the recent happenings firmly within the concept of extra-normal abilities. Kamijou glanced over at Index to see her looking agitated, but he held up a hand to keep her in check. They didn’t need to complicate the discussion any further. The Judgment brassard on Shirai’s arm rustled as she heaved a sigh. “For goodness’ sake. To think we’d allow a terrorist in…I think I need to refocus as well. I heard that two people broke in, and yet just one of them is causing this much of a problem. I’m worried about the other one now, too.” Hmm? Kamijou couldn’t help but be drawn by what Kuroko Shirai was saying. “What, Kuroko? There’s still more trouble than this?” “Yes. According to the information we received from Anti-Skill, there are two intruders. They entered through different places and using different methods, so they were believed to be separate incidents, but we cannot be sure.” Hmmm…? Kamijou broke out in a profuse, cold sweat. Index seemed to have noticed it first. She tugged on his shirt with both hands and asked, “Touma, you look like you’re trembling. What’s the matter?” Mikoto smirked at her. “Heh-heh…Maybe it’s because you’re so stuffy and annoying.” “I’m not annoying” Index shouted back to her. Kamijou took no notice of her. “Excuse me, er, please, don’t get angry at what I’m about to say. I think that other intruder was, er, probably me.” “Huh?” Everyone present looked at him. Kamijou began his clever ruse to escape from all the stares. “Well…I met this clumsy man named Yamisaka last night. And we absolutely had to leave Academy City in order to help his friend, and then we finally settled that problem, and I just returned this morning, so…umm…what is it? Mikoto, Shirai, why are the two of you sighing like you totally understand and this is just a disease I have or something?” He instinctively knew that he needed to change the topic to something else. He revved his brain motors to full. “Wait, so, what are you two doing here, anyway?” “I am a member of Judgment, so I have come to evacuate the people who got locked in here. I am a teleporter, after all.” “Huh. Then what about you, Mikoto?” “Oh, er, I didn’t really…” “?” “Wh-what?! It doesn’t really matter, does it?!” Mikoto shouted, her face turning all red for some reason, confusing Kamijou. Shirai shut one eye, making no attempt to hide her displeasure. “(…Well, I can’t say that she was tagging along with me while I was working, then saw you come up on the Code Red security cameras in the office, and then ran here because she was worried about you. It’s not something one could say normally.)” Kamijou looked over at her, whereupon she snorted a hmph! and turned away. Unaware of what was transpiring beneath the surface, he considered her teleportation ability. It would probably be pretty easy to get out of the locked-up underground mall if she used it. “I am still a member of Judgment, so I can’t overlook this terrorist, or whatever she is,” she remarked, shooting a glance down the dark hallway. “But human lives come first. If it’s true that they shut the partitions ahead of schedule, then we don’t have any time left. If a large battle is going to happen here, then I must complete the evacuation before it does.” Even now, there were dozens of students who hadn’t quite been able to escape gathered around the gate. They were all still struggling in vain to somehow get the steel wall open, when there was no way they’d be able to. “All right. I’ll buy you time while you get the trapped people out, so could you take them outside?” The moment Kamijou said that, Shirai, Mikoto, and Index all angrily pointed at him at once. Mikoto exchanged pained glances with Index, as if saying that they seemed to get along at the stupidest times. Kazakiri, the only one left, couldn’t muster the courage to retort and could only wave her hand uselessly in the air. Mikoto spoke for the group. “You need to get out of here first. I mean, you’re all being directly targeted! You think we’d leave the most dangerous person on the battlefield?!” “…Well, no, but…” Kamijou scratched his head. “My right hand nullifies all abilities, Shirai’s included.” “Now that you mention it…I did fail that time you came to the girls’ dorm, didn’t I?” She noted, suddenly remembering it. Mikoto’s eyes immediately sharpened. He gulped and took a step back. For various reasons, he had forced his way into Mikoto’s room without warning one time. “A-anyway, I can’t get outside with Shirai’s power, so the only thing I can do is go fight her.” When Index heard that, she latched on to his arm. “Then I’ll stay here, too!” This time, Index was set upon by four people—by Kamijou, Mikoto, Shirai, and Kazakiri, all at once. Even the timid Kazakiri seemed to have rallied her bravery. Her eyes were shut tight, but she definitely got in a chop to the back of Index’s head. Shirai put