Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter5 (section)

===Part 3===

“Ohh, ohhhhh.”

The youngest sister, Gokusai Amazora, kicked her small legs at the booth seat next to the window. She opened the menu wide and cried out in joy.

They were in a District 21 restaurant at the foot of the mountains.

“They have oysters! Raw ones!! Yes, yes! I can finally eat some raw oysters!!”

“Amazora,” cut in Kaibi from the seat next to her.

Rikuri laughed while seated at the same table.

“You can’t, my cute little sister. Didn’t we say to avoid eating those before an important job?”

“Ehhh!? I still can’t have any!?”

The third sister’s legs stretched out below the table and she blatantly puffed out her cheeks.

Those sisters had created a gal-style space different again from Kumokawa or Mitsuari. It was too much for Kamijou Touma who sank down and nervously spoke up.

“Eh? Is it like bad luck or something? You’re like the pros only seen in movies, so I’m surprised you obey those unscientific rules.”

“Oh, it isn’t about that. Even little kids know raw oysters are a food poisoning risk.”

“Well, that’s no concern of mine,” he said. “Looks like my wallet has enough to cover a lunch set, so I’ll go with this raw oyster meal.”

The third sister’s small butt rose up from her seat with her eyes aglitter.

“Yay, I love you, Onii-chan! Now I can ''share'' your raw oysters!!”

“?”

“Sigh. Have it your way, but I’m not saving you if you get a stomachache at some crucial point of the mission.”

For some reason, the youngest sister rejoiced and the other two sisters brought their hands to their foreheads, but Kamijou could only tilt his head in confusion. The food had not even arrived, yet Amazora seemed convinced that she would be taking some of the oysters from his plate.

“Hm, hm, hmm. Raw oysters, raw oystery oysters☆”

The girl of about 10 began to sing while she sank down like a submarine. No, she had crawled down below the booth table and then her head popped up between Kamijou’s legs.

“Gwah!?”

“Okay, this is my seat now!!”

Now she was sitting in his lap.

She kicked her legs while imagining the raw oyster meal to come, but Kamijou did not know how to handle kids of that age and he froze up. There was way too much body contact going on and looking down just about let him see down the flat chest of her gaudy dress, so it was a dangerous situation all around. But he also felt like it would be wrong to just mercilessly throw her off of him.

“Oh, geez. At least wipe your hands off with a wet towel. You just pressed them against the filthy floor crawling over, didn’t you?”

“Ehh? What a pain.”

“You can look at the menu while I do it. Here, let me see your hands.”

“I said I don’t need- hee hee, nya ha ha ha ha!!”

She laughed ticklishly while he had his way with her small hands and the girl in a dress cutely puffed out her cheeks.

Kumokawa Seria gave an exasperated sigh while crossing her legs next to him.

“I’m not about to get jealous of a girl that young, so can we get down to business? How is the preliminary investigation going?”

“I’ve given things a quick lookover,” lazily replied Rikuri while resting her head in her hand. She used her right hand because of the toxic threat of the needle on the end of her left hand’s ring finger.

She used drones in addition to poisons, so instead of barging onto the mountain without knowing the threat, they had decided to wait here for a bit.

“Near the dam, there appears to be a log cabin a short distance from the mountain road. It matches the documents we found when researching his ability to pay. Ventilation is handled using a long duct traveling underground to a remote location, but the cover has a very special filter installed. That may be an identifying mark of his, so he is almost certainly holed up in there for his work.”

“Anything else of note?” asked Kumokawa.

Rikuri placed a folding palmtop computer on the table and shrugged.

“My drones aren’t good enough to scan for mines hidden underground, but they did detect a few large heat readings. Those are living creatures. And I imagine we will find more and more of those.”

“How large is large here?”

“Larger than an African elephant. I initially thought they were robots shaped like that, but it looks like I was mistaken.”

You would have a hard time finding land animals that large not just in Japan but in the world as a whole. This was larger than the biggest ones listed in the encyclopedia.

The steep slopes and deep woods of Academy City’s only mountainous region had been transformed into a zone of death by L.S.S.’s technology.

“But Biohacker Matsuo Ryuusuke might be using more than those obvious creatures as his toys. There could be smaller animals like venomous snakes or bugs, there could be carnivorous or parasitic plants, and there could even be mold or bacteria. If L.S.S. wanted to, they could create plants and animals ranging from the microscopic to the enormous. They could probably also create biological-based explosives and ethanol.”

