Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item2 Chapter2 (section)

===Between the Lines 3===

The din of the storm was loud and unstable in the convenience store that night.

“Um, where’s the bento I just bought? You recommended I get it warmed in the microwave…”

Tachiuo Mary stared at the floor and mumbled behind her mask.

The part-timer girl loudly chewed her gum and gave Tachiuo Mary an irritated look.

“Eh? Don’t ask me. There’s nothing in the microwave.”

“But I know you put it in there.”

“I did not!”

“But, um, I paid for it. So can’t you at least give me a refund…? Here’s my receipt.”

“Doing refunds is pain in the ass, so nope! Leave me the hell alone. I get paid the same wage either way, so why should I bother with any of this crap? What, you think I should slave away for a loser like you? You’re hilarious. Oh, but that’s not a compliment, so wipe that grin off your ugly face. …God, this pisses me off. My rock-paper-scissors luck is so bad I lost during this stupid typhoon of all days and got stuck working the night shift in place of that plain mom.”

The part-timer’s complaints were absurd, but a line was forming behind Tachiuo Mary. Everyone had to be on edge with the typhoon so close to making landfall, but when they began clearing their throats and clicking their tongues, Tachiuo Mary felt like she was the one who had done something wrong.

Then again, maybe the problem was her inability to stand up to the ill-tempered part-timer.

The part-timer decided everyone was on her side, which only encouraged her.

“And what’s this refund nonsense? You want me to open the register and put change in your hand? Bwa ha! What, do you use physical money in this day and age!? It’s not the 20th century anymore, so get with the times. That’s almost as funny as your face! Bwah ha ha!! What, did you just arrive from the 20th century after building a time machine!?”

Now was not the time to let this get her down.

Tachiuo Mary heard a dull thud from behind her. Ainame Caroline had been hanging around the downloadable games section, but she had just thrown a kick directly into the crotch of one of the bastards who had loudly clicked his tongue at the back of the line.

And it didn’t end there.

The 10-year-old girl grinned with the skinny chocolate snack stick wiggling in the corner of her mouth.

“You crack me up☆ It’s so funny I’d love to hear it all again. If you really think that’s appropriate behavior, you won’t have a problem if I stream it for all the world to see, will you? Oh, and can you give me a good, clear shot of your nametag? Let’s see, Harusawa Märchen? Yeah, I’m sure the world won’t see any reason to make fun of a stupid name like that☆ But, hey, at least you can find satisfaction in bringing the entire human race together as they ruthlessly mock you☆ Hwa ha ha. Okay, all you bored people stuck in your room during the typhoon: I’ve found your main character for the day♪”

“Eh? Uh, hey, stop that! You aren’t really streaming this, are you!?”

“Not only that, this would make it out no matter what I do. Ah ha ha☆ See that ATM? I know it’s got the store’s logo printed nice and big on it, but on the inside, it’s a reused Kazusawa Bank model. That means its security camera records sound too. To prevent people from withdrawing money with a scammer on the phone. Hee ha ha. Lame. Did you not know since the audio’s almost never used?”

“Go to hell!!”

“Oh? So being a bad employee wasn’t enough and now you want to create some even more shocking footage of you grabbing a 10-year-old by the collar? Ha ha ha. So an employee’s life is about to ruined by the very security camera the store paid good money for? That’s what I call funny! No, don’t even try rushing to the back to destroy the footage. It’s an online system, so all the data’s being sent to both the security company and the franchise HQ. Oh, shit. I bet this will go crazy viral, so I need to set up a victim support fund with a throwaway account. I’ll get rich off of this☆”

The terrible part-timer froze in place.

By this point, the other customers in line had already snuck out without buying anything. Which couldn’t be fun with the storm raging out there.

“And you kept badmouthing the 20th century, but you wouldn’t have the world you live in now without it, so how about you show some respect? Lame. And boring too. What is it with idiots and drawing arbitrary lines and rejecting everything outside those lines? You’re a waste of breath and possibility, so how about you apologize to the 20th century? Hey, are you even listening? What happened to that attitude of yours, anyway?”

