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

===Part 2===

“…”

Kamijou Touma was in the dining hall.

With his time-sensitive trash work complete, he had hoped for a relaxed and leisurely breakfast, but then he froze up.

When he faced the ticket machine’s LCD screen, he saw another new item under the new tab.



Vegetable curry.



“Y-you’re kidding!! What am I even supposed to imagine here!? Vegetable is just too broad a category!”

This was that gyaru-ish young woman’s doing. She wasn’t quite a dorm manager. There were unconfirmed reports going around that she would strip down and float in the dorm’s large bath when she got bored during the day. …But that didn’t fix this problem.

Yes, the pointy-haired boy knew how to cook, so he wasn’t going to go easy on her. In fact, he wouldn’t have to bother the bento shop woman at all if he just had a kitchen in his room!

Also, why didn’t this one have a sample photo either?

Vegetable curry.

Kamijou had a fair amount of experience analyzing the abilities of magicians and espers in life-or-death battles, but he was helpless here. He couldn’t even hazard a guess.

Plopping a single giant oden daikon radish on top of curry rice would technically count! If he was served curry with a ton of sliced onion instead of rice, he wouldn’t have any right to complain!! All it said was vegetable curry, so there was no guarantee it would even have rice. Of course, he could be overthinking it. But there was that egg curry from yesterday. They all would have happily accepted it if it had been a sliced boiled egg, a rolled omelet, or a fried egg on top, but instead of going sweet or salty, that woman had gone with scrambled eggs! With a culinary sense like that, how could he hope to predict what this would be!!?

He couldn’t work up the resolve here. And if he couldn’t bring himself to take the safe path up the mountain, a courageous withdrawal was the only option. While you did only live once, that didn’t mean you had to adopt a dangerous spirit of accepting any and all challenges. There had to be other options. Like a safe ginger pork set or oyakodon!!

With some trouble, Kamijou searched out the set tab among the mountain of categories, skimmed through it, and couldn’t believe his eyes.

“T-the screen is so dark. And covered in red Xs. Everything normal is sold out!?”

“Probably from everyone avoiding the vegetable curry.”

It violated the spirit of capitalism.

He was only a little late and this was what he had to deal with? He had money but no freedom to choose. How was this any better than a ration system!?

With Himegami and Fukiyose watching over him from behind, Kamijou chose the vegetable curry with a trembling finger. And why was it so hot in here!? Having teenage girls gathered close enough he could feel their breaths on his ears came as a real shock!

Please let it be something like a summer vegetable curry packed full of potatoes and carrots! Kamijou shut his eyes and made a wish. He belatedly realized it was the opposite of summer and all hope shattered in his heart.

“Here you go.”

“That was fast!! Only having time to speak a few words is so worrying!”

He was handed his food from beyond the counter. In 1.5 seconds again.

He couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at.

“???”

He followed the flow of the crowd, carrying his tray to the table, where he gave it another look.

Vegetable curry.

“What…is this? It just looks like brown roux to me.”

“Wait. There’s some small yellow lumps inside the curry. It’s hard to tell because it melted from the heat, but these aren’t spices.”

“It’s quinoa. This is the super food quinoa!!”

Detective Fukiyose revealed the truth.

It wasn’t fair. Didn’t one of so-and-so’s ten commandments say quinoa couldn’t be the culprit!?

“Wait, does that even count as a vegetable!? Sure, it’s a plant, but like with millet, isn’t it categorized more as a grain than a vegetable? Isn’t it something like a friend of rice!? Not that I have any idea how quinoa is grown!!”

“Kamijou Touma, that argument isn’t going to work. Quinoa is used in salads too, so we have no way of denying that it can be called a vegetable!”

“That’s absurd. Dammit, Fukiyose, are you going to say potato salad and macaroni salad count as vegetable salads just because they use plants!? Ham salads exist, but you’d better not be telling me ham is a vegetable. We have a real case this time!!”

“No, we don’t. This isn’t a detective story. This is the real world. No matter how unbelievable a situation we find ourselves in, we have to face the truth before us.”

So solving the mystery didn’t make anyone happy? Now that was a merciless sort of perfect crime.

Kamijou stuck his spoon in it.

There was no resistance.

He tried a bite.

It was like eating curry with nothing in it. The roux was thinner, like a soup curry, so it didn’t feel like he was eating anything at all. He knew it wasn’t anatomically possible, but it went down so easily he thought it was skipping right past his stomach.

How could this possibly have 800 Calories? That was a lot! Kamijou shuddered. What was the quinoa even doing? Was it a mass producer of obesity!? This wouldn’t keep him feeling full for even an hour. He just knew he’d be visiting a convenience store and snacking on all sorts of things later!!

Kamijou hung his head and trembled.

But then he raised his head with renewed conviction.



“That’s enough! Let Kamijou-san borrow that kitchen real quick!! I can cook, so I’ll show you how you can feed students on the cheap!!!”



Himegami and Fukiyose had to hold him back.

Apparently fire safety and sanitation rules didn’t allow for guest cooks.

But wasn’t that bento shop woman a guest here too!?