her hands on her hips. “My power has its limitations, though…I can probably only take two people with me at once. Though if this little brat is heavier than I expected, it may not be so easy.” “Hmph! That’s funny, you calling me a brat! You’re the most childish one here” “Wh-what was that? You’re flat as a board but you’re telling me that…?!” Mikoto gave a sigh at the enraged Kuroko Shirai. “Now, now. It doesn’t matter. From a step back you’re both children.” “…” From one more step back, and from a high school student’s point of view, Mikoto looked like a child as well. Kamijou decided to smile vaguely and keep his mouth shut. After all, he was 50 percent composed of pure, distilled kindness. On the other hand, Kazakiri was another step away, looking at them in much the same way a kindergarten teacher watches over her children. Nobody noticed her, though. “But you can only carry two, huh…Okay, then take out Index and Kazakiri first.” “Touma, are you saying you’ll stay down here with Short-Hair?” said Index in an oddly cool tone. Her canines glittered in the dark as if to say that her attack preparations were complete, and that she could bite his head at any moment. “…Uhh. Okay, then just take Mikoto and Kazakiri.” “Oh-ho. You want to stay here with that little runt, don’t you? Hmm.” This time, static electricity began to flutter about Mikoto’s brown hair. The bluish-white sparks snapped and crackled sporadically, lighting up the darkness. “Aagh, shit! Just bring Index and Mikoto, then” yelled Kamijou, practically tearing his hair out at this point. Shirai sighed. “Then I’ll take Big Sister and this brat, but I’ll be jumping out there, too.” “Huh? Isn’t it a pain to keep going between the surface and underground? I feel like it would be faster to just send one person at a time up there.” “I can control where we go much more finely if I go with them. If I send them away willy-nilly, then in the worst case, I’d be off by a bit and warp them straight into a building. I do not want to be responsible for creating any strange human pillars. Now then, if you will, both of you.” Shirai put either hand on Mikoto and Index as they glared at each other, as if to mediate. The next moment… There was a poof as Index, Mikoto, and Shirai all disappeared into thin air. Kamijou thought he heard Mikoto saying something like, “Huh? Wait, Kuroko! I’m staying here” but he figured she was worried about her underclassman staying here at the battlefield by herself. He and Kazakiri naturally looked at the ceiling. Had they gotten up there safely? “So those two first…Sorry about leaving you here.” “…N-no, don’t be. I’m fine…with being last…but what…about you—” Her words were cut off in the middle as…gr-grash The entire underground mall was rattled again by a huge tremor. However, unlike the previous times, this blast seemed to be closer to them. The explosions of guns along with angry shouts and yells began to drift over to them from down the dim passageways. The main event’s here?…Wait, this is too soon Their opponent had already scanned the underground mall with those eyeballs, so it wasn’t surprising that she was heading straight for them. The students gathered by the wall heard the sounds of fighting from afar and burst into panic once again. However unique their own powers may have been, they were just simple students at heart. They all began to run to get away, to put even a few more feet between them and the danger, but thanks to the meager red emergency lights, they stumbled over one another and started falling like dominoes. Kamijou stared intently down the passage. There was no time to be lost in thought about this. If a battle were to happen here, where there were dozens of others, there would surely be sacrifices. His right hand could cancel out any strange powers, but he didn’t have much confidence that he could completely protect that many people. If I can’t avoid battle one way or the other, then… His decision was swift. “Sorry, Kazakiri. You wait here for Shirai to come back.” “Huh…what about you…?” As she spoke, another loud gonk shook the underground mall. This time it was close. A warm breeze blew up the hallway and pushed past them. The sporadic gunshots and shouting were gradually becoming clearer and more vivid. They weren’t very far from the enemy anymore. He directed his gaze into the darkness before him, without glancing at her. “I’m…gonna go stop it.” That’s all he said. Without waiting for a reply, he ran into the dark. He had no idea who the enemy was or how strong they were, but the sounds reaching him were enough to make him shudder. If whatever it was came this far, dozens of lives would doubtlessly be lost. And Hyouka Kazakiri would be among them. That was something he couldn’t let happen. He ran into the darkness, tightening his right hand into a fist. Word Cound: (12791)