“Ma’am.” A handsome young man emerged from the back of the store with a gleaming smile. “Are you familiar with the concept of customer harassment?”

“Huh?”

“A customer making extreme demands or behaving in an intimidating manner is a recognized form of harassment. I will not let you harm our employee any further.”

The gum-chewing girl looked to the older part-timer like he was her prince charming.

However…

“Hmm. So when does your shift end?”

“Excuse me?”

“No, it won’t even take that long. The typhoon’s about to make landfall, so even this 24-hour convenience store will be closing soon. I’m willing to wait until the HQ sends their notification.”

A silhouette was visible outside the store.

But this was no ghost.

A noticeably unsocial person stood in the pouring rain just 2cm away from the glass. And he wasn’t alone. There were plenty more. The intellectual delinquents covered all the windows on the road-facing side of the store. They were following orders, but their anger was visibly growing by the second while they were forced to wait out in the storm.

The stupidly misguided prince charming began to sweat with his smile frozen on his face.

The gum-chewing girl had already made herself scarce.

They soon heard a shrill scream.

Had that idiot thought there wouldn’t be anyone at the back entrance?

“As you can see, mister, you can run if you want, but it’s game over if you leave the store☆ Hee ha ha. A cool grownup knows how to complete the job he’s given. And phones aren’t allowed on the clock, right? So I’ll be taking that. Oops, how clumsy of me. I dropped it and stomped on it♪”

There had been a correct answer. If he had grabbed and lowered his foolish coworker’s head and apologized along with her, this could have ended peacefully. But who was it that that ultra moron had decided to threaten instead?

“God. It’s the bad examples like you who ruin it for the 99.99% of convenience store workers who actually do their job day in and day out. If only you 0.01% of idiots didn’t think you could half-ass it just because it’s a part-time job and you can quit if anything goes wrong. But in a single bad decision, all the trust built up by the others goes right out the window.”

Left all alone, the worker glanced over at the stationery section. Was he thinking of writing a large SOS on some paper and showing that to the security camera? Or did he think someone would come rescue him if he pressed the alarm button hidden below the register?

Despite what Ainame Caroline had said to tease the awful gum-chewing part-timer, a dark side pro would always neutralize the security system before taking action.

“So what was that about not letting me harm your employee, little boy?”

This true idiot had chosen this path for himself.

Ainame Caorline grinned as she spoke.

“''I’m willing to wait until you’re done working. Then we can talk this out outside, okay?''”



“Ugh, I’m soaked. How did that goddamn typhoon get me so wet when it’s only 10m to the curbside parking?”

Ainame Caroline shut the 4-wheel-drive truck’s door and tossed a towel over her partner’s head before worrying about herself. Then she used her small hands to dry the other girl’s hair. She was only wearing a bikini top and a miniskirt with suspenders. She hadn’t chosen it for that purpose, but it was a convenient outfit for getting wet.

“So Tachiuo-chan.”

“Uhh.”

“That was super boring!! How many times do I have to tell you you’re my greatest success, so you need to hold your head high with pride!!”

“But…I’m not worth all that. I even kind of agreed with what she was saying…”

“What happened to the confidence you show in front of your bath posters?”

“You saw that!? Why would you bring that up here!? Just kill me now!!!”

“Lame. You’re such a pushover I bet someone on the side of the road could trick you into trading everything you own for some supposed magic beans. And it isn’t even a case of you being too trusting. You know it’s wrong, but you still let it happen. When someone makes fun of you, they might as well be making fun of me. And I won’t let that stand. Got that?”

“…Yes.”

That was also why Tachiuo Mary was following Ainame Caroline.

Back in the peaceful world, everyone had looked down on her as the gloomy girl in class.

Her school environment hadn’t been as horrific as the bullying seen in manga or anime, but the most popular people in class still decided for everyone what was cool and what was creepy or childish. It should have been a matter of each person’s personal taste, but if you stepped outside the bounds determined by the most popular, you were branded “weird”. And no one else wanted to meet the same fate, so the rest of the class would start downloading and dumping money into a game they didn’t actually care about. And once the most popular got tired of that game on a whim, all of that effort had to be thrown right out the window. Then the process repeated. It was a modern version of the invisible rails that had existed since the days of black-and-white TV, where, if you wanted something to talk about with your peers, you had to have seen whatever popular show had aired the night before.

