Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume16 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 10===

Night had fallen.



“Hm, hm, hmmm. Bath time, bath time, splash!!”

“Hey, stop, you fool! That big wave nearly capsized my washbasin!”



Index and Othinus were taking a bath. The tub was small, but the 15cm god could still drown in it, so she apparently had to get creative. Still, could she really handle it? He just hoped a moment of carelessness didn’t get her washed down the drain.

The calico cat was curled up in the best spot next to the heater. Apparently he had completely abandoned his nocturnal side.

Kamijou Touma was using this free time to speak with his family on the phone.

They had called him.

They had completely ignored him when he was in the boys dorm, so why the sudden change?

“As your mother, I am just so worried about you living in the girls dorm, Touma-san. I do hope isn’t going to lead to a rash of pregnancies.”

“…”

She was worried all right, just not for him.

The lack of concern for her son found in her ultra hands-off form of education remained unchanged.

“Sigh, learning to take part in the modern digital lifestyle is all well and good, but I really shouldn’t try to be a demoness at my age. My throat is so hoarse… I should start adjusting the tone with a slider instead of pitching my voice up myself.”

“?”

After a moment of thought, a chill ran down Kamijou’s spine. He was reminded of Demoness Mayu-chin, whose sugary voice, small 3D body, and succubus costume had captured the hearts of high school boys around the world…but surely not, right?

Once the call from the unbeatable mommy had ended, Kamijou hung up.

He could still hear the shower running.

Waiting for Index and Othinus to leave the bath would be a waste of time, so he wanted to get some of the built-up housework done. Going to classes during the day and doing housework at night took a lot out of you.

“Right now I can do…the laundry, I guess.”

So he grabbed the basket piled full of laundry and walked to the front door.

The curled-up cat hopped up. He knew the cat was plotting an escape, so he used his feet for defense as he stepped alone out into the hallway.

“Phew.”

Silence.

The girls dorm did have a lights out time after which you weren’t allowed to leave the building, but movement within the building was relatively unrestricted. So Kamijou walked stealthily through the dark.

“Uh, oh.”

He held his breath and slowly hid behind a nearby pillar.

He had sensed a presence.

A short distance away he saw…

(There’s an older gyaru there. The one from the dining hall. I thought she worked for a bento shop, so what’s she doing here so late?)

She had placed a blanket over Kamijou during the night. …Thinking back, that had been strange. He had also heard rumors that she would float naked in the large bath when she had nothing better to do, so did she see this as her second home? She might even have moved into an empty room somewhere.

“Then she should just go ahead and become an actual dorm manager. Paradise is right there, so why won’t she reach out and grab it?”

Was she patrolling in the night?

He had forgotten to thank her for the blanket at dinner, but if he approached her now, she would probably scold him and make him go back to his room. Letting her pass and thanking her tomorrow morning would probably be best. Nothing would be more foolish than causing trouble for someone when trying to thank them for saving his life.

(They even have an adult patrolling the place at night. The girls dorm really does do things differently.)

Or maybe it was the absolute freedom of the boys dorm that was out of the ordinary.

He heard a gentle electronic tone.

The elevator door must have opened and closed.

After waiting until he couldn’t sense her presence anymore, Kamijou resumed moving.

He arrived at a room with both walls lined with drum-style washing machines. The room was lit up as bright as a hospital. And the washing machines were split into two levels, one above the other.

The small LCDs next to the round doors suggested they could be locked with a number code.

It was a lot like a laundromat, except that it was free.

“A laundry room, huh?” said Kamijou half in exasperation while carrying a large quantity of laundry.

Like with the dining hall, the girls dorm had all sorts of perks the boys dorm didn’t. It really didn’t seem fair when they all went to the same school!!

(But I guess that’s how dorm life is. The focus is on protecting the girls, so the boys dorm only exists as “somewhere to put the boys that keeps them away from the girls”.)

Anyway, he wasn’t familiar with this manufacturer’s washing machines. It was a little daunting. He knew he just had to dump his laundry inside, shut the door, and press the button, but his eyes were drawn to the warning label on the machine.

First, he placed his laundry basket on the floor and sat on the bench.

There was a giant detergent bottle on the floor…but was that for refills? The label said Miracle Enzyme Z. In big, bright writing. …Had Fukiyose mail-ordered this out of her own pocket and left it in the laundry room?

(Our new and improved catabolic enzyme removes even the stubborn oil stains on ventilation fan… If I use that on my clothes, will it bleach them all white?)

What looked like a manga magazine sat on one end of the bench. Someone must have been reading it while waiting and then left it here.

“What’s this?”

Kamijou Touma was more than a little familiar with Japanese culture and thus knew how to read manga…but he had never heard of this manga magazine before. A long list of titles was given on the cover, but he focused on the title of the manga depicted on the cover.



Yuri-



Kamijou quickly covered the cover with the blanket lying nearby.

He hid it.

Hold on.

