CHAPTER 1

Entrance Ceremony
Baby_Queen.

1

September 1st, early morning.

Academy City, which encompassed one-third of the Tokyo metropolitan area, was suffused with cool air despite the sunlight pouring down on it. People were few and far between, too—only middle school students walking their dogs and college students out for a jog were around. The propellers of the wind turbines here and there spun slowly, churning the cool, forestlike air.

And…

Touma Kamijou limped through this clear, cool scene, completely exhausted.

“I-I’m beat…This was definitely not a normal day in the life of a high school student…”

The high school boy’s T-shirt and pants were sopping wet, as though he’d just run a marathon. His body felt twice as heavy thanks to his clothing absorbing all the moisture.

When you got right down to it, the previous day, August 31st, had been the root cause of everything.

That night, Kamijou met a man named Ouma Yamisaka. And then they both left Academy City in order to save a woman the man knew.

“Left”—as in “broke through by force.” Academy City was encircled by a wall, and a police-like force guarded it. They didn’t allow anyone out without permission. If Yamisaka hadn’t helped, it would have actually been difficult. The sorcerer had a convenient spell called “Beguiling Bowstring” that made the capturing forces think Kamijou and Yamisaka had permission to leave. Mental defenses varied from person to person, though, so the technique itself was somewhat capricious. Sometimes they had to take a more forceful approach.

“…It doesn’t even make sense. He risked his life to get through that security net, but then what? Do all sorcerers mercilessly beat the shit out of amateurs? Damn, if I had a journal, yesterday would take up an entire book. I just know it.”

And after everything was over and done with, he’d broken back into Academy City with Yamisaka’s help. And that was just a little while ago.

…Ah, I can finally see the dorm. Yes, I’ve made it back to the normal world at last!

In reality, it hadn’t even been a day since he left, but he felt like he was returning home after a months-long vacation. Of course, he was an amnesiac with no memory of what happened before August, so he didn’t exactly know what doing something for the first time in months felt like.

Kamijou’s body sagged with exhaustion and sleep deprivation. He dragged it back to the dorm and took the tiny elevator up to his room.

Ugh…I’m so sleepy.

He fought back a yawn. All he wanted to do was leap into bed and sleep like the dead for two or three days straight. Unfortunately, today was September 1st, the day of his entrance ceremony.

He had lost his memories during the summer break, though, so he didn’t really know anyone in his class aside from one or two people. It would just be a normal day for the other students, but for him, it would be like he’d just transferred in. As a transfer student, he couldn’t afford to skip out on his first day just because he was a little sleepy.

And of course…I definitely don’t want anyone to know that I lost my memories. There’re no classes today, so I need to use it to relearn how I lived my school life and figure out my relationships with people, he thought, feeling rather sophisticated. He breathed a sigh of sleepiness and opened the front door.

As soon as he did, he heard the shrill yell of the girl inside.

“Tooouuummmaaa!!”

Her voice was mad, but that was all. She didn’t come running over to the front door.

He made a dubious face for a moment…then finally remembered.

As he worked his tired brain, the voice’s owner finally appeared. It was a foreign girl, with fair skin and silver hair that went down to her waist. She wore an extravagant nun’s habit made of pure white fabric, decorated with golden embroidery, which for some reason had a handful of safety pins stuck into it along the seams.

The girl, for whom the term girl was still apt, was named Index.

…And at the moment, she was bound hand and foot with slender rope. Unable to move her limbs, she had wriggled out of the room like an inchworm. Incidentally, the calico sat nimbly atop her head, yawning without a care in the world. The term inverted social order was quite intuitive and fitting.

“Ack, I totally forgot! Were you tied up this entire time?!”

“Touma! You left me behind and the first thing out of your mouth is that?!” Index shouted, baring her teeth.

As explained before, Kamijou had met a man named Ouma Yamisaka last night, then fought his way in and out of the city to save an acquaintance of his. Of course, there was no way they could bring the weakling Index with them. As soon as he explained that, though, she started to rage at him, throwing punches and kicks. He had no choice but to have Yamisaka tie her up using his rope-binding skills and have her mind the dorm in his absence.

“Every time, every single time, you go out there alone…Touma, just take these ropes off! It’s just a small barrier created with a shimenawa! Your right hand should be able to break it!”

His right hand.

In it rested a power called Imagine Breaker. It could nullify any abnormal power, whether it was magic or supernatural abilities, without question. Its flaw, though, was that it only worked from his right wrist to his fingertips.

“But, I mean…When I undo the rope, you look like you’ll just throw a huge fit…”

Index had this terrible habit where when she was mad, she’d bite his head. He couldn’t let down his guard when she was infuriated like this. It would be like letting a hungry, savage dog off its leash. He really didn’t want to go to the first day of the new semester with a girl’s bite marks all over him…

Then, her expression softly changed.

To put it in simple terms—into the kind of face a mother might give to a scared, lost child.

“Touma, if you untie me now, I won’t get angry with you. So would you please just undo these ropes?”

“…Really? You’re really not going to get angry?”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t start to chomp on me the moment I undo the ropes?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she said, with a smile as soft as the Holy Mother herself.

Kamijou stooped down to her, lying on the floor, and touched his index finger to the ropes binding her body. Like a magic trick, the knots in the dozens of ropes all came undone at once.

A moment later, Index, now freed from restraint, immediately attacked him.

“Eh?”

She bit into his head like a caveman tearing into a huge piece of meat.

“Touma, you idiot! Idiot idiot idiot!”

“Gyaaaahh?!”

By the time he cried out, it was too late. He writhed as the pain violently shot through him. Not even his Imagine Breaker, which could wipe out any magic or supernatural ability, could stand up to this girl’s brute savagery.

“Y-you’re a liar! You said you wouldn’t get angry—owww?!”

“Of course I got angry! I can’t believe you’d just leave me here even though you knew you were gonna go fight with a sorcerer! No matter what strange powers you may have, you’re still an amateur when it comes to magic, Touma! What would you have done if something happened?!”

When he looked at her, her entire face was warped in anger, and yet her eyes looked about to burst into tears.

Index stroked his head, embracing the object of her memories.

“…Seriously, what would you have done?”

Kamijou heard the voice come down on him like rain.

A faint, sweet smell wafted from her long silver hair.

He realized she was trembling a little.

She had probably been worrying all night about him until he got home.

“I’m sorry.”

That was all he said.

No other words would come out.

I can’t cause any more pain for someone who has been sick with worry over me, he thought. It was an honest, earnest wish that came from the bottom of his heart—he didn’t want to hurt her.

As it happened…

…she didn’t know that he had lost his memories.

He hadn’t told her, because he knew that if she found out, it would hurt her for sure.

2

Kamijou shook his head from side to side to drive off the sleepiness as he made breakfast for two. It was toast, bacon, eggs, and a steamed salad, with milk—a super-simple four-piece set.

As soon as Index saw the food, she—and the cat—ran over to the table. He, however, walked about the room with a piece of toast in his mouth, throwing everything he’d need for the entrance ceremony into his bag.

“…indoor slippers, stuff to write with…Homework was due…today, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was today. I never finished it, did I? What should I do…? And a…report card? They should’ve just sent it in an email.”

Maybe it’s to prevent hacking, he figured idly as he tossed the pasteboard report card in.

Index, sitting by herself at the table, gave him a displeased look. “Touma, do you really have to go to school?”

“Hmm?” He put his now-loaded bag down, wolfed down the rest of his breakfast, and brought his dish into the kitchen. “Ahh, right. Now that the semester is starting, you’ll be all alone here by yourself.”

“Mgh. T-Touma, I’m not worried about feeling lonely or anything, okay?”

Kamijou was actually under the impression it would be dangerous to leave her, but he decided to keep that to himself.

Of course, he couldn’t tell her not to take a step out of the dorm. But the thought of letting a girl with no knowledge of Academy City loose seemed risky, too. In the month that she’d been here, she hadn’t shown any signs of adjusting to the city life. That kind of sense wasn’t something he was going to be able to simply explain to her, either.

Thinking on his past experiences, the quickest solution would be to have her come with him everywhere, but she obviously couldn’t transfer into the same school as him.

Even Kamijou knew that sorcery and science didn’t get along. If Index, one of the sorcery side’s most important people, were made into a scientific esper with the same curriculum Kamijou had taken, it would be a problem.

“Gonna have to think about that, too. Sorry, Index, today you’ll just have to mind the dorm while I’m gone. Just rinse off the dishes in the sink, all right?” he explained hurriedly, glancing at the clock.

He went into the bathroom—which he’d turned into a half bedroom—and washed his face, brushed his teeth, and changed into his summer uniform. He really wanted to take a shower, too, but there wasn’t time.

Having finished getting ready, he opened the bathroom door again to find Index waiting there. She looked up at him questioningly.

“Touma, will you come back soon?”

“Hmm. I know—when I get back, let’s go out and do something.”

Index’s face lit up.

Kamijou was happy to see her smile, but he also felt complicated. Most of her connections to the outside world relied on him. In fact, her interpersonal relations were all with friends of his, or friends of his friends.

Depending on how you looked at it, that seemed really lonely.

But it was hard for Kamijou to help with that problem, since the solution was for her to build a new relationship without involving him.

“All right, I’m off.”

He wasn’t able to do anything about it, so he left the issue aside.

“Okay. Come back soon,” Index said, smiling to him.

Five minutes after he left the room, she was completely bored.

She had held down the fort a few times before, but that didn’t mean she liked it very much. She was a very active girl. It was easy to imagine how unsuited to sitting and waiting by herself she was.

The television was still on, but she didn’t look at it—she was lying flat on the floor, playing with the cat. Before too long, she stopped abruptly.

I’m bored. I want to go outside. I want to follow Touma.

