Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 6===

“Phew.”

(I miiiight have overdone that. I can smell gas leaking out.)

Maidono Hoshimi sighed.

She had no limitations this time, meaning she could kill as many people as necessary to achieve her objective. But that attack had clearly been excessive and meaningless. From a stage magic perspective, it was like the magician shouting at an audience member in anger when they were about to discover the trick.

She had slid two skyscrapers two building-widths to the side from the left and right. Those buildings were too heavy for cranes to move and too unstable for workers to enter them, so they would have to be demolished to clear this major road. And since she had torn them from their foundations, she had also torn through the electric, gas, and water lines. The gas line was especially problematic. Since she could sense the artificially added odor, she was at risk of being blown up if the conditions were right.

Nothing would be more foolish than performing a “cutting yourself in half” magic trick and accidentally doing it for real.

It was crucial to always ensure your own safety first.

In that sense, the Santa girl was a second-rate illusionist for failing to immediately confirm her own safety.

“…”

After a short silence, she looked away.

Her blonde wig spread out as she turned 180 degrees away from the seam between the two buildings that were smashed together so tightly not even a sheet of paper could fit between them.

(Those two should manage to crawl out of that half-crushed building before long. It would probably be safer to wait for them to come out and make sure I kill them than crush the building and assume I got them. If I’m not absolutely certain they’re dead, it might worry my client.)

But more than that, she could not keep her thoughts off of something else.

There was no direct cause and effect there. It annoyed her to still feel fear of someone she had supposedly defeated, but she had to listen to what her own subconscious was telling her.

(That boy gave that ordinary clone some instructions. I need to deal with her, retrieve the cleaning robot, and finish transporting Last Order. Is that all? That should end it. This is looking more and more like a lonely Christmas for me.)

“I need to go eat one of those cream-covered donuts somewhere. Using a knife and fork to break apart the reddish-purple chocolate and the tower of matcha cream will rid me of this bad mood.”

While somewhat grumpily going over her plans, she noticed something else.

Her phone had been going off for a bit now.

She grabbed the vibrating mobile device and it was exactly who she expected.

“That was unnecessary,” said the person on the phone.

“You think I don’t know that?” she responded.

“Then why did you do it?”

“Shut up. It was you adults who made me like this.”

She was burning with a quiet anger.

But quiet did not make it any less dangerous.

“''I can’t use chopsticks.''”

That was an odd thing for a high school girl to say.

And it was accompanied by a tone of deep, deep resentment.

“Does that not sound like much to you? It probably doesn’t to those of you who took it from me, but when you can’t do something that everyone else can, it binds your heart far more than any of your calculations could have told you! I can only manipulate things with my index fingers. Because you made me that way. You sprung it on me without warning, calling it nothing more than an ‘optimization’ for my power!!”

She had been the class rep who could do anything.

She had not been all that much smarter than anyone else and she was certainly not the most athletic person. But when it came to trivia or manners, she was always the easiest one to come to. She had found a place for herself there.

So she could never allow herself to stumble in those ordinary things. And yet…

“It’s like I’m a small child. Whenever we’re chatting at school or eating out after school, I’m always reaching for the fork or spoon while curling up in fear that they’ll realize the truth!!”

She noticed the person on the phone had gone quiet.

But that was not someone who could be overpowered into silence. This silence almost certainly came from exasperation. They were not foolish enough to get rid of useful personnel for purely emotional reasons, but this had still been a mistake on her part.

She intentionally regulated her breathing before continuing.

“I will do as instructed because I too need the dark side. But please stop expecting anything more than that from me. Conforming to society? Adapting to the situation? I can’t. You should know that as one of the ones who ''removed'' that ability from me so you could manipulate me more easily. So I will do this the simplest way I can. Just as you so selfishly hoped I would.”

She could tell some lengthy orders were still coming, but a puzzled look appeared on her face as she held her phone.

Then she quietly clicked her tongue.

“Excuse me,” said the blonde Santa.

She loathed that person, but she also could not leave her work undone. Grades and family background were useless in the dark side. It was all about results. She could not let those slip if she wanted to survive.

“I still have more to tell you, but I must return to my job.”

She had enough of a reason to hang up now.

Namely…

“I’ll tell you why that should matter.”

“…”

She heard a voice.

