Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter2
Chapter 2
Liberal Arts City was the world’s largest artificial island. It was created on the ocean 50 kilometers west of the California coast. After the filming of a certain movie, it had been remodeled into a certain type of theme park, but the large movie country of America saw value in having it also function as a large facility for research and development of new filming techniques.
It was a collection of attractions that were created by those working on the front lines of the world’s movie business. Those attractions were first seen there and were overflowing with stimulation and wonder.
But Misaka Mikoto knew something.
She knew that every kind of abnormal situation was treated as a “show” there. Even if someone was shot right in front of people’s eyes, they would merely be surprised that an actor had been mixed in with the crowd, surprised at how well the actor was showing pain, and surprised at how real the fake blood looked.
It was an area where no one would be shocked upon seeing a corpse.
And that atmosphere was no coincidence.
There was Saten Ruiko.
“Wow, Misaka-san!! When did they get you to join the show!?”
Even after seeing Mikoto get involved in a real incident, she thought it was part of a show.
There was Uiharu Kazari.
“I-Is it really okay to show off Academy City powers publicly like that?”
She was a little worried, but she was worried about the wrong thing.
There was Shirai Kuroko.
“…Onee-sama?”
She was a little suspicious, but it had nothing to do with an incident or a fight.
And then there was Misaka Mikoto herself.
“…What is going on here?” she muttered.
No one could hear her quiet voice that had a bit of annoyance mixed in.
“Just what is going on in this city?”
Fwoom.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!”
Whoosh.
“Mgyaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!”
Fwoosh.
“Funyaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!”
Uiharu Kazari let out all those yells and then exited the private showers lined up near the hotel. She had been playing in the ocean all day until the sun went down, but all the seawater on her soft skin had been washed away. In fact, there was not a drop of water on her hair, skin, or swimsuit and the smell of salt water was completely gone.
She lightly tugged on the swimsuit that looked like she had just bought it and then her classmate, Saten Ruiko, approached her swinging an arm around.
The area was getting dark and the richly colored lights characteristic of theme parks had been turned on, but Saten was still the same as ever.
“Oh, Uiharu. How was it? Wasn’t that amazing!?”
“Was that thing a full body dryer? That’s a pretty major device. It washes and dries your swimsuit and your body as well…”
“Well, you wear your swimsuit everywhere except for your hotel room bed here, right? They’d rather you were clean and dry when you enter the hotel.”
Uiharu and Saten continued to give noises of admiration.
They lived in Academy City where the technology was about 20 or 30 years ahead, but Academy City was in western Tokyo, so they did not have many opportunities to use technology related to the ocean. That kind of research would obviously be done in Academy City, but the children of the city did not get a chance to use it.
Saten rubbed her upper arms.
“…But Liberal Arts City sure is cheap to charge for the cream that keeps the dryer mode from drying up your skin.”
“Ah ha ha. Yes. The theme park builds up this image with everything from the scenery down to the smallest details, but when they start bringing up money, it takes you back to reality.”
“And that wind pressure was amazing. It shot my breasts right out of my top.”
“Bfoeh!? S-Saten-san…?”
“Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have hit the quick dry switch. And my top is supposed to stick to my skin like a NuBra…Wait, if you were wearing a normal bikini, they’d be blown out for sure!”
Uiharu blushed at that topic of conversation, but there must not have been anyone around who knew Japanese because the passing foreigners did not look their way.
Saten Ruiko cared the least about her surroundings and she grabbed Uiharu’s hand.
“Okay, let’s go find Misaka-san and Shirai-san and then go get some dinner!”
“By the way, why did all the food on the menu at lunch have the titles of movies?”
“That restaurant gives you the food that appeared in various movies. If you aren’t familiar with the movie, you’ll have no idea what food you’ll be getting.”
“…I see. So that’s why I got a toothpaste-like tube of space food when I ordered Alien Wars.”
Uiharu had a distant look in her eyes as she and Saten entered the hotel.
“Oh, right. Have you checked in with the teacher? We have to do it in the morning and in the evening, right?”
“The roll call is after dinner. We’re free to eat anywhere we want. But I can’t believe we have to line up in front of the hotel as they call out our names. How lame. That makes it obvious we’re here on a school trip.”
The large hotel had over 800 rooms. It was mainly made of sparkling white marble with a few amber accents made of wood. Red carpet was laid out on the path the guests would take like it was some sort of movie palace.
People of all sorts of races were coming and going in the lobby making it clear that the city was popular all over the world.
“Are you bothered by all the guys looking at you, Uiharu? A leer is the same worldwide.”
“…I’m sure it’s you and your bikini that’s drawing attention, Saten-san.”
“Heh. But the way you’re fidgeting oddly and rubbing your thighs together is much sexier.”
“Ee!? I-I’m not….!”
Saten walked through the large atrium lobby that an entire large passenger plane could fit inside. Uiharu walked next to her and then suddenly asked her classmate a question.
“By the way, what do you want to eat for dinner? Even this hotel has plenty of restaurants in it.”
“Hmm. I’m kinda in the mood for Chinese. Well, I can just ask the hotel manager where a good restaurant is.”
“Oh, Saten-san, you can speak English?”
Uiharu held a waterproof cell phone in her hand. She had downloaded a voice recognition application that also translated for her, so she could speak Japanese into it and it would speak in English for her. Uiharu only had a first year middle school textbook knowledge, so the instant the battery died, she was dead in the water.
“Ah ha ha. We’re both humans right? I can get my words across through feeling alone. Hey, you, boy! Chinese food want eat delicious restaurant please!?”
“Gyaaahh!! I-I don’t think that’s going to cut it! You can only fumble around so much!!”
Uiharu started blushing, but the hotel worker must have managed well enough with the words and nuance Saten had thrown at him because he explained mostly via gestures that they had to take a turn up ahead and they would find one.
Saten nodded confidently.
“It seems there is an amazingly good Chinese restaurant, but it gets really busy around this time so we should wait until later. What do you think, Uiharu? If you’re so hungry you need to eat now, we can go somewhere else.”
“…A-am I just a very unsophisticated girl?”
Saten cheerfully handed a tip to the hotel worker and then waved at him as Uiharu felt slightly depressed.
They decided to look for Mikoto and Shirai so they could eat that amazingly good Chinese food and then Mikoto appeared out of the elevator hall with perfect timing.
But her face was red and she was running as quickly as she could.
“Gyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”
“Wai-…wha-…M-Misaka-san!?”
Uiharu called out her name and Mikoto immediately turned her head in that direction.
However, she remained silent.
With a clear liquid welling up at the edges of her eyes, Mikoto ran straight for Uiharu. She leapt into Uiharu’s arms and refused to let go.
“Funyaaaahhhh!? Wh-wh-wh-wh-what is this all of a sudden, Misaka-san!?”
“I-I was scared!! I was so scared!!”
As Mikoto yelled, she was trembling and she was rubbing her nose into Uiharu’s small chest.
Saten placed a hand on her chin.
“Uiharu, this might be that cute kind of development where it turns out the ultimate invincible Ace of Tokiwadai is actually super afraid of roaches.”
“No. This is in a completely different dimension!!”
Mikoto finally pulled her face out of Uiharu’s chest and held out a magazine in her hand.
It seemed to be a swimsuit catalogue.
“K-Kuroko was reading this! She was muttering something about choosing another one. I casually looked over and now I don’t know what to do!!”
Uiharu and Saten grabbed the catalogue from Mikoto and started flipping through the pages.
And then they seriously regretted that encounter with the unknown.
“G-gyaaahhhh!? Uiharu, this is…wait, what!? I can manage – just barely – to understand the T back here, but this is an O and this is a V and this…Eh? An I!? How is that supposed to stay on!?”
“L-look at this, Saten-san. It says it’s a low leg, but there’s only 5 centimeters from the inseam to the waist!! It’s like it’s a…belt?”
“Watering material…? This is a see-through bikini with colored liquid inside…is that really okay!? It says the pattern changes depending on the slant of your body, but can you really not see anything through it!?”
“A reflective crystal bikini…? This is basically a mosaic! It’s true you can’t see things properly, but the color remains the same!!”
Saten and Uiharu’s faces were bright red as they started to wonder what kind of inhuman punishment game would lead to wearing things like that. Every item in the catalogue was full of danger to a maiden on the level of no longer being able to be a bride.
Misaka Mikoto, the Ace of Tokiwadai, sobbed which was rare for her.
“Th-there’s no guarantee that she only brought one swimsuit. What if Kuroko is still hiding an even worse bomb? I-if Kuroko clings to me wearing something with even more of an impact than the one from today…what am I supposed to do!?”
If someone wearing those kinds of things was walking next to them or clinging to her, Saten and Uiharu would be embarrassed, too. They could not just leave such an obscene girl to her own devices.
But what were they supposed to do about it?
Was there an effective method of sealing that pigtailed monster that was like an incarnation of freedom of expression?
The three of them silently thought for a bit and then an older girl passed by them who looked like some sort of celebrity having just finished a lovely dinner. She was wearing a black one piece swimsuit with sparkling gold thread sewn into it and a large pareo wrapped around her waist.
The three girls watched the celebrity-like girl’s butt as she walked off seemingly purposefully shaking her hips back and forth.
“A pareo! That’s it!!”
At that same time, Shirai Kuroko was rolling around in her bed still wearing the same swimsuit while digging through a ridiculously huge suitcase.
“Hmm… Just being highly revealing may not be enough. This one looks like a white school swimsuit at first, but it all becomes see through except for the three most important points when it gets wet. Maybe this one. It’s a string swimsuit that makes seven different transformations while wearing it. Heh heh heh… Onee-sama’s face when it transforms in front of her eyes would be something to see…”
Shirai was holding a swimsuit that did not have even a millimeter of cloth and was made of braided strings so it covered up the bare minimum of space. She laughed as she plotted something, but then the electronic lock to her room’s door started making odd noises.
“What? What?”
The instant Shirai looked over, the door burst open. Misaka Mikoto entered with sparks crackling from her bangs.
Seeing that, stars starting sparkling in Shirai’s eyes.
“Oh!? My, my, Onee-sama!? I never thought you would be so in the mood that you would break my lock to sneak a visit to my roo-….gwoohhh!? Ah, it’s so hot in this thing!? What’s with this large piece of cloth!?”
“It’s called a pareo! It’s meant to cover up the delicate zone of shyer people! Everything about you is worth being shy over, so it’s going to cover up all of you!!”
“S-stop, stop!! Don’t wrap me up like a teru teru bouzu! And this is more like an elementary school swimming towel than a pareo…mghgmghg….”
Uiharu and Saten had heard the commotion from out in the hall and then they heard the sound of the door opening. The looked over and saw Mikoto looking oddly refreshed.
“Okay, we’re ready! Now we can freely enjoy dinner.”
“??? What about Shirai-san…Ee!?”
Uiharu Kazari’s shoulders jumped when she saw Shirai Kuroko wrapped up from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet many times over with a large piece of cloth making her look like some kind of lame bigfoot.