Her impulses raced, but she immediately shook her head. She couldn’t let her desires get in the way of others. All she needed to do was imagine their positions reversed. If Index had received a summons from St. George’s Cathedral, and Kamijou had followed her because he was bored…

She’d be sort of happy, but he’d be bothering her.

Index was far from a beginner when it came to sorcery, and she didn’t want him to see too much of that side of her—when she was at work. It was embarrassing to be seen in a different way by somebody you know.

In the same way, if Index chased Touma, it might bother him. When she thought of it that way, she knew he would feel ashamed if she naïvely sought him out.

And he said he’d take me to play somewhere when he got back, too.

Index began playing around with the calico cat, rolling around on the floor. I’m bored, but I’ll endure it, she resolved.

But suddenly, it hit her.

“…Huh? Touma, what about lunch?”

Her face paled.

She had no cooking skills to speak of. There were no leftover snacks, either, since the cat had torn into the bag of them and devoured it all.

“Wh-what do I do? This is the crisis of the century…,” she murmured in spite of herself, casting her gaze toward the front door.

Past it was the big, wide outside world where Touma Kamijou was.

3

Meanwhile, Kamijou was running down the road toward school.

The prankster city crows had left some pebbles on the tracks, which had been enough to bring the city trains to a halt.

The school he attended recommended taking excessively expensive school buses, so its rules forbade him from taking the train. On the surface this was to prevent misconduct and trouble with delinquents. In actuality, of course, the management would make more money that way, since they managed the buses.

But the real problem was that first, they rolled along at half the speed of trains, and second, they cost three times as much. Anyone would use the trains once they realized that. After taking a bus one time for his remedial classes during summer break, he had secretly decided to use the train from then on.

But because the school had such absurd rules, he couldn’t get a delay certificate from the train company and use it to excuse his tardiness.

Damn it…I’m sleepy! I’m exhausted! I swear, my rotten luck wakes up before I do. I mean, I guess I’m not the only one unlucky this morning. But that doesn’t make me any happier!

His brain managed to pump out a few sentences in a row, but just then, someone whipped past him from behind.

It was a girl with shoulder-length brown hair. She wore the uniform of the elite Tokiwadai Middle School, complete with its short-sleeve blouse, a summer sweater, and a gray pleat skirt. Her fierce, all-out sprint told him she was wearing short pants under her skirt so she didn’t have to worry about it flipping up. The way she presented herself was totally removed from the traditional “proper young lady” image he’d expect out of a student from such a school.

“…Oh, hey, it’s Biri Biri.” Kamijou’s sleepy brain finally churned out the answer for him.

He ran on, blinking his tired, dispirited eyes, and called out,

“…Heeyy. You young people sure are energetic in the morning!”

Biri Biri, or Mikoto Misaka as she was normally referred to, reluctantly slowed her pace and let him come alongside her. She turned to look at him with a face that said, Hello. I’m not in a good mood right now.

She glared at him.

“Why exactly can you address me so casually? You totally, completely, utterly, entirely ignored me last night! Don’t you have any sense of shame?”

Kamijou rubbed his half-open eyes and processed what she had just said.

Now that she mentioned it, on August 31st—well, last night—when Index had been kidnapped by Yamisaka, he thought he remembered running into her. He also thought he remembered leaving her there, given the situation and everything.

Continuing a fairly quick run down the road, he responded, “Wait, what? Did you actually need something from me?”

“W-well, not really. I mean, I didn’t need anything, but…”

“???” Kamijou blinked hard, trying to get the sleep out of his eyes. “There’s something I want to ask. If you didn’t need anything, then why did you stop me?”

“Sh-shut up! It doesn’t matter, I’m changing the subject! Did you always use this way to school?!”

Don’t outright declare that you’re changing the subject, he thought. He didn’t say it, though. “…No, the trains are stopped, that’s why. I mean, it’s just two stations away, so I should make it if I run.”

“By the way, you seem pretty low on energy. Are you not a morning person?” Mikoto gave him a mystified look, but his own face turned to one of exasperation.

“A lot of stuff happened yesterday, and I’m really tired. Wait, how are you not tired at all, anyway? Is this the power of youth at work?”

Mikoto had gotten herself into a spot of trouble yesterday, too. Of course, Kamijou had been the one who had to pay the price for that, plus tax…

“Wh-what? Did pretending to be my…my b-boyfriend yesterday tire you out that much?”

“Huh? Oh, it wasn’t just that. There were plenty of other things happening!”

“I see,” she replied, giving a little sigh.

She seemed to be relieved to be able to push aside the guilt over having gotten him wrapped up in annoying events yet again, but then…

“Hmm? Other things…? You weren’t doing the same thing with some other girl…were you?”

“Idiot. You’re the only one who would ever come up to someone with a humiliating request like that so calmly.”

“Wha…?!”

Kamijou’s voice was composed, purely because of sleep deprivation. His composure made Mikoto’s face go bright red immediately.

“I-I wasn’t calm at all! I-I was…I was totally out of options and really distressed, so I swallowed my pride and asked you!!”

“…Ah, right, right. I see, is that so? I get the picture.”

“You’re not actually listening to me, are you?! Don’t start using your low energy level as an excuse to ignore me again!”

At opposite ends of the energy spectrum, they fought and bickered about this and that as they each ran toward school.

4

After Kamijou parted ways with Mikoto, he continued to run until his destination came into view.

Somehow…it looks like I won’t be late. Man, it’s a good thing I went to those summer classes.

The remedial classes he’d had to take had gotten him familiar with the way to school and its general layout. It was thanks to that he didn’t have to wander around with a map in one hand, looking suspicious.

There are two school buildings. The one in front is a newer building, and the one in back is older. My classroom is on the third floor of the new building, second room on the right. The shoe racks are to the right of the entryway. I got this!

He organized all the information in his head so that he’d be able to pretend he hadn’t lost his memories. Without slowing his run, he passed through the school gates with the other students.

Schools in the city didn’t generally have a schoolyard, but this one did. The plot of ground wasn’t all that big. There were two school buildings—one in the front and one in the rear—connected by a roofed passage in the middle. It looked like a big capital I when seen from above. To the left was a D-shaped gymnasium, and to the right was the pool.

Irregular school building construction wasn’t a rare sight in the city with 2.3 million students. Some had pools on the rooftops, and others had big warehouses below the gymnasiums.

This high school, though, was a paragon of normality. It was bland; it was without character. The students he’d passed on his way here all wore standard uniforms that didn’t stand out at all.

I guess it would just be a pain if it were too unique, though. Like how crazy Tokiwadai seems to be.

As he turned that over in his mind, he ran toward the entryway. There wasn’t very much time left, but most students seemed to come to school around now. As he was passing by the employee parking lot, he suddenly heard a shrill warning sound. He looked over to see a car trying to back into a parking space. It stopped midway through the process and honked its horn a few times. A white cat, yawning away without a care right smack in the middle of the parking spot, leaped up in surprise and ran away. The car was a bright green subcompact with a rounded design. But it was small even for a subcompact car—there wasn’t even a passenger’s seat. It had been designed for a single occupant.

Whoa, what’s with that car? It looks as handy as a scooter. Except you wouldn’t get wet if it rained. Must be nice. I can’t get a car, but maybe I could buy a bike…No, that’s a bad idea. It would definitely get stolen if I parked it at a train station. The thief would go straight for mine and ignore all the other ones.

Kamijou could see it all too clearly in his head, as used to rotten luck as he was. He sighed…

…then suddenly noticed…

…that his teacher, who looked like an elementary school girl, was sitting at the wheel.

“—Hey! Do your feet even reach the brakes?!”

“Th-they don’t, but I can still drive!” Miss Komoe shouted back, opening up the door.

A closer inspection revealed that the mini-car’s steering wheel was different from normal ones: It had buttons on the left and right. It looked kind of like the controllers used for racing games. It was probably equipment meant for handicapped people so that they could control the car’s acceleration and braking by pressing the buttons.

She parked the car unexpectedly smoothly, as though well used to driving it. Then she got out, holding a thick, clear folder in one hand that she must have needed for work.

“You couldn’t think of anything better to say our first day back from summer vacation? That’s not the Kami I raised.”

“(…Anyone would fear for your safety if they saw that, I think…)” Kamijou said to himself, averting his eyes.

“Did you say something, Kami?! You’re not thinking of sneaking up behind me and holding me way up in the air again, are you?!”

“Of course not! Don’t be so paranoid!”

As they shouted between themselves, Kamijou and Miss Komoe walked along the path to the school building. She was trotting along, since she probably had things to do before the entrance ceremony—but every time a student greeted her, she’d stop and say good morning to them. Kamijou, with his broad stride, had no problem catching back up to her.

“What’re all those papers in that folder? You’re not gonna give us a pop quiz on the first day, are you?”

“Kami, your teacher would never do something she wouldn’t have liked when she was a student. Now, come, don’t lag behind. Hurry!” prompted Miss Komoe. “This isn’t part of my school job. My friend from university asked me to collect some data for a paper, so I’m helping her.”

“From university, huh?…Oh, right. You have a teaching license, don’t you?”

“Kami?” Komoe looked at him askance as he muttered to himself.

He returned his gaze to the folder and asked, “What kind of a paper is it?”

“It’s not really anything difficult! It’s about involuntary diffusion fields—something you’re very well-acquainted with.”

So she said, but he’d never heard the term involuntary diffusion field before.

Evidently concerned about the time, she continued her quick pace. She brought her explanatory teaching mode to bear. “You’ll study it when you get a little older, Kami. Involuntary motions are ones you do unconsciously, without thinking about them. These involuntary diffusion fields are just that—fields of energy emitted naturally from espers, kind of like body heat.”