Just to be sure, he was in a girls dorm right now, wasn’t he?

So this probably wasn’t a shounen magazine. And the target demographic was probably a little higher than shoujo manga. Was this really something an ignorant boy should be intruding upon?

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

What was that thing? He was tempted to remove the blanket and take a look inside the magazine, but he couldn’t.

The pressure was too powerful.

He felt a pain prickling his skin.

No, that was only a magazine and it wasn’t radiating any kind of energy.

He belatedly realized what he was feeling.

He was nervous.

(It can’t be. Kamijou-san has the blood of an otaku coursing through his veins…yet I’m too intimidated to even try this!?)

He could read and enjoy a cheerful 4koma manga about a group of girls, but would this really fall into that simple category? …He suspected it wouldn’t. That wasn’t what real girls did. He expected to be hit by something from a different angle altogether. What if it was like one of the ads that appeared frequently while he watched videos on his phone? The psychological damage would be too great if it was a manga where an average-looking office lady had her heart snagged by a host and was dragged down to rock bottom. Although with the Yuri in the title, it might be a gaudy hostess who snagged the average-looking office lady’s heart.

But yuri, huh?

The magazine appeared to carry only that kind of manga, but what was it doing here in a girls dorm?

“…”

The next thing that caught Kamijou’s attention was a scent.

It came from the blanket he had used to cover the magazine. It was faint but familiar. Yes, it smelled just like the blue blanket he had found covering him when he woke up during the freezing morning!

Besides, it was weird to find a blanket sitting in the laundry room.

Why was it here?

If it wasn’t meant to be here, then had it been forgotten here by the same person as the magazine?

“Hm? In that case…did the dining hall woman leave them here?”

Maybe it would be best to stop thinking about this.

Alarm bells were ringing deep in his instincts. Or so it seemed. This cast an entirely different light on that woman floating in the large bath during the day and prowling the dorm at night…

“Wait. No, no, wait.”

He had to think about this rationally. He understood wanting to focus on this at Mach speed after finding it in a girls dorm, but that was just his otaku blood running wild. He needed to step back and simulate this. If she had left the magazine here, the magazine’s owner clearly didn’t try to hide her interests. Which meant she wasn’t too serious about it. Ha ha ha. It was like seeing the ghost’s true identity. If this was actually targeted toward a more casual audience, then there would be nothing wrong with him taking a look at that Yuri-

“Kamijou? What are you doing here?”

“Yikes!?”

“?”

A suspicious look from the entrance pierced into him.

It was Fukiyose Seiri.

She wasn’t carrying a basket or bag full of laundry, so was she here to collect her clean laundry?

She was currently wearing brightly colored unisex sweats. He didn’t know if it was loungewear or sleepwear, but it was a new sight for Kamijou who always saw her in her uniform.

It was 10 PM on a weekday.

…On that note, it felt a bit like a fantasy to see a female classmate at this time of night at all.

Fukiyose, however, didn’t seem bothered by it. For her, it may have been like having a boy mixed into her ordinary life.

The black-haired forehead classmate watched him like he was a strange creature.

“Why are you just sitting around in the laundry room? Your phone will tell you when your laundry is done, so you can just hang out in your room and come collect it in two hours. Are you afraid you’ll fall asleep?”

“No, I just kind of zoned out in here… Maybe it looks too much like a laundromat.”

“Hm.”

Fukiyose started to accept that, but then she froze.

“Wait, are you the kind of guy who finds it soothing to watch girls’ clothing and underwear spinning around in the washing machine?”

“Hey, what even made you think of that? Can you stop being needlessly cautious and explain that to Kamijou-san?”

Now that she had mentioned it, how could he not be curious!? Kamijou ended up further troubling himself for no reason. When he took a look at what was spinning around nearby, he noticed it was leopard print. What high schooler was walking around secretly wearing that? Could it be Himegami!?

“Anyway, if you’re washing your clothes, be quick about it. No one likes a machine hog.”

Kamijou honestly found this strange.

He looked to the two levels of drum-style washing machines lining both walls.

“You’re spoiled. You have this many machines and it still isn’t enough?”

“Of course it isn’t. How many hundreds of students do you think our school has? The girls dorm is split into a few different buildings, but it still isn’t anywhere near enough. A lot of girls get tired of waiting and head out to a laundromat instead.”

That did make sense.

But in that case, why didn’t the girls buy their own washing machine and install it in their room? He didn’t quite understand dorm life here, but it was a lot like living on your own. Wasn’t a washing machine a necessity on the level of a refrigerator?

Kamijou sighed softly.

“Come to think of it, there’s a big bath here too, isn’t there? Why does the girls dorm have so much more infrastructure built in? Although it all seems like a half-measure that actually restricts you more in the end.”

“This is the only dorm life I’ve known, so how should I know? Oh, but an upperclassman did talk about this before.”

“?”

