Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 2===

“Eh? You’re really going to eat this? First thing in the morning!?”

“Soy is healthy food. Eating it is good.”

“Yeah, um, I get that you can make vegetarian meat out of soy, but you’re making that into a burger. Won’t that tern into a hellish mass of grain with essentially tofu between two buns?”

“I desire healthy.”

Her Japanese was weirdly awkward because he was only receiving the Transla-Pen’s translation. When she spoke with her long silver hair swaying behind her, it was all in fluent English. The clearance rack gadget from Academy City could only do so much. It even left some words entirely untranslated in its so-called translation.

(Well, I can understand her and that’s what counts.)

Index and Othinus had not accompanied him to the kitchen. One of them could do housework but didn’t and the other didn’t do housework because she couldn’t, but he was beginning to think he had spoiled both of his freeloaders too much. They would never learn if all they ever did was eat and sleep.

He was currently alone with Helcalia.

Everyone needed to eat to survive. And as long as they were hiding in the diner, Kamijou figured he might as well whip up a light breakfast from the ingredients that were going to go bad anyway. But his Japanese knowledge did not apply to an American kitchen. And not just because the tools were shaped differently and the temperature displays were all in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. First of all, the tomatoes and broccolis were so big they scared him a little. They looked like some kind of freak mutation, so he half expected them to bite his head and hijack his brain the instant he looked the other way.

He checked inside a silver fridge larger than any he had ever seen in Japan.

“It’s packed full. Are these leftovers from Christmas? Hey, Helcalia, give your thanks to the holiday season. I can make just about anything with all this.”

“Don’t like holiday season.”

“Eh? Why not?”

“My birthday is 28th. But no one comes to the party during winter break. Friends always mix it with Christmas.”

Was that what happened?

Even if the ingredients were for unsold party dishes, Kamijou appreciated the excess stock. He scraped some of the former chicken breasts from the grill with a metal spatula to secure some space for himself.

(I need to leave some money by the register for all the ingredients I use.)

He decided he didn’t need to share that overly strict thought with Helcalia. He had something else to say to her, who was clinging to his hip in her white camisole.

“Listen, Helcalia, healthy eating means a balanced diet. Escaping your dependence on meat and grease in the land of the Stars and Stripes is an impressive feat, but that doesn’t mean you can eat nothing but grains. Whether it’s trans fats or carbs, you Americans always take everything way too far.”

“Fuck. Not making sense.”

“My point is you need to find a way you can eat all the vegetables you don’t like. …And please tell me that ‘fuck’ was a mistranslation.”

The 10-year-old only gave him a blank stare.

Kamijou frowned down at the Transla-Pen. The truth remained a mystery. He could only understand one end of the conversion, so he had no idea how the machine was interpreting the English into Japanese and vice versa.

He ended up using the restaurant kitchen to cook a round pancake.

He was a poor student, so there was only so much he knew how to cook. He wanted credit for measuring out the flour and baking powder to make it from scratch instead of using a pre-made mix.

For vegetables, he knew a 10-year-old was not going to eat a salad even if he stir-fried it. He did not know Helcalia, so he had no way of knowing her dislikes. Small children could be cruel about these things. If he ended up serving her something she disliked, he just knew she would painstakingly separate it out and push it aside with her fork. So to make that impossible, he threw the veggies in the juicer and added mayo and cream to make them into a dip. That way she wouldn’t even think of it as vegetables. Kamijou had done it with sodas and shaved ice syrup, so he knew it was common for kids to choose something for its bright colors than for its actual flavor.

It wasn’t uncommon for people who rarely ate whole fruits to love jam. And people who chose cheeseburgers over plain hamburgers sometimes didn’t like solid chunks of cheese. It was all in how you perceived it. And when you made something yourself, you could adjust the salt and sugar content however you liked.

“Here, all done.”

“DIY?”

He had no idea what she was talking about now, but her eyes were glued to the food on the plate and she gulped. Seeing the finished product had successfully stimulated her hunger.

“Index will eat it all if she shows up, so I’d eat that in a hurry if I were you.”

“What do you mean by index page? Maybe I should eat you tonight, kitty baby?”

