Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter1 (section)

=== Part 5 ===
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The powerful magnetism caused the AR effects on the hotel wall to be slightly distorted, but there were no major issues.

Mikoto landed after heading vertically down the wall from 20 stories up and then looked around.

“Now then, where should I go? …This is a cooperative institution, so they might have a Russia exclusive Gekota.”

She started walking without having decided on a destination.

The hotel was near the edge of the city. All of the surrounding buildings were other hotels or duty-free shops.

High-rise buildings could not be constructed in the center of the city and the objective of the city was to be the world’s largest shopping mall. It covered a vast area, but it was not all that tall. It was only about 5 stories above the ground.

The large center facility was divided into two major facilities.

Each area was something like a giant shopping mall much larger than a domed stadium. The buildings were not perfectly rectangular. Some parts were just five-story boxes, some parts were shaped like donuts with giant courtyards in the middle, and some parts had large atriums that sank down below ground level.

(Overall, it’s kind of like a giant box that has been eaten into in various places.)

650 domed stadiums.

It was such a vast area, that one might have to ride the subway to get from one store to another. There was also more than one parking lot. Each parking lot was the size of one for a championship soccer match and there was one in each cardinal direction of the giant facility.

Mikoto entered one of the large shopping mall areas.

It did not seem like just a giant building.

For one thing, it was simply too vast.

The insides of the shops were displays full of products just like at a supermarket or a department store. However, there was an overwhelming amount of them making the stores almost seem like a type of labyrinth. It was amazing that each and every thing on display was actually for sale and not just a decoration.

The pet shop was as large as a zoo, the flower shop was like a botanical garden, and the temporary day care for small children was like a small scale amusement park. Mikoto had never before heard of a day care that had a roller coaster inside.

Even though it was evening, there were of course a large number of people there.

That may have been because it was like a theme park or it may have been because the area had no sense of the sunset.

Their prided Semipublic AR functioned as special monitors. The display used RGB instead of CMYK. In other words, the building walls, the path at one’s feet, and everything else glowed. A normal night scene was a collection of points of light, but in that city it was a collection of panels of light. There was simply so much light that any sense of dimness was done away with.

In fact, the less light there was in the surroundings, the more the presence of the Semipublic AR was forced upon you.

The races of the people walking along were varied. It was not just a general mix where some were white, some were black, and some were Asian. Misaka could see some distinctive builds even among those different groups.

(I see.)

Mikoto nodded as she looked around that building that was more a sealed off commercial district than a giant shopping mall.

(With an area this big, there would be a lot of lost children and pickpockets. I can see why they need those security guards in addition to the police. Having workers at the shops double as security was probably inspired by our Anti-Skill.)

And then Mikoto added another comment in her mind.

(…I can see how this would end up being a treasure trove of urban legends.)

There were places about which urban legends naturally popped up such as schools, hospitals, and tunnels. Large amusement parks and shopping malls also fell under that category. Perhaps because children got lost in those places on a daily basis, a lot of the stories about those last two involved human trafficking. Mikoto was not too knowledgeable about that kind of rumor, but even she knew two or three of that sort, so they were probably a fairly major genre.

Urban legends.

A very valuable orange.

(That rumor may have spread among tourists who came here because things are sold here that are not in other places. They may have thought that something like that could be found here. Well, there’s no point in thinking about a completely baseless rumor.)

Mikoto continued to walk around that foreign city as it turned to night in hopes of seeing something she had never seen before. After heading up some stairs, she realized she had entered an odd area. Instead of the vast large scale image of the places she had seen before, the shops lined up there were all quite small. The roof was narrow and the entire area seemed rather cramped. The shopping district a ways from the main streets seemed like the entire place had been dragged indoors.

“What is this place?”

She looked around, but she saw no signs. For an instant, she felt the area was quite inconvenient, but then she recalled the Semipublic AR. That city was a place where one could obtain any information one needed.

She brought her hands over to a thick round pillar and called up a keyboard. She typed in “area map” and a detailed diagram of the area immediately appeared on the pillar.

(Hmm… So they’ve invited in a few shops from outside the city. I guess it’s an economic experiment about the fusion of local stores and new stores.)

Small shops were lined up on either side of the long narrow passageway, but old-looking shops and shiny new chain shops alternated like Morse code. The experiment was most likely not seeing which one did better. They were likely trying to see how to get both to get even business.

New shops would not necessarily sell more.

For instance, in an area with a lot of brand new sushi or ramen shops, the customers would all head to the one old-looking shop.

Their goal was to analyze that to the point of knowing the actual values involved rather than just the common knowledge so they could always gain that effect.

(Trying to figure out what their ulterior motives behind things are as you walk along can be kind of fun.)

However, she would be lying if she said she was not mainly trying to see if she could find a special Gekota you could not find elsewhere.

She could feel her destiny for a once-in-a-lifetime encounter that transcended probability theory.

Encountering that Gekota would be nice.

