Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

He so wanted it to be a dream.

But his sleep-deprived mind and aching muscles told him the events of the previous night had been all too real.

“Such misfortune,” muttered Kamijou Touma in his student dorm room.

His phone was propped up on the glass table using a stand and its power cable was plugged in. It was invisibly linked to the room’s TV with a short-range wireless connection, so the phone’s display was transferred to the large LCD screen.

He was in the middle of a video chat.

This month’s data limit was being rapidly chewed through in order to display Tsukuyomi Komoe, a 135cm and pink-haired teacher who was full of mysteries. And given the date, she was wearing a miniskirt Santa outfit. She apparently liked to dress up for special occasions much like the top page of a search engine.

“Okay, it’s time for one of my special makeup lessons since Kamijou-chan here has missed far too many days of class.”

Her voice was as sweet as candy, but there was a hint of poison mixed in. Her perfect smile scared him. The 24th was part of winter break, so this was supposed to be a precious holiday for students and teachers alike. She was giving off an aura. Her anger and resentment over him ruining her holiday seemed to waft from her body like a dark perfume.

“If it was too much trouble to get us both at school for this, why even bother with the makeup lesson?”

“Because without this lesson, you would have to repeat your first year again. But if that is what you want, so be it. So, um, what will it be? If you do go for a second round, you should be able to live the life of an overpowered MC who has seen it all before.”

“Makeup lesson please!! I know full well the ‘overpowered’ life of repeating a year will be nothing so nice! Everyone else in the class is bound to just keep their distance!!”

Thus, he had to spend his holiday studying. Academy City was indeed a city of schools. They did things very differently from an ordinary shopping district where a couple would enter the karaoke box and excitedly discuss whether to choose the fake nose glasses or the cat ears headband for the optional joke product that came with the room rental.

He wanted to live that life. Was he allowed to wish for something like that?

“Academy City’s esper powers have a foundation in quantum physics. Quantum physics is useful in describing the behavior of subatomic particles like protons and electrons as well as the four fundamental forces of the strong force, the weak force, gravity, and electromagnetism, but you will almost certainly never be aware of the changes caused by the observations you make in an ordinary life. You can’t make an apple disappear by willing it to disappear, after all. You can think of those changes like imaginary numbers – they are necessary to explain the way the world works, but you are never really aware of them. ''Normally, anyway.''”

She had complained about having to give this makeup lesson, but once she got going, she proved herself to be a true teacher.

Her words flowed smoothly, but she changed her intonation on the important terms so they would stick out in Kamijou’s mind.

That made it easy to take notes and mark up his text with a highlighter. That provided an odd sense of accomplishment, so it was a lot like working out the structure of a dungeon in an RPG that required manually drawing out the map.

Of course, this was not unique to this special Christmas Eve lesson. Komoe-sensei must have always taught like this in the classroom, so the horrific state of Kamijou Touma’s attendance record could be seen in how he was only really noticing it now.

“Academy City’s espers forcibly alter this to draw out phenomena that cannot be explained with Newtonian physics. In other words, supernatural phenomena. Drugs, electricity, suggestion, and other methods are used to distort how people perceive the world and that forces them to make observations outside of the norm. By bringing that from the microscopic and up to the macro world, we make esper powers a reality. Ksh.”

“Hm? Komoe-sensei???”

The footage had grown pixelated for a moment there.

Kamijou had a bad feeling about this and called out to her, but the Santa costumed teacher did not seem to mind. Or had his voice not reached her?

“The filter used to – ksh – distort the esper’s perception is known as their Personal Reality, but those are all unique and no two people have the exact same one. Ksshh. That is one of the tricky aspects of esper development. Ksshh!! But don’t worry! There is no such thing as wasted effort!! You might be ranked as a Level 0 for now, Kamijou-chan – ksshh!? – but if you work at your strong points, you will surely- kssshhh!!”

“Wait, wait, wait! What is going on!? Ahhh!”

Kamijou Touma screamed.

The footage on the TV entirely froze for a few seconds and then it transformed into a bunch of white alphanumeric text on a black background. A bunch of incomprehensible English text was followed by a countdown. He apparently had to select an option and he was given 10 seconds to do so.

But this was new.

Computers were one thing, but he had not known that phone OSs had crash screens. He knew the hardware was fragile, especially the LCD screen that was easily broken, but he had thought the software was fairly robust and it would only reboot quickly if it ran into trouble. It felt like seeing your usually reliable dorm manager laid up in bed after coming down with a cold. It was actually kind of adorable.

Also, the phone’s crash screen was not the well-known blue one. To reiterate, it was black. Why was she trying to be so stylish during an emergency like this? Was she dressing up somewhere she thought no one would ever see? It was a lot like deciding to help out by washing off the dorm manager’s sweat and accidentally seeing some shocking underwear. It was awkward. ''M-miss manager!! I thought you were more the kind and gentle type!!

“…”

Ten seconds passed while Kamijou used those ridiculous thoughts to avoid facing the reality before him. The TV and his phone had both gone dark and refused to do anything.

It felt like some kind of punishment.

Did cutting-edge phone OSs dislike wishy-washy guys? Had that kind and gentle dorm manager (who could not hide the sexy allure hidden below the surface) finally grown fed up with him? If so, his life truly was devoid of hope.

“Umm.”

He had no idea what to do.

So he called out to the girl playing with a calico cat in a corner of the room.

“''Index,'' how about we head out for a bit?”