Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

Kamijou Touma found himself lying in a bed.

It was already morning.

He also detected a strong disinfectant smell. Sadly, he found the scent very familiar. He was used to this sort of awakening.

He was in the hospital.

In fact, he was in the ''usual'' hospital where that frog-faced doctor worked.

He had checked his phone countless times, but the clock never turned back for him.

Which meant…

“December…25. I’m in the hospital on Christmas of all days.”

Complaining was not going to change that.

Dawn had arrived ''and his presence in the hospital meant he had survived.

This location carried that unbreakable guarantee of safety.

He understood that more than just intellectually – he knew it from experience.

And thinking back, his Christmas Eve had been pretty awful. His body below the covers was so wrapped in bandages that his movements were as stiff and awkward as an ancient civilization’s clay robot. He did not want to know how many injuries he had in all and he definitely did not want to see them. Counting just the ones he was aware of, he had been stabbed in the side with a knife, lacerated by metal and glass shards, blown away by a few blasts of next-generation magic, and punched square in the cheek by a rich, sexy, macho former rescue squad member.

And to top it all off…

…

He silently brought his fingers to his lips. The sensation still lingered there, so that must not have been a hallucination caused by the lightheadedness brought on by blood loss. He still was unsure what to think about it, though. He had a feeling he would get beaten up by Index, Orsola, and some others if he chalked it up to the outdated stereotype of Westerners being more open about kissing.

(St. Germain.)

He had no idea what any of it had been about, but he did remember that name.

It had looked like a black pill now, but that would have originally been a magician.

(Then my first kiss tasted like St. Germain? Wait, what does that mean? That it tasted like some gross old man from the past? Oh, god why!? How am I even supposed to categorize this? Happy? Depressing? I can’t figure this one out!!)

Q. A mysterious and breathtakingly beautiful woman asks you to kiss her while she has some strange old man’s used sock rolled up and stuffed in her mouth. What do you do? Also, this is your very first kiss, so no matter the circumstances, the memory will stick with you for the rest of your life☆

Kamijou Touma found himself covered in an unpleasant sweat.

“Oh, no. I don’t think I can get the taste of my mouth!! No, why is the old man sock so powerful!?”
Anyway.

He felt like bloody tears were about to flow from his eyes and his memories of those final moments were still unclear, but he did know he had vomited up a lot of blood. He was amazed he had not died of blood loss and it made him wonder just how many liters of blood he had flowing through his veins.

But he was fine. He had to be. His spirit was as strong as ever. He had not heard back about any tests run in the hospital, but he did not hurt anywhere and he could move everything just fine. Plus, he had not coughed up any more blood. The crisis was over. He could even poke at his abs without any pain whatsoever!!

But deficiencies hit you without mercy the instant you became aware of them.

He started feeling faint while still lying down in bed.

(Ah, ahhh…I-I need iron. I could devour some liver and spinach right now.)

That was not the request a teenage boy’s appetite would normally make on Christmas, but he knew his odds of getting it were low. After all, this was a hospital and they might not let him choose his food based on the severity of his injuries. Which day of the week was it? Once he recalled the answer, he realized he would be served a saltless rice porridge that felt tasted like microwaved glue and a disappointingly thin piece of grilled salmon that felt like it was made from plastic.

“Man, if only I’d been hospitalized on a Friday. Then I’d have gotten seafood curry.”

It saddened him to realize he had been in this hospital enough to know what food they served on what days.

And then…

“Heh heh heh. I appreciate the monologue, Kami-yan. Now I know exactly what you’re doing here.”

“Wait? Th-that voice!”

It came from beyond the curtain. This time, he was apparently in a large room containing multiple people divided by curtains instead of a private room.

And the curtain next to him was flung open from the other side.

“Mwa ha ha ha!! Join me in the depressing hospital Christmas life, my unpopular brother!!”

“I’m stuck being hospital pals with you!? How badly did you burn yourself with that microwaved boobs mousepad!?”

It was his classmate Aogami Pierce.

