Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter1
Chapter 1: Go Get That New Year’s Eve Job – Away_SHIBUYA,31.[edit]
Part 1[edit]
“…ey, you. Hey. You should probably wake up, boy!”
Kamijou Touma’s mind was shaken awake by the voice shouting into his ear. Only after realizing he didn’t know who the voice belonged to did he realize his eyes were shut.
He had to pour all his might into forcing his eyelids open.
“What is going- eh? Kumokawa-senpai?”
“I’ll admit some things came up and I arrived late, but were you really so bored you ended up napping on the sidewalk people probably walk their dogs on?”
Kumokawa Seria, his busty upperclassman with her glossy black hair held back by a hairband, gave him an exasperated look while crouching down and poking him on the forehead. The mature upperclassman’s casual clothing was a thick coat and the kind of tight skirt suit a capable schoolteacher might wear, so it was worrying in a number of ways when she crouched in front of him like that. (And wasn’t she cold wearing such a skintight blouse for a top?)
But the pointy-haired boy was too confused to focus on any of that.
Realization slowly sank in, but once it dawned on him that he had been stabbed in the back, it avalanched into his mind like panic setting in.
He sprang to a sitting position.
“Eh? Huh!?”
“Hyah?”
Kumokawa jumped and shrank down in an unexpectedly cute way, but he didn’t even notice.
Was he still in District 11? At the east gate? What had happened after that?
“Wait, wait, wait. