Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume15 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===

She was eating curry.

Were all the people walking by on their way to or from one of the cooperative institutions? Among all the businessmen moving to and fro, Leivinia Birdway was eating beef curry in the international airport lounge.

Kamijou Touma couldn’t keep up with her.

“Why curry rice? Two dangerous people traveled all the way to Japan and something’s clearly about to happen, and you’re eating curry rice!?”

“It’s not my fault Japanese airports have great curry rice for some reason! And this is a Japanese specialty, just like sushi and tempura. You can’t find curry rice in India and you can search far and wide across Europe without finding this ‘European-style’ curry they only make in Japan!!”

Lessar was really into it too. She had ordered the seafood curry. She was making a valiant defense of her plate whenever Birdway’s spoon approached to steal some.

Did their government plane not serve an in-flight meal?

“Without Mark and the others with me, I need someone else at my beck and call. You can shirk that duty if you want, but if my fools decide you were rude to their cabal boss, you might just receive a ‘thank you visit’ from a group in black suits and sunglasses, so be careful.”

How could he react to that except to tremble?

…But why was it Kamijou’s duty to serve Birdway anyway? Hadn’t Lessar been sent with her for that kind of thing???

But then Lady Birdway’s face went blank.

And she spoke with her voice pitched horrifyingly low.

“if you don’t want to, that’s fine. I can always make do on my own. Hmm, I see how it is.”

“Eh? Wait, where did this terrifying atmosphere come from, Birdway-san? C-c’mon, stop puffing out your cheeks and pouting your lips and look at me. Now can you smile for me?”

“Don’t provoke her. If the boss of the infamous Dawn-Colored Sunlight decides to take this seriously and goes all out, this entire area will be reduced to rubble!”

“Wait!? But all the mail lost across Academy City is supposed to end up here in District 23. If you include the packages containing a single bar of soap people ordered online, that’s tens of thousands a day! If I have to search each building, room, shelf, and box for the document proving I’m alive, I’ll never find it. If I can’t check their giant computer for it, it’ll be lost forever, so don’t destroy it! My life will be overrrrrrrrrr!!”

“Hmph.”

The curry-eating girl wouldn’t look him in the eye, much less smile.

This meant she had more or less taken his future hostage! Thoughts raced through Kamijou’s mind. …Birdway and Lessar were essentially a pair of little bombs and he couldn’t afford to let them out of his sight. It would be best to stay with them until he had that document in his grasp.

Lessar cackled like this had nothing to do with her.

“By the way, Kamijou-san, where are your usual companions today? Y’know, the big-headed nun and the big-headed god.”

“Don’t let them year you say that…”

“”What, you want us to start keeping secrets just between the two of us? Welcome to the start of a sordid and immoral new life!!”

Kamijou had only come to District 23 because Komoe-sensei had suddenly given him the “held back” death sentence at school and he needed to get her to reconsider. He had come here directly after school without even stopping by his dorm where Index and Othinus were waiting.

With a look of dawning realization, the joking light vanished from Lessar’s eyes.

“…Wait, you mean this is a real opportunity?”

“Hey, those eyes are terrifying.”

Getting her to look after Birdway was looking like a far distant dream.

Birdway herself poked curiously some red fukujinzuke with her spoon as she spoke.



“So Hamazura Shiage, you say? Quite an interesting piece to appear on the board.”



She said it like she was enjoying rolling a piece of hard candy around in her mouth.

And with a thin smile.

She had met Hamazura before, hadn’t she? In Kamijou’s dorm and elsewhere.

…''The name was beginning to gain some real significance for Kamijou as well.

Hamazura Shiage had witnessed the moment of Great Demon Coronzon’s death. In the shipyard containing a sliced drone carrier, he had shouted “wait”. And Kamijou hadn’t done so.

Kamijou had killed Coronzon to protect the world.

But what was the world for Hamazura?

“So he really was the criminal they were handing over. …What about him?”

“Well, he certainly is a threat. After all, he knows things about Coronzon no one else does. Maybe she was a cute, lonely, and pure girl. If he started spreading and disseminating information about Coronzon, she might start gaining supporters. No, in that case, it would be called proselytizing and evangelizing, wouldn’t it? Heh heh. For the Church of Coronzon, perhaps? You can see why the Anglicans are so on edge they built a special cell for him.”

“…Really?”

This was sharply diverging from his expectations.

The Church…of Coronzon?

Coronzon’s death had turned Hamazura into a threat. …Kamijou had assumed that was a scientific and physical issue like the possibility of him directly starting a firefight or setting off a bomb.

Birdway shrugged.

“You didn’t think killing Coronzon herself would immediately clean up all the problems she was spreading around, did you? A human’s influence on the world doesn’t vanish the instant they die. And here we’re talking about a great demon straight out of myth. It wouldn’t surprise me if her death actually caused her presence to grow. …And in every era, there is a subset of the population who are fed up with their lives. If those people start gathering around the banner of Coronzon, it could lead to an apocalyptic ideology spreading around the world. You can imagine the Anglicans and Academy City aren’t fond of that idea.”

“Are you sure? From a business standpoint, a global crisis seems like a great chance to win yourself some believers. Ha ha ha. The apocalypse is the ultimate opportunity!”

With her usual penchant for inappropriate comments, Lessar appeared to have $ signs in her eyes. But wait. Did they even use dollars in the UK?

“Hamazura Shiage took Coronzon’s side. That brought some very real disadvantages for him and got him treated as a criminal, but his psychological stance hasn’t changed. That makes him living proof that ''people can worship an absolute evil''. If one person has done it, then there’s a chance more will as long as the conditions are right.”

There are no pure demons. “Demon” is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.

…According to Index, that had been Aleister’s theory.

Coronzon was known as a great demon, but based on that theory, she may have the traits necessary to draw people to her outside of a certain mythology.

The seeds planted in Hamazura were bad news whether he sowed them around or let them sprout within him.

In a way, they were even more dangerous than Adikalika or Dakshina Kalika.