Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Cold Game (section)

===Part 15===

'''(the_devil)

The scariest thing of all was to find yourself unable to do anything.

Left all alone in a waiting room that just looked like a bland box, Saten Ruiko breathed a heavy sigh in her full-body skintight rubber suit.

How many times had she looked at the wall clock now?

She had a habit of messing with her phone when she had some spare time, but that had come back to bite her here. She knew having her phone’s location set to here would cause problems, but the inability to maintain her normal rhythm and cycle created all the more pressure. She wished she had not returned the prosecutor’s phone.

There was nothing to do and she had nothing but time on her hands.

There was a TV, but she would only find talk shows at this time of day. Those cruel programs liked to discuss depressing stories, and all of them would be focused on the story she was a part of. The witness would not be named or pictured, but there was only the thinnest of layers protecting her. She found it hard to breathe when she started imagining what would happen if they revealed her information by mistake.

That was when a light knock came to the door.

Was it that puppy prosecutor?

That woman could be seen as the one who had placed her in this situation, but Saten did not care who it was if it would free her from this oppressive atmosphere. She called out to the door.

“Yes. I’ll open-…”

“No!! Do not open the door!!!!!”

The girl’s shoulders jumped.

Her body tensed up in confusion, but real time continued like normal.

The reverberation of something flipping over reached her through the door. Was there some kind of scuffle going on in the hallway? Or was someone being restrained as they tried to run?

Then she heard a deep male voice she had never heard before.

“Shut up! Let go, let go!! You are violating the freedom of the press! I am the administrator of a news forum! Get the hell away from me! The age of TV is over!!”

“Take this man away immediately! Hurry!!”

“Don’t get so mad. Don’t you feel silly getting worked up over every little thing? Just so you know, I’ll be writing all about how you’re oppressing me here!!”

It was bizarre and nonsensical.

What would have happened if she had not been warned and opened the door? She had a feeling it would have been worse than having a camera or microphone shoved in her face while she was pelted with questions. The fear crawling up her fingertips was the same she would have felt if the doorbell rang late at night and she looked through the fish-eye lens to see a man wielding a knife.

This was what it meant to be on the chopping block.

Of course, she did not think these were bad people to the core. But she also doubted they saw her as a living human being from the same city as them. They only saw her as “news”. These people would rob someone of their future like it was a way of scoring bonus points. It felt like watching as the price of each of her organs was haggled down.

Finally, another light knock came to the door.

This time, the lock knob turned on its own.

“!!”

“Sigh, looks like we got that worked out…wait, wait!! Put down that floor lamp! Slowly now!! Okay?”

Saten just about split open the head of the puppy prosecutor who poked her head through the cracked-open door.

She tried to let go of the light fixture that was as long as a mop, but…

“Huh…? My fingers are stiff…and won’t let go.”

“Oh, honestly.”

The small prosecutor pried off the girl’s fingers which had become as stiff as rigor mortis.

And she slowly breathed a sigh of her own.

“Once we have a chance, let’s move you to another room. I had everyone removed, but it’s possible they left a web camera in the hallway during all the confusion. I need to check over everything first.”

“Do you really have to go that far…? I mean, I haven’t done anything wrong! You said the courthouse would be perfectly safe and I would only have to make a statement or two!!”

“We just need to keep going a little longer. We need to get a guilty verdict for Innai Chigiri in order to bring an end to all the crimes committed by Loophole.”

“How does that improve my life any!?”

Saying that made her feel so ashamed tears welled up in her eyes.

But her entire life had been tossed onto the poker table without her knowledge. If they lost this mysterious gamble, she could lose everything, but she would not gain anything even if they won. Justice, duty, and accomplishment? It was not normal to discuss something like this using those formless concepts.

“How am I supposed to bear this…?”

To clear the victim’s regrets.

To prevent a future victim.

Those things were simple enough to say, but they felt so flimsy now. Saten felt like a tiny boat being tossed about in the stormy sea. She was supposed to lower her anchor and desperately bear with it, but that anchor was too light and she would be swept away to who-knows-where.

“…What am I supposed to use for support?”

The small, puppy-like prosecutor slowly exhaled.

And then she spoke.

“Saten-san. You don’t have to do anything special.”

Those were nothing but meaningless words.

