Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 1===

“…ey, you. Hey. You should probably wake up, boy!”

Kamijou Touma’s mind was shaken awake by the voice shouting into his ear. Only after realizing he didn’t know who the voice belonged to did he realize his eyes were shut.

He had to pour all his might into forcing his eyelids open.

“What is going- eh? Kumokawa-senpai?”

“I’ll admit some things came up and I arrived late, but were you really so bored you ended up napping on the sidewalk people probably walk their dogs on?”

Kumokawa Seria, his busty upperclassman with her glossy black hair held back by a hairband, gave him an exasperated look while crouching down and poking him on the forehead. The mature upperclassman’s casual clothing was a thick coat and the kind of tight skirt suit a capable schoolteacher might wear, so it was worrying in a number of ways when she crouched in front of him like that. (And wasn’t she cold wearing such a skintight blouse for a top?)

But the pointy-haired boy was too confused to focus on any of that.

Realization slowly sank in, but once it dawned on him that he had been stabbed in the back, it avalanched into his mind like panic setting in.

He sprang to a sitting position.

“Eh? Huh!?”

“Hyah?”

Kumokawa jumped and shrank down in an unexpectedly cute way, but he didn’t even notice.

Was he still in District 11? At the east gate? What had happened after that?

“Wait, wait, wait. What’s going on here? Someone spoke to me from behind and I didn’t even have time to turn around. I heard some weird and disconcerting sounds from my body and then my spine – yeah, that’s right! It pierced right through my back! So what happened to me!?”

He ran his hands along his chest and stomach.

“Huh? There’s nothing wrong with me?”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

The way her exasperation was gradually shifting to suspicion was adorable.

He wasn’t injured. His spine hadn’t been shattered, his flesh hadn’t been torn away, his clothes weren’t ripped, and there wasn’t a drop of blood on him.

The digital clock on a building wall said it was 9:15 AM.

What had he been doing for the past 15 minutes?

“You’re getting really worked up over nothing. Were you that afraid of heading out of the city to visit Shibuya? Look, your coat still has the price tag attached.”

“Eh? Huh?”

“Stay still. I’ll cut it off for you.”

Kumokawa Seria pulled a small pair of scissors from a portable sewing kit and cut the plastic thread. That upperclassman was so perfect she even showed off homemaking skills that felt incongruous with her sexy looks.

“Touma. Huff, puff.”

Then he heard Index’s voice. She had the cat on her head and Othinus on her shoulder, the latter trembling in fear while just barely out of range of the former’s front paws. The way that arrogant god was clinging to the white hood of the nun’s habit was just like a terrified girl in a haunted house.

“Huff, puff. W-we finally caught up, so let’s go get something to eat. Ugh, I can’t go on eating the mystery veggies I grew by sprinkling watered-down ketchup in a corner of the balcony.”

“Heh heh. Don’t worry, Index. Cotton candy can fill your stomach with its great size, but it started out as nothing more than grains of sugar. Humans can eat the mist or the air if they’re clever enough.”

“It isn’t fair that Sphinx has cat food ''and'' catches mice to eat.”

“And he’s trying to eat me as we speak. The animal lovers in this country get mad at you if you catch a pigeon and eat it, don’t they? I might try raising mice if they really did multiply as fast as people say, but apparently it isn’t true. Yikes, he’s trying it again! Human, bring me a book of your country’s laws! I need to find a legal way for me to eat this cat!!”

Technically, they were leaving the city to earn the money needed to buy food, not to directly get something to eat, but Index was skipping that first step in her head. Their New Year’s Tokyo survival life wasn’t over yet. And while they played that game, the god of poverty had grown to a hellish size.

Kumokawa placed a hand on her chin after listening to the poor student, the mysterious nun, the cat, and the god.

“Your idea of survival has a very urban slant to it and it’s based on Academy City standards. This is technically Japan’s capital, you know? And I thought you lived in the dorms where the adults are supposed to be taking care of you.”

Kamijou started to think he might have simply collapsed from hunger. People’s memories were malleable, so his mind might have invented a reason for passing out after the fact.

(Yeah, that sounds more likely. I mean, I already have amnesia.)

Now they all had to leave the city together.

