Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

Tokiwadai Middle School was a conspicuous location even for the School Garden, a special area in District 7.

A curvy girl with a decorative braid in her fluffy blonde hair held her hands together in a polite greeting.

“How do you do?”

“Hello, ''Ibotanokikouji''-senpai. Aren’t you running late? I thought your last class today was swimming.”

They exchanged greetings like it was nothing, but the short-haired girl in front of her was in fact one of the seven Level 5s. People like that walking the halls on a daily basis was one reason Tokiwadai was a den of monsters.

Ibotanokikouji Kaede, leader of a brutal dark side team, suppressed a soft sigh.

(Really, the weird thing is for elites like the Level 5s to be lurking in filthy back alleys during the day. As far as Academy City’s hierarchy is concerned, anyway.)

“I will be fine. Changing quickly is one of my talents, so don’t worry.”

“Everything moves at such a carefree pace in Tokiwadai, so I’m not sure I trust your idea of ‘quickly’. You should still probably hurry.”

Ibotanokikouji agreed with that assessment.

Tokiwadai Middle School was like a breathable aquarium.

The teachers and students all moved so maddeningly slowly as they walked down the hall or ate their lunch.

And she had to move just as slowly or everyone would see her as an aberration from the norm.

Like they did the Level 5 girl in front of her who chose to live true to herself.

“I assure you I will be fine. By the way, Misaka-sama, have you ever met the #6 Level 5?”

“I haven’t.” The girl shrugged. “It’s not like the Level 5s have some special community where we all get along. My arguments with the little one are famous, aren’t they? Or not, I don’t really know.”

The other Level 5, Mental Out, could reproduce just about any psychological power, so for better or for worse, this girl was the only one in Tokiwadai who could call her “the little one”. Which did make it seem like those two had some kind of special bond.

She casually shrugged again.

“There are only seven of us, but that doesn’t mean much. We haven’t all become friends and exchanged email addresses or anything. I don’t even know all their names and powers.”

“''What if I told you I was the #6''?”

“''Oh, really''?”

After that exchange, they parted with a smile.

Ibotanokikouji turned a corner in the hallway, and…

“Phew.”

Even the bright midsummer sun felt somehow cool inside Tokiwadai. It was a carefree world free of crime where the little birds someone had fed were relaxing on the windowsill.

Ibotanokikouji knew it was careless to attend a swimming class when an enemy dark side team wanted her dead.

Tokiwadai was a safe zone in every possible way. It was physically isolated, no information could leak out, and it was involved in Academy City politics.

But it took away everything except for safety, so staying there too long was stifling.

She felt staying here was like locking yourself up in prison for safety.

“Everything moves at such a carefree pace” was a good way of putting it.

Since she was attending Tokiwadai, Ibotanokikouji obviously was not short on money. She was soaking neck deep in the dark side anyway because she feared she would become cut off from the world at large like Urashima Tarou if she did not leave on occasion. Or to put it another way, she always wanted to be at the leading edge of the world. No matter how rotten the truth was, it helped her adjust the hands of her old watch that fell out of sync so easily.

(The dark side has a bad habit of drawing a solid line between themselves and the rest of the city.)

She raised both arms to stretch her back.

The girls in the hallway were moving carefully but somehow hurriedly just before the break ended, but all of a sudden they parted to the sides of the hallway.

''Her power was best suited for killing, but with a bit of creativity, it could also do things like this.

She walked right down the center of the hallway.

(The two worlds are geographically connected and function like two sides of the same coin. This sunlit field is within reach. I haven’t been reborn in another world or anything.)

Mugino’s team would have seen the Tokiwadai uniform in the library and they had to be working feverishly to track her down and rescue the hostage, but they must have assumed their enemy would not be attending school at the predetermined time each day.

She had sacrificed her freedom and bound herself here, so she needed it to cut off all pursuit, both physically and psychologically.

She glanced through a classroom door to check the clock on the wall, but she did not make her way to the locker room. She preferred a deserted location, so she set her sights on the landing of the stairs leading up to the roof. That some cleaning supplies had been left out but no one had reported it meant people barely ever came this way.

Ibotanokikouji nodded.

A sharp sound of splitting air scattered from her feet. Since barely anyone went up to the roof, a “closed for cleaning” sign had been left lying on the landing instead of being put away properly, but it hopped up like she had kicked it. She easily caught it in one hand when it arrived at eye level.

She set it up on the stairs below, transforming the landing up to the roof into her own private territory.

(Of course, ''if I have to, I can always have them subconsciously avoid the stairs.'')

“Now, then.”

She didn’t have much time, so she removed her uniform while operating her phone.

This was why she couldn’t use the locker room in the busy time before swimming class.

She attached an eraser-sized signal spoofing device to the phone’s bottom connector and manually input a number not recorded in the address book. She had to be clever since Tokiwadai had that electrical esper, that psychological esper, and so many more.

“Yes, I can talk now. But I need time to store my uniform, underwear, and valuables in the locker room, lock the locker, and reach the pool on time, so you have 5 minutes for your report.”

“Do they really allow private phones at that fancy school?”

“It won’t be a problem as long as none of you call me in the middle of class.”

She had called the art club girl named Inoue Laspezia.

Her plain, whispered voice was even harder to make out coming from the device.