Tachiuo Mary hadn’t been able to keep up with it all.

She had fallen off the rails.

She hadn’t been able to ignore how foolish it was to endlessly dump time and money into a character she didn’t even like and how depressing it was to be unable to afford to buy and enjoy the things she really wanted.

And once the slave ceased to till the fields of someone else’s kingdom, she had lost her place in the class. An unsociable Level 0 had no influence on her own. And when that high school girl ''was slowly melting away into nothingness within a peaceful world void of bullets or blades,'' she had been rescued by a 10-year-old researcher who seemed to have stepped straight out of a manga.

Ainame Caroline had said she wouldn’t let anyone make fun of her.

That meant she believed Tachiuo Mary deserved respect. It meant she had the right to build her own kingdom, no matter how small it might be.

And Ainame Caroline had improved Tachiuo Mary’s power.

In Academy City, esper development was everything. After the previously shunned Tachiuo Mary had rapidly grown to Level 4, the most popular person in class could no longer drive her out of the classroom and had been driven into a corner of the classroom herself. Shallow social skills hadn’t been enough at that point. Tachiuo Mary hadn’t seen it herself since she hadn’t been to school lately, but she had heard that girl had been unable to bear her new circumstances and ultimately transferred to another school.

Tachiuo Mary had found a place she wanted to be. Maybe it was a world of villains, but she felt comfortable there.

Ainame Caroline might think everyone on her team was equal, but it wasn’t remotely true. Honey Queen belonged only to her. Tachiuo Mary was satisfied listening admiringly to the stories of the girl’s exploits. She loved hearing about things she couldn’t do herself.

“We are Honey Queen. So if anyone spits on anyone on the team, we will strike back. And we’ll immaturely use every bit of power we have as a dark side group.”

At that point, the pouting 10-year-old brown gyaru lowered her voice.

“Mugino’s Item mocked Minokasago-chan. So this doesn’t end with just stealing the sample we need. We will use everything at our disposal to crush those four.”

Item would probably have no idea who she was talking about.

Minokasago Ryousuke was ''the burglar who had died with his neck caught in their balcony’s metal shutter.

He was on the dark side, but he was also a pacifist who disliked fighting. He had joked that he only wanted out of his dead-end office job, but he had obviously been downsized. They had let him join because they had needed ''an adult guardian'' if they wanted to arrange a bank account, a car, and so on. He had been an excellent cook and had gone out of his way to handle all the housework. He had even washed their underwear without asking, which had resulted in a blushing Tachiuo Mary chasing him around in tears.

Before Honey Queen had taken action, Minokasago Ryousuke had bowed down and asked for just one chance to do things his way. Not for himself, but to preserve the lives of the enemy. He had smiled and insisted they could avoid fighting Item and peaceably achieve their goal if he successfully burgled the sample.

And this was the result.

The team had taken in the abandoned adult to give him another shot at life. And now look at him.

Mugino Shizuri had mocked that timid pacifist and disposed of his body as no more than a nuisance.

She hadn’t left him even an ounce of dignity.

What was wrong with wanting revenge for that?

Level 5s were rare, with only seven in Academy City. They were well-known figures. But that didn’t give them the right to trample on the lives of the unknown.

So Honey Queen’s temper had been pushed beyond the boiling point from the very start.

Mugino hadn’t just unwittingly stepped on someone’s dignity. She had stepped on a landmine loaded with the explosive known as a taboo.

“This is the all-out war you wanted, failure. Don’t even try to complain about it at this point.”

Ainame Caroline sensed a worried aura coming from the gloomy girl.

She was aware she had a habit of obsessing over her own destructive thoughts to push herself toward victory.

Tachiuo Mary was usually so timid, but she always let these worries come to the forefront even if it would make waves. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t live in a peaceful world and truly shined here on the dark side.

