Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

The girl looked to be around ten.

It could be hard to tell thanks to the shopping district’s arcade roof, but it was snowing outside. However, being outside in the middle of winter was not enough to stop her from working at the two scoops of ice cream sitting atop the cone she held.

“Munch, munch.”

“Why do I always end up taking in kids like this?”

The delinquent boy named Hamazura Shiage had a distant look in his eyes even though he only had himself to blame. This naked little girl had only a red cloth gathered around her flat chest to protect herself, so she was almost guaranteed to bring trouble.

This was all happening in District 13, where Academy City’s elementary schools were gathered. This was the shopping district that had always(?) existed on the far eastern end of the district. A lot of children would gather there even though it was not on the way home for most of them, so it had become known as Afterschool Snack Road. If it were not winter break, gym teachers filled with a sense of duty would be patrolling the area.

(It doesn’t look like there’s any immediate trouble. Honestly, maybe it’s a testament to how peaceful this place is that a naked girl in only a thin cloth can walk around without anything happening.)

He did not want to even entertain the thought that this was the latest fashion. At least he didn’t see anyone else dressed like this among the local kids troubling the miniskirt Santas in front of the bakeries by peppering them with questions, hoping to learn the secrets of the flying sleigh that could slip past the military radars of advanced nations.

He looked up into the sky and saw a food delivery drone carrying a box using the claws attached to its crab-like legs. He briefly wondered if it was carrying a cake or a turkey before returning to the real topic at hand.

“I guess I can ask Fremea later on. Speaking of which, what’s taking her?”

That delinquent was the type to take in a kitten on a rainy day, so he had a small friend in this district. In fact, the entire reason he was here was to bring Fremea Seivelun a bottle of a bubbly golden drink that had “nonalcoholic” plainly written on the label (and was more pricey than nonalcoholic beer) yet the clerk had still refused to sell to an elementary schooler like her. He wanted to get that party item to the sulky girl so he could be freed of the errand. But not because he was interested in the Christmas spirit. No, he just wanted to go after his girlfriend from a variety of angles while she sat motionless in the kotatsu. There was always the standard of embracing her from behind, but he could also go with submarine mode by sticking his head underneath the opposite side of the kotatsu!!

The girl in a white knit dress standing next to Hamazura sighed while looking even more exasperated than him. He was not clever enough to figure out what a girl was thinking just from the look on her face, but he could guess she had found her super-sweet donut (that was fully customized for District 13’s many elementary school students) too much to handle.

Her name was Kinuhata Saiai.

She was a Level 4 who had been even more involved in Academy City’s darkness than him.

He glanced down at the bare legs sticking out from the bottom of her short dress.

“Is there some bare-skin health craze I wasn’t aware of?”

“What exactly are you looking at while coming up with these super fantasies? Look any longer and you’ll have to pay me. And before you start asking about some ridiculous idea like nude sunbathing in the frigid December air, why don’t you give some super thought to how these questions will influence your life, Hamazura? As much as she says she doesn’t mind, I have a feeling that expressionless track suit girl would be super jealous, but what do you think?”

“Yikes.”

“If that’s all you can say, then you have some super sense left. If these lover’s spats are how you want to enjoy this couple’s holiday, be my guest, but don’t drag me into it. This isn’t about Levels—Takitsubo-san is simply impossible to predict when she’s mad.”

Kinuhata sounded casual enough, but she was actually keeping her eyes on the windows and stainless-steel pillars around them. But not because she was worried about her hair or clothing. That was a professional’s way of monitoring her blind spots without having to turn her head or move her eyes too much.

It was worth being cautious at the moment.

''Because the entire dark side had apparently been shaken to its core.

(Now, will that year-end cleaning actually work? As long as there’s an illegitimate way to get ahead, the darkness will always crop up again. People love attaching price tags to everything and the negative cycle will begin anew when people need escape funding and hideouts to super shelter them during the chaotic aftermath. The rich can shout about justice through a loudspeaker all they want, but the black market won’t go away as long as people need it to survive.)

“Mm.”

The little girl used her small tongue to lick up the milk that had dripped onto the thumb holding the chocolate chip cookie cone. Some kind of AR walking game must have been having a Christmas event because the other children were gathered around seemingly empty areas with their phones at the ready, making it look like some kind of weird ritual. But this little girl must have had no interest in joining those children (and a few childish college students who were doing it too) because she stared at them with emotionless eyes.

“This really is a nice city,” she said from a short distance away. “Everyone has food to eat and a warm room to go home to, so they can all enjoy the holy night as no more than pretty scenery. Everyone has a livable environment here. Even though the winter city used to be a symbol of fear more sinister than a corpse, where the painful and ruthless chill would creep in through the snow to reach every nook and cranny both indoors and out. Just look at the hunger in St. Nicholas’s story or the icy cold in the Little Match Girl.”

“If you say so.”

A lot of kids that age liked to talk. Had she recently read a collection of harsh fairy tales or a book on how to make money by destroying people’s dreams?

She continued without worrying about the eyes on her.

“So I am sorry to say this city will soon return to having a true deadly winter. When a terrible day comes to an end, you might want to go to sleep with hope for tomorrow in your heart, but there was a time when you might not have woken up the following morning. People die so easily. But that is how humans are made, so it’s not your fault.”

“…?”

Something seemed off.

The little girl began muttering to herself while operating her phone.

“Hm, hm, hm hm. Good, good. It looks like all the people around the world I had rewrite the paperwork to keep scrutiny off my paper company are dead now.”

It was like leaning in to get a sniff of a beautiful flower only to discover a strange new kind of mantis in your face.

He could not read the emotion in the little girl’s eyes.

Something thick was lurking below the depths there.

A crescent moon smile split across her face as she looked up from the screen.

“''Is Takitsubo Rikou doing well?''”

“W-wait. What are you talking about?”

“''I do apologize for that. That was entirely my fault. Not that I expect you to understand even if I pulled out the name of that con artist Madame Horos. Since I have no way of objectively proving what happened, it is my duty to accept your anger and hatred.''”

A name burst into Hamazura Shiage’s mind.

Yes, he had ''only'' known her name.

That person had lured his girlfriend in with sweet words, taken control of her body, and used her as a disposable tool. He had known far too little about that hated enemy.

“Anna…”

And now the ordinary delinquent boy had found his enemy.

He had found that mysterious figure who lurked in the deepest depths of the magic side and may have been even more hidden than the Magic Gods.

Could this really be her?

“Anna Sprengel!!!???”

The bizarre figure who had taken the form of a little girl was no longer even looking his way.

She held the thin cloth in one hand and the ice cream cone in the other.

With her hands full, she turned around to look in a completely different direction.

“And I must apologize again. If I’m going to have some fun, they take priority.”

A heavy metal clanking sounded as two girls landed on the snow-covered arcade roof nearby.

The Ace and Queen of Tokiwadai had descended from the sky.