Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 7===

''Goodbye, green onions.

''It isn’t that I can’t eat without you, but any soup or hotpot I make now isn’t going to taste right.

Kamijou Touma squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth.

The sweaty pointy-haired boy cried out in frustration with the face of a gambling story protagonist upon realizing he had chosen the wrong tactic way back at the very start of the game.

“Dammit! Why would I buy the chicken but still let go of the green onions!? Am I stupid!? Stupid, stupid, stupid! How careless can you be!? That rules out grilled chicken as an out if I get sick of soups!!”

He had eliminated his own last hope.

Or so he thought until he glanced down at the receipt he still clutched reluctantly in his hand.

The very bottom of the supermarket receipt contained a ticket with a number and barcode on it. It apparently gave him one go at the supermarket lottery. They had one of those boxes with a round hole in the top like you saw at parties sometimes.

His face went dark.

They did have luxury rice and beef on the prize list. However…

“You’re kidding me, right? You want me, Mr. Misfortune, to rely on a luck-based lottery as my final hope? This will never work out. I can already see myself stuck with nothing but an empty stomach and a pack of tissues.”

“Then let the girl do it☆”

Alice stuck her little hand in the hole of the box and yanked out a scrap of paper. Unlike Mr. Misfortune, the smiling blonde girl showed no hesitation whatsoever.

She and Kamijou opened the folded paper to see what it said.

“Let’s see. Multiple Climax♂(x3)?”

“???”

“Bffff!! Wait, what!? What is that doing in there!? E-excuse me, sir, but that is the ‘for couples’ prize box!!”

Kamijou ended up learning something he would rather not about the short middle-aged clerk (who was apparently dating a very carnivorous young woman).

Later, Alice was smiling in a chain café on the 2nd floor of the shopping train.

“This tea is really good.”

“Glad to hear it. It cost me my last 100yen coin.”

Thanks to the mystery man’s eager insistence, Kamijou had been given some luxury caviar as a “special prize”. In the adult world, that might have been called buying his silence.

(But what do I even do with caviar? I feel like anything I do with it would only harm it. I’ve only mastered budget cooking, so this is more than I can handle!! If I’m going to get through this New Year’s Tokyo survival life, I’d prefer something filling, like udon or mochi!)

“By the away, Alice, I notice you’re fine with instant tea and don’t insist on brand-name leaves or anything. I’m sure that stuff was steeped in ordinary Japanese soft water.”

“Huh? Why are you only drinking water, teacher?”

Because he was completely broke.

Even the tea Alice held carefully between her little hands wasn’t in one of the big, decorative cups meant to make a good photo. It was the cheapest and smallest option on the menu. It was cheap enough he had his doubts it was actually Darjeeling like they claimed.

He viewed the platform from the unmoving train’s second floor window.

(The city is normally crawling with Anti-Skill, but I haven’t seen one all day. Are the railroads and stations under different jurisdiction or something?)

He didn’t know where Alice lived, but her guardian had to be worried. He wanted to leave her in adult care as soon as possible. But…

“Hmm. Hm?”

He saw something in the reflection. Alice’s pouting lips were reflected in the glass. He knew by this point that was a bad sign, but she was already on the move before he could react.

“This side of the table is too boring. Hiya!”

“Wait, Alice! Don’t climb under the table!!”

“Hello. Hee hee. Now the girl can be with you forever, teacher☆”

“You’re too heavy.”

“Not true.”

Everything he said got an immediate reaction. She apparently enjoyed anything as long as he was paying attention to her.

After climbing below the table, she resurfaced between his legs, made a 180-degree turn, and sat down in his lap.

She was just like a pet cat when its owner was reading an article in the newspaper or on a tablet. The cat would mistake that for being ignored and get on top of the article or screen to block their view.

Satisfied, Alice leaned back against him. He could feel her higher body temperature and she acted like she was seated in the throne of a fairy tale castle.

“Hee hee hee☆”

“Hey, wait, Alice. Don’t grab your teacup again. You definitely touched the floor with your hands, so you need to wipe them off first.”

“Really? What a pain. You do it, teacher.”

The teacup in question was not a delicate piece of porcelain. It was only a paper cup with a drinking lid on top. He had a feeling she would start poking at the lid’s opening if he didn’t do it, so he obeyed. He reached past her to grab a paper towel soaked with ethanol and wiped off Alice’s small hands. Her skin felt nothing like his own. Her palms reminded him of a sweet dessert like custard or bavarois. They were so soft he feared a paper’s edge would easily slice into them.

