Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

Cold rain that couldn’t quite become snow fell from thick gray clouds.

It was weaker than before.

But that made it seem more stable, suggesting it would last longer.

A funeral was underway.

It had begun in the school auditorium.

The entire student body was gathered there, so they had to line up based on a system to fit. …Except Aogami Pierce and Fukiyose Seiri had frozen up nearby. Apparently Komoe-sensei had panicked, so their class’s guidance was a mess. But that boy may have appreciated a human response like that.

The space was large enough to hold hundreds of people.

That meant the heating was only so effective. Even with the air conditioning and halogen heaters, the chill could not be fully banished.

It was the presence of death.

Something you normally didn’t sense but crept up on everyone the same.

Aogami Pierce felt like the world itself were telling him an attempt to act cheerful would not fundamentally change what they were here for.

This was a funeral.

A member of their class was dead.



“Thank you all for attending despite the poor weather. Perhaps the heavens themselves are weeping for the deceased. It pains me just as much to lose someone so young.”



A young Buddhist monk got started with a microphone in hand. Fukiyose Seiri was only familiar with the term “abbot” as a title for a Buddhist monk, but she wasn’t sure if there was a proper hierarchy there.

“The abbot is the head of a single temple,” explained Aogami Pierce. “They’re the one who leads the rest of the temple’s monks. But there are a fair number of temples where the abbot is the only monk due to the aging population or just being shorthanded, so a lot of people get the terms monk and abbot confused. It’s unusual for someone that young to be one.”

“Why do you know so much about this?”

“What, are you really not reading that social media gag manga that went viral on New Year’s? It’s called ‘I Was Reincarnated and Got a Hypnotizing 5 yen Coin That Makes People Do Anything I Say, but I Ended Up in a Buddhist Temple Full of Macho Monks’. The unexpected mismatch!! What fate awaits our gloomy heroine after the ascetic life and vegetarian food cleanses her in body and soul!?”

“Why can’t someone ban this guy’s very existence?” asked an exasperated Fukiyose.

But had her senses dulled over winter break? She appeared to have forgotten insults of that level were nothing more than a reward. She could be two or even three times as harsh and he would still welcome it.

The screen on the wall behind the auditorium stage came to life.



“I am truly grateful you have all gathered today for our son.”



Remote comments by Kamijou Touma’s parents played on the screen. They apparently used more than just telegrams in this day and age.

A loud slam came from the back of the auditorium.

Someone had been unable to contain themselves and rushed out while covering their mouth. For a brief moment, the outside light shined into the dark auditorium. Surprisingly, this person was not from their class. From where they came from, they must have been a student from another year.

“Kami-yan sure was loved.”

“He had the weirdest connections. I sometimes saw him speaking with an upperclassman girl.”

There was some kind of accident that led to shouting, but the funeral itself continued without a hitch.

Aogami Pierce got some words out while staring out ahead.

“Why…?”

“Hm?”

“Why do people die so easily?”

This was somehow different from before.

Death.

The word carried so much more weight. Instead of the light and empty feeling of losing a life in a video game, this carried the heavy weight of reality.

Maybe that was what a funeral was.

It was about saying goodbye.

But in a different way from a classmate moving away.

Instead of not being able to see him again after this, they already couldn’t see him again. People could not accept that so quickly, so they needed a way to smooth over the rough edges of reality or else the small society that was a school could collapse.

It was like bringing things into focus.

Uh, oh.

It wasn’t so bad when the image before Aogami’s eyes was blurry. He could stand that. But once the outlines came into focus, the corners of his eyes could be in trouble.

Trouble?

Who said it was wrong to cry? It wasn’t a competition and who did he even think he was competing with? Apparently adolescent rebelliousness could needlessly screw with people’s lives even here.

“…”

He realized he hadn’t heard Fukiyose’s voice in a while.

When he focused, he could hear some breaths seemingly covered by an unseen hand.

Or maybe she had a handkerchief out.

He wasn’t about to peek over at the next seat, though.

He envied the people who could let themselves cry here. He was always shouting in the classroom, but he felt some kind of barrier forcing himself to hold back here.

Aogami Pierce was not a diligent student.

Even during ordinary classes, he would stare out the window and daydream about battling terrorists.

He had always thought Kamijou Touma would survive to the very end.

He could do anything in his fantasies, but for some reason that boy always survived longer than Aogami himself. Aogami would sometimes save everyone and end up with a harem and he would sometimes get dramatically shot and die, but no matter what happened, Kamijou Touma would always survive to the end, no matter how beat up he was.

But.

Reality was something else entirely.

He could think of any number of things to say if he were the one to die, but he couldn’t think of a single one when it was Kamijou Touma who had died.

“I’m such an idiot,” he muttered to himself.

He hadn’t expected this.

Something had happened somewhere he wasn’t aware of.

He guessed people all over thought these things as they lived with regret.



“Now, if you will please come forward to burn incense. Yes, it will help if you climb the stairs on the right and descend the stairs on the left. You may begin.”