An unbelievably simple male voice came from behind her.

But how? How in the world???

During their previous fighting, she had known the boy was covered in sweat and bluffing every step of the way. It had partially been to apply psychological pressure to her, but it must have also been to keep himself going after getting stabbed and beaten up so much. That method could certainly be effective, especially in Academy City where battles were often based on esper powers. And as a standard method, it had been easy for Maidono, a master of underhanded tricks, to see through it.

But what was this?

Was there some further trick she had not seen?

Or had the situation really and truly moved beyond her tactics?

Someone other than herself spoke so smoothly and loquaciously it was hard to think it was entirely calculated or entirely uncalculated.

Which one was it!?

“If your Telekinesis can only move inanimate objects, then it all makes sense. I was wondering why you weren’t counted as a Level 5 with that much power, but I think I get it now. I certainly wouldn’t want your power. Misaka’s highly adaptable powers and the psychological powers of the #5 ''who I’ve heard rumors of'' sound like a lot more interesting options if I could trade powers with someone for a day. There’s just no way I could see your power being on that same highest rank.”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

The gears in Maidono Hoshimi’s mind ground to a halt.

Her planned timetable truly did fall apart here.

“You can’t save anyone and you can’t make anyone smile. All you can do is destroy.”

He sounded almost regretful, like he had seen someone else horribly wounded.

“How did you end up like that? …I did hear you say something about being unable to use chopsticks.”

With the stiff movements of a rusty doll, she turned 180 degrees again. She was supposed to have the initiative here, yet someone else had forced her to turn around.

And there he was.

That completely ordinary boy stood there like normal.

With blood soaking his side.

He was sweating a disturbing amount for the December weather and his face was haggard and pale.

Yet he refused to collapse.

Plus, not even his bones should still be intact. That attack had not been something you could overcome through the psychological boost of some bluffing.

“How did you do that?”

“How do you think?”

“I used two skyscrapers standing more than 50 floors tall! Was my maximum weight limit of 100 thousand tons not enough, or are you saying you can hold back nuclear aircraft carriers with your arms!?”

“I wasn’t caught in the clockwork traps of some ancient ruins. The buildings had windows and doors on their ground floors. Tackle through one of those and there was a whole hollow floor for me there. If you were going to do that, you should have kept going until both buildings were squished flat, like metalworking with gold leaf.”

And besides that.

Or because of that.

He had heard her mention the chopsticks.

She only had herself to blame for not checking on the corpse, but still.

She had lied to her friends and deceived everyone in her everyday life to keep that secret, yet it had slipped out so easily here.

Psychological pressure?

A psychological boost?

This was beyond anything words like that could influence.

“I’ll kill you.”

“You can try.”

“I’ll kill you!!!!!!”

Most likely, these emotions were not really directed at the pointy-haired high school boy in front of her. He was just getting caught in the crossfire. But she could not hold it in any longer. She had soaked in the dark side to the point of no return. She knew that so well that it almost made her laugh, but this was something she could not stand.

She felt like it had all been a waste of time.

Even that twinge of pain she always felt in her heart.

Even that patchwork school life she had held together by deceiving those ignorant people.

She could feel an unidentifiable noise rising from the depths of her mind. She could feel it, but she could not stop it. This was the annoying part of the human psyche. Things had derailed further than even she had ever imagined.

“Yes!! Yes, it’s true!! I can’t do something everyone else takes for granted. I can’t manipulate those two little sticks in one hand and I can’t pick up food with them! I can’t use chopsticks!! All I can do is hold them in my fist and stab the food like a small child!! But you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have the adults steal from you what no else ever has to even think about!!”

“Stole from you?”

“Modern technology can erase specific information from the brain without harming the brain cells themselves. There is, technically speaking, a chance of recovery, but I imagine the only person who could truly do that would be Academy City’s #5.”

It felt like her head was swelling.

Her temperature kept rising from within, which threw off the rhythm of her breathing.

Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes as she yelled at him.

“But if you send a massive amount of information to a specific part of the brain to rewrite it and then repeat the process over and over, you can leave it truly beyond recovery. It’s known as the signal slide method. My mind was optimized for using this power. By removing what wasn’t necessary!!”

So she could not use them.

All so she could fully focus her nerves on her two index fingers.

