CHAPTER 4

Gradually Intersecting Pairs
Boy_Meets_Girl (x2).

1

Mikoto Misaka went away somewhere.

He didn’t know why, really, but as soon as she’d seen Little Misaka and the tiny one with her, her mood had worsened.

“Hey, wait!” she’d said, her face bright red. “Whose punishment game do you think it is you’re here for today?! You weren’t going to work your butt off all day for me?!”

Kamijou had responded to her demand honestly. “Huh? You were just after Croaker, weren’t you?” he answered.

Then for some reason, Mikoto had nibbled her lip. “…!! What…? Ah, uh, that’s right! Now that I have Croaker and Hoppit, I have no more use for you! Who cares about the punishment game?! Idiot!!”

A lance of lightning had flown at him as she shouted, which is why Kamijou was now on the floor in a corner of the underground mall. He’d managed to succeed in repelling her billion-volt attack, but the surprise had made him lose his balance and fall backward.

Wh-what was the problem…?

She’d shouted, “I don’t care anymore!!” and run away somewhere at a rapid pace. Kamijou, left behind, wasn’t clear on whether she’d released him from his punishment. Now he was loafing around, doing nothing in particular.

What on earth is going on today? he wondered. What with Little Misaka and Kuroko Shirai…

The most suspicious of the bunch had to be the girl of about ten with Little Misaka. Her features were exactly the same as Mikoto’s—or rather Little Misaka’s. Seriously, who was she? He hoped, a bead of cold sweat breaking out on his face, that they hadn’t added on another twenty thousand Misakas as a new series or something. It really worried him. In this city, it could actually happen.

With a sigh, he said, “Gah, I’ll just ask Little Misaka at some point. I get the feeling I’ll be getting a huge invoice later if I let this run its course.”

“Why do your shoulders droop with such deep exhaustion? asks Misaka asks Misaka, clinging to your back like a mascot made for soothing the soul.”

As the strange, unexpected reply came in response to his muttering, a weight suddenly latched onto his back. The round sensation on it sent a terrible shudder through him, making his hair stand on end.

“Wha— What?! Are you trying to be that tiny old man spirit that crushes you when you give it a piggyback ride?!”

“Misaka’s gender is female, and besides, I think talking about occult stuff in Academy City is nonsensical, says Misaka says Misaka, gripping your body tighter to gain a sense of stability. Misaka wants this to be her spot, demands Misaka demands Misaka as an extra.”

Fshh. The lukewarm mass of body heat got a tiny bit heavier.

The chilling feeling in his spine reached its climax. “Uwooo-wahh!! What the heck is this?!” he shouted as he reached his hands behind his head, took hold of the thing clinging to his back, and flung it before him like he was slam-dunking it. There, hanging upside down, was the mystery miniaturized Little Misaka.

Who is this kid? he wondered, tilting his head to the side.

The upside-down, mirrored girl followed suit and cocked her own head to the other side.

2

How the hell did it come to this? Accelerator’s shoulders drooped.

He was right inside the entrance to the underground mall. Several tables were arranged even outside the stores as open spaces for fast-food joints. Though this was the underground mall, the distinction between a shop’s inside and outside was extremely dubious.

At one of those tables was a silver-haired, green-eyed girl wearing a snow-white habit. She was slumped right over the table face-first, buried under a mountain of hamburgers, French fries, salads, and the like. Just for the sake of clarity here—these were all things Accelerator had bought. The girl didn’t have a single coin on her.

The trigger for all this happening in the first place was Accelerator’s entrance into the mall on his modern-design crutch to search for Last Order, and this mystery girl had, out of nowhere, crashed into him from the side.

With a gait and tone that indicated she was indeed dizzy, she’d said in his direction, “Huh, that’s not Touma, not Touma, I thought it was Touma. Why isn’t this person Touma? Where did he go? It doesn’t matter, I’m so hungry I can’t move, all these smells of salt and pepper and meat are making my mouth water, I want to eat that, I want to eat it. What should I do? What do I need to do to eat it?”

“…”

Normally, that would be the moment Accelerator considered smashing her body to bits and leaving it lying around somewhere, but embarrassingly enough, Yomikawa had just been telling him a few minutes ago to do nice things once in a while. He shouldn’t have bothered making such strange conversation. There was exactly nothing in his mind telling him he needed to faithfully keep to what she’d told him, but if he punched out the sister in white here and went on, he felt like she’d laugh at him the same way one would at someone who said they quit smoking and didn’t last thirty minutes. That would be annoying in its own right.

She kept talking on and on without listening, making him think she resembled the brat somewhat, but he’d rather die before admitting it had caught his attention.

Instead, he kicked the starving sister into a nearby fast-food place and threw his wallet at her. As soon as he’d done that, she’d started spewing absurdities, like wanting to eat this and that and everything on the menu—and that’s how they got here.

Accelerator had rented his body out to many projects in the past. He’d thrown plenty more money than he needed into a bank account he didn’t use, so this wasn’t a financial issue…but still, she’d torn through all those hamburgers, so he had to wonder how big her stomach was.

Incidentally, the nun was holding a small calico cat in her hands, but it didn’t seem to be hungry, since it didn’t show any interest in the hamburgers. (Then again, it couldn’t eat them because of the finely sliced onions.) It was busy mewing and meowing with the stray cats wandering into the mall. Their conversations probably included “We’re apparently going to get more flexible muscles this autumn” and “No way?! I’ve been sharpening my claws this whole time!!” Maybe these cats didn’t have any territorial instincts.

Accelerator watched the scene of gluttony. “This is ridiculous…I don’t even get this tired dealing with that stupid brat.”

“Mgah?”

“Quit stopping so much and just eat everything at once. Besides, isn’t there somethin’ you wanna say to me?”

“Gulp. Yep. Thanks!”

“…Shit. One word?” Accelerator shook his head a little. This was one handful he’d stumbled across. He prayed for peace in the next world for whichever of her acquaintances had to deal with her on a daily basis.

The nun brought a large bottle of juice to her lips and chugged, following that with enough food to fill a plastic bottle, finishing them in five seconds each.