They showed their departure permits at the east gate, which had a very open feel to it. It looked like no more than a small guard booth with a flimsy barrier like at a railroad crossing, but it actually had a thick shutter that would drop down like a guillotine and was guarded by dangerous firearms and unmanned weapons. Tracking nanodevices were injected into their arms with a ''pshh'' of air. The cat and god were exempt from that process, earning them an envious look from Index who hated injections (even when they didn’t involve a needle).

Kamijou looked back the way he had come while he stepped out past the thick wall.

“There’s usually a lot more Anti-Skill here. Are they all on winter break?”

“(Knowing the new Board Chairman, he might start using those mass-produced military clones to fill out the ranks of the city’s law enforcement. Someone has to replace everyone who was lost and, if he wants the people to support protecting them, it can’t hurt to give them an official position that lets them prove their worth to society.)”

“?”

The mysterious upperclassman was so perfect she always seemed to be a million steps ahead, but that led to one of her few flaws: she sometimes said things that were so far above his head he failed to understand what she was even talking about.

Leaving through the east gate placed them in the vicinity of Shinjuku, but since Kamijou’s gang was so devastatingly poor, they were forced to walk the rest of the way. He was so thankful for free apps at times like this. He checked his old folks smartphone and it told him they only needed to travel a few kilometers south.

“The phone bill is due at the end of the month, right? Human, that means the 31st, so if you don’t get any money today, they’ll shut off your service.”

“…”

“Also, boy. If you thoughtlessly fail to pay your phone bill enough times, it will affect your credit rating. I believe there’s even an urban legend saying two or three late payments is enough to cut you off from getting a credit card. If you don’t want to be digging yourself out of this hole for the next decade or longer, you’re going to have to work your ass off today.”

The boy too poor to ride the train was persistently marching onward with his own two legs, but nothing anyone had to say to him was making him feel any better.

He passed by a man who seemed to be out on a pleasant morning jog. Kamijou’s gang could only be described as “trudging along”, but the distances involved were more the “casual exercise” variety.

Kumokawa toyed with the hair draped over her shoulder while walking alongside him.

“Here, I’ll hail a taxi for you. All it takes is a quick wave of my phone.”

“Stop it, you bourgeois. I’m here to make money, not spend it.”

“Did you forget to do the math? The taxi fare is the same no matter how many people you have riding with you.”

He had bigger concerns right now.

He took the fateful step.

“Ugh.”

Halfway down a seemingly ordinary road, he felt something crawling up him from his feet. He had stepped on something here. It was like he had crossed an invisible barrier. He wasn’t taking a train, so there was no obvious sign or set backdrop telling him he had arrived in Shibuya. He knew that, but still.

“I think we’re about at Shibuya now,” bluntly stated Kumokawa Seria.

“Eeek!!”

“I said ‘about’. We’re still in Harajuku. Hee hee.”

“…”

“Ow! Hey, cut it out! Don’t use your fist against a girl! Stop silently giving me a noogie!”

Thanks to that, Kamijou Touma was forced to scream again once they actually left Harajuku.

“Abwahhh!!!!”

“What’s wrong, Touma? Why are you trembling and sticking your head between my back and my hood?”

Index’s voice sounded so distant.

And he lost sight of where he even was.

There was so much color. Too much. There were clothing stores, record stores, and was that a store just for sneakers? Land here was so expensive that all the stores were tiny and seemed crammed together, but they all tried to stand out by using lots of primary colors and it made his eyes hurt. It reminded him of children’s building blocks or a notebook covered in thick lines from different colors of highlighter. He ended up recalling the trivia he had learned about a certain country developing an incapacitating weapon where they launched a grenade full of LSD into enemy territory.

“Why are they like this?” He spoke in a vanishingly quiet voice while trembling behind a girl a head shorter than he was. “Why are they all so supremely confident in their extreme taste in colors!?”

“Hm, are they though? Most people say Shibuya has gotten a lot chicer lately.”

Apparently it didn’t bother some people as much.

This did a lot more damage to Kamijou since he had drawn a line between the people who could survive here and those who couldn’t. He wanted to find some way of dragging this busty upperclassman onto his side of the divide.

“Do the people here hate how their surroundings look so much they feel the need to fill everything with their own colors!? That manga artist known worldwide for his sharp aesthetic sense caused so much controversy with his striped house, but the people of Shibuya don’t seem to care at all! It’s terrifying. If the people here can feel remotely relaxed looking at this colorful assault on the senses, then what color do they see when they look at a strawberry shortcake!?”