She could no longer perform a task she had managed with ease before – and that even kindergartners could do.

“Makes you want to laugh, doesn’t it?”

Her lips had grown loose.

But not because she was smiling.

There were children out there who could not write or do their times table. And after hitting a roadblock at a point everyone else passed without issue, they could make no further progress and fell off the rails of their school life.

She had been the same.

And terrified of what people would say if they found out, she had kept it a secret.

“All I want is to enjoy eating with my friends without having to worry about all this. All I want is to eat at a restaurant without hunching over and fearing everyone is watching me. That’s all I want, but the next thing I knew, my feet were caught in the quicksand I couldn’t escape!!”

Something could be heard slicing through the air.

She had pointed her finger at one of the glass shards at her feet and launched it at her target with a flick of her finger.

Her maximum weight limit was more than 100,000 tons.

After using two entire skyscrapers, she now used a clear needle of only a few millimeters.

Human senses would adapt to stimuli and make corrections without the person being consciously aware of it. The average person would have been stabbed through the forehead before they could adjust to this sudden change in scale.

“I see.”

“!?”

This was odd.

The boy was not shaken.

All of a sudden, his right hand was raised with its perfectly ordinary palm directed her way. That was all it took for it to fall apart. The glass shard that should have shot through her target from only a few meters away fell powerlessly to the ground.

He had broken it.

He had torn through it.

He had destroyed Maidono Hoshimi’s power itself, which was something like an invisible ropeway.

Yet he said nothing about that.

But not because he was interested in hiding his trump card.

It was more like he had something more important to say.

“Then do you feel a little better now?”

“Huh?”

She did not understand.

But his words seemed to force their way into the blank in her mind.

“I mean, you haven’t been able to tell anyone about all this, but you just got it all off your chest. So how was it? Maybe it was painful and embarrassing and maybe it made you want to stomp and writhe round, but do you feel some relief in getting it all out there?”

Why did he sound like he knew what he was talking about?

People acting like they understood should have been the most infuriating thing, yet his words hit home.

After some thought, she fell silent for a bit.

She had no objective proof of this, but could it be?

“You too?”

“…”

“Did you lose something too? No, did you have something stolen from you too!?”

She could guess that there was something special about this boy’s right hand. And that was what he used now.

He formed a finger gun with it and aimed at his own temple.

“''My memories.''”

“No.”

“''I’m missing everything before this past summer. A full 15 years’ worth.''”

He was not speaking particularly loudly.

He did not make any grand gestures and he did not add any dramatic tone to his voice. If he had played it up in that way, a pro like her would have seen through it right away. But she saw none of that. Which was why she felt the weight of his words.

That realistic sound seemed to make the air itself harden.

The truth was not a kind thing.

She knew that all too well as someone who protected herself by soaking in the dark side. In fact, she knew the unvarnished truth could be used as a weapon to scar people’s psyches.

“Although it was apparently just the episodic memories, so unlike you, it doesn’t really affect my day to day life. I can’t objectively prove it, much like your chopsticks thing.”

Was that possible?

How was that allowed?

She had had things to cling to for support. Even when she had killed people while working for the dark side, she had still been focused on protecting her connections to other people. It was those very connections that had made her so ashamed of what she could not do, made her lie to hide those things, and made her sink ever further into the quicksand.

But.

Did she want to quit just because it was hard? No.

No matter how much it had torn her heart to pieces, she never wanted to lose those memories she had made with those people. It was those very connections that had given her the strength to keep going in the darkness. She had wanted to keep that small light within her.

Yet that was what had been taken from him?

“Then how?”

The words spilled from her.

She had been avoiding it from beginning to end, but now she found herself seeking the answer.

“How can you possibly ''keep going''!? Your case is far worse and you can’t reclaim what you lost no matter how hard you try, so wouldn’t it be easier to just resent whoever did this to you!? How!?”

He was a normal boy.

He might be accustomed to fighting abnormal battles, but he was still far too naïve deep down.

As someone soaked in the dark side, she could tell that all too well. Simply having another place to live made him fundamentally different from her.

Who had done that to him?

The answer honestly did not matter. When you lost something, it was like being given an excuse to resent the entire world around you. After all, no one noticed what was happening, no one protected you, and now it was too late. You could shout those things to excuse whatever you were doing. He had essentially been handed the absolute privilege of being the victim.

