Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 2===

In the Shibuya shopping district, another Transcendent, Aradia, was the center of attention.

That was to be expected when she didn’t bother concealing herself with a people clearing field. It didn’t take any knowledge of how magic worked to tell this witch goddess was firing beams and trying to shoot down a flying object.

However, this didn’t trigger a panic with people shoving or even trampling each other.

“Wow.”

An eyepatch ghost girl wearing a translucent raincoat over a swimsuit-based costume was standing a short distance away and aiming her phone’s camera toward the woman with long silver hair swaying side to side. The excitement had begun without warning, so the girl had failed to record the climax. That was a common enough problem for video posters, but she had still tapped the record button even if just to provide a timestamp for the event. A video that missed the crucial moment people most wanted to see could still gather enough attention to get some serious numbers.

(That is really high quality. Is this a corporate PR stunt combining live magic tricks with a video zooming through the sky? This is professional stuff. There must be a film crew somewhere around here because she wouldn’t dare walk around in that modified bikini otherwise. Really, her bare feet are the most impressive part. I mean, it’s New Year’s Eve. But I thought Blau said the Magical Powered Kanamin stuff was going down in Ariake today.)

“Damn, grownups have such big boobs. Oops.”

Something dripped onto her screen.

The bright yellow drop covering one corner of the LCD screen appeared to be melted cheese. It must have fallen from a hot snack someone in the crowd was eating. Probably a mysterious Korean item being sold at one of the food trucks in the area.

“Ugh, really?”

She reached for her pocket on reflex, but the translucent raincoat was for streaming. It would be a buzzkill to have a handkerchief or tissues visible in her pocket, so she didn’t have any. She also couldn’t wipe the drip off with the baggy sleeves. The melted cheese stretched stickily down the entire screen, but if she got even the sleeve of this costume dirty, the stain would still be there during the countdown.

Just as she was trying to figure out what to do, someone held out a pack of tissues.

That someone was the silver-haired witch dressed like a dancer plus an ankle-length wimple.

“Take one.”

“Um!?”

She had been recording this person from afar in order to post a video just for the hell of it, but now the woman was right next to her. The pressure coming from the woman was powerful indeed and the girl was frankly terrified. She had a bad feeling about this.

The woman must have been used to gathering attention because she ignored the rest of the crowd.

“Don’t worry about it. I only just received them over there.”

“I-I see.”

The eyepatch ghost was surprised to learn even this otherworldly professional(?) would accept the packs of tissues people handed out. The ad on the pack said they were recruiting women and provided a location and time without any further description, which set off her sexual harassment alarm. She felt like a model’s manager was supposed to prevent people from approaching you for a job like this on the street.

But a voice interrupted that thought.

“Listen, that is melted cheese, not mustard. The heat can damage the protective film and maybe even the liquid crystals if you don’t wipe it up soon.”

“Yikes, really!? But this is the top-of-the-line model that only came out this fall!!”

The fuzzy unreality of the situation vanished and she took one of the tissues. It was a similar feeling to hearing a disaster alert from her phone while trembling within a haunted house. Now that she had taken the tissue on reflex, she balled it up and wiped off her phone’s screen.

The skimpily-dressed witch was already wandering off somewhere else. From behind, her ankle-length wimple hid her silhouette and even her long silver hair. She might as well have been wrapped in a bedsheet.

The raincoat eyepatch ghost called out to her as she left.

“Th-thank you?”

“No need to thank me.” The woman didn’t even look back. “''I have already been rewarded with triple interest.''”

“…?”

The ghost didn’t like the sound of the word interest there.

She felt like it was a little rude after what just happened, but she aimed her freshly cleaned phone toward the alluring witch again.

That woman was up to something.

The ghost watched it all through her phone camera.



“Thanks!”

At one point, she pulled a dropped train card out from under a vending machine and received the thanks and smile of a small child.



“My, my. How kind of you.”

At one point, she separated two fighting dogs and received a polite bow from the elderly couple who were having trouble holding onto the leash of their powerful Doberman.



“Wait, how did you do that? This truck doubles as a temporary stage, so it has to weigh more than 10 tons.”

At one point, she used a mysterious barrier of light to push back a truck about to plow into the scramble crossing, turning the truck half to scrap, saving the lives of the pedestrians, and earning a fearful look from one of the young men she had just saved.



Eventually, the ghost looked up from her phone’s screen.

She was unable to believe what that brand-new LCD screen was showing her, so she had wanted to see it for herself.

“What the heck?”

And the Shibuya girl had seen something truly unexpected.

It was often said that seeing is believing, but that wasn’t always the case.

''She had seen it for herself, but she still couldn’t believe it or even understand it.

That woman used her bare hands to separate two fierce dogs and then to deflect an enormous truck without even touching it. She was clearly doing something here and that power was growing at an accelerating rate.

Now that something was clearly wrong here, the Shibuya crowd kept their distance, giving the creepy witch enough space to wander around on her own. That distance was usually a terrible insult for anyone living in Shibuya, yet the witch somehow managed to shine brighter than anyone else there. And something strange and unseen began to swirl around her.

All she ever did was small good deeds.

But each new kindness expanded the spatial distortion around her. It was like a small snowball growing ever bigger as it rolled down a snowy mountain.

''“No need to thank me.”

The witch’s concerning words replayed in the ghost’s head.

''“I have already been rewarded with triple interest.”

She looked down at her own hands and clenched and unclenched them a few times. Almost like she was checking on the strength they contained.

The phone’s lip-reading function drew a box around her lips and tracked their movement with greater precision than human senses ever could.

That told the ghost what the silver-haired witch said with a thin smile.

“Yes, this should do nicely.”