“Huh. Maybe that’s like how Misaka’s body generates a weak electric field…”

“Hmm, Misaka…? Wait, um, could you be referring to the Misaka?” She slowed down a little. “Anyway, the type of involuntary diffusion field an esper gives off depends on what power they have. For pyrokinetics, that would be heat, while telekinetics exert pressure over their surroundings. Of course, they’re all very minute, and you’d need to use precise equipment to measure them at all.”

Kamijou overtook her, and she hurried to catch back up with him. “Huh. So if there was an esper who could detect those involuntary whatever things, they could act like they’re in a manga and say stuff like, ‘Hmm, I sense an esper nearby!’?”

“Ah-ha, that’s right. Taking it further, they might even be able to measure the type and strength of the ability, too. Something like, ‘Hmm! His power level is 70,000!’ Anyway, there are a lot of curious people passionately studying the subject.”

They broke out into a run toward the school building as they talked, but soon parted. The employees had a separate entrance.

After Miss Komoe went out of sight, he exhaled softly.

…Here we go.

Resolving himself, he went through the entryway.

The amnesiac Kamijou’s falsehood-ridden school life was about to begin.

Having already taken some remedial classes, he had no trouble remembering where his shoe locker and classroom were. He tossed his shoes into his shoe locker like a totally normal student, put on his slippers, climbed the stairs, walked down the hallway, and came to the door of his classroom.

This was where the problems would start.

When he was taking remedial classes (well, makeup remedial classes, apparently), back around the time he had first met Little Misaka, he and Miss Komoe had been the only ones there. He sat at a desk in front of the lectern. That hadn’t been his seat, though. The amnesiac Kamijou didn’t know where his real seat was.

What to do now…

He was a bit worried, but it would be suspicious for him to stay standing here. Without coming to any good solutions, he opened the classroom door.

Oh, wow…

As soon as he entered, he cursed to himself. Not even half the students were here, and nobody was sitting at their seat.

If all of the students had been here and sitting already, he’d have been able to find his desk. It looked like things wouldn’t be that easy.

As he stood in the entrance, unsure of what to do, he spotted Blue Hair, who must have come in mere moments before. The 180-centimeter-tall kid walked over to him, saying,

“Hmm? What’s the matter, Kami? Don’t tell me you came all this way and you forgot your summer homework at your house, bro? That sure would be unlucky of you, eh?”

At that, all of the kids in the classroom turned to look at Kamijou.

They all began speaking separately.

“Wait, what? Kamijou, did you forget your homework?”

“Umm, Kamijou, did you really forget it?”

“Whooaaa, yeaaaah! It wasn’t just us! We have an ally! He’s on our side!”

“Hooray! And Kamijou has such rotten luck that the teacher will just get mad at him and cut the rest of us some slack! Hooray!!”

Kamijou made a sour face at his now-excited classmates.

Their fathers would probably seriously worry about that sort of treatment being shown to their sons, but for Kamijou, this was just his comedic life as usual.

“You mean none of you did your homework? You’re all going to make Miss Komoe cry!”

He briefly wondered what all his effort was for. He’d tried so desperately to get all his homework done, even though he knew he wouldn’t make it. He’d been the only one.

Blue Hair grinned at him. “What? It’s okay, dude. You know she seems to like problem students better than smart kids, yeah? Bro, two-thirds of us were in remedial classes, and man, did she look happy about it.”

“…You don’t think she goes to bars afterward and cries to herself, do you?”

“Ah-ha-ha. What’re ya sayin’, Kami? Ya know, I did all my homework, but I left it at home just so she’d get mad at me!”

“The hell? She’s gonna cry at that for sure!! You’re like some five-year-old teasing the girl you like!” shouted Kamijou without thinking. The rest of the classroom didn’t pay attention to him. They seemed to be treating it like business as usual. The cluster of students broke apart and they restarted their own conversations.

For his part, now liberated from the clutches of the throng of weirdos, he wanted to catch a little shut-eye at his desk before homeroom started. Unfortunately, he didn’t know where he sat.

Let’s see. It’d be weird if I just straight up asked where my seat was.

Kamijou thought for a moment, then turned to Blue Hair. “Hey, sorry, could you get the notebook out of my desk for me?”

“Hmm? Kami, didja forget something at the closing ceremony?”

Somewhat unexpectedly, Blue Hair obediently went to a seat in the back by the window.

I see, so I sit over there, he thought as Blue Hair took a look inside his desk.

“Hey, Kami, there’re no notebooks in here, bro!”

“Huh? Wait, did I not put it there?” Kamijou gave the confused Blue Hair a vague answer, then finally went to his seat.

Blue Hair sat in the seat next to him, and they started to talk.

“So this so-called well-informed guy, right? He says that manga nerds are right up there with video game nerds. I think he’s a moron. If manga altered your brain, ability development would be cake! It’d be totally sweet if we had a manga instead of a curriculum textbook, you know?”

“Yeah, but the kind of manga they’d use in place of a textbook would probably be really boring. Like, the color pages would be full of teaching stuff.”

“You idiot! That’s what the whole concept of hidden moe is all about, bro! Why don’t you realize the destructive power unexpectedly included in children’s anime and tokusatsu? My fist will tell you all about it!!”

“Why are you so mad about this? I don’t know if I’d trust someone who got to Level Five like that!”

Kamijou felt himself blending in to his surroundings as he and Blue Hair made their ordinary, dumb conversation.

A month had already passed since he’d lost his memories. The current Kamijou wasn’t a blank slate. He could almost feel his new self overwriting his old self.

He could already talk about things he remembered.

His amnesia handicap was already slipping away.

But that was only good for Kamijou.

It wouldn’t be any comfort for that girl in white.

He didn’t know how the two of them met. From what he’d heard, though, they hadn’t known each other for years or anything. It seemed to be that they had just met recently. It was possible that they had spent more time together after his memory loss than before it.

But that didn’t matter.

In that short period of time, Index had come to trust him. The memories she had of that slice of time had to be precious ones that she would never forget.

Index was friendly toward him right now, but that was because she didn’t know the truth.

He had already lost all his memories. They didn’t share those precious ones she had.

“…”

“Kami? Heeeey, Kami!”

Kamijou snapped out of his reverie at the sound of Blue Hair’s voice.

“Oh, uh, sorry. I kind of spaced out. I didn’t get any sleep yesterday.”

He smoothed over the whole thing and returned to his life of lies.

5

“Okeydoke, everyone, homeroom is starting now! We’re pressed for time because of the entrance ceremony, so let’s get things wrapped up quickly, okay?”

By the time Miss Komoe entered the classroom, most of the students had taken their seats.

“Huh? Miss Komoe, where’s Tsuchimikado?”

“He hasn’t told me he was taking the day off, so maybe he overslept!” answered Miss Komoe to Kamijou’s question, craning her neck. “So, before I take roll call, I have big news for everybody! We have a transfer student joining us starting today!”

That got everyone’s full attention.

“And she’s a girl, too! Congratulations, fellows! Better luck next time, kittens!”

The class began to buzz with excitement.

Kamijou, however, was suddenly overcome with dread.

It couldn’t be. There was no way that his utterly unfortunate life would include a totally normal, attractive, female transfer student. It was impossible.

…I have…I have this really bad feeling this won’t end well…

He immediately suspected Aisa Himegami due to her preestablished connection with Miss Komoe, but the world was a big place. It could be the likes of Mikoto Misaka or Kaori Kanzaki, having lied about their age. Or maybe Accelerator’s real name was actually Yuriko Suzushina. Or perhaps the ten thousand Sisters were gonna barge in and immediately multiply the student population by ten. Or it could even be an angel hiding her wings about to descend on them.

“N-no, stop! I heard that, brain! You said it might be fun! Stop that right now!”

“Kami, why are you holding your head and muttering to yourself?” Miss Komoe seemed a bit flustered, but she continued. “Anyway, this is just a short intro! Please leave more in-depth introductions until after the entrance ceremony. Okay, Miss Transfer Student, come on in!”

After she said that, the classroom door clattered open.

He cast his gaze in that direction, wondering what kind of insanity awaited him.

And there was a nun dressed in white, holding a calico, unsure of what to do.

“Nbaghh…!!”

This was completely outside anything he could have predicted. His mind went white as a sheet.

His classmates seemed to be puzzled. After all, she clearly wasn’t wearing a normal school uniform. What kind of Catholic school does she come from? was one of the questions he immediately heard being whispered around the room.

Index ignored all of it, and in the same way as always, said,

“Oh, it’s Touma! Okay, so this means that this is definitely that school thing Touma goes to. I should thank Maika later for showing me where it is!”

Everyone in the class looked to Kamijou all at once after hearing what she said.

Their eyes spoke to him, saying, Not you again.

“……………………………………Um, what? What is this?”

For some reason, even Miss Komoe, who had introduced the “transfer student,” froze in place when she saw her.

“H-hey, wait. Miss Komoe, what is…?” began Kamijou, but it seemed that she hadn’t expected this to happen, either. She finally snapped out of it when she heard Kamijou’s voice and said,

“Miss Nun! Where on earth did you come from?! You’re not the transfer student! Come on, leave, leave, get out!”

“Ah, but, but I need to ask Touma about lunch and—” Index tried to complain, but Miss Komoe wasn’t hearing any of it. She pushed on the nun’s back and drove her out of the classroom.

He reflexively rose from his seat.

“Uh…H-hey, Inde—!!”

“Kami! Please don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be!”

“What?!”

He was about to run after Index, but Miss Komoe’s shout stopped him dead. He was less scared of his teacher being cross with him and more afraid that she was about to cry—that’s certainly how she looked at the moment. She pushed Index out of the classroom and left.

He stood there dumbly for a bit and watched them leave.