But.

The boy shook his head.

“''That wouldn’t be easier.''”

“…”

He lived in a different world.

“That path is one of pain. I don’t think I could bear it. That’s why I’ve hidden my memory loss for so long. Although it was a terrible act and full of holes, so some people still figured it out. But that’s why I won’t rely on intangible things like memories anymore. I mean, we’ve got a whole world out there. I’d be missing out if I didn’t enjoy that along with everyone else. Smiling and running around together is the much easier path.”

His values were fundamentally different.

Which was why they could not reach an understanding.

“So how about you?”

Yet his voice would not leave her ears.

She could not drive those words out of her mind even though they made no sense to her.

“We lost different things and in different ways, so I’ll ask you what it’s like. Is it really that comfortable being forever bound by what you lost? You can’t use chopsticks and there is no changing that. ''But don’t you want to become someone who can look at that and say ‘so what’?''”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“It’s not that easy!! You can’t just add in something new to fill in the gaps!! This isn’t a simple case of one plus one equals two!! The same amount of data doesn’t mean the same contents. This must have taken a lot out of you too, so stop trying to force it. ''I mean, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose your memories''. That’s way worse than not being able to use chopsticks! You have to be way more dead inside than me!!!!!”

“I lost my memories and they’re never coming back. ''So what?'' I’ve made it this far, although I’ll admit it took me a while. But where are you right now? What part of this long path is most comfortable for you?”

Then what explained this?

Where had the two of them differed?

These were not the words of some outsider who did not understand her pain.

There really was someone worse off than her.

So how had that boy managed to make this decision?

“I don’t think I really had a reason.”

“…up.”

“I lost something. I had something taken from me. Yeah, it hurts, but that doesn’t give me the right to do whatever I want. Actually, it’s not even about what’s fun or what’s painful. I just don’t want to be ''that kind of person''.”

“Shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!!!!!!”

The ground more than the air gave a roar. Then the asphalt rose up right next to Maidono Hoshimi. And it did not end there. That was merely the catapult. A tunnel was pushed up from below. An entire subway track was tossed up to the surface.

There was no warning whistle.

Based on all the lenses and sensors added to the front, it was probably an unmanned train. It may have been a freight train carrying Christmas products, but it would not have mattered even if it was manned.

The 8-car mass of metal bent and tore through the air while mercilessly charging toward Kamijou Touma. In terms of pure physical destructive force ''and nothing more'', this was more powerful than Academy City’s #3 Railgun. And this was not based on her power. The train itself was only moving with its electric motor.

But.

However.

“I’ve seen a lot of people, even after losing my memories.”

He moved a meter to the right.

That slight movement of his feet was all he did.

He simply sidestepped the range of those predetermined rails.

He ignored the deafening roar of destruction as he kept his eyes on her.

“I’ve seen elite Level 5s and I’ve seen dropouts who couldn’t make any progress no matter how much they struggled. I’ve seen a smoker magician who couldn’t protect the person he cared for most and I’ve seen a Saint who was always followed by tragedy due to no fault of her own. …It’s not just us. Everyone is carrying pain no one else will ever understand, but they clench their teeth and continue to fight. This isn’t a small enough world to warrant tearing it to pieces just because of our own personal reasons!!”

Then.

Then what was she supposed to do?

Changing how she felt would not cause the world to take her side.

The cruel reality would remain unchanged.

After everything she had done, she could never leave the dark side. Looking back at the bloody path she had taken made her feel queasy. She needed that resentment that told her she had been justified in her actions. By only ever looking ahead, she had been able to believe she could reach that ridiculous future where she would one day laugh with her friends without any of these worries.

Even though, deep down, she had known that was never possible after she had killed her first person.

Deep down, she had given up at that point, making it easier to kill the second and the third.

“Yeah.”

She heard an odd sound.

This did not come from her power. She had not done anything at all.

“So if you’re going to agonize over this all on your own and if you’re going to waste the opportunities you’re given because you let those intangible things bind you…”

Then what had made the sound?

She looked up and saw that boy quietly but strongly clenching his right hand.

She saw him form a fist.

And she heard his words.

“Then I’ll destroy that goddamn illusion until not a scrap remains.”