Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter3 (section)

=== Part 2 ===
<br>
Now then, who exactly was this girl named Lancis with the headband?

Since she was an acquaintance of Lessar’s, it was possible that she was not some harmless teenager and that idea grew within Mikoto as they moved on.

She was like a spy.

That said, she was not the showy and gaudy type of individual who pulled various secret gadgets from a tuxedo and won magnificent firefights against 100 agents.

She was quite the opposite.

She was natural. Even though Mikoto was being chased by the security guards, the two girls did not speed up their pace pushed on by the desire to just run and flee. Instead, they merely naturally walked along following the flow of people.

At the same time, Lancis did not forget to keep in mind what to do in an emergency. She paid close attention to various entrances and exits like side streets or buildings they could quickly rush into. She also kept a proper distance so they would not run into any security guards when turning a corner or something. It was possible that she was also constantly calculating out how to cause a panic among the passersby and what direction the people would flow in were a panic to occur.

Mikoto still had some slight doubts, but she did admit that the girl was useful in that situation.

“Why?” Mikoto sighed as if she were truly suspicious of something. “Why are we heading for a leisure pool of all places this early in the morning?”

“The water temperature is regulated by a boiler and last night was a hot night, so I’m betting the pool was crowded the instant it opened. The leisure pool has five entrances, so if we slip in with the crowd and cut through, we can exit almost right next to Nihon Daruma.” Lancis used a small hand to make a slight adjustment to her headband. “And heading through the pool is advantageous for us on the security front.”

“?”

“The security guards cannot enter the pool facility that heavily armed. The inside of the pool facility and the outside are under different jurisdictions for the security guards. And in the women only corner, the jurisdiction is even further broken down. By passing through different areas of jurisdiction, they cannot continually patrol the entire area we’re passing through.”

“I see.”

It was something like heading into a women only train or a women’s changing room while being chased by a man.

“And it’ll be even easier to hide within the crowd by completely changing our visual appearance in the changing room. Yeah, it’s a little stupid sounding, but it makes sense. …But I don’t have a swimsuit.”

“Tah dah.”

“Why were you walking around with swimsuits for two people?”

“They’re supposed to be products for the store. They’re cheap and simple bathing sets. Choose a master and an apprentice and you too can attempt a pretend baptism. By incorporating the symbol of the nude body to its fullest, they have a bare minimum of holiness so that they cannot be mocked as merely indecent scraps of cloth.”

As Lancis spoke on about things Mikoto did not understand at all, she pushed one of the clear plastic bags containing a swimsuit in Mikoto’s direction.

From what Mikoto could see of the triangular cloth, it was…

(Why a bikini…?)

Mikoto stubbornly looked over at the other swimsuit in Lancis’s hand, but the cloth folded up in that plastic bag looked like it had parts made of strings, too. There was likely not much difference between them. Mikoto guessed that the other girl’s choice had been based on nothing more than something along the lines of liking one color better than the other.

Mikoto gave up in various ways and looked at the warning label at the top of the package.

From what it said about the size…

“Kh. I don’t fall under the recommended cup sizes…!!”

Of course, she could likely manage by adjusting the length of the strings, but she would not be able to get rid of the feeling that it was a little too big for her.

Now, between a girl forcing a too big cup size onto herself and a young lady forcing herself into a too small cup size, which one was better?

As Mikoto thought about that, she noticed a slight look of pity in Lancis’s eyes.

The girl in the headband then spoke.

“When I spoke with Bayloupe and Lessar and they decided that my cup size would work as a standard for the lowest it was quite humiliating, but I never expected my heart to be saved by negativity like this…”

“Shut up!! Let’s just get to the leisure pool’s changing room!!”

“?”

“…Why did that make you look confused?”

A chill ran down Mikoto’s spine and she had a very bad feeling about what Lancis was going to say next.

“We aren’t going to the changing room.”

“Hah?”

“Security guards are constantly stationed around the changing rooms as a counter measure against perverts. It’s more a way of gaining trust than something that’s actually necessary, but we still have to avoid going through there if we’re going to avoid getting caught.”

“Th-then, what are we going to do?”

“We’ll sneak in through an employee entrance, cut across the side of the leisure pool, and then leave through a different employee entrance. But it would be unnatural to cut across the poolside in our normal clothes, so we need to change into the swimsuits.”

“Umm? Wait a second. If we’re going to head in through a back entrance like that, we won’t be going through the normal changing rooms, right? But isn’t the employee changing room just a small locker room? We’ll have no idea when someone could come in or take a break or something. Can we really safely change there?”

“Like I said, we aren’t going to the changing room.” Lancis’s expression did not change at all as she concluded her thought. “Any of the changing rooms.”

“...”

Railgun, the #3 and the Ace of Tokiwadai, felt like her mouth turned into an X-mark for an instant.

“Um, then…where will we change…?”

“There.”

Lancis was pointing into the shadows of a narrow, narrow alley between buildings.

<br>
<br>