Apparently girls can start spending lots of money on health and beauty products to compete with each other. If someone buys a fancy dryer that emits some kind of ions or whatever and uses it to show off, the others will start buying even more expensive dryers. And that back and forth destroys the basic idea that dorm life is supposed to be cheap.”

“You girls are terrifying.”

So had they had no choice but to add the dining hall and laundry room?

Health and beauty was a realm Kamijou knew nothing about since all he did in the mornings was wash his face with tap water. So appliances designed specifically for that purpose were not a part of his world. If he did have the money to buy them, he would probably end up buying a new game or pair of sneakers instead.

“Also, most people rarely use the big bath. During the day, the dining hall woman floats there naked. And at night, the athletes who go jogging after practice ends at school turn it into their own exclusive bath.”

Kamijou had no desire to approach that bath.

…Because as a girls dorm, there had been no need to make a division between a boys bath and a girls bath when it was built. That meant there was just the one big bath. If he carelessly ran into someone there, he might just end up beaten up by every single girl in the building.

Besides, the individual rooms all had their own small bathrooms.

What was even the point of the big bath?

The school had felt the need to build it, but that didn’t mean the students were going to use it. Hopefully Komoe-sensei wasn’t crying somewhere over it.

“Well, the garbage rules here are the same as at the boys dorm at least.”

“Those are determined by District 7, so they have nothing to do with the dorm.”

“Hm? Does that mean it would be the same for Tokiwadai too?”

“Why do you know anyone from Tokiwadai? Isn’t that a middle school?”

“Well, those rich girls all have maids, so I bet they would say they have no clue about the garbage rules.”

“Why do you know that middle school has maids?”

Because a maid riding a cleaning robot used to visit the boys dorm.

Kamijou and Fukiyose continued chatting and laughing about pointless things.

Except they weren’t talking the entire time.

There were times when they ran out of things to say.

And fell silent.

But then something would come to mind and one or the other would bring up a new topic.

And the process would repeat.

“…”

“…”

Silence again.

The rumble of the large washing machines was the only sound for a while.

But these lulls in conversation were not an uncomfortable thing.

When battling CRC or Coronzon, each and every second had looked like a chance for action. That level of pressure had continued on and on, where even a single step in the wrong direction felt like it would cause everything to fall apart.

And he hadn’t even gotten through it all.

He had in fact died after his battle with Alice.

In that sense, it was truly incredible that he could enjoy this kind of pointless waste of time again.

No longer did he have to gamble it all on each and every action.

He could say whatever he wanted without needing to worry about the source of his information or have any guarantee of its accuracy.

…Time like this was so important.

Kamijou gently narrowed his eyes in appreciation.

It wasn’t obvious treasure. It wasn’t immortality or world domination. But what he found before him here was definitely worth risking his life and facing near certain death to fight for.

The battle itself wasn’t his goal.

There was something he had been clenching his fist and fighting for.

A simple electronic tone sounded.

Kamijou’s laundry was done and even completed the drying phase.

Fukiyose blinked hard in realization.

“Oops, I got lost in conversation there. My laundry was done before I even got here.”

“And after you told me not to hog the machine.”

With that exasperated comment, Kamijou punched the single-use code into the small LCD keys. He couldn’t let anyone know he had set it to 000 because he was afraid he would forget what he had chosen otherwise.

Would laundry here become a new part of his routine?

(The lines and securing a machine is going to be a pain, but I guess it’s still a win since we can use them for free. The cost of the water is actually more than the detergent. That really adds up day after day.)

With that on his mind, he pulled his laundry out through the round door. It was all weirdly warm thanks to the dryer.

And…

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Fukiyose was acting strange.

She had frozen while partially bent over. She should have been taking her own laundry out of another machine, but for some reason her head was turned this way. With a look of shock frozen on her face.

“?”

He followed her gaze.

His gaze landed on the laundry basket in his own arms.

His laundry had been through the dryer, so surely a bee hadn’t gotten into it. A bee that could survive the water, detergent, and drying would be terrifying, though.

But then what was it?

Something seemed off at the very top of the unfolded laundry piled up in his laundry basket. It took him a moment to recognize it.

It was a balled-up white cloth.

With a small ribbon on it.

It was a pair of girls panties.

Death filled the air.

“Why?”

She was astonished.

Unable to process the information before her eyes, Fukiyose simply spoke her question aloud.

“Why is there girls underwear in your laundry?”

(Ahhh, this is Index’s, but I can’t tell anyone I have a nun, a god, and a cat secretly living with me! But what happens here if I can’t explain this!?)

“Wait, wait! Remember the peaceful mood we had going here. We were just reaffirming how important these peaceful and conflict-free days are. Please remember!! We can’t let that fall apart here!”

He tried his best to convince her, but she wasn’t listening.

He expression was entirely blank.

“Did you grab that from another machine?”

“No!”

“Then did you buy it to wear yourself!? No, I just can’t seem to simulate what’s going on in his brain…”

“Eek, it’s not that either!!”