He had heard the boy had burned his hands after ignoring all of the usage warnings and throwing his boobs mousepad in the microwave on the 24th, but he had not expected to find him with bandages or casts covering his arms. Everything past his elbows looked like it could blast off like a rocket.

Also, snow was still falling outside.

It was indeed a white Christmas. But for these two boys, that only meant it was a little chillier by the window.

Robot Kamijou gave Rocket Aogami a look of pity.

“That looks pretty awful. I mean, you can’t do much of anything without using your fingers. What do you do about food?”

“Not to worry. There’s this old trick called floor humping. You lay down on your stomach like this and then rub your thing between your body and the floor like this.”

“Shut up! No! I was not asking about that!!”

“There are rumors saying getting used to this modifies your body to the point you can’t enjoy the real thing, but that’s just a superstition, so don’t worry about it.”

“Enough with the demonstration! The only thing I’m worried about right now is your sanity, inchworm boy!! It’s 7 in the morning and your bed is by the window! People outside can see you!!”

“Don’t you dare take this so lightly, Kami-yan!! Deprive a nerd of this high-level one-man mental activity, and what do they have left!!!???”

“This is not a topic that warrants manly shouting! I won’t ask you to stop being a nerd, but can’t you please be the kind of nerd who creates an innovative new type of OS or something!?”

“Tch. I’ve never been a fan of American-style moe, you know? Be honest, what do you think about how they keep turning American comic superheroes into girls? It’s official and not just fan stuff, so I’m really not sure what to think about it.”

“I’m the kind of nerd who never laughs at people’s efforts to create something new.”

“Don’t hide behind that idealistic hogwash. Oh, I get it. You’re scared, aren’t you!? I loathe all of you self-styled ‘influencers’ who use clickbaity headlines to gather enough attention to earn ad revenue off their half-assed weaksauce criticism! Ban them, ban them, ban every last one of them!!”

“Just so you know, your life is as good as over once even us nerdy outcasts find you unbearable to be around.”

“I’ll kill you!!”

“You’re on. It’s time you left this world, you freak!!”

Different sorts of nerds could never see eye to eye. That sad history of conflict played out again here as the world’s most meaningless battle began. Those two pill bugs simply could not remain rolled up below the same stone together in peace. However, one of them was a rocket boy with his hands covered up and the other was a clay robot with bandages around his entire body. Neither one could bend their joints very much, so despite announcing their intent to kill, their scuffle ended up more like a fight between old-fashioned tokusatsu kaiju. None of it looked very impressive.

In the mayhem, something slipped from Aogami Pierce’s pocket: a notebook-sized tablet.

“Time out, time out!! Wait, Kami-yan! That internet device is my one remaining lifeline!”

“Hey, Seri!! Gather up all the browser history, bookmarks, and videos saved to the device and the cloud and then post them all online!!”

“Stop!! Don’t give her that kind of crazily unspecific command!!!”

For better or for worse, modern voice commands checked for the user’s voiceprint, so Aogami Pierce escaped that one alive.

That awful friend got down on the floor and protectively held the device close like a child protecting a puppy from parents who refused to let him have a pet.

“Do you know how much effort I put into finding a wholly prepaid device? There’s no personal information on the device itself, so as long as I don’t use my own wireless LAN, no can ever link the things I search back to me!! Do you get it now, Kami-yan? What would you type into the search bar on a device like this!!!???”

“I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is a mirror of your own heart.”

“Female doctors? No. Nurses? No, that’s not quite what I want either. …Gasp!? That’s it! A dental hygienist!!”

Aogami Pierce forcibly pulled the curtain closed again.

Kamijou was left all alone on the other side, but then he realized the other boy was lying in his bed operating the device. Operating it via voice.

“Hey, Seri. Take me on a journey of freedom. Yes, yes, I accept, I accept!! Is there anything like this on the top video’s page?”

“Hey, wait! Please wait!! You aren’t actually trying it here, are you? Yeah, there’s a curtain between us, but we’re still in the same room. Please don’t make me spend my Christmas like this!”

Aogami Pierce was not listening.

Kamijou’s voice did not reach him. That bastard was probably wearing wireless headphones or something.

