Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item3 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 6===

This was bad.

It could hardly be worse.

Kagiyama Sasuke understood this intellectually, but he still couldn’t make himself move.

He could only watch as the track suit girl wrapped a handkerchief around her hand and stuck her hand into the hole.

Takitsubo Rikou grabbed the grip and lifted an object up to eye level.

It was a weapon with one-sided blade measuring more than 30cm. It wasn’t made of metal, but it was still quite heavy. Because it was 3D printed, it was all one piece, from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the grip. It wasn’t multiple pieces held together with screws.

The white plastic knife had already started to crack.

It looked ready to fall apart at any moment.

“Whoa.”

“Tch. Don’t hurt yourself, Takitsubo. Having your DNA on it would only complicate matters.”

(That’s right. This isn’t over yet.)

Kagiyama did his best to catch Saetani Melusine’s eye.

(Don’t give it away! They haven’t completely identified their enemy yet!!)

The voice on the phone, who was apparently watching through the phone camera, sounded exasperated.

“Wait, really? I know the blade is the thinnest and most fragile part, but why does it have to be like this? If the bacteria eat away too much of it, we can’t compare it to the body’s wounds.”

“What about the glove marks? Y’know, how you said we could identify someone from the distribution of their hand bones.”

“We can try, but I’m not sure it’ll work. Since District 4 works with food, garbage-eating soil microbes are artificially disseminated there. If the surface of the grip’s been eaten away, the glove marks won’t be there anymore.”

“God, you’re useless.”

“Why is it always like this with you!?”

If no one were watching, Kagiyama might have high-fived his partner.

They’d won.

They’d escaped.

On instinct, Kagiyama reached for his SLR camera on the table. Not yet. Don’t smile yet. Once they were away from the gazebo, it would finally be their turn to attack.

(Top priority has to be Takitsubo Rikou since she’s too clever by half. Next would be Mugino Shizuri since she’s the most powerful. The other two I’ll kill using Amekawa’s power! I’ll stab them so many goddamn times for giving us so much trouble. We’re justice. We’re on the right side here. The Frees know when to use photos and when to use violence, so how could we ever lose to some villains who only know how to use violence!?)

Just then…

“The person who buried this knife is the one who killed the guitarist, right?”

“?”

Matching the knife to the body’s wounds and identifying the wielder’s hand bones from the glove marks on the grip would both be difficult.

But Takitsubo was looking at something else.

And she made it sound so simple and obvious.

“Then that settles it. We’ve caught the dark side killer.”