To replace them, a long-black-haired girl stepped into the room.

“In any case. I’m the real transfer student. My name is Aisa Himegami.”

Relieved at the sight of a familiar face, Kamijou fell back down into his seat.

“O-oh jeez. I’m so glad it’s just boring old Himegami. And she’s not even in her shrine maiden outfit, either. She’s just wearing a normal, boring school uniform. Thank God…”

“I can feel traces of spite in what you just said,” replied boring old Himegami, a little bit irritated.

6

Index walked down the hallways in a huff after being chased out of the classroom.

She held a 2,000-yen note. Miss Komoe had pushed it into her hands, saying, “Jeez, why are you even here? Go home now! People we don’t know aren’t allowed to come here! Come on, now, go call a taxi!”

…Touma looked really freaked out.

She frowned as she recalled what she’d seen back there. She’d been with him for more than a month already, but this was the first time he had given her such a look of pain when he saw her—such a clear expression of rejection.

Without really knowing how to deal with her murky feelings, she realized that now she was hungry. When it rains, it pours, she thought, biting her lip.

Then, she passed by the cafeteria.

The cat in her arms began to mew at the sizzling sounds of things being fried and the lovely smells wafting over to them. Index stopped dead in her tracks.

“…I’m hungry.”

Now that she thought about it, the breakfast Kamijou had made her seemed a little bit hastily thrown together, what with how busy he was. On a satisfaction scale of one to ten, she put it at maybe a four.

She shuffled into the cafeteria like a zombie.

It was a large room, but its furnishings were rather slapdash. Around one hundred sets consisting of a round table and four pipe chairs were installed here. One corner of a wall was a counter, and there seemed to be a kitchen behind it. The sounds of things frying were coming from that direction. Three food ticket machines were set up in another corner.

Hmm, I’ve read about those in manga. You just put the money in and press the button for the food you want, and you get a ticket you can trade in for it, right?

She came to that conclusion by comparing her albeit-biased knowledge with the scene in front of her. Stiyl would probably faint dead away if he knew that shounen manga were beginning to infiltrate her archive of famous grimoires such as the Kin’u Gyokutoshuu, the Sepher Yetzirah, and The Book of the Law, but she still had them all properly recorded and stored. It wasn’t really a big deal.

She walked up in front of the ticket machine.

She held the crumpled 2,000 yen up to it and fed it in.

See? I can do this just fine! Touma says I’m old-fashioned and antique, but this is nothing to get worried about. All I have to do now is press the button!

Having come into the possession of a handful of pride, she stuck her finger out to the machine to press the button…

…but then stopped.

There wasn’t a single button on it.

Wait…what? What’s…Huh? Where do I push? What do I do to make this work?

There was an electronic stand arm reaching out from the vending machine, and the LCD monitor attached to it displayed the prices of different items, but that was it. There was no button for her to actually make an order.

In reality, it was just a touchscreen, like the ticket machines in train stations, but Index didn’t understand things like that.

Uh, eh, erm, umm…R-right. I’ll just get my money back for now…Wait, how do you get change back? Where’s the button???

There was indeed a button in the corner of the LCD that said “Cancel,” but it was too far in a psychological blind spot at the moment. Index’s cat would always helplessly whack the television screen with a paw whenever they watched cooking programs, so she was pretty sure it was impossible for anything to happen if you touched a screen.

Index grabbed the vending machine with both hands and jiggled it around, then peeked into the change dispenser. Nothing happened, of course.

She moaned. “Maybe I caught Touma’s rotten luck…”

Tired out and at a loss, she crumpled to the floor. She wailed on her hands and knees like a high school baseball player who had lost the Koshien Championship. The cat, for its part, didn’t understand what was happening. It gave a great yawn, looking bored indeed.

Then, she heard the tip-tap of footsteps behind her.

Before she could give it any consideration, someone clapped her shoulder.

The entrance ceremony would take place in the gymnasium.

The hallways were packed full of students coming out of their classrooms to head over there. It was as crowded as a train station on a holiday.

Meanwhile, Kamijou had left his classroom. His reason was simple—he was so worried about Index being left to her own devices that he had to find her.

“Damn…This may sound funny coming from me, but she sure manages to get involved in a lot of trouble herself…”

She had perfect recall, too. If she saw any of the workings of the ability development curricula, then it would put scientific secrets at risk of being leaked to the world of magic. He hadn’t thought that far ahead, though.

I just need to go find Index, and fast, he thought, racking his exhausted brain as he ran down the hallway.

The one who had tapped Index’s shoulder was a girl she’d never seen before.

She was taller than Index, but a little shorter than Kamijou. Her hair was black with a tinge of brown, but it was probably natural. It was straight and went all the way down to her thighs, and she had one bunch of hair tied up with elastic on the side of her head. She wore glasses with thin frames, but they were sliding down a little bit for some reason. Index looked at her chest, and after seeing the bulges in her summer uniform, she was forced to admit that the girl definitely had her beat there.

Who could this be?

Index was one to talk. The girl’s clothing was slightly different from the outfit that students at Kamijou’s school wore, though. The girls here wore a white, short-sleeve sailor uniform with a navy blue skirt. This girl, however, wore a short-sleeve blouse and a lighter blue skirt. A red men’s necktie accented her white and blue outfit. That, too, was definitely different.

Their eyes met.

From behind her slipping glasses, the girl was giving her a look as though Index were some sort of small animal.

“Umm…You have to press a button.”

“Huh?”

“Well, you need to press a button on the monitor…,” she said in a low, quiet voice, pointing a finger at the ticket vending machine. Index finally caught on. She followed her fingertip right to the LCD monitor on its arm.

Index made a face like a child who was lost in a country she didn’t know the language of. “Button? But there aren’t any buttons on this machine.”

“Err…,” she muttered, worried. “You just have to touch the monitor with your finger…Didn’t you know that? I-I mean, please, don’t cry…”

“You’re lying! I know all about this. Nothing happens to the people on TV when I touch it.”

“…”

The girl silently went in front of the vending machine and pressed the cancel button at the corner of the monitor.

Vreeem. The motors inside groaned and the 2,000-yen note she thought was gone forever slid right back out. Index’s eyes ballooned at the sight.

“Wh-what’s going on?”

“Like I said…you just need to touch the monitor…”

“W-wow! This TV is connected on the inside!”

“Umm…This isn’t a television…”

“Wow, cool! Again! Do it again!”

The cat began to cry out in protest at her sudden shouting. She was now having so much fun that she forgot how hungry she was. She pushed the bill back into the machine again. Then, she looked back at the girl expectantly, as though the girl were a magician.

The girl’s face creased into a worried frown, but she pressed the cancel button again.

The bill came back once more. That was all Index needed to look at this girl with profound reverence.

“Th-then what about this one? What is this button? The one that says exclude or whatever?”

“Umm…If you type a word into there, it lists everything except for that…So if you’re allergic to eggs, you can type in egg, and it will only show you things that don’t have eggs in them…”

“What about this one that says data search?”

“It’s just how it sounds…You can search for things like how much nutrition everything has, like vitamin C or iron. If you search for everything under one hundred and fifty calories…it shows only diet foods.”

Index cheered like a child every time the girl finished one of her pointless explanations. She looked like a kindergartener with aspirations to be an astronaut being shown around the space shuttle. The girl, bearing the brunt of Index’s praise, wondered in apprehension whether she should just be happy about it.

After quite a few more explanations, Index looked at the girl with a broad grin.

“Thank you! What’s your name?”

“…Um. Hyouka Kazakiri.”

Index and Kazakiri sat down at one of the tables without actually ordering anything and started to talk to each other. Actually, it was mostly Index complaining to Kazakiri. She was so absorbed in their conversation that the fact that she had an empty stomach had slipped right out of her mind.

“And then, and then even though I called his name, he didn’t answer me. He actually looked away! Jeez! It’s his fault he forgot about lunch in the first place…”

Kazakiri glanced between Index and the cat she held, then replied, “Uh, umm…Well, outsiders generally aren’t allowed in schools…He probably got worried that you came in like that. If a teacher found you, you’d be in a lot of trouble…”

“But Hyouka, you came in, didn’t you?”

“I…I’m different. I’m a transfer student, so I just don’t have a uniform yet…”

“Then I’ll be a transfer student, too!”

“…Umm…” Hyouka Kazakiri frowned, looking troubled.

“Anyway, I’ve got a thing or two to say to Touma. I don’t want to just go home like this, and if I don’t ask him about lunch, I might really die from starvation!”

“But…You stand out way too much wearing those clothes…”

“Hmm?” Index looked at herself.

Index never paid much attention to her clothing, since she wore it all the time. Her gold-embroidered, pure-white nun’s habit stood out like a princess’s dress.

“If you get caught…it’ll cause him problems, too, won’t it?”

“Then what should I do?”

If Kazakiri were the sort of person inclined to play the straight woman, she would have just said, “Go home already!” However, her gaze wandered uncertainly.

“…Umm, if you go to the nurse’s office, there might be a spare uniform…Well, maybe not an actual uniform, but an all-sizes gym uniform…”

“What’s a gym uniform? Will I not get caught if I wear it?”

Hyouka Kazakiri made a flustered face at the innocent question.

She did admit that Index wouldn’t stand out as she did while wearing her gaudy habit. But Hyouka was pretty sure that if Index wore a gym uniform to the entrance ceremony—there were no classes today—it would still stand out a lot. Plus, school rules prohibited students from bringing pets in anyway. She didn’t have any better ideas, though…so Kazakiri finally gave a vague, uneasy answer.

“…Yes. I think so. Well, probably. Maybe? You’ll be fine…I think.”

Index and Kazakiri walked down the deserted hallway.

“Hmm. So what kind of clothing is this gym uniform?”