Just then, Kamijou heard solid footsteps from the hallway. They sounded like someone wearing heels. It was still early in the morning, so he doubted visiting hours had started yet. That meant this was probably a nurse going around to the hospital rooms to take temperatures and serve breakfast.

Which meant they would be coming here.

And if he could hear their footsteps, they had to be extremely close.

“Aogami! Aogami!!”

“No, not like that. I don’t want anything dark, so no tearful faces please. I want the kind of young woman who will take good care of you, but not where you’re just a complete horndog only interested in your own pleasure. I want something more heartwarming, if you don’t mind.”

“Seri won’t know what to make of such a long command!! And why are you more polite with Seri than with me? But that aside, you’re in serious trouble here, Aogami Pierce!!”

It was too late.

The footsteps had arrived in front of their room. Their step was light enough that Kamijou assumed it was a woman.

''Farewell, my friend. May you rest in peace!!'' prayed Kamijou Touma while squeezing his eyes shut.

“Good morning, Kamijou-san. No trouble ability with your condition, I hope? It’s time for breakfast☆”

This was odd.

She was dressed up like the nurses of this hospital.

But.

As nice as her figure was, she was very clearly ''a middle school girl'', so the outfit just looked wrong on her. And in a medical facility where cleanliness was king, it was odd for her ''long, honey-blonde hair'' to be left falling down her back like that.

And Kamijou was immediately disturbed by his analysis here.

Since when was he so perceptive?

(H-have I been in the hospital so much I’ve become an expert on nurses? I hadn’t noticed it before, but maybe I’m past the point of no return here.)

So who was this girl?

She spoke like they were friends, but he could not seem to remember her.

Yet he did not see how he could ever forget someone who looked like that.

The honey-blonde nurse(?) laughed.

“Yes, I know you don’t know who I am. My name is Shokuhou Misaki. Not that you’ll remember I told you that.”

“Shokuhou?”

What a strange name.

He felt like he would never forget a name like that once he heard it.

“See?” said the blonde girl while pointing at her large chest. A nameplate smaller than a stick of gum was clipped there, but the meaning of the characters written there seemed oddly reluctant to enter his brain. It was like how you could not make out any one face in particular when staring blankly at the audience in a packed stadium.

“So text doesn’t work either, does it?”

The honey-blonde girl let out a sigh.

She had the look of someone who had avoided getting her hopes up but still found the expected result painful.

“Well, the problem is in your brain, so I guess that makes sense. It would only be more confusing if there was some weird loophole like videos worked while photos didn’t.”

“I’m not sure what this is about, but sorry.”

“Your apologies hurt most of all,” she said rapidly under her breath.

She was still smiling, but she had apparently needed to let that comment out.

Kamijou only felt confused.

“So what brings you here, Miss Whoever?”

“I was thinking I would remove those bandages. You’re fed up with them already, aren’t you?”

“Eh, wait! I don’t want any treatment from a fake nurse!!”

“I checked inside a few people’s minds and it turns out they intentionally gave you an excessive amount of bandages to scare you. Because otherwise you’d run off and tear your half-healed wounds back open. Your injuries aren’t actually all that bad.”

So were these like the plastic trumpet thing placed around a cat or dog’s head to keep them from scratching at their ear? Kamijou could not believe it, but the honey-blonde girl removed his giant cocoon of bandages with surprising skill.

Once the seal had been removed, his body began to tremble.

“I-I can move. My clay robot limbs can move so smoothly!!”

“Your resilience is a constant reminder that the human body is a mysterious thing.” She sat her shapely butt down on the bed next to him. “I went to the trouble of using Mental Out, the strongest psychological power, to sneak into the hospital, so I wish you would show the appropriate appreciation ability. Also, I came here for revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“No need to get scared. It isn’t against you.”

She silently puffed out her cheeks from within. She looked like a sexy queen, but she was surprisingly childish deep down.

“(I can’t believe Misaka-san went as far as abandoning me and then forced him to have such a gloomy Christmas Eve. What was she thinking? And then she shows such a lapse of defensive ability she lets some mystery woman come along and steal his lips!? If you didn’t leave yourself so wide open, that kind of lazy long pass could never fly right past you like that!)”