Ainame Caroline sighed and consciously switched gears.

“Well, maybe I’m the cute culprit we should blame for this one since we wouldn’t have gone to the convenience store in the first place if I hadn’t thrown a fit because I was so hungry with no restaurant or shop in the love hotel,” cheerfully conceded Ainame Caroline while reaching into the convenience store bag and pulling out a chocolate sandwich and waffle, which she wasn’t quite sure if she should classify as a snack or a meal. She also stuck a straw in a bottle of sweet caramel iced coffee that appeared to be a collab with some kind café or another. “Anyway, we have Mugino Shizuri’s skin tissue. What happened to Minokasago-chan is a shame, but you’re still alive and kicking. Ohh, we’re so close! I can almost taste it!! Once I use Meltdowner’s DNA map to update the flaws in the fragments of research data I managed to steal, I can use the completed data list to perfect your body!!”

“Hee hee. Lady Carol, what will you do once you have perfected me?”

Ainame Caroline briefly fell silent there.

But after a moment, the 10-year-old brown gyaru opened her mouth again.

Her voice sounded somehow dry.

“I had a sister.”

“You did?”

“I don’t think she was very smart. The adults who only know how to judge people based on their test scores tended to look down on her. But I think she knew a lot more ways to live a cool life than I do. She had a lot of friends too.”

Perhaps the 10-year-old had picked up the gyaru fashion by copying her older sister.

Even if Ainame Caroline didn’t feel worthy of it.

“She was the kind of high schooler who wanted to have as much fun as possible, but then she spent so much time in the kitchen making charaben. Did she think I would like them? They were really just triggered an explosion of embarrassment beams the instant you opened the lid. But still, day after day, she would get up early in the morning and make one for me. She spent so much time on it instead of the things she really wanted to do, but she always made sure to smile for my sake. That’s just the kind of person she was. She could look at her younger sister – who was so much smarter than her – and happily smile. Pretty cool, right? It’s easy to say you appreciate the people closest to you, but actually doing it is something not even Edison or Nobunaga could do. And she did it so easily.”

How much had that everyday action saved this little monster? It was no exaggeration to say her sister had given her everything she lacked as a child prodigy.

Ainame Caroline used her empty hand to toy with her smartphone.

The camera app was filled with charaben photos.

She had felt bad destroying them, so she had gotten in the habit of taking a photo before eating them.

She would not let anyone make fun of her teammates.

Ultimately, that was a value she had picked up from seeing her sister protect her so many times because, even if she was a monster, she was still family.

“Your sister sounds very nice.”

“She’s dead, though.”

Ainame Caroline said it so readily – so quickly – that there was no real emotion in the words.

“One day, she went out to the neighborhood supermarket and a wind turbine’s blade flew over and killed her. Like a pixel art shoot ‘em up where an enemy bullet comes in from off screen and kills you without any warning whatsoever. They claimed it was an issue of aging public infrastructure, but I didn’t buy that for a second. I did everything I could to hide the dark side from my sister so I could protect her from it. But not even my Thoughtography predicted that one. There was no avoiding it.”

“…”

Her sister hadn’t done anything wrong.

It hadn’t been a malicious crime, nor had she been a criminal.

But there were still horrific deaths that no one could avoid.

“These were my sister’s.”

She snapped her suspenders.

She was a researcher in Academy City, which worked tirelessly to eliminate the occult, but she still couldn’t throw out that piece of sentiment.

“It does limit what outfits I can wear, though. Ah ha ha☆ But I want to keep her with me a while longer.”

“Lady Carol…”

“I turned 10 this year. You realize that means I was only 5 when I began working on developing Mugino Shizuri’s power, don’t you? And I had of course already graduated college then.”

Ainame Caroline gave a dry smile.

“Hwa ha ha. Obviously, that’s not actually possible. ''So I used advanced technology to cheat my way into my degree''. That 3-or-4-year-old genius girl was blessed with a talent for deceiving everyone around her☆”

It couldn’t have been that easy.