“Umm…Well, it’s sort of…They’re clothes meant for exercising. They’re stretchy, so they feel comfortable, and they’re made of fabric that lets you sweat easily…”

“W-wow! That must be that high-tech thing Touma was talking about!”

“………Umm…”

“Wow, that’s so cool! Oh, you should come try it, too, Hyouka! It sounds really awesome!!”

“……………………Umm, well…”

The timid Kazakiri found herself unable to correct Index’s overactive imagination. Index began to drag her along. Her eyes nearly began to well up with tears behind her big glasses.

Meanwhile, Kamijou was still searching for Index.

There were no more students around, despite the massive flood of them earlier. He heaved a gloomy sigh as he ran down the empty halls. The entrance ceremony would have already started by now.

…Shit. I’d finally managed to blend in with my class normally, too. Well, the entrance ceremony is just listening to the principal talk…but I don’t know what the principal looks like. Anyway, I need to deal with Index right now.

He glanced back and forth as he ran.

Then, he suddenly heard a familiar voice fill his ears.

Huh? This voice…Enemy detected! Identified as a stupid nun!

He stopped and listened carefully to the sounds around him. It sounded like the voice of a girl having fun. He could hear her relatively well because there was no one else around. He looked in the direction it was coming from, then scowled. There was a door with a plate that had the words NURSE’S OFFICE written on it.

He grimaced.

D-damn it. Here I am, sleep-deprived and frantically searching for someone, and she’s just sleeping the day away in a bed in the nurse’s office? Is that it?

He put his hand on the sliding door to the office and called out, “Hey, Index! Why the hell are you in the nurse’s office?! If you’re sick at all, you’re sick with apathy!!”

Slam!! went the door as Kamijou threw it open.

He was all set to stomp in and go into full-on lecture mode today, but…

What he saw were girls in the middle of changing their clothes, just like in a manga.

And there were two of them, too.

First was the nun he knew well. She wasn’t wearing her habit, for some reason, but rather a short-sleeve shirt and the short pants of a gym uniform. Except…her short pants were only halfway on. She was bent over, with one hand holding either side of them, and she had completely frozen—save for the corners of her lips, which were turning up in an awkward way.

Second was a girl he did not know, wearing the summer uniform of a different school. She had straight hair, with a clump of it tied up with elastic at the side of her head. Her thin-framed glasses were sliding down her nose, though he couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or if they just did that anyway. Except…all the buttons on her blouse were undone, and she held a short-sleeve gym shirt in her hands. She was also completely frozen, save for her eyes, wide like a small animal and dangerously close to watering.

They looked back at him. It seemed they hadn’t yet fully grasped the reality of the situation.

The cat, who didn’t care one way or the other, drowsily cleaned its face with its front paw.

Kamijou’s danger sense went into overdrive.

“……………Err, sorry, wrong room!!”

The next moment, both girls’ faces went bright red.

He wanted to believe it was because they were blushing or embarrassed—but no.

One moment later there came a shriek of anger and the roaring crash of something breaking.

7

Kamijou was extremely angry.

He was the one being subjected to this absurdity in the first place. He was very sorry that he had walked in on them changing, but he would not be satisfied with simply letting Index get angry at him and thereafter having her tooth marks imprinted in his head.

This led to them going to the cafeteria after the two of them had changed back into their normal clothes. Kamijou and Index glared at each other while the girl who he didn’t know looked at them and fidgeted, as though wondering what to do. None of this was any concern of the cat’s, though, who proceeded to make itself comfortable on the table.

In a low voice mixed with sleep deprivation and anger, Kamijou asked, “So, Index, who’s this girl?”

For some reason, the unfamiliar girl’s shoulders twitched in surprise. In contrast, Index morosely replied, “I don’t know, but she’s my friend.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Don’t go walking around with strangers!”

“I don’t know, but I know Hyouka’s my friend, okay?!”

The girl named Hyouka jolted like a frightened animal every time one of them shouted, but she finally took a deep breath and, very hesitantly, tried to settle them down.

“I-I’m…Hyouka Kazakiri…Who are you?”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m Kamijou.” He said it casually, though her shoulders still gave a jerk.

Index saw that and said, “Touma, you mustn’t scare Hyouka…It’ll be okay, Hyouka. Touma is a rare species. He’s a very vigorous male, and he’s indecisive, and he wants to butt into girls’ business all the time, but he’s a good person.”

“…U-umm…Am I supposed to be relieved…?”

Kamijou grimaced at how seriously Kazakiri asked that question.

However, she didn’t look like she was coming out of her trembling, scared mood any time soon. Index tried to ease her nervousness.

“There, there, Hyouka. I’ll let you hold Sphinx! If you pet him, it might loosen you up a little.”

“Umm…Is Sphinx his…his name?”

Without a hint of hesitation, the cat rolled onto its back and showed its stomach, as if to say in a very gentlemanly voice, “Now, Miss, you can cry into my belly all you need.” It began to spread its front paws wide.

Kazakiri’s troubled face persisted as her hand hovered in the air, but she finally brought it down and stroked the cat’s soft stomach.

“Oh…He’s warm.”

An unintentional smile crossed her face. The cat, on the other hand, started to twitch back and forth as if someone were tickling his feet. He looked like he was trying desperately to endure something, as if saying, I-I’m just fine, Miss. You’ll hear no complaints from me, this is nothi— Owhoa?! Meanwhile, Kamijou moped a little at how he’d been eliminated from the conversation.

“Yep! You can try holding him if you want. He does shed a little bit, but I think it feels good to hug him.”

“Um, okay…Like…like this?”

Doing the same as she saw Index do, she softly embraced the cat, holding him to her breast. The motion wasn’t any different from what Index always did, but…

Sproing.

The cat’s head got buried in Kazakiri’s generous chest.

Kamijou snapped out of his foul mood and immediately went red in the face. He jerked his head and eyes far away from the defenseless Kazakiri. The cat squirmed about, as if to say, Gwooh?! N-now, Miss, I appreciate the gesture, but I may suffocate— Agh!! He slipped out of her hands, landed back on the round table, and shook himself off.

However, the girls in question didn’t seem to realize why the cat had shown such rejection.

“Umm…Animals have sharper senses than humans…so maybe he can smell the difference between you and me…”

“Hyouka, don’t look so sad! You just have to get to know each other a little better…Hey, Touma? Why are you looking over there?”

“No reason,” Kamijou answered.

He locked eyes with the cat, both of them knowing the truth, but the cat meowed in exhaustion, as if telling him that there are some things in this world better left unsaid.

Kamijou, strangely self-conscious, wanted to change the topic. However, he was under the faint impression that Kazakiri might have androphobia, so he took aim at Index instead.

“So why did you come here, anyway?”

“Mgh. That’s right. Lunch, what about lunch? You left without leaving any lunch for me. I could have died of starvation!”

“Today’s the entrance ceremony, so I’d have been home by noon!”

“Y-you didn’t say anything like that! How was I supposed to know?”

“Just know! It’s common sense, okay?!”

“Okay, then, Touma, you know this, right? About how when you’re casting a spell in a sanctuary to create an idol and fill it with Telesma from an English cross? You know how the time and cardinal directions are related to the caster’s position, right?! You know about defensive magic circles to protect yourself from the main spell’s aftereffects, and how you have to put it in a very precise location! And how if you’re even a little bit off, the main spell will eat up the defense and it won’t work properly! This is a golden rule, but you knew that already, didn’t you? Come on, it’s just common sense!”

“Now…now, stop…”

They continued to yell at each other like this, with Hyouka Kazakiri trying to mediate every twenty seconds or so.

They weren’t the only ones angry. Miss Komoe was at the end of her rope.

Wheeere aaare youuu, Kamiii? How bold you are to blow off the entrance ceremony on the first day like this! Hee, hee-hee-hee, eee-heee-hee-hee…

When she’d realized Kamijou wasn’t present in the gymnasium, she began to smile that dark, evil smile that no one should ever see and began to search for him.

Hmm. Well, he may have fallen ill, or been wounded, or had extenuating circumstances…Kami, you’re okay, right?

Even though she was currently raging mad at a certain truant, she couldn’t help but worry a little. She was a kind teacher at heart, after all.

However…

She heard the sounds of talking coming from the cafeteria. Every student and faculty member in this school should have currently been in the gymnasium.

Could it be? Miss Komoe headed that way, and sure enough, there was Kamijou.

Surrounded by a pair of girls, no less.

They were arguing with one another, somehow looking like they were enjoying themselves.

Ah…aha…

The needle on her anger gauge rose exactly as much as how worried she had been.

She took a deep breath, filling the very bottom of her lungs, and put every ounce of strength she had into her next words.

“K-K-Ka-Kami!! What in the world do you think you’re doing?!!”

At the sound of her shout, the cat curled up on the table, yelped, and nearly fell off.

They stopped their conversation and turned around.

A female teacher barged into the cafeteria. She was 135 centimeters tall and looked like she was twelve. Her face was red all the way to her ears. Probably from intense anger.

“H-huh? Miss Komoe, what’s wrong? Isn’t the entrance ceremony happening—”

“You shouldn’t be talking, Kami! I’ll have you know that your teacher was so worried that you weren’t in the gymnasium, she left and came all this way to look for you! And yet here you are, reveling in your school popularity! If you flirt with girls that much, you’re going to fall victim to impure members of the opposite sex one day!”

“Well, no, I wasn’t flirting…Miss Komoe, did our yelling at each other really look that way to you?”

“You both look so calm even though you’re yelling at each other. That’s basically what flirting is! I-in the first place, why do so many girls just gravitate toward you, anyway?! Are you giving off some kind of weird involuntary diffusion field or something?!”

“Th-that’s got nothing to do with it! Why even bring that up at this point?”