“E-excuse me, but what exactly do you mean by revenge? If I’m being honest, it terrifies me to have someone mention revenge and immediately start muttering to herself with a shadow over her face. Wait, said you were some kind of powerful esper, didn’t you? You aren’t working for Neoka, are you!?”

“Oh, shut up!! Okay, I’ve had enough. That woman may have stolen your first kiss, but that just means I have to take all of your other ‘firsts’ myself!!!!!!”

“What kind of desperate move is that!? And does the entire world know what happened to me now!?”

“I reluctantly let Misaka-san have the 24th, but that means the 25th belongs to me!!”

Just then, the person hidden behind the curtain began to speak.

“Dammit, I can’t find a single dental hygienist video. God must be telling me now is not the time to remove my pants. The genre must be too niche at present, so I have no choice but to wait for it to flourish in the future.”

“?”

“Oh, no,” said Kamijou. “I don’t know where this is going, but you need to hide!!”

The girl let out a quiet shriek one second before the curtain was mercilessly thrown open.

“Huh? I could have sworn I heard a nurse in here, Kami-yan. When’s breakfast???”

“I sincerely hope you did stop before doing the deed, but I’m still not touching you until you’ve been sterilized with the hospital’s most harsh disinfectant spray.”

Kamijou Touma sounded casual, but he was keeping a secret from his friend.

He knew that fake nurse could not let anyone discover her here, so he had pulled her into the bed and hidden her below the covers.

“(Mgh, gh, um, excuse me, but what is happening here!?)”

“(Shut up. Do you ''want'' this to blow up into a huge deal!?)”

“(Well, um, none of that is actually a problem since I can use Mental Out to- ahhh!! Th-this is – oh, wow – a boy’s chest!? Ahh. Never mind, I don’t care anymore. I’ll just let this happen.)”

She was hard to make out, but the mystery nurse began muttering to herself and then stopped struggling like her battery had died. Much like someone who had succumbed to the temptation of a kotatsu.

Aogami Pierce tilted his head curiously.

“What are you doing, Kami-yan? And should you remove your bandages like that?”

“I-I’m playing a life simulation game. I just caught this cute thing, but she’s a little feisty and won’t obey my commands. It makes her hard to take care of.”

“Oh, so you’ve got a gadget too, huh? But it’s not light’s out anymore, so you don’t have to play it under the covers like that.”

“(Well excuse me for being feisty.)”

“(Ow, don’t pinch me there!)”

“(I won’t obey your commands, remember?)”

Kamijou was moving both his hands around below the covers quite a bit, but Aogami Pierce did not question it.

“Come to think of it, since you don’t have to register a phone number with those handheld game systems, I’ve heard you can modify them to make truly private searches just like a prepaid phone. But you can only use wireless LANs, not whatever-G.”

“Why bother telling me that?”

Kamijou also doubted that would work so well.

If everyone knew about a loophole, it was bound to be secretly filled in. Plus, Academy City was chock full of strange technology and espers. The defenders could use every trick in the book as well. He doubted a Level 0 could emerge victorious in that world.

But the oblivious boy sounded very proud of himself.

“Heh heh heh. I’ll teach you how to do it later on. It’s time you entered the adult world, Kami-yan. We’re not in our dorms, so we don’t need to follow the dorm rules. We might be trapped in this room, but the world is at our fingertips!!”

“(Hm? What is he talking about???)”

“(You’re better off not knowing. And I’m relieved to find this mysterious blonde gyaru is surprisingly pure.)”

“(Surprisingly?)”

“(Ow!? What is this strange new feeling!? Did you…bite my chest!?)”

“(Goo goo ga ga☆)”

He had gone to the trouble of sheltering the honey-blonde girl, but now she was getting out of hand. At this rate, he was afraid she would rapidly evolve into a little tyrant. He just had to hope this was not a case where the evolved form was much more brutal.

“What’s the matter, Kami-yan? You have the look of a man awakening to a new fetish.”

“Ih's nuffing.”