She would have had to perfectly predict what questions would be on the exams, extract the necessary information from the textbooks, either hide the answers in tiny text on her pencil or eraser or print it on her palm with a special ink mixture, and then convert those things into tech capable of fooling Academy City’s high-tech exam supervision security. That would take more than 5 times as much knowledge as passing the exam the ordinary way, so, to be blunt, it would probably have been easier to just study normally.

Nevertheless, Ainame Caroline chose that method and pulled it off flawlessly.

She enjoyed choosing the riskier and less direct option.

She didn’t resort to cheating at the last second because she found she wasn’t smart enough. No, cheating was second nature to her. For her, it was as much a part of the process as needing to go to the testing site to take the exam.

She was a genius through and through, but in a bad way. She didn’t even need to make a conscious decision to fool people.

It made sense that, when she developed her own power based on the data gained from Mugino Shizuri, she ended up with Thoughtography, which manipulated electrons but was effectively an entirely different power. Because that was how her Personal Reality worked. Simply put, ''her power let her use a tool to learn the future and cheat in life.

“Of course, these techniques are considered a good thing when it’s an adult, like a politician giving a soapbox speech or a scientist reinforcing their knowledge. And while I’m the kind of monster who can make these excuses for days, my sister would waste her time studying kids anime and getting up early in the morning to make charaben for me…even though I never asked her to. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Ainame Theresia was a better person than me. If her kindness had been allowed to grow with her to adulthood, I just know she could have changed the world. It’s not fair that she died.”

Ainame Caroline sounded so very lonely, like a child left behind in a strange city.

Perhaps she really was wandering in the darkness after losing her purpose in life.

The researcher, who had conquered the gap between prodigy and dropout through cheating, said more.

As twisted as it was.

She was completely earnest.



“''What is a human life''?”



“''Does heaven really exist''?”



“''That’s what I want to know.''”



She wanted to repay her beloved sister for everything.

That had always been Ainame Caroline’s motivation.

That was why she had gathered her partners and developed Tachiuo Mary.

Mugino Shizuri was too destructive to do the job. Once an esper reached Level 5, it was hard to change the course of their power development. That was why she called Mugino a failure and called her current project a success.

“I have heard a legend of ''a Kihara'' who specializes in researching life, but the stories about them are all so exaggerated it’s hard to sort the fact from the fiction. I didn’t want to waste my time chasing a phony legend, so I decided it would be faster to build what I needed myself.”

Once she had completed Tachiuo Mary, she knew she would have the answer she sought.

She also needed to avenge Minokasago Ryousuke who had gone along with her selfish plan.

“Ha ha ha. We have Mugino Shizuri’s skin tissue. It cracks me up, really. Those cells are all I need to have a complete DNA map. We’re so close, so let’s go find our answers. I can’t bring my sister back from the dead, but I can at least know her soul went to heaven. And I’m not talking about finding some psychological peace of mind in the thought of it – ''I will scientifically prove it to be true.''”

Something was making dull clattering sounds.

The sounds came from the back of the 4-wheel-drive truck. A box of reinforced plastic with an oblong, coffin-like shape lay there and some groaning sounds were coming from it. It was actually a battery-powered wine cooler with the between-bottles cushioning and latches removed. It looked large from the outside, but it was a tight fit ''when two people were crammed inside''. The two lovers in their convenience store uniforms may have been gone past shouting at each other and started physically biting.

“Um, Lady Carol. What are we going to do with them?”

Tachiuo Mary didn’t have time to stop it.

The 10-year-old brown gyaru snatched a .45-caliber handgun from the intellectual delinquent in the driver’s seat, held the grip that was much too large for her small hand, and artlessly fired two shots into the plastic box.

After the two loud bangs, the clattering sounds stopped.

As did the moans.

“It doesn’t matter if those two complete morons knew who we are or not. They chose their fate themselves. Ha ha ha. How boring… On the dark side, you’re allowed to kill someone if they insult you for no reason☆”

Ainame Caroline grinned.

Tachiuo Mary froze in place with a timid look on her face.



That small girl earnestly wanted to know everything she could about the concept of life.

But did that mean she didn’t know anything at all about it at the moment?

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