“I will admit things are wilder here than near the train station, but this is far from the worst area. I mean, all we’ve done is walk a bit south past that big shrine in Harajuku.”

“Hold on, Senpai. Why are you still dressed so lewdly when we’re in Shibuya? You’re dressed like a schoolteacher and also showing off your midriff. Won’t a group of hip hop guys in giant T-shirts surround you and harass you?”

“First of all, there aren’t groups carrying giant boomboxes around Shibuya. Second of all, not everyone here hates teachers. And third of all, ‘hip hop guys’ aren’t bad people.”

“And then I’ll be forced to intervene to help you. That sounds like misfortune to me, so I just know it’s going to happen!!”

“Hm. I like the sound of that, so maybe I should undo another button.”

He had to restrain the beautiful girl before she could invite in disaster.

At any rate, this was apparently not the center of Shibuya that Japan liked to show off to the world, but he was already feeling his HP dropping with each step he took. Demon Castle Shibuya was a fearsome place indeed.

“What is your deal with Shibuya, human?” Othinus sounded thoroughly exasperated. “You saw worse than this in the world I created. And you walked through even more fashionable areas of London and LA without batting an eye.”

That was different. It was like how an actor in a foreign film speaking a foreign language looked cool no matter what they were wearing or saying, but it just seemed silly in a domestic film using your own language. He had been so overwhelmed by the scenery in the UK and the US that he had overlooked these differences, but they managed to hit home and rattle his soul when he was in Japan. The difference in style was terrifying! He was a high school boy so poor he couldn’t even shop at Uniqlo and wore synthetic materials that stank of insecticide, so he was afraid he might just spontaneously combust after trying to enter Shibuya. He trembled, feeling like he was violating a taboo along the lines of carelessly placing a metal spoon in the microwave.

“What are you so afraid of, boy? You’ve never been to Shibuya before, have you? So what do you even know about it?”

“I-I know enough!! Shibuya is a post-apocalyptic underground world of fashion where the buildings have numbers like 110 or 119 on them. If you let your guard down for a second, someone will have you carrying a mysterious herb for them!! And it’s dangerous for girls!!!!!!”

“Were you watching some kind of police special on TV? Is that why you think the world works like a video game rated 17+? Just so you know, your idea of Shibuya is about as accurate as a foreigner’s idea of geishas and ninjas.”

Kamijou jumped when a blaring siren and red-flashing lights drove past them from behind. He lost his balance and caught himself on his perfect upperclassman’s shoulder through her super-expensive-looking coat. For some reason, Kumokawa Seria was unable to suppress a grin.

“What the hell was that!?”

“A cop car? Oh, I guess they are fairly different from what Anti-Skill drives in Academy City. But you can find them year-round anywhere, so this isn’t even a Shibuya thing.”

“Then why is that gaudy car split in two!? How the hell did that happen? I thought Level 5s like that white monster didn’t exist out here! Or is there a wild Gemstone with some crazy power wandering around out here!?”

“Huh. Based on what I can find on this video site, it ran full speed into a stainless steel streetlight. The driver survived and no one else was hurt. Oh, and you called it gaudy, but the driver is an 83-year-old man from Osaka.”

“So if you make a mistake here, videos of it are all over the internet in the blink of an eye!? Whatever happened to privacy!?”

Kamijou was already imagining people pointing, laughing, and taking photos of his out-of-place clothing and him ending up with a 30-second rotating panorama video of him going viral on PokPok. In this land of fashion, a single fashion faux pas could plague you for the rest of your life. Scary stuff.

However.

“I’m hungry.”

The surprising number of ramen shops in the area must have been preparing their ingredients for the day. Index picked up the scent of seafood and pork and her comment provided a small injection of strength back into Kamijou’s breaking spirit. That was practically her catchphrase at this point, but it carried a lot more weight this time. They were still living their New Year’s Tokyo survival life.

He needed a job that would pay in cash today.

It didn’t matter what that job was. If he didn’t make some emergency income now, he would have a decent supply of dried human meat in his dorm room by the time the new school year started. As the manager of the dorm room’s kitchen, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

He pulled his old folks smartphone from his pocket.

“Okay, time to find a job. What should I start with?”