EPILOGUE

Return to Academy City
L’inizio_Nuovo……

An Italian hospital. That was new.

Many people go overseas on vacation, but Kamijou thought sightseers who unexpectedly ended up in the hospital were a rare breed. At the moment, he was on a rickety stretcher moving through a dark passage. No matter what the doctors and nurses tried to say to him, he was clueless. At any rate, his right shoulder and left hand were bandaged, and gauze stuck to his face…Or maybe that was antiseptic, because his eyes were a little blurry.

“It must be antiseptic. That’s the only reason possible! Damn it, all the other Amakusa people were taking a bath spell until their skin practically glowed, too…”

“The Adriatic Sea was less cold than I thought, huh?”

“Why are you so happy about it, Index?! The two of us fell into the Gulf of Venice with the rest of the ship!! Hah! Wait, maybe you’re in a good mood because I didn’t leave you by yourself this time…”

“!!” Before Kamijou could finish speaking, Index got her legs tangled up and fell on the floor. “I-I’m not in a good mood!!”

“I got it, but are you okay?! Sheesh, don’t go crazy over something dumb, Index. Look, you’re causing problems for the nice nurse lady, too— Dbahhhh!!”

The moment he mentioned the newly hired blond nurse, Index bit him. “Are you still Touma even when you’re on a stretcher?!”

“I don’t even understand what that means!!”

The doctor subdued the nun struggling around on the stretcher and peeled her away. The nurse crooked her head to the side, not understanding what they were saying.

“Breathe in, breathe out. Touma, Touma. The doctor’s saying to hold on to this,” said Index.

Kamijou looked at the doctor, who was holding a cordless phone for some reason. He wondered if it was okay to have that in a hospital, but when he thought about it more logically, it seemed more normal to have a phone somewhere in here. He took the phone tentatively. It was already connected, and when he put it to his ear, a familiar voice greeted him.

“You go through the same things on vacations, don’t you?”

It was the frog-faced doctor. The one who was always fixing him up in Academy City. Kamijou’s life was one of getting recklessly injured, then going back to the starting point—or, rather, the hospital—so he had already assumed that doctor was extremely good at his job, among other things.

“What? This is rather sudden. Wait! Are you one of those nutso doctors who gives checkups to patients over the phone?!”

“If I could do that, the hospital would have already made a phone application, I’m sure. But, well, I can’t, so I have to put in a request with you. You need to come back to Academy City right away.”

………………………………………………………………Huh?

“Well, I’m not joking, you see. You may be in an Academy City–associated facility, but I think there are many reasons we wouldn’t want an outside hospital tinkering with an esper’s body, don’t you?”

“Umm, no, that’s not…But wait! You’re gonna make me get on a plane like this? For almost ten hours?! Just so you know, the good Mr. Kamijou has been pulverized!”

“Oh, no, that is perfectly fine. There should be an Academy City supersonic passenger jet at Marco Polo International Airport. You know, it can apparently go over seven thousand kilometers per hour at its maximum speed. It’ll only be a little over an hour to Japan, right?”

“On a jumbo jet?! Aren’t you actually talking about the mystical North American X-15 experimental aircraft?! How am I supposed to fly something that goes faster than most missiles without any training?!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’ve actually piloted one before, and you only feel a little bit weightless.”

“And for an hour?! I think the entire contents of my stomach are going to come right out!!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’ve actually piloted one before, and you don’t have time to think about things like that after the first ten minutes.”

How is that fine?! Kamijou grabbed his head with his hands. “Please, wait—I beg you! I—I haven’t even been in Italy for a whole day yet! I’ve tasted the waters of the Adriatic Sea twice—no, three times if you count when we escaped—but I haven’t even taken a single step into Venice, the place I was supposed to be going this whole time!”

“Oh yes, if you’ve experienced that much, then I’m sure you’re satisfied. Well, I can only say one thing…There’s no way that will work, so give up and get back here.”

That was mean and kind of apathetic!! he thought, pushed ever further to his wits’ end.

And then the voice on the line said something else. “Oh, right. The cute little girl who’s been around for hospital visits lately—I mentioned I would contact you, and she asked me to relay a message for her.”

“What???” Cute—who was that? Right now, Kuroko Shirai and Aisa Himegami were the ones in the hospital. Himegami would know Seiri Fukiyose and Miss Komoe, and if he looked at Shirai, it would probably be Mikoto Misaka visiting…

“…Wait. Mikoto Misaka?”

“Yes,” said the frog-faced doctor with a nod.

“I’m glad you know. She said something about ‘preparing yourself for the punishment game from the Daihasei Festival when you got back,’ you see.”

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh?! I totally forgoooooooooot!!”

As Touma Kamijou began to rage in the stretcher, the doctor and nurses had to use all their might to hold him back. They must have noticed that the situation called for haste.

Touma Kamijou and Mikoto Misaka had made a little deal during the Daihasei Festival. Now, having lost, he would be forced to do whatever Mikoto wanted. If she knew he’d not only stood her up but was off in Italy for a relaxing vacation…

“…then I’ll be in for hell when I get back! Now I really don’t want to go! Wait, no, let me go, please! Come on, seriously, don’t lock me down with professional-looking tools like that!!”

The stretcher clattered along on its way.

The phone spoke to the wailing Kamijou.

“Well, I suppose, hmm. Welcome home, Touma Kamijou.”

Before the calendar date changed, during the time referred to as “late night”…

In a pocket of Lambeth, London, was a dormitory-like building for English Puritan believers. Those who used it most of all were not those without money but those who didn’t want civilians to be caught up in sudden attacks. If everyone nearby was a professional, if it came to combat, they would get through with minimal casualties.

