Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 6===

Frenda sighed with her phone to her ear.

It was always worth asking. A report had come in via a combination of code words on a disaster notification message board to prevent a third party from tracking what was said.

(I thought I could use Hanatsuyu Kuchikusa and I was right to put together that macro just in case.)

Basically, Frenda had set things up so, if she didn’t contact her sister’s phone in a certain amount of time, an email asking for a defense job would automatically be sent through a series of intermediaries before reaching Hanatsuyu Kuchikusa. Payment upon completion of the job had been set up to work automatically as well.

Insurance like this was worth setting up while you were still safe. It was too late to scrape something together once you were already in a crisis.

For now, her sister was safe.

But that wouldn’t last forever. It would be best to not let this issue drag on.



“Now, then.”



She consciously shifted her focus.

Even with all her countermeasures in place, her phone was for emergencies only. She wanted to avoid using it as much as possible. Since the Mugino Family was from outside Academy City, she doubted they could intercept the signal, but Item was from Academy City.

So Frenda made her way to an internet cafe near Yokohama Station.

Any information from lodging and rest facilities would reach the Mugino Family before long, but she could still use them if she knew she would be found out. Basically, she had to keep it quick.

To avoid looking suspicious, she ordered the complimentary curry rice and melon soda.

(The luxury of getting as much of the food as you want is a selling point, so it’s weird they don’t have canned mackerel as an option.)

Then again, she was on the run, so she was lucky to be able to eat at all. Frenda entered the booth closest to the emergency exit, got on the computer, and began a speedy search for information.

“Crossword, Crossword… Oh? In the end, is this it?”

The ordinary search engines only provided links to a lot of puzzles with prize rewards, but a check through an underground search engine revealed some more dangerous articles.

This was the unseen negotiator for an organization.

“Kidnapping, threats, embezzlement, poisoning, a bomb threat at an international airport… Wow, he was the reason the president canceled his trip to Japan at the last second 5 years ago? Not bad.”

Frenda stopped eating the mild curry rice.

Even though she saw herself as the kind of scum who could eat while watching a livestream of people killing each other in the Colosseum.

On the other hand, they had anonymously exposed illegal bidding prices for construction projects. But based on the rest, that hadn’t been done out of a desire to see justice done – it was probably used to get the police to crush a rival criminal organization.

They were a genius in a single field.

By swapping out words and using language as a weapon, they could freely manipulate the emotions of enemy and ally alike to control individuals and organizations, or even tear them apart. They were like an expert in the unseen curse where the resistance each individual thought was best ended up working against the organization as a whole.

People like this were rare, but they did exist.

The Brain who gave advice to the Board of Directors and the Voice on the Phone who acted as a go-between for the legal and illegal worlds were probably that type.

Much like Frenda’s bombs, this was a power on a different axis from Academy City’s esper development. Those without a special power could only survive by keeping a hidden weapon that they had thoroughly honed. This person believed themselves superior and carried a variety of complexes.

Frenda must not stand on the same playing field as them.

No matter what.

“Argh. This is the kind of person I’d normally blow up before they could speak a word, but I’m supposed to capture them alive? Who knows when they’ll kill me in my sleep afterwards.”

(A number of these incidents don’t seem to have any link to the Mugino Family…no, that’s probably not it. In the end, that Family is just so big I can’t see every part of it. How far do their roots spread across the globe?)

As the name Crossword suggested, the negotiator would apparently cut printed character out of newspapers and magazines and paste them into letters to make threats. That would normally provide a lot of information from the paper, the blade used, the glue, and the location it was mailed from, but they calculated all that out and used it to their advantage. Such as being in Yokohama but throwing off the investigation by using newspapers delivered from Kansai or Hokkaido. By taking a hair from an enemy and mixing it into the glue, they could guide the police to a false arrest to punish that person for them.

(A paper magazine lover who dislikes email, huh? In the end, all the cutting out and pasting seems like it would just make the process harder, so maybe they’re the kind of person who enjoys doing things with their hands?)

A quiet craftsman who specialized in intellectual crimes.

As an energetic bomber, Frenda could sniff out the subtle differences between them.

Not even the sites that gathered underground articles on the cases had a photo of Crossword or their real name. In the end, all of their threat cases had gone unsolved. It didn’t sound like there was going to be any word on past convictions.

But Frenda did find one interesting piece of information.

''“Crossword only ever uses synthetic glues. Not once in the past cases, did he or she use a traditional natural glue made by crushing rice.”

“I see. So do they have a severe food allergy?”

(Rice is everywhere in this country. Even when you buy wheat bread, it’s often made in the a factory that also uses rice. But when hiding out in a single location, it’s hard not to get sloppy with food. …They were headed to a forest safe house, right? Even if they fled there in a hurry, they would have to gather up a fair amount of allergy medication.)

“Specifically, antihistamines for regular use and epinephrine for emergency use. In the end, I should be able to find out Crossword’s identity by tracking down anyone who bought an unnatural amount of those medications today.”

Starch glue had many uses outside of stationery. For example, sturdily binding the pages of a thick book and keeping wallpaper on the wall. It was a landmine found all throughout life. Even the laundry starch used to keep blouses and shirts unwrinkled was essentially the same thing.

And while modern stamps used a synthetic adhesive, they used to use a starch glue. That meant there was a chance they used rice. Even when you tried to be careful, there was always the fear of some getting mixed in by mistake. It was unlikely they actually licked the stamps used for the threatening letters, but they would have to consider the possibility.

Frenda checked the clock in the corner of the desktop screen.

She was out of time.

“Oops. It’d be a shame to let this curry go to waste.”

The blonde girl used the largish spoon to scarf down the rest of the curry while organizing the information in her mind.

Antihistamines could be bought just about anywhere, so they wouldn’t be very useful.

So she decided to run one last search: sketchy online shopping sites offering epinephrine.

Crossword would have seen the same sites.