Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Prologue (section)

==Prologue: A Picture Book that Slipped through the Cracks – Magic_Side,Open.==

“…mour…”

Lights out had passed, so the hospital had gone dark. A hospital at night was the source of so many different fears and a voice seemed to echo up from the depths of the earth inside one room containing six girls.

The voice belonged to Shirai Kuroko. The twintailed 13-year-old wore a see-through purple negligee as she slipped out of her bed and crept toward another bed in the same room.

“It’s amour time, Onee-samaaaaa!!!!!! They say people are influenced by their environment and there are no end to the impure and erotic rumors surrounding a late-night hospital room! Things are bound to work out better than in our ordinary dorm room! Christmas is over, but the 26th is still too soon for New Year’s. Plus, everyone relaxes their guard during winter break. Weh heh heh. No reaction to all this noise? You must be exhausted indeed. But this is why you should always be careful, Onee-samaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!”

The prestigious girls’ school student teleported above the target bed and then dove toward the lump in the blanket with perfect diving form.

But she soon realized her mistake.

“What…she’s gone!? This lump is no more than another rolled-up blanket! That explains why the chest looked awfully large for Onee- bgwahhhh!!!???”

After crawling on the bed like a dog and pulling back the blanket, Kuroko felt a powerful blow to the back of her head.

“It’s 2AM!! Try to keep it down, geez.”

After sneaking from her bed at some point, pajama-wearing Misaka Mikoto slammed her heel into the other girl’s head. That attack was her idea of being considerate. Phones were fine in the hospital room since no special medical equipment was in use there, but who could say what effect a billion-volt surge of power would do. Being too powerful could be inconvenient at times.

Mikoto had shared a room with Shirai Kuroko for long enough that she knew to keep her guard up. Her sensor was not so lax she would allow the girl to attack in her sleep.

But on the other hand…

(I know spending the night at the hospital has her excited, but it isn’t like her to lose control in the middle of the night and cause a scene.)

Shirai Kuroko was a self-admitted pervert, but she also managed to fit right in working for Judgment. It felt wrong for her to just give in to her desires and throw all the public rules and manners out the window.

And if something out of the ordinary was happening, something out of the ordinary must have caused it.

Misaka Mikoto had a pretty good guess what that was. Another girl staying in this very room excelled at that sort of thing.

“Shokuhou!! Did you use just a liiiittle smidge of Mental Out to sic Kuroko on me ''again''!?”

She yelled at the adjacent bed, grabbed the lumpy blanket, and swept it aside like a bullfighter, but then her eyes widened.

“Sh-she’s gone?”

The bed was empty. The lump in the blanket had only been a rolled-up blanket stuffed below.

“Damn, she used that commotion to slip out, didn’t she!? That’s just like her!”



“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

The cheerful humming did not at all suit the late night hospital hallway.

Shokuhou Misaki, Queen of Tokiwadai, let her long blonde hair sway side to side as she walked to her destination in a skimpy babydoll with a cardigan over it.

Misaka Mikoto subconsciously radiated weak microwaves and she could use the reflection of the EM waves to instantly and perfectly detect any moving object in all 360 degrees around her. She had reached the point where she could detect and accurately shoot down the countless porcelain shards blasted her way by a bomb, but even her senses would be dulled while dealing with a commotion like that.

(She has no problem breaking the rules when she can play the justice card, but she never let’s anyone else do the same. So I have to get creative if I don’t want her demanding my hall pass every time I set foot outside the room☆)

But Shokuhou Misaki did not just want a bit of freedom from her cramped hospital life.

She had a distinct objective in mind. She started toward the elevator on habit, but thought better of it, deciding it would be too noticeable. Instead, she climbed the plain emergency stairs one step at a time.

Misaka Mikoto and Shirai Kuroko of Tokiwadai were not her only acquaintances in this hospital.

(If only Dolly…’s sister could have come to this hospital to play.)

The honey-blonde queen briefly pictured two identical girls, but she was no longer in charge of that. She had not received word from the ''chaperone girl'' since Handcuffs began, but she assumed no call for help meant the girl had escaped on her own. There were plenty of ways to set things up so she would be alerted if that girl really did go missing. Like the innovative electric water boilers that prevented the elderly from dying alone.

Making a fuss could actually end up giving any enemies extra clues. It was like the scab over a half-healed wound. The Queen had to mentally work to avoid picking at it.

“Pant, pant, gasp. The stairs really take it out of you…”

She worked to calm her sweet breaths and wiped the sweat from her brow when she arrived at her target floor. She quietly peeked out into the hallway. It was identical to the floor she had just left, but she sensed a special, unseen pressure there. Bluntly put, she was nervous. Her Mental Out power made her the #5 Level 5 and she had every form of mental power at her fingertips, but this she could not fight. It was too fleeting and precious for her to blot it out with her power.

''He'' was in this same hospital.

He was a true Level 0, yet he would charge toward certain doom faster than anyone. He would die if he failed, but self-interest played no role when he chose what to do.