Kamijou tilted his head, checked the Transla-Pen’s settings, and tried a soft reset. Meanwhile, the girl stood on an empty zucchini box as a stool, grabbed a plastic knife and fork, stood up on her tiptoes to reach the plate on the stainless steel countertop, and chowed down on the pancake. The reset meant he missed whatever she said before eating.

But it finished rebooting just in time to catch one word in particular.

“Delicious!!”

“This thing isn’t bugging out anymore, is it? Well, she does look happy.”

“This green stuff is good. What is it?”

Helcalia was happily dipping a sliced of pancake in a small bowl of dip, but he didn’t dare tell her it was made from bell peppers. He didn’t want to see the sour look on her face, so he opted to simply smile instead of answering.

She had orange juice to drink. She had pulled that out of the giant fridge on her own. Kamijou normally had miso soup and rice, so the sweet juice seemed like an odd choice, but he realized miso wouldn’t go well with a pancake anyway.

He thought to himself while watching her hold the cup in both hands and gulp down the juice.

(That juice is nice and cold, but the inside of the fridge is actually ''warmer'' than outside right now. Los Angeles really has become another world.)

“But stretching up and eating is new. Mama made all tables and shelves my height.”

“Did she?”

“When using bottom shelf, mama crouches down and has difficulty. But always smiling.”

“I see.”

He had not been directly introduced or checked the paperwork, but he realized he had just more or less confirmed the identity of the other Grocery in LA.

That woman had disappeared.

And in those last moments, she had pushed aside the fear and resentment to mark out the location of her daughter and hope some unknown person would take care of her.

(So it was her mother.)

“I want to eat lots more.”

“Ha ha. Give me a moment to wash the kitchenware, okay?”

“I want to eat infinity more!!”

“…”

Some caution entered Kamijou’s smile. He was in high school, so could not let himself fall into grandpa mode just because a little girl was flattering him. Pancakes were pure carbs, so the only person with a hellish enough stomach to thoughtlessly eat a giant stack of them was Index. This girl had been indirectly left in his care, so he couldn’t let her fall into that pancake trap.

“Eh heh heh. I’ll add this blue next. Not blueberry?”

“Hey, Helcalia?”

“Yes?”

The girl on the empty zucchini box turned toward him, the fork in her mouth.

“If you’re feeling brave enough to tell me, I’d love to hear what happened here. As much as you know anyway. You weren’t in this diner by random chance, were you?”

The smartwatch had pointed to the diner’s address and he had found Helcalia in a locker here. That meant she had not fled here on a spur of the moment decision. She must have been told to wait here. Otherwise, Melzabeth wouldn’t have been able to leave behind that information before she disappeared.

What had Melzabeth hoped to do after regrouping with Helcalia?

For that matter, why had an LA resident like Melzabeth been in an Academy City base and how had she found an opportunity to leave her own watch in a safe that would have been strictly locked down?

The smartwatch was a crucial hint, but there were also so many questions surrounding how it got where it was. Since Melzabeth had disappeared, her daughter was the only hint remaining.

She might not have told her 10-year-old daughter everything. It was common to keep the hard truths from your own child during an emergency because you didn’t want to scare them.

But even a small piece of new information could mean a lot right now.

“What if I tell?”

“I’ll go save your mother who disappeared along with everyone else.”

He didn’t even need to think about that one.

He was worried the crappy Transla-Pen might not be translating what he wanted to say.

But Helcalia Grocery nodded.

Maybe it was the conviction she saw in his eyes more than his words.

“Um.”

She opened her small mouth.

She did not want to think about the missing 30 million and Kamijou’s group could never understand what it felt like. These were the words of someone who had seen it for herself.

“Mama was sneaking, but it’s not what it looks like. Mama’s phone…somewhere at the station…but…”

“?”

“She was with R&C, but not really. Mama worked with Academy City people.”

Kamijou Touma felt like he was a step away from making some major breakthrough, but then the diner’s back door burst open and the priest with long, dyed hair barged in.

“Stiyl? What are you doing?”

“She’s gone.”

Kamijou realized Stiyl Magnus was out of breath.

Had he been in a fierce battle or had he been running for his life?

“''Kanzaki Kaori has disappeared. R&C Occultics got her''!!”