Meanwhile, the food they had ordered arrived, so they had to pause their dangerous conversation.

Amazora’s eyes sparkled and she clasped her hands in front of her flat chest, as if in prayer.

“My raw oysters are finally here!!”

“Those are mine,” protested Kamijou. “You ordered your own food! It’s not even the Midsummer Day of the Ox and you still ordered an extra-large eel bowl! And you ordered it without the usual sauce, like some kind of connoisseur!!”

“Uhh…”

“Don’t cry, don’t beg, and don’t lean back against me. No puppy dog eyes either.”

“Uhhh!!”

“Okay, fine! If it’ll keep you from crying, we can go halfsies!!”

“Heh heh. Then you can have my eel liver soup, wonderful Onii-chan.”

“How is that fair? The oysters are my main dish, so you have to give me half your eels!! With an eel bowl, dividing it perfectly in half is simple enough with some chopsticks!!”

Kumokawa Seria had ordered a bagel with avocado and sliced smoked salmon, Gokusai Kaibi had ordered pale-colored Kansai-style udon, and Rikuri had ordered a summer vegetable pasta dish, although she had asked for no chili peppers or garlic.

“This is one hell of a lineup.” Kamijou sounded exasperated. “What kind of restaurant is this supposed to be?”

“I thought it was an everything restaurant, similar to the ones on the beach.”

The only point in common between them was the avoidance of anything strong smelling, like curry rice or pepperoncino. Similarly, they had ordered cold water to drink instead of tea or coffee.

“My cute little sister, don’t put any pepper on your eels. Since you ordered them without the sauce, you need to stick to the wasabi soy sauce.”

“Ehhhh!?”

“Amazora.”

The middle sister was apparently stronger than the oldest in their family. One forceful word from her and the littlest sister gave in.

Kumokawa Seria sighed.

“Boy, don’t put anything more than soy sauce on your oysters. Don’t squeeze any sudachi on them either.”

“Ehhhh!?”

“Boy.”

He had no choice but to give in.

He did understand the point behind it. They were about to enter the mountains and play a deadly game of hide-and-seek with creatures possibly possessing superhuman senses.

Still, Kamijou was dead set on eating some raw oysters after ordering that meal. The little girl in his lap had taken away three of his five oysters (how is that half!?), so he had to plan his next moves carefully. He only had two of those shelled things left. One he would eat as is. The other he would customize with soy sauce and grated radish. If he did not manage that, he knew for sure he was going to cry.

(Okay, where’s the soy sauce?)

He reached over to grab a small bottle from the condiments at one end of the table, but his hand bumped into someone else’s.

It belonged to Kaibi.

“Ah.”

“Ah.”

Now was not the time for a bittersweet atmosphere. The soy sauce had toppled over and its contents were spreading across the table. The tension was far greater than normal thanks to the sisters’ gaudy dresses. A stain on those would do way more damage than to a guy’s shirt or pants, so he quickly reached for the napkins. And…

“Ah.”

“Ah.”

His fingers bumped into Rikuri’s slender ones.

But instead of quickly pulling away, those fingers with polished nails tangled with his. That was enough to apply great pressure to his heart. It almost felt like having a large tongue licking at his fingers. And that idiot was so distracted by the sexy fingers that he failed to notice he was only a few millimeters away from being pricked by the poison needle on her ring finger.

“My, my. Did I scare you?”

The sexy girl laughed and the girl in a dress trembled.

“First you spoil Amazora and lure her in with food and then you draw out Rikuri Nee-san’s protective and mischievous sides simultaneously? And do you not care who it is as long as they’re a girl?”

“You only just noticed?” asked Kumokawa. “I bet that boy would act extra nice to a tree if its trunk looked like a woman’s crotch.”

Amazora stuffed her face full of oysters and stretched her legs out below the table.

It was rude, but the cook would have been delighted to see the smile on her face.

“Heh heh heh. They’re so good!”

“Well, isn’t that great.”

“I can eat the rest for you if you don’t want them, Onii-chan.”

“Don’t you dare! I was saving those for last!!”

They had different backgrounds and lived in different worlds, yet they could still come together like this.

But something was missing.

Kamijou Touma did not know much about L.S.S. or this Biohacker, but he would take back what had been stolen from them.