“Is that so? Good work.”

Speaking in one of those rooms was Kaori Kanzaki. She had an Asian face, and her black hair, though tied into a ponytail, was long enough to reach her hips. Her clothing consisted of a short-sleeve T-shirt tied around the waist and jeans with one leg cut off. She also regularly wore a large katana at her waist, close to two meters long, called the Seven Heavens Sword, but right now it was leaning against the wall.

She wasn’t talking to a person but into a telephone. It was an old rotary phone—a perfectly antique item, made of red ceramic and bordered with gold. For the record, the person on the other end was Motoharu Tsuchimikado.

“Nya. But if you wanted a report, you should have asked someone else from Amakusa. It’s a bit dangerous for me to go looking for intel, you know. You do know that, right, nya?”

“R-right now I’m not a member of Amakusa anymore. Even the thought of speaking so freely with them should be called arrogance,” said Kanzaki, playing with the phone cord with her index finger. She went on. “Besides, whatever the case, you were collecting information around Venice already. The timing was too impeccable. Those from Amakusa going to Chioggia to help with moving and the young man and the index coming to Italy together…By the report, Orsola Aquinas was mistaken as someone sent to stop the Queen of the Adriatic and attacked by the Roman Orthodox Church, but I wonder. I believe their hunch may have been correct.”

Kanzaki tapped her bare foot on the floor as she spoke. The room was a western one, but Kanzaki forbade anyone to enter with their shoes on. It was, perhaps, a blending of Japanese and western styles.

“Mm, about that. There’re things going on over here, too, so I can’t answer that.”

“Wh-what is it?” Tsuchimikado’s voice had been oddly slow and drawn out, but it instead put Kanzaki on her guard.

And her hunch was correct. “…Zaky, you caused a big problem for Kammy again, didn’t you, nya?”

“Pfft?!” Unfortunately, the damage was way outside what she was able to tolerate.

“Jeez. What are you gonna do now? Zaky, I think you’re gonna need to do a little more than put on a maid outfit and be his servant for a day. Oh! How about this, nya? I’ll lend you my angel set—a halo for your head and white wings! It’s an improvement on the maid outfit! Then you can go for it, Zaky!! Wh-whoooa! A freaking angel, damn it. If such a cute fallen angel arrives at his front door, what’ll happen to Kammy?!”

“Wh-why must you insist on this absurdity…?! And why would you even have something like that?!”

“Oh, well, actually…I bought it for Maika. That stepsister of mine…She said maids aren’t in cosplay and punched me real good in the face. I gotta wonder about a girl having a punch that seems like it came out of the army, nya.”

“…She is at that age, so maybe you should be a little more considerate,” said Kanzaki, about to deflate entirely, before giving a start. This wasn’t what they were talking about. “Wait a moment. All this was really just the leaders of the English Puritan Church and Academy City pulling some strings and getting Touma Kamijou involved so they could resolve this incident, wasn’t it? Why am I at all related to this?!”

“Hmm? Zaky, you mean to say you’re not grateful to Kammy for anything?”

“Urgh?!”

“Oh well. Kammy went out of his way to protect everyone in Amakusa from the Queen’s Fleet blowing up, but you declared you have zero gratitude toward him and even that you weren’t related to this. You’ve really fallen, Kaori Kanzaki. If Kammy heard about this, he’d be pretty disappointed. He’s weirdly nice about things, so he probably wouldn’t even be mad.”

“Th-that’s…You do have a point, but what more am I supposed to do?! My debt to him does nothing but increase!!”

“That’s what I’m saying! The only path for you is to give your heart and soul and truly become the fallen-angel maid! Even if there are only twenty of you saints in the world, you’d better be prepared, Zaky!!…Huh, hello? Zaky, you listening? Hey, wait, I’m not done…!!”

She slammed the receiver back on its hook. She stared down at it for a few moments, dazed, and finally her face went white.

“…F-fallen-angel maid…?”

Kanzaki’s eyes dropped to her uncontrollably shaking hands. Then she looked at the rectangular water tank with her tropical fish in it next to the phone. There she saw the face of the former priestess, directly confronted with a grandiose problem.

“W-would a halo be something like this? B-but a fallen angel…How would one act and speak…? Synonymous with devils, in this case female, and when presented with a male, they would be cute and mischievous…”

If the POWER OF GOD, the archangel who had partially descended to earth as Misha Kreutzev, heard that, it would probably instantly attack her. Kanzaki had no knowledge of this, though, as frenzied as her mind currently was.

And then, the sublime saint, of whom there were only twenty in the world, after a brief moment of silence, tilted her head to the side and said:

“…A-as you please, Touma?”

All of a sudden, there was a ding-dong at the door.

“…???!”

Her shoulders suddenly jerked violently in surprise as she quickly took the decorative plate off her head. When her small tropical fish saw her do that, they all rushed madly to the tank’s rear. Kanzaki quickly scanned her surroundings, and after making sure nobody was around, she put a hand to her chest and sighed quietly before eventually looking at the door.

This dorm had a bell for visitors at the front door in addition to the ones for each room. If that had rung, then what was it? Maybe it was a delivery.

Kanzaki retrieved her katana from the wall, went to the door, put on her boots, and left the room. She headed down the long wooden hallway toward the front door.

The dorm had custodians, but they tended to be sloppy and often slept on the job. As she went to the entrance, she glanced into the nearby custodian room and saw the ladies dozing off as always. The television had been left on, so they were probably unconscious. The television had originally been brought in to prevent them from taking naps, but it seemed to just encourage them if nothing they liked was on.