And like that, Kamijou and Miss Komoe began a face-to-face quarrel…

…and five minutes later, the conversation started to get a little strange.

“Tsuchimikado never came to school, and a nun did come to school, and I was already busy! So no more weird questions out of you! I cannot leave you to your own devices when you’re so…so frivolous with girls!”

“Tsuchimikado and Index have nothing to do with me, do they?! Besides, good old Kamijou is super hard-headed! Even if I happened to trip some flags, no events would happen! Only bad stuff would happen!”

“K-Kami? What about you is hard-headed, exactly?! Here you are, wallowing in your loud, flamboyant school life, and yet you say you’re hard-headed?!”

…Ten minutes later, the conversation started to get really strange.

“Why do your mental and physical faculties suddenly increase whenever girls are involved, Kami?! You should use that enthusiasm for your studies instead!”

“W-wait a second, Miss Komoe! You’re not just writing me off as some merrymaker who would risk his life just to make friends with a girl, are you?!”

“…Touma, don’t you realize that risking your life is why you make friends with girls?”

“Damn it, not you, too, Index…?!”

…Fifteen minutes later, the conversation was in a completely different place altogether.

“A-anyway, you’re coming with me, Kami! I’ll give you a lecture you’ll never forget!!”

“Touma, instead of listening to a lecture, I think you should give your confession to me.”

“Agh, jeez! I’m running on no sleep and I have a terrible headache, so please stop yelling in such a high-pitched voice! Come on, Kazakiri, say something! You’re the only good person around here—Huh? Wait, what?”

Kamijou looked over, stupefied. Index and Miss Komoe looked over as well.

Hyouka Kazakiri had been at their table, but at some point, she had disappeared. The only thing left was the empty folding chair sitting by itself where she had just been.

“…Oh man, did she get fed up and leave?” he wondered aloud, but there was, of course, no response.

8

Index, having been driven off of the school grounds, leaned against the chain fence next to the school gate. She had decided to wait for Kamijou. The cat in her arms seemed sleepy.

“…Umm…I just wanted to say, that was…well. I was a little surprised, I guess…”

She turned around at the hushed voice to see Hyouka Kazakiri, who they thought had left because she got tired of them.

“That stuff always happens. Hyouka, you should have said something, too!”

“Really…? That teacher seemed really mad, though…”

“Komoe wasn’t angry. How come you’re so bothered by it, Hyouka?”

“Well, I mean…She was making kind of a…well, a sad face…”

Index fell silent for a moment. Then, she said, “…Touma was mad.”

“?”

“We fight with each other all the time, but this time it seemed different. He wouldn’t listen to anything I said, and he was angry the whole time, and he never smiled…”

Index made a sour face at her own words.

She had looked pretty energetic while arguing with him, but it seemed she was a little depressed on the inside.

“I wonder if Touma hates me now…”

Her gaze fell.

Or maybe…

She hesitated to think the rest.

Maybe he just hated me from the start, and I only just realized it now.

She bit her lip.

The cat in her arms started to mew in protest as she tightened her grip unconsciously.

Kazakiri smiled a little at her. “…That’s not…true. Really good friends…are friendly enough to fight with each other.”

“Why? People get hurt when you fight. It hurts when someone says something rude to you. I wouldn’t want to do that to someone I’m good friends with.”

“Friends who are close enough to fight with each other…,” began Kazakiri in a soft voice. “It means that when they fight…they can make up. So their friendship doesn’t end. That person…He knows that even when you and he fight, you won’t stop being friends…so I think that’s why he can fight with you.”

“Really?”

“It’s true…Would you rather not argue at all? If you don’t want to fight…then you would keep everything you want to do pent up inside you, and just smile even when you don’t feel it…And if you have a fight anyway, you wouldn’t even make up after it…You would leave that friend and make other friends. Would you rather be on thin ice like that…?”

Index made a grouchy face.

Kazakiri gave her a small smile.

“No, I don’t want that. I want to be with Touma forever,” said Index.

“Yes…I think you two will be fine…because you feel that way…At the very least, he would get angry on your behalf…so you’ll be okay,” responded Hyouka Kazakiri.

But under her breath, she added, “………But he does talk like nothing happened even though he saw us naked…”

At long last, Kamijou was freed from the clutches of Miss Komoe’s lecturing.

There were no students left in either the hallways or the classrooms. Both the entrance ceremony and homeroom were over, and everyone had gone home by now. The only voices he heard were of people at after-school clubs. That must be why the cafeteria was open.

He never saw Tsuchimikado. Maybe they had missed each other, or maybe he really hadn’t come in today.

…B-blech…

He drooped like a wilting vegetable under the weight of his exhaustion coupled with his lack of sleep.

It was already past noon. He idly reflected on how he was hungry as he returned to his deserted classroom, picked up his bag, and headed for the entryway. He traded his slippers for his shoes and exited the building. He plodded through the courtyard and past the soccer club, which was in the middle of its stretches, and discovered Index and Hyouka Kazakiri waiting for him at the gate.

“Heeey!” he called out to them as he ran outside.

“Oh, Touma’s back…”

“Huh? Why the long face?”

“What? No, it’s nothing.”

“Huh? Whatever. You want to get something to eat? Somewhere cheap.”

Index made a confused face and replied, “Touma, we’re not eating at home today?”

“That’s too much of a hassle. We were gonna go do something afterward anyway.”

“…”

“What? I told you this morning, remember?”

“I-I remember…but…” Index’s face flushed a bit and she tightened her grip on the cat, who started squirming about and mewing in annoyance.

Kazakiri, standing next to her, giggled.

“Oh, do you want to come, too, Hyouka?”

“Huh…? May I?”

“There’s no reason not to! Touma, you’re okay with that, right?”

“Right,” he answered without skipping a beat. Kazakiri looked a little surprised.

“Umm…Th-thank you…,” she replied in a hushed voice to Index.

“Hmm. If we’re gonna be out all day, we’re gonna need some money. I’ll be right back. I’m just going to go withdraw some cash from the store, so wait here.”

With that, he headed for the convenience store by the school and started using the ATM next to its entrance.

Every student in Academy City was included in its scholarship system. Each month they would receive money, sort of like a paycheck.

It sounds like a pretty convenient system, but you could also look at it as the contract fee for agreeing to be a human experiment for ability development. The better your school and the higher your Level, the bigger your scholarship was—meaning you were that much more important to their research.

Kamijou didn’t get much money, because he was a Level Zero who attended an average school.

…Well, it’s not like they’re treating us like lab rats or anything.

He stuffed the money into his wallet and left the store.

Then a voice suddenly addressed him from the side.

“Hey, hey, you, young man! That’s dangerous, y’know.”

He turned to the female voice and saw a rather good-looking woman in a green jersey standing there. Her long hair was tied back, but her somewhat sloppy impression only served to bolster her appeal. However, judging from the crest on her shoulder, she was a member of Anti-Skill.

He thought female Anti-Skill members were pretty rare. The reason was simple—despite Japan’s equivalent pay laws, the gender ratio in its defense force was overwhelmingly one-sided.

She looked at him and said in exasperation, “Don’t go flaunting your wallet next to an ATM like that. It’s almost like you’re asking people to steal it!”

“Huh? Oh, um, I’m sorry.”

He didn’t really know what to do but apologize, but that seemed to satisfy the woman in the jersey.

“Right, right! Be more careful next time, young man.”

Grinning, she left Kamijou and went elsewhere.

He scratched his head. Professional Anti-Skill officers had a lot of training under their belts, but their real job was teaching. Normally, side jobs were forbidden to government employees, but that rule didn’t apply here. It wasn’t a specific exception, though—it was because they weren’t paid for it. Their job was essentially like a neighborhood watch that volunteers to keep an eye on things at night. The only thing they got for doing such a dangerous job was special jurisdiction as members of Anti-Skill. He heard it was still pretty popular to do, though. From an educational guidance standpoint, it seemed to make their jobs easier in a few different ways—not the least of which was to keep your students in line when you told them you were an official member.

But why was she hanging around here? Is she actually a teacher at our school?…Argh, I was talking to her like we’d just met, too! Well, I guess she wasn’t talking like she knew me, though…

Someone tugged on his clothes, breaking his train of thought. What is it? He turned around and saw Aisa Himegami there.

“Huh? What’re you doing, Himegami? You haven’t gone home yet?”

“…I just transferred into your school. And yet you give such an indifferent response.”

“Uhh…”

Now that she mentioned it…The events of today were still pretty hazy for him thanks to Index bursting into the classroom. The big event of the day had been Himegami’s first day at her new school, hadn’t it?

“I see. I really am. An easy girl to miss.”

“No, well…Don’t get so down on yourself! It’s just that the sun doesn’t quite shine as much near you, or something…”

The gong sound effect was nearly audible as Himegami got more depressed. Eventually, though, she lifted her head up.

“More importantly.”

More importantly…? Man, she doesn’t really understand conversation, either…

“I recently heard something. That girl wearing the glasses. Is her name Hyouka Kazakiri?”

“Huh?” Kamijou shifted his gaze.

Index and Kazakiri were standing a little ways off. He couldn’t hear them from here, but they looked like they were enjoying their conversation.

He looked back at Himegami and replied, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Hyouka Kazakiri. Wait, is she a friend of yours?”

“…” After hearing his words, she looked at Kazakiri from afar.

It wasn’t a very favorable stare. It was more like an observational glare or something.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

“Just to be sure. Her name. It’s really Hyouka Kazakiri?”

“Well…I mean, she and Index both say so. It’s not like she showed us her ID or anything, but does she really need to?”

“Hyouka…Kazakiri.” She said the name to herself again. “Do you know? The name of my school. The one I used to go to.”

“Well…no.”

“Kirigaoka Girls’ Academy. It’s an elite school like Tokiwadai. If we’re talking purely about ability development. Tokiwadai specializes in helping espers with regular abilities. And excellent all-around academic skills. Kirigaoka deals with weirder ones. Strange ones. Irregular espers with abilities that are difficult to reproduce.”

“Hmm,” mumbled Kamijou to let her know he was still listening.

Now that she mentioned it, her own power, Deep Blood, didn’t seem very useful for any scientific pursuits. Put in those terms, he wouldn’t be surprised if they would treat his right hand as a treasure. Of course, he hadn’t the slightest intent of going to a girls’ high school.

“I have seen Hyouka Kazakiri’s name. At Kirigaoka,” she asserted, placing emphasis on the word name.

“Wait, so did you two transfer in together, then?”

“…” For some reason, she didn’t answer. She was acting a little odd.

“Since she went to Kirigaoka, that must mean she has an unusual skill like you, right?” he asked, not really surprised. He knew a top-class electric user, and he had a unique ability himself.

However…

“I don’t know.”

“Huh?”

“Nobody knows. Hyouka Kazakiri’s power.” She paused. “But her name. It always shows up on the test grade bulletin boards at the top.”

“Hmm. So she’s smart, then?”

“No. It has nothing to do with her intelligence. Kirigaoka gives ranks based on rarity of ability. It is simply that. Her power is the most unusual. Whether or not it’s useful. Is a different story. However…”

She paused again there.

“But nobody knows. What class or year she’s in. In the first place. Everyone at Kirigaoka knows. The name Hyouka Kazakiri. But there is nobody. Who has actually seen her. And yet she appears at the top of the test rankings.”

“…That’s kinda weird.”

“Yes. We don’t know anything. I once asked a teacher at Kirigaoka about it. And she told me in secret. That Hyouka Kazakiri is called Identity Unknown.”

That wasn’t all she had to say.

“But. That isn’t the most important part. The most important thing the teacher told me. Was not about that Identity Unknown. It was something else.”

She continued.

“She told me. That Hyouka Kazakiri. Is the key to discovering the identity of the ith School District—the Five Elements Society.”

Kamijou frowned.

The ith School District was also known as the Five Elements Society and got its moniker from the symbol used to designate an imaginary number. Some called it the imaginary school district. It was said to be the first-ever research institution in Academy City, and that it possessed all sorts of sci-fi technology that modern science couldn’t reproduce. If the rumors were true, then the entire city was being managed from within it. It was the dark spot of this city.

It was a mysterious facility that should certainly exist, and yet nobody knew where it was.

This was starting to sound like a certain girl.

“From what the teacher said. Hyouka Kazakiri had her own special class. Though it was more like a laboratory. So they could research it. People almost never create a laboratory for just one person. But it was not actually for Identity Unknown. It was to uncover the truth behind the Five Elements Society.” She, too, seemed lost in thought. “But. The teacher said that she hadn’t ever seen Hyouka Kazakiri, either. Even though there was a lab for her. Even though she showed up on test results. Very few teachers know her identity.”

“But…but that’s…”

“Yes. I don’t know how much of it is true. And that’s why. I thought I would warn you about her. So be careful.”

And then, as if to say that her job here was finished, she turned to leave.

“Hey, wait a minute. We’re going to go and hang out. Do you want to come?”

“—”

She turned back around. Her impassive face held the slightest tinge of surprise.

“…Stupid…Komoe.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. I have been asked to do something. So I can’t go,” she explained calmly, turning her back to Kamijou again. He stared after her for a few moments, noting that she looked crestfallen, but suddenly she remembered something and turned back to face him.

“By the way. Hyouka Kazakiri. How did she enter the school?”

“Huh? If I recall…Well, Index said she’s a transfer student.”

“I see,” she replied succinctly. “But. As far as I remember. I am the only transfer student.”

Kamijou wasn’t sure what to say. Himegami told him once again to be careful, then left for real this time. He looked away from her and back to the girls next to the school gate.

Hyouka Kazakiri stood next to Index, smiling along with her. She didn’t look like anything but a normal person.

She looked like she had nothing to do with any of that weird imaginary school district stuff.

Man, I don’t get it. Are they just rumors? Or are they real?

He scratched his head and then walked over to them.

Index and Kazakiri smiled at him to welcome him back.

The cat mewed.

There was nothing strange about this.

At least, not at the moment.

INTERLUDE ONE

The road in front of the station was packed with swarms of high school students.

All schools had their entrance ceremonies today, so every student had been released into the afternoon city at once. People were particularly crowding around one corner of the train station, where all the big department stores were.

Kuroko Shirai made her way through the chaos.

She was shorter than your average female middle school student, and she wore her brown hair in two long pigtails. She was best described as cute rather than pretty. She was fully dressed in Tokiwadai Middle School’s summer uniform, but she had a brassard on her right arm.

On it was written the word JUDGMENT.

Judgment was the name of an anti-esper peacekeeping force—essentially the city’s version of the riot police. In contrast to Anti-Skill, which was comprised of school faculty wielding next-generation weapons, Judgment was made up entirely of espers.

The reason there were two separate peacekeeping organizations was so that they could each keep an eye on the other’s internal affairs to prevent corruption. Unique though they may be, they were just students and teachers. There was no discarding the possibility of a renegade cop showing up and abusing his or her position of power.

…Goodness. They should have split up the recreational facilities in this city a little more. I wonder if the developers are short on traffic and environmental psychologists? grumbled Shirai—one of those students—completely ignoring things like property values and consumer attraction methodology.

Like most people, she hated crowds. But there was a reason she had braved the combination of the blazing, late summer heat and the sweaty, crowded atmosphere to come to this station.

There she is…

Shirai saw a figure ten meters away and compared it to the photograph on her cell phone screen. The woman looked foreign. She hadn’t noticed Shirai’s presence. She was walking boldly through the throngs of people, seemingly uncaring of the fact that she was on the run.

Two people had broken through Academy City’s walls at approximately the same time, right before seven this morning.

One of them was under Anti-Skill’s jurisdiction, not Judgment’s, so Shirai didn’t know the details. From what she’d heard, though, it was a student registered in the city’s databanks—a corporate spy, perhaps?

She was on the tail of the other suspect.

Her cell phone screen showed an enlarged image from a security camera. The blond-haired woman depicted had actually attacked the city gates head-on. After causing fifteen casualties, including three with major wounds, she had forced her way past security and entered the city.

The anti-terrorism security level “Code Red” was currently in effect. Entry and exit were being completely blocked, and the members of Judgment had been excused from class and ordered to search for the intruder.

Thus, Kuroko Shirai had skipped her entrance ceremony and had been walking around the city for a while now, but…

In a normal situation, I would call for support, have the civilians disperse, and confirm that she’s the one we’re after…but if I take very long, I’ll lose my chance, won’t I? she whispered to herself, making her way through the crowd, still glaring at her target in front of her.

Though the city’s security forces were split into two, Anti-Skill was usually the one on the front lines, not Judgment—the latter was made up of students, after all. Shirai’s orders were only to capture the criminal—everything else was in Anti-Skill’s ballpark. Unfortunately…

I can’t just leave this in Anti-Skill’s hands, either. People have already been wounded at the gates. I shall ask all powerless individuals to please evacuate, then.

This decision was based on her confidence as a Level Four esper. The teachers, who surrounded themselves with armor and next-gen weaponry, seemed extremely fragile from her point of view.

She didn’t want to give Anti-Skill a job they wouldn’t be able to handle. She’d have trouble sleeping at night if the Anti-Skill officers she handed off the baton to got hurt. She’d feel more at ease if she were the one who did the fighting.

She reached a hand into her skirt pocket and came out holding what looked like a small handgun. However, its muzzle was more than three centimeters wide. It was a device for firing signal flares.

I don’t want to write the report I’ll have to make after firing this, but…!

Shirai pointed the barrel into the sky and immediately pulled the trigger.

Pop! With something of a comical noise, a metallic cylinder the size of a tube of lipstick flew about seven meters into the air.

Right after that came a boom and a brilliant flash of light as the contents of the cylinder scattered everywhere. Those in the area put up a hand to shield their faces from the sudden and extreme brightness.

A moment later, they all took swift action. Everyone scrambled into nearby buildings, screaming and shouting. The university students and teachers who were driving at the time stopped their cars right away and also dashed indoors.

Everyone in this city knew what this meant.

It was the evacuation order used by the security forces. It said that a battle was about to start, and it urged bystanders to find shelter somewhere stray bullets wouldn’t hit them.

It didn’t even take thirty seconds for the bustling street in front of the station to completely empty out.

Now, only Kuroko Shirai and the aforementioned target remained.

The woman neither fled nor caused a stir; she simply stood, relaxed, within the center of the explosion of light.

There was a bit more than ten meters between them.

Shirai cast her gaze over the woman.

She was an odd person to look at. It seemed fair to call her a gothic lolita—she was wearing a long black dress with white lace and ribbon decorating its ends. Nothing a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl wore would look bad.

Despite her long blond hair, her skin appeared weathered and brittle.

She was in her late twenties, and strands of hair stuck out like a wild animal. She must not have taken proper care of it. Her skin was brown, but not the shade that went well with sunlight. Her dress, too, seemed fairly old and worn-through, its fabric damaged and the white lace beginning to fade into a dingy tone. She was certainly pretty, but she looked somehow crazy at the same time. Looking at her would destroy the illusion of gothic lolitas being neat and trim.

“Please, it would be better for both of us if you stayed where you were. I am Kuroko Shirai, and I am a member of this city’s security force. I don’t believe there is any need for me to explain why I’m arresting you, is there?”

The woman with the wild blond hair didn’t show much reaction to her voice.

Was she effete or just emotionless? She turned her neck slightly and took a look around. She seemed more interested in the people who had all disappeared than in Shirai.

After five seconds, the woman finally looked toward her.

“Suspending search.” She paused. “…Make things harder for me, will you?” she said with clear disdain. Then, without waiting for a reply, she stuck a hand into one of the ripped sleeves of her worn dress faster than Shirai could move an eyebrow, and was about to bring something back out—

—but at that point, Kuroko Shirai was already standing right in front of her.

They had been ten meters apart just a moment ago. In less than a heartbeat, Shirai had reduced that distance to zero.

The woman’s relaxed expression took on just a hint of doubt.

Shirai wasn’t about to explain, though. The woman didn’t need a lesson on how she used her Level Four teleportation ability to cross through space.

She reached out her hand and grabbed the lace-covered woman’s wrist.

The next thing the woman knew, she was on her back on the ground. There was no pain or shock, nor did she even remember when she fell. Shirai had actually just used her teleportation ability to move her to the ground as she touched her. To the woman, however, ignorant of her abilities, it probably looked like a martial arts throwing technique she’d never seen before.

Irritated, she took evasive action anyway, and tried to get herself up off the ground, but…

“I said…”

Kachink-kachink-kachink!! A sound like a sewing machine split through the air.

When the woman looked back down, there were two metal arrows piercing through the loose parts of her dress sleeve and skirt fabric, pinning her to the asphalt.

“…not to move. Do you not understand Japanese?” Kuroko Shirai demanded quietly.

This, too, was an attack that used teleportation. She had instantly moved the arrows hidden in her skirt into specific points. It was both as strong and fast as a machine gun. It couldn’t be blocked with anything, since the arrows instantaneously warped from one place to another. There also wasn’t any chance of collateral damage. It was a truly unbelievable attack.

However…

Even presented with that, the expression on the woman’s brown face didn’t change.

Except…

…for the corners of her mouth. Her face was like a steel mask, but her lips began to stretch across it, thinly, long, and silently, into a smile.

“Wha…”

On the other hand, Kuroko Shirai frowned in surprise…

…and suddenly, the ground just behind her exploded violently.

“…at…was that…?!”

She was surprised, but she had no time to turn and look. Her body flew into the air, flung by the bulging in the asphalt. Once she slammed on her back down on the cold, hard ground, she finally glanced behind her.

It was a giant arm.

There was a two-meter-long arm sprouting from the road like a sea serpent stretching its head above the surface of a lake. It was shaped like a human arm, but it was made up of asphalt, bicycles, guardrails—from all sorts of things nearby—that had been kneaded together like clay. It vaguely resembled the metal arms that were attached to heavy machinery for building deconstruction.

Shirai quickly tried to get away, but her ankle caught on something.

The road around where the arm was sticking out had bulged, and the broken asphalt plates were coming back together like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces. Her ankle had gotten caught in between two of them.

…Agh…She’s just an outsider…Could she be an…esper…?

The pressure slowly increased around her ankle, causing her face to distort with pain.

She looked back to the woman and saw her pinned hand holding something resembling white chalk. She was using it to draw symbols on the road.

They weren’t any scientific symbols she’d ever seen. In fact, they looked like occult, magical letters.

She may be controlling her ability by using some kind of patterns for self suggestion, like the compressed memory in a cell phone, she speculated, ignorant of magic and going purely off what she knew.

Th-this is…really bad. I need to…get back up…!

She made a valiant effort to calm herself, but then she noticed something.

The giant arm was sticking out of the ground, causing the surrounding areas to bulge upward. Her ankle was caught between pieces of road from that bulge, but the swelling itself looked somehow…round. Almost like a human face.

It was as if her foot were being bitten by asphalt teeth.

Oh…no…

Shirai possessed the ability to teleport. This power let her cross freely through empty space, unbound by three-dimensional limitations.

But it had a weakness. She couldn’t just warp around however she wanted. It went beyond three dimensions—the ability required her to derive her current spatial coordinates in eleven dimensions, then calculate her movement vector from there. The commands she needed to give were on a completely different level than those of normal espers, who could just think phrases like “create fire” or “make lightning.”

Because of that, if anything were to rob her of the calculation abilities she normally possessed—something like pain, exhaustion, or confusion—she would no longer be able to use it.

Creeeak. The road fragments only closed a few millimeters, but her ankle spasmed in agony nonetheless.

Ah…gh…gah…?!

She could flee immediately if she teleported, but her fear was overriding rational thought.

She saw the woman on the ground smiling to herself as she moved the chalk around with a few snaps of her wrist. As if being controlled by it, the arm’s elbow gradually bent and slowly changed the direction it was facing…as if it were about to crush a bug crawling on the ground.

Shirai understood all that, but she still couldn’t move.

Her calculations were in disarray because of the pain and her fear of death. She had an escape route right in her hands, and yet she couldn’t make use of it.

It was like losing the key to the door of a nuclear shelter.

The woman swung the chalk into the air in an arc, and the arm clenched its five fingers into a fist. At the same time, the pavement dug into her ankles even tighter. Shirai slammed her eyes shut at the incredible pain.

Bkk-bkk-gkk-bkk!

Then she heard a loud, strange noise ring out from somewhere in her self-induced blindness.

Was that the sound of her anklebones shattering? No, it wasn’t.

The sound of the giant arm made of countless pieces of scrap coming down to strike her? No, not that, either.

It was the sound of somebody severing the arm.

Wha…Eh…?

She opened her eyes, surprised at the sudden strike.

The arm had been cleanly cut in two at the wrist. Before she could give it a closer look, the “teeth” holding her ankle in place were mowed down. Suddenly freed from her shackles, she toppled over backward. As soon as the hand was severed, all the materials composing it reverted to their normal state and flew off in all directions.

Bzzzzzzzzz…! A strange sound hundreds of times louder than the buzzing of bees assaulted her ears.

When she looked, she saw something floating in the air. It was like a black whip or like a rapier many meters long. That’s where the sound was coming from. Closer inspection revealed that it was iron sand. An enormous clump of iron was being controlled by someone, possibly with magnetism, and it was vibrating.

In other words, it was a supersonic chainsaw.

Bshh-bang!! came a piercing sound as the iron whip returned to its owner.

Wa…wait…Controlled by magnetism…? Could…could it be…?!

Taken with a fit of coughing, still trying to get oxygen, she looked over there.

And there…there was…

Mikoto Misaka.

There was a small chink of metal.

It was the sound of her bouncing a coin on her thumb. It danced slowly, slowly, slowly over her head.

She spoke.

“I don’t know what all this fuss is about…”

The arm, its hand gone, had transformed into essentially a mountain of trash sticking out of the ground. As if collapsing under its own weight, the garbage tower fell toward Kuroko Shirai in an attempt to hit her as hard as it could.

Before that happened, though, the coin landed back on Mikoto’s thumb.

“…but don’t lay another one of your dirty fingers on her, you pig!!”

A moment later…

…she fired the attack that had given her the name Railgun. The coin flew forward at triple the speed of sound. It heated up as it rubbed against the air and became an orange beam as it lanced straight through the “tower,” which shattered instantly at the extreme impact. It and the “head” attached to it all blew into a million pieces.

Grashh!! came the roar an instant later.

A dust cloud rose up like a screen, but a sudden gale drove it away—the trailing shock wave from the Railgun attack.

A-amazing…

Shirai continued to keep an eye on her surroundings, but most of her mind had been stolen by something else.

She could match normal wind users just with the gusts coming from her shock waves. Big Sister! Just how much more invincible are you planning on getting?

On the other hand, Mikoto was walking toward her, relaxed, as if to say that the crisis had already been defused.

“Uhh, Kuroko, you can loosen up now. I think that giant hand was a decoy. It blew up on its own, not because of my Railgun’s power. See? That jerk of a woman used the smoke to get away,” Mikoto said, pointing and sticking out her tongue a little in spite.

Shirai looked. She’d pinned the woman’s dress to the ground, but she was nowhere in sight. The only things still there were a few pieces from the end of her dress’s black fabric, sticking around like a stubborn stain.

“So who was that? Someone related to Judgment? You were the one following her, after all.”

“Y-yes, that’s correct. She seemed to be the illegal intruder, but…Oh, Big Sister!”

Then she lunged toward Mikoto as if her legs had given out.

“Hey, would you quit it?! This isn’t the time for your crazy fantasies—”

She reacted a second too late, though. She finally tried to peel Shirai off her chest but didn’t put any strength to it, because…

Shirai was weakly clinging to the chest of her summer sweater.

With just that one point of contact, Mikoto realized that she was trembling.

“Jeez.” She sighed, thinking.

What would that boy have said to her if she had been the one like this?

“Kuroko, you try to do way too much by yourself. It was stupid to go up against someone like that. There’s no rule that says you have to fight by yourself, you know.”

She thought about it. Words themselves didn’t have any meaning. The feeling she put into them as she spoke was what gave them meaning.

“Rely on me more, all right? Not just if something really bad happens, either. Even if things only kind of look bad, contact me. It won’t cause me any trouble, so stop thinking like that. If you rely on me in hopeless situations, then that just means you trust me more, right? I’d never refuse that.”

Pat pat. Mikoto lightly stroked Shirai’s head.

Then, her underclassman, still trembling, said, “…Heh-heh-heh. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. This close to Big Sister, I have full access to her cleavage…heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh-heh!!”

“Wh…Hey…What? Wait! I-I’m seriously trying to make you feel better here! You were trembling with excitement, Kuroko?!” Mikoto shouted as her face turned red, but it was too late.

Shirai brought her hands around Mikoto’s back, locked her in, and started rubbing her cheek all over her “big sister’s” chest.