Young Alice let him do it.

She laughed and kicked her legs ticklishly below the table while her fine blonde hair brushed across his chest. The attention from him must have been enough for her because she didn’t pick up the teacup afterwards.

“You can have the girl’s tea. As thanks for helping her.”

“Alice, why do you keep trying to set up indirect kisses?”

“Because she loves you.”

That blunt statement made his breath catch in his throat. He had thought she was the kind of person who would jump on anyone’s back and ask for a piggyback ride if she was feeling tired, so he was surprised to hear her say she loved anyone in particular.

But after a moment, he realized what this was.

“Oh, I get it now. This is that ‘I want to marry you when I grow up’ thing that all the dads and big brothers out there have to deal with. This doesn’t mean anything, so I won’t let it affect me!”

“Mh. The girl is being honest, but you don’t believe her.”

She kicked her little legs and pouted her lips in displeasure.

He did still have a question.

Why was this girl so attached to him? He still didn’t know why she had been in his dorm when he woke up. This wasn’t like happening across her on the roadside. Theirs hadn’t been a chance encounter – she had come to him.

(Could I have met her before?)

That seemed unlikely when Index and her perfect memory hadn’t appeared to recognize Alice, but that said nothing about the possibility of meeting her before he had met Index.

In other words…

(Did I know her before I lost my memories?)

“Hey, Alice.”

He was just about to ask, when he heard the buzzing of a small motor.

It was his phone. He pulled the old folks phone from his pocket, checked the screen, and saw an unfamiliar popup on the lock screen.

“A break alert has been issued (tap for details)”

“?”

“This is an emergency alert from your location service. You have received this alert because your GPS location matches the affected region. Please leave your present location and find safe shelter immediately.”

What was this?

Old Man Kamijou was new to this whole smartphone business, so he wasn’t sure what he was looking at.

“Hey, Alice- ew, I just got your pointy curl in my mouth. Anyway, do you know what this means?”

“Wow! Is this one of those fabled smartphones! The girl wants to play games! And watch videos!!”

Come to think of it, Alice didn’t have a phone.

She did seem familiar with smartphones, though. The mismatch may have come from gathering information on something she didn’t have herself. Maybe from ads on TV and in subway stations.

Kamijou looked puzzled, but something seemed off beyond the incomprehensible message. All around him, the other café customers’ phones began to buzz or play their notification melody.

Then they all stood up and rushed off the train. There was even a college girl who left behind her ice coffee decorated with lots of whipped cream and chocolate sauce before she could snap a photo of it. In fact, the part-timer at the register was fleeing with the rest.

“Huh?”

The next thing he knew, he and Alice were the only two left in the café. Everything around him felt ice cold except for Alice on his lap.

What had that alert meant?

Based on this, it couldn’t be anything good.

He was unsure what to do, but then he saw someone running along the platform directly outside. The girl wore her chestnut hair in twintails and wore a distinctive armband.

“Oh, is she from Judgment? She’s not an adult, but she’s the next best thing.”

“Hmph! The girl wants you to look at her, teacher!!”

Alice sulked in his lap, so a head pat was his only recourse. The twintails girl on the platform seemed to notice them. Her eyes widened and she shouted up at them with panic in her voice.

“Geh, it’s the ape who won’t leave Onee-sama alone,” groaned Shirai Kuroko. “Hey, you there!! I am Shirai Kuroko of Judgment. Didn’t you receive the break alert!? You need to get off the train and evacuate!!”

“''Evacuate''?”

That was too dangerous a word to overlook.

But he still wasn’t sure what the danger actually was. Evacuate from what? What kind of disaster could hit this sturdy train platform along an elevated track? He couldn’t imagine powerful winds or flooding affecting it.

Shirai Kuroko formed a megaphone with her hands and shouted the crucial words up at him.

“A train is about to crash into that one!! We’re looking at a head-on collision with a prisoner transport train!!”



The Overhunting prisoner transport train crashed full speed into the shopping train stopped at the station platform.

The Delivery Go Round’s first car was crushed like an empty can and the impact rapidly propagated down to the very last car. A few of the cars in between were pushed unnaturally up, making the train look like a caterpillar or inchworm.

The jail''break'' had begun.