Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 7===

Hotels and inns would be watched by the police and criminal organizations, but there some surprising places remained unmonitored.

Like a small multi-tenant building.

This one in particular was a makeshift office used by phone operators hired out by companies.

The people who thought they were calling up a big corporate headquarters to complain would have been shocked to see this.

The skinny building was as thin as a watermelon slice someone had failed to cut evenly and it was filled with locked rooms, but just one of the small rooms contained a sofa and a bed. If you didn’t make any noise, no one else would notice. If you wanted a bath, you could visit the spa across the street. It was perfect as long as you weren’t too concerned about complying with the laws governing the hotel business.

“…”

And Kinuhata Saiai was viewing it with her mouth forming a small triangle.

Noticing her gaze, the track suit girl spoke.

“It’s alright, Kinuhata. I’ll do it for you later.”

Takitsubo Rikou sat on the edge of the bed.

Mugino Shizuri was lying down with her head resting on the track suit girl’s lap.

Takitsubo was cleaning her ears.

And it didn’t seem like the first time she had done this.

“Wow.”

“This really helps calm her down,” said Takitsubo, keeping her hands working. “Mugino, what will we do now?”

“With the Sakuya faction as large as it is, Sakuya can’t protect each and every one of them, right? And as members of the Mugino Family, they aren’t innocent civilians, so we don’t have to hold back. As soon as they show an opening, we can start tearing through their troops and get whatever information we can out of- kyah!”

“Mugino,” briefly said Takitsubo.

Mugino was resting on her lap and getting her ear cleaned out, so Takitsubo had a small bamboo stick in her right ear.

Deep inside, but precisely controlled.

“Hey…you intentionally didn’t bring this up until you had me like this, didn’t you?”

“Because you would have snapped and started firing Meltdowner if I hadn’t.”

…The girl really did understand Mugino’s personality. At any other time, she might very well have blown away one of her teammates.

“Blindly tearing through the enemy will only hurt you in the long run, right? The Mugino Family is your family.”

“They’re after my future and my life. I can’t survive if I go soft like that.”

“I will come up with a method.”