Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

The girl wore a white apron over a blue dress.

She wore short sleeves even in late December. She wore white tights over her skinny legs and she wore black patent leather shoes even though this was Japan and she was indoors. Her long blonde hair was decorated with a pair of pointy curls that resembled animal ears. The round white fluffball on the back of her apron may have been meant as a rabbit tail.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What I’m getting from this is it’s time for some Toumacide.”

“Index-san, you already chomped me on the back of the head a few times, so could you not invent an ugly new word right now?”

Kamijou Touma was so far past his limit he only smiled gently while making his suggestion.

“This is yummy!!”

The Western girl understood Japanese yet refused to remove her shoes no matter how many times she was asked. Presently, she was kicking her little feet below the glass table. She was already in a good mood and she smiled innocently when her eyes met Kamijou’s. She looked like a perfect little doll, but when she spoke, she demonstrated a warmth that swept aside that cold image.

Index glared over at her.

“How did this small child get in our room?”

“Pff. Says a girl who looks like she would land on the balcony after collapsing from hunger.”

“Shut up!! L-l-l-l-like I would ever do that!!”

“Now, now. You both seem about the same to me,” said Kamijou, hoping to mediate the situation. He ended up rolling on the floor from an Index bite.

The mug the blonde girl held in her little hands contained the Kamijou Touma Special Blend – a dark sludge brewed from black tea leaves reused well past their limit with a drop of caramel and the little bit of potato starch leftover at the bottom of the bag. If classy Misaka Mikoto had seen this, she might just have fainted (both from the horrific contents and the fact that he just dumped the tea in a mug), but this was a trick he had learned during his New Year’s Tokyo survival life. From a cabbage core to a fish head, even the toughest and bitterest ingredient could be made edible if you softened it up in a pressure cooker and added something sweet or spicy! Humanity, now is the time to praise honey-flavored ultra-sweet syrup (flavored with god knows what) and discount curry powder (containing a mystery blend of spices)!! Kamijou Touma would be dead right now if not for them!!!!!

It was eight in the morning.

He would need to leave soon for Komoe-sensei’s rundown apartment for a winter break supplementary lesson. But he needed to deal with this girl first. After all, this was a matter of life or death for him.

In fact, he was a little afraid to make a hasty decision here.

''Eh? Where did this girl even come from?

''And wait. Does this mean we have to look after her now?'' He was starting to act so unusual that Anti-Skill would have taken him in for questioning if he were outside. See, it was December 29 and he only had 1580 yen left. That was all he had to keep himself, Index, Othinus, and the cat alive until the ATMs started back up on January 4, so why did he have to have a mystery guest now!? Wasn’t this as much of a threat as looking down and finding a colorful snake sinking its fangs into his foot!?

“So who even is this extreme lost girl?”

“The girl’s name is Alice.”

“Index, explain.”

“With only that to go on? That’s probably the 1st or 2nd most popular girl’s name in the UK. I think it’s even used as a sample name on government forms.”

So it was like Tarou or Hanako. Which meant it wasn’t much of a hint.

Alice referred to herself as “the girl”.

Almost like she was talking about someone else. She had an otherworldly quality to her and she showed no caution around strangers like Kamijou and Index. It was like she alone was weirdly detached from reality. Yes, she felt like Snow White, Red Riding Hood, or another character from a fairy tale where no real danger existed.

Kamijou Touma held a hand to his chin and groaned with a serious look on his face.

“None of this makes sense. This is Academy City in Japan. My room smells like soy sauce. Why would I wake up and randomly find a British girl here?”

“Touma, I’m feeling kind of attacked over here.”

Come to think of it, he had no actual proof that Alice was British. Kamijou Touma, you gave her that sorry excuse for black tea yourself, so don’t let it influence your impression of her.

(What do I even do? We don’t have a gentle and beautiful dorm manger here, so should I call Anti-Skill? But I want to avoid trouble if I can. Oh, but if they take me in for questioning, they might serve me katsudon?)

Whatever he was going to do, he had a supplementary lesson to get to.

But before that, he had to prepare some breakfast or Index would starve while he was out.

“I don’t have much of a choice. I’ll figure out what to do with Alice later, so for now I’ll break out the bread I was keeping in reserve. So the time has come to open our final loaf. These six slices are the last real food we have left. Our path forward gets a lot worse at lunch today, so prepare yourself, Inde-”

He trailed off.

It was gone.

The bag had been right there next to the rice cooker that was dead weight now that they were out of rice. Well, the plastic bag was technically still there. The problem was how it was balled up and shoved into a small gap with the crucial six slices of bread nowhere to be found!

When he turned to look at Index, she refused to look him in the eye.

Come to think of it, Index had spent the night tending to an empty stomach just like he had, so where had she found the excess energy for all that anger?

15cm Othinus was lying face down on a shelf nearby and she used the strawberry jam on her index finger to write out a message on the shelf: '''Index.

“H-how…how could you do this? You got up in the middle of the night and ate all six slices of bread while I was in the bathroom and wouldn’t notiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!???”

“There are no rules in the life-or-death struggle of our New Year’s Tokyo survival life, Touma. And if you’re that keen on being honorable, then what ever happened to lady’s first?”