Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item3 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 1===

Mugino Shizuri did have a school.

It was a cold and inhumane prep school.

She was an extremely poor fit for that school, but Academy City was a city of students and the esper development was only done for students. Even when operating on the dark side, it was worth being enrolled in a school and achieving the bare minimum of attendance so your official records didn’t stand out.

And there were only so many schools at which a Level 5 could be enrolled without “standing out”.

But she really did only complete the bare minimum.

She didn’t show up most days in any given week and it wasn’t uncommon for her to be out for the full week. She barely ever returned to the poorly-managed school dorm. Not even her own classmates knew what she looked like. At the most, they would be jealous of the privileges that came with being a Level 5. Mugino wasn’t going to approach them, obviously. Her black stockings clearly didn’t match the fresh look of her white short-sleeved sailor uniform. Anyone could tell she wasn’t even trying to make it look good. She didn’t even bother getting the right size of uniform. She had simply ordered one with the right waist measurement, so her large chest pulled it up enough to provide glimpses of her navel.

However, there was one exception.

One girl would rush over and speak to Mugino every time she saw her.

That girl was Shiratori Okibi.



“I am the Class Rep, after all. Of course I’m going to be interested in what’s going on with a student who almost never shows up.”



“Look at it logically. The care you take with your hair and nails tells me you aren’t hurting for money. By the way, what do you do on the days you aren’t at school?”



“Ehh!? You can’t carry such expensive perfume with you! It’d be a tragedy if the teachers confiscated it!”



She couldn’t have been more of a nuisance. Anyone on the dark side would only see a risk when someone got nosy about how they lived their lives. Even if they were only a worrier or curious.

Why did she have to get involved?

“To be honest, I’m something of a detective,” Shiratori Okibi had said with a grin.

Asking for advice could be a shortcut to a solution to all your problems, but it could also act as an Achilles heel.

Someone on the dark side would never even think of hiring such a talkative detective, but were ordinary people different?

“As Class Rep, I end up hearing a lot of people’s problems. So if you’re ever in real trouble, you can come to me. I’ll do anything to help you out!”

But something occurred to Mugino.

In her limited time at that school, where she couldn’t match a name to a face for any of the teachers or students, the one exception would be Shiratori Okibi.

She had a lot of useful acquaintances on the dark side.

But when she thought about it, that girl may have been her one and only “friend” outside of the dark side.