Mikoto looked around thinking about entering a random shop. She changed the AR setting so that it would display information on her surroundings as she looked around. Matching her gaze, the signs for various shops were displayed one after another on the wall.

Suddenly, Mikoto’s gaze froze.

The data for one of the many signs was in Japanese which was rare for that city.

It read: Snack and Souvenir Shop Nihon Daruma.

Mikoto had just been thinking of that city as a treasure trove of urban legends and then that showed up.

I have no intention of explaining in detail, but it is a rather famous story in Japan, so you should be able to easily find it by searching on the internet.<ref>The urban legend being referenced is the "Daruma Woman". Simply put, it says a woman was kidnapped overseas and years later was found alive with her arms, legs, and tongue cut off in a shop in a foreign country that had "Daruma" in Japanese on its sign.</ref> However, it is a rather creepy story, so I do not recommend it. Do not look it up.

“…Are they trying to draw people in?”

It was a well-known rumor in Japan, so they may have looked it up on Japanese websites or the store may have had been opened by someone from Japan like a sushi or nabe restaurant.

However, even if it was shocking, the store won by catching people’s attention.

Mikoto was at a loss for words for a bit, but once the shock wore off, she started to get curious. For one thing, she had been wandering around that foreign city at night in hopes of finding something with some impact. Mikoto headed for the shop like she was being sucked in.

The door slid open.

The inside was odd, too. It was a lot like a Japanese convenience store. The clean and modern interior seemed unnatural. The shelves for the products were the same as a normal convenience store, but the products themselves were clearly different.

On the magazine racks were old books made of parchment with mysterious cursive writing in an unknown language.

Instead of plastic bottles in the glass door refrigerators covering one wall were bottles filled with a mysterious liquid as well as things like snakes and insects.

Next to the register where heat insulated containers for hot snacks would usually be were small dried heads of animals.

Nothing there was normal.

It could perhaps be described as occult.

Everything there would be laughed off as ridiculous if it was listed as a mail order product on the back cover of a manga magazine. However, with so many of them gathered and logically laid out within the store, there was a sense of unity to it all.

“Yah ho ho!”

The girl at the register gave a meaningless cry of greeting.

The girl was shorter than Mikoto but actually had breasts, so she annoyed Mikoto.

“Are you a tourist, miss? Well, I guess everyone in this city is a tourist. Although it’s rare for a Japanese girl to come in after seeing that sign. Are you starving for some stimulation?”

“What about you?” Mikoto said as she poked at something that looked like a crystal packed in plastic. “With that name and this design, I thought someone Japanese was running the store, but I guess I was wrong.”

The girl at the register had white skin and long black hair with just the ends braided. However, her eyes were blue and her skin color was not that of a normal Japanese person. She had the characteristics of a European, of an Anglo-Saxon.

Mikoto looked at the nametag on the girl’s chest that had her name written in hiragana.

“Lessar?”

“Yup, I’m Lessar-chan. We have all sorts of souvenirs. And don’t worry. Everything we have here won’t get you caught up at customs. So just loosen the purse strings.”

“You say that, but…”

Mikoto looked around the horrid convenience store again.

Instead of snack foods, dried bats wrapped in plastic were lined up.

[[Image:RAILGUN_SS2_01_018.jpg|thumb]]

“How am I supposed to tell what’s good or not?”

“It’s like an amulet. You just need to use your feelings to choose the one that matches your situation the best. I don’t really like putting added value on art or antiques.”

“Hmm… This selection goes a bit far for just grabbing people’s attention, don’t you think?”

“They’re souvenirs, so just random things are fine, right? And the things here are nothing more than materials. I don’t think you could make a proper spiritual item from them.”

Mikoto did not understand what the girl named Lessar was talking about.

Was she using terms commonly used in fortune telling magazines or something?

“I don’t think I need to buy anything that’s sole purpose is to bury one’s troubles.”

“Hm? Are you the type that denies the effects of good luck charms? But I think normal convenience stores are more or less the same. You go to the store because you feel you need something and then buy items to make up for your general dissatisfaction. Isn’t that all those everyday products are? This store specializes in the things that cannot be seen, but is otherwise the same.”

“I see. So this really is a convenience store?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, at any rate, it doesn’t look like I’ll find a Russia exclusive Gekota here.”

“I have no intention of stocking anything I have no interest in or knowledge of. After all, this is basically just a hobby. But I will always be here. This is basically a convenience store, so come back if you ever have any kind of dissatisfaction similar to if you were to suddenly want some ice cream during this warm night.”

“I see. Well, I have no worries right now.”

“Worries fluidly come and go. Even if you have none now, that will not necessarily be the case later.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

Mikoto headed for the sliding door. When she stepped on the floor mat, a soft electronic tone sounded. Even that was just like in a normal convenience store.

However, the words of the worker named Lessar alone were not stereotypical.

“Oh, one more thing. Watch out for oranges,” she said.

“Hah?”

“Watch out for oranges.”

With the smile of the service industry on her face, Lessar repeated her warning.

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