She thought it was ridiculous.

Especially from the perspective of the #5 Queen who could control individuals and groups alike and could manipulate everything to her benefit more easily than move her own fingertip.

But maybe she longed for him so much because he existed outside her hierarchy of control and because her power could not reach him.

“He definitely deserves ''something'',” she muttered to herself.

He had been beaten within an inch of his life. He had risked his life to fight the monster named Anna Sprengel and just barely managed to protect the two girls and the entire city. She knew he would simply smile and say he couldn’t stand to see tragedy. She knew he would say no one owed him anything for it.

But she could not just rely on him forever.

After all that effort, he deserved even greater happiness in return.

''Even if he was destined to forget every single thing Shokuhou Misaki might give him.

She pressed a hand against the center of her chest and took a deep breath in front of the door.

She was fine. Her throat was not shaking.

She was the Queen of Tokiwadai and the leader of the largest clique, so she hated how she always became no more than a younger girl when she was around him.

But she would do this.

And she would enjoy whatever it might lead to.

“K-Kamijou-saaan?”

She cracked open the door and called softly inside.

Then she slipped inside. This was not a private room and would be shared with several other boys, but she did not particularly care. If any of them were still awake, she could aim her remote at them and zap away their memory of seeing her and their ability to notice her for the rest of her stay. It was selfish, but she did not hesitate.

She had done her research.

She knew exactly which bed was his.

“Now, how about we take another stab at Christmas since our first attempt was so rudely interrupted? Don’t worry. My elimination ability will take care of every last thing that might try to interfere this time☆”

But there was no response, so she hesitantly pulled back the blanket.

“H-he’s gone?”

She blinked thrice after seeing the rolled-up blanket placed below the main one.

Then her head snapped over toward the window.

She could not see anything from here, but he had to be somewhere out there. And since he had felt the need to sneak out, he must have had some reason that required doing so.

Yes, Kamijou Touma never got a day off and the 26th was no exception.

Shokuhou Misaki held her head in her hands and screamed.

“Oh, god!! I should have known!!!!!!”



The pointy-haired high school boy named Kamijou Touma had walked to a nearby park while still covered in bandages and gauze.

“Kamijou.”

Hearing his name, he turned to see two familiar faces. They were his classmates Fukiyose Seiri and Himegami Aisa. They were both girls with long black hair, but they had very different looks. Himegami was the calm, traditional Japanese type while Fukiyose was the energetic class rep type.

Either because it was winter break or because of the late hour, they were both in their casual clothes. Fukiyose wore a down jacket, a hoodie, and skinny jeans. Himegami wore a duffle coat, a knit sweater, and a long skirt. It was strange seeing them in something other than their usual uniforms. And they were dressed tastefully, unlike the pointy-haired boy walking around outside in his hospital gown.

Fukiyose frowned at his obvious runaway getup, but she still handed him a large paper bag.

“What, did you really escape the hospital to get here? Well, I had a hunch this was trouble when you asked us to bring you a change of clothes in the middle of the night.”

“Thanks a lot.” Kamijou’s face lit up when he checked inside the bag. “I feel bad having you run an errand for me. And looking after the cat too.”

“Don’t worry about it,” bluntly replied Fukiyose. “(I actually always wanted a cat, but our stupid dorms don’t allow pets. I’m all for following the rules, but only the ones that make sense! Yes, winter break is looking up this year. I get to spend it with a cute calico kitty☆)”

“(Well, at least I know where he hides his spare key now.)”

The pointy-haired boy was too focused on the bag to notice the slight change in the two girls.

He even stuck his hand inside and rummaged around for the most important item.

“Yes, yes, this is what I wanted! The Transla-Pen! I bought it thinking I might need it sometime and I hated how it just sat around collecting dust!!”

The two girls tilted their heads.

It was an accessory that synced with your phone, but it was only a toy sold cheaply at discount stores in Academy City. The pen-shaped device had a microphone in the tip that would pick up foreign languages and translate them to Japanese. And by tracing the pen tip over a foreign text, it would translate that into Japanese as well. It was cheap enough that they came as a free bonus when you bought language learning material online.

“Does that mean you are traveling overseas?” asked Himegami, her head still tilted.

“Yeah. I’m not sure of the details, though.”

Before Kamijou could clarify on that vague answer, he was drowned out by a rhythmic beating of the air. A powerful gust of wind caused the dark trees of the park to creak around them and Fukiyose held her hair down on reflex.

This was not a helicopter.

The aircraft slowly descending toward the center of the large park was a tiltrotor that could greatly change the angle of its wings and engines. Plus, they were in the middle of Academy City, yet a foreign flag had been hurriedly printed on the side. Assuming it was not a punk rock decoration, that likely functioned similar to a diplomatic license plate.

It was the Union Jack.

That should be enough to know what country it belonged to.

Kamijou Touma let his shoulders droop and made one last comment with his back to the midsized transport craft.

“I have a feeling there’s some misfortune in my immediate future.”

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