Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

Note: the gold leaf is contained in a separate package. Sprinkle it on to enjoy the crunch!

“Is gold leaf actually crunchy?” groaned Utagai Karuta while reading the Japanese confection’s package.

A small plastic bag contained thin flakes that glittered gold. There was only about a pinch or two at the most. Instead of a single folded piece, it was even smaller than pieces of katsuobushi. It may have been more like a powder than a leaf.

They had bought this on the black market.

They had used that kind of sketchy store instead of a legit one because of the influence of the Problem Solvers’ defeat. The light spear had not been the only one to die in London that day.

The giant sword woman had as well.

The Student Council President had defeated the one who apparently controlled the world’s industrial side.

Simply put, that woman had run a giant all-purpose factory that could make anything if you sent her a request via email. For normal corporations, everything leading up to that email had mattered far more than the production infrastructure. In other words, the value of intellectual property like designs and plans had skyrocketed. They had started using analog microfilm as a countermeasure against hackers, that had led to the spread of business-oriented banks that specialized in safe-deposit boxes for that microfilm, and companies called for armored cars as readily as motorcycle couriers.

Then that entire system had collapsed overnight.

Corporations around the world had lost that all-purpose factory, but they could not prepare their own production infrastructure so quickly. They could not supply the products for the orders they were receiving. They all had to build their own factories in a hurry, but they needed money to pay for that. They were forced to sell off all sorts of things: their buildings, the designs of their products, and even human beings in the form of layoffs.

The chaos was unlikely to end soon.

The shelves of retail stores were empty and the foods and everyday items sold on the black market were going for exorbitant prices. It had reached the point where it was said you needed a knife or a handgun to even start haggling.

(But this won’t last forever.)

Karuta observed the situation with a somehow cold look in his eyes.

(Humans always find a way of bringing things back to normal. And I’m used to being hated by this point, so you can’t use them as hostages, Problem Solvers.)

Meanwhile, there was Crystal Girl Aine.

She must not have cared in the slightest about that human interplay of joy and sorrow because she was already leaning forward without considering the hem of her transparently white dress.

“H-hurry! Hurry up and sprinkle that crunchiness on the yokan and then give me permission to eat it! Pant, pant, ahh, woof, woof!!”

“This is looking more and more like some kind of dangerous withdrawal symptoms, so are you sure it’s safe to let you have this!?”

Her eyes were spinning and drool dripped from the corner of her mouth. She looked so frail that she would break if you held her too tightly, but that only made it look all the more inappropriate when she was staring so intently at the powdered contents of a small plastic bag. That mystery crystal girl did not rely on any god’s name to accurately calculate out the collision of the energy from the Original Crystal Embryo at the center of the earth and the supernatural forces pouring down from outer space, but at times like this, she made him look like the bad guy.

It was Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka who smiled gently.

She held a small plate containing a mille-crepe that was not a convenience store product. Karuta did not know the name of the tea she had on the table either and he doubted he would remember it even if she told him.

“My, my. But if you refuse to give it to her now, I am pretty sure she would throw a tantrum that would cause the RV to burst open like a jack-in-the-box.”

“She’s asked for gold powder and gold leaf before, but that doesn’t really change the flavor, does it?” asked curly twintailed Marika.

That girl lay on the sofa bed with a bunch of cheap snacks piled around her. When the time had come for each of them to choose their own snacks, she alone had ignored the luxury items and gone for quantity over quality.

“It is not an issue of flavor and the nutrients required by the human body are irrelevant to me. I need gold, pure gold. By adding wiring thinner than hairs inside my silicon semiconductor body, I can expand to even greater heights!!”

“I don’t really get it, but it’s creeping me out.”

How had this happened?

It was going to take some time to analyze the smartphone they had swiped from the giant sword woman’s corpse, so they had nothing to discuss concerning the other Problem Solvers who never made media appearances. With nothing to do, they had decided to head out and buy some food.

So where had the money for that come from?

That too was simple.

“The Problem Solvers really are loaded, aren’t they?”

“Impressively so. Can you see now why all the powerful nations want to call themselves the guardians of the law despite how annoying that position is?”

Basically, they had stolen more than just the phone from the giant sword woman.

They had taken a life without leaving any room for argument, they had checked over the corpse and stolen everything of value, and they had bought some luxury items with that money to take a nice break. As reluctant as Karuta had been, he could not deny they really were living the lives of avengers at this point.

Slender Crystal Girl Aine was the most lacking in morals (since she was not human) and now she was all fired up. Was he imagining things or was her long silver hair stirring?

“Sacri-sama, how long are you going to tease me? If you don’t give it to me soon, I am going to enter a rebellious phase.”

“I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to use a rebellious phase.”

“Can anyone really say they used their rebellious phase the way they were ‘supposed to’?” asked Kyouka

“Does that mean even our gentle Student Council President had a rebellious phase?” asked Marika, whose interest here was straying from the point a little.

Meanwhile, Karuta first removed the main yokan from the small wooden box and placed it on a small plate on the side table. Once that was on standby, he only had to open the small plastic bag and sprinkle on the gold leaf.

“Listen, Aine. I will sprinkle the gold leaf on like you want, but this yokan is for the two of us to share. Do ''not'' eat the whole thing yourself, okay? And I mean it! No matter what, do ''not'' eat the whole thing the instant I sprinkle this on!!”

“Woof, woof, woof!!”

“Not exactly inspiring confidence here!!”

Going without a snack while everyone else had one would be too psychologically taxing. He kept a cautious eye on Aine who was in a very untrustworthy spinny-eye mode while he grabbed the small bag of gold leaf in both hands. Gold leaf or not, this was little different from the packages of soy sauce or Worcester sauce that came with convenience store bentos. He slowly tore off the top edge using the score in the side.

However…

“Oh, crap. I got some on my finger. I should have tapped on it to get it to settle in the bottom first.”

“!?”

He just about wiped his finger off on the thigh of his pants, but a viselike grip grabbed his wrist first.

It was the gold-loving girl Aine.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!! You’ll break it, you’ll break it, you’ll break it, you’ll break it!!!”

“Ahm.”

“And don’t just start sucking my finger like that! Stop it, Aine! I’ll do it right, okay!?”

“I han’t let it go hoo waste.”

His shouting accomplished nothing. He really did use his full strength to try and pull away, but this wrist was trapped more securely than in the base of a guillotine. Meanwhile, the boy’s fingertip was at the mercy of Aine’s surprisingly warm mouth. It felt like she was using her tongue to thoroughly clean off the bottom of the finger, the top of the nail, and even below the nail.

Seeing the enjoyment and love on her face as she consumed the gold leaf filled him with a weird feeling. She looked so much like a human, but this consumption of metal was an undeniable oddity. While it was true humans needed to consume iron and zinc, they would not start chomping on a screw or nail. Aine, on the other hand, probably would eat a pure gold screw or nail if she was given one.

It was unlikely that pale crystal girl would show any sign of rejection such as metal poisoning.

Meanwhile, the oddity of it all was accentuated by how her mannerisms were the same as a cute girl.

Something was shaken in his heart. The scene before him greatly worried him.

“Fwah… I will let you off the hook with just that, but pure gold is a valuable rare metal. If you do not treat it with the proper care, I will never forgive you even if you are my Sacri-sama.”

“You do know that would amount to a gentle form of suicide, don’t you?”

His wrist was finally freed from her viselike grip, but it sounded like he needed to be more careful from here on. In fact, he was a little worried that the Problem Solvers might throw pure gold caltrops on the ground in battle to distract her.

“But this stuff looks pretty tricky to use since its even thinner than katsuobushi. If I just sprinkle it on like normal, some of it would probably end up off of the plate.”

“Starting now, I will hold my breath until you have completed your objective,” announced Aine.

“You don’t have to do that. Besides, I just have to do it away from my face, you don't have to keep staring at me like that!!”

During that discussion, Utagai Karuta moved the small bag as close to the yokan as he could before sprinkling its contents.

However, a demon interrupted him.

“Mh. Oh, I got the rare planaria character! Hey, hey! Look, Karuta! These things can multiply endlessly if you keep cutting them apart! And finding one in your animal snacks is supposed to increase your monetary luck, so…ah…ah…”

He had a bad feeling about this.

And his bad feeling proved accurate.

“Achoo!!!!!!”

A great wind blew in just as he was attempting such delicate work. The glittering gold leaf should have fallen straight onto the yokan, but it was all blasted in the wrong direction.

Specifically, all over the body of the boy who had been so carefully handling the bag.

[[Image:ApocalypseWitch_v01_11.png|thumb]]

Karuta began to sparkle all over, but it may have been more like a human disco ball than a scene shown in shoujo manga vision.

Now, a question.

What had happened to his fingertip when he got just a bit of gold leaf on it earlier?

“………………………………………………………………………………Sacri-sama. Drool.”

“Wait! Stop, Aine! This is an ord-…”

“Sacri-samaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

A fairly serious hell of stickiness soon followed.

Just before the collision, Karuta tried to ignore the reality facing him by noting that the Student Council President cleverly grabbed her teacup from the side table and retreated.