They were so flimsy that Saten felt abandoned.

“Do you need courage to stand on your own two feet? Do you ever get tired of holding chopsticks and a rice bowl? You just do what’s normal and ordinary. That is what preserves society’s peace. Think of it like that and the fear and anxiety should all go away.”

“But…they’re targeting my life and everything else.”

“Even so. Even when you’re drowning, you don’t stop seeking air. Even in a fire and surrounded by smoke, you still breathe in and out. It’s during the emergencies that you most need to do everything like normal. You never let yourself waver and you remain firm.”

Oh how wonderful it would be if she could do that.

But the blade was already at her throat.

And it was not just Loophole and his followers. All of society was trying to take everything away from her for its own amusement.

This woman did not understand.

A prosecutor was thoroughly protected by the government while Saten would have to return all alone to her student dorm and tremble through the dark night. How could the woman understand how she felt? She only needed Saten to last until they had their verdict. What happened to her after that was of no consequence. A witness was no more than a disposable tool.

“Saten-san.”

Or so Saten thought.

However.

“To be honest, being a prosecutor isn’t as cool as dramas make it look,” said the puppy prosecutor. This somehow felt like more than just meaningless words. “Investigating the case and arresting the perpetrator is Anti-Skill and Judgment’s job. We simply handle the trial to tie up the loose ends. It’s true we have to put together all the necessary documents, but Japanese trials almost always achieve a guilty verdict once they reach the point of indictment. This isn’t a job that has you on the edge of your seat very often. …The prosecution will establish a special investigation department for some financial cases, but even those rarely lead to a spectacular victory. Most of them time, an indictment is never made and no clear reason why is ever given. There’s just so much you have no control over.”

“…And so you can’t protect me? Is that it?”

Saten just threw the words out there, but the prosecutor shook her head.

She denied that idea.

“Why do you think we stay with this job we have so little control over? Why don’t we quit and become a private detective or join a think tank instead?”

The puppy prosecutor took just one step away from Saten.

That way the girl could see her entire body at once.

“…?”

“So we can continue to do what we consider normal. Because we believe that is what preserves stability and brings peace to the world.”

The small prosecutor slowly reached for the bottom of the white blouse inside her cheap suit. Then she pulled it up to expose her belly to Saten.

There was a stiff knife scar there.

Saten gulped.

…She had thought a prosecutor could not be targeted by criminals, but she had been wrong. In fact, Saten could return to the normal world once this one trial was over, but the puppy prosecutor would continue to involve herself in criminal cases. She would get involved with cases she had neither caused nor witnessed and gather plenty of resentment and interest in the process.

“Yet I am still alive.”

She was nothing like her appearance.

This prosecutor had lived through countless deadly situations and she now looked Saten square in the eye.

“The ‘normal’ I have continued to live to this day is all the guarantee you need, Saten-san. I will not let anyone take away your life or your future here. I have already walked that path, so you can trust me. I’ve been stabbed out of the blue. And I’ve had a bomb attached to my car. But not once have I lost a witness. Every last one of them is a part of my ‘normal’ and I will not let Loophole destroy that. Because I know that weight is the greatest weapon to drive back that kind of brutality.”

“…”

“And I can never break my word in this because I must tell the same thing to my next cooperator and the next witness. Saten-san, I will send you safely back to your normal life and I will continue on to the next case. So I want you to join me here without regret. I need your help for this case.”

Perhaps this was not a new experience for the prosecutor.

She may have been asked the exact same thing by a similar person during her previous case or the case before that. And she may have given the same answer each time, brought an end to each case in the same way, and built things up like that.

The criminals were arrested by Anti-Skill or Judgment.

The presiding judge gave the verdict.

Prosecutors were administrators of justice, but they did not get to be the stars. They were preceded by a general image of being the elite, but no one would recognize any of them. Nevertheless, this woman had come this far walking the path of the prosecutor. At times she had been stabbed or shot by strangers, but she had never compromised in her work.

That provided a great weight to her words.

That was an anchor capable of holding the small boat firm in the storm.

“How can you do all this…?”

The puppy prosecutor’s expression was unchanged by Saten’s hesitant question.

Perhaps this too was no more than part of a conversation she had held countless times.

“Do you need a reason to do what’s normal?”