“And a lot of the girls here don’t have one. Have you heard of love letters? They still write them on paper here. With a spritz of perfume on the stationery, of course.”

“At a girl’s school?”

“The rules in the student handbook never say a word about banning relationships with other students. Although it’s possible the teachers just didn’t think that one through.”

“Whatever. I don’t have anything to do but wait, so I was trying to figure out what to cook today.”

“Do forgive me. The school provides our lunches, so I won’t be able to eat your bento.”

“Don’t worry about it. I found some good eel, so I’m planning to make some jellied eel broth.”

“Eh? But today isn’t even your day to cook.”

“I’m doing it.”

“Jellied eel broth… Just a second. You aren’t planning to serve just that one dish for dinner, are you? Whenever you try to make a Kyoto dish, you always boil it down well past being a stew. Remember when you suddenly said you wanted to make Kyoto-style ramen the other day and ended up toiling over that huge pot for 8 hours? You always insist Waniguchi-chan doesn’t go to the convenience store to tide herself over, so she was so hungry she started rolling on the floor and begging you to let us eat even if it wasn’t perfect.”

“I will always wait as long as it takes. I will wait and wait even if it boils down beyond recognition.”

Ibotanokikouji stared into the distance, thinking she had better get home early today.

But anyway. She unzipped her skirt, leaving her in only her underwear and mentally listed out the things she wanted to check with her dark side teammate.

(We can wear whatever underwear we want, but here I am with matching white for the top and bottom. I’m so like the other girls here it makes me want to die.)

“How are things with the rest of you?” she asked.

“No real issues yet, but Waniguchi is on the verge of losing control, just as you feared. She says she wants to get back at them for what they did to our teammate, but that’s only an excuse. She really just can’t bear having to restrain herself from destroying someone who is at her mercy. …Then again, there are a number of legitimate reasons, like revenge and getting that girl to tell us where all the enemy’s hideouts are.”

Ibotanokikouji went on to remove her underwear on a stairway landing with no walls separating it from the rest of the school.

She held her phone between shoulder and cheek, grabbed the racing-style Tokiwadai swimsuit, and spread it out between her hands.

“You haven’t ''started'' without me, have you?”

“Not really. I don’t need you getting after me again, Kaede.”

“That’s a good girl. I will reward you later. I know this is an unusual situation, but we don’t gain anything by letting that get to us. Bear with it. We can all ‘welcome’ our cute newcomer together.”

“…”

Did that silence come from jealousy? But it was cute how Inoue still obeyed.

Ibotanokikouji continued the conversation with her phone held between shoulder and cheek and one leg lifted to put on the swimsuit. The angle of her head messed with her vision, so she had trouble staying balanced.

Hanano Choubi, was it?

“I still think we should have killed her then and there,” said Inoue.

“What’s this? Jealous? I chose to take her in because she’s cute.”

“That’s a bad habit of yours. And ultimately, you either don’t get along or they can’t keep the dark side’s secrets, so we have to kill them and clean up afterwards.”

Inoue sounded legitimately exasperated.

“You really need to understand that we are the only ones who can get along with someone as tricky as you. Because with both people and things, you prefer the ones ''with the presence of death about them'', don’t you?”

“Hee hee. If you’re going to react this cutely, I’m going to do it even more.”

There were two teams and the winner could officially call themselves Item.

That much was true, but there was no real reason to take the risk of searching out the enemy team’s personal information or hideouts. If all they wanted to do was lay the pressure on Mugino Shizuri’s team, they only needed to throw some of their Colosseum money at the adult world. It wouldn’t be immediate, but the damage would slowly but surely accumulate. The frozen bank account was one example. By the time the bubbles were visible on the surface, the bottom of the pot was already boiling away.

So they needed to preserve this situation.

It was crucial they kept themselves in a position where they could make unilateral attacks. If they got greedy and made a mistake, they might lose everything.

“I miss you,” said Inoue.

“Yes, yes. Just wait a while longer. I plan to head straight home today.”

“Thank you. I will have a sea bream hotpot ready for you. First, I slice it thinner than sashimi, then quickly heat it with some turnip…”

“Kyoto seasoning scares me.”

Generally, when a curvier girl attempted to put on a one piece swimsuit, pulling up the shoulder straps alone wasn’t enough to get the chest up. Ibotanokikouji pushed her large chest inside the swimsuit to fix that and finally took the phone from between her shoulder and cheek.

“The system will be back to normal either today or tomorrow. We will wait until then before working together to win over Hanano-chan. If she joins us, we have a new teammate.”

“And if she doesn’t, we kill her and dispose of her body?”

“Oh, you. You aren’t hoping for that outcome, are you?”

No response.

Ibotanokikouji seriously hoped she wouldn’t try the “she was resisting so I had no choice but to kill her” trick.

“I will do whatever you want of me, Kaede. Even if I am bored out of my mind.”

“If you’re bored, why not finally handwash your 2D body pillow covers and hang them up to dry?”

“Bff!?”

Inoue must not have been able to ignore that one because she gave a highly unusual response over the phone.

“And how can you be bored out there where your options are endless?”

Ibotanokikouji tugged on the shoulder strap with her thumb and let it snap back into place.

And she winked.

“You have it so much better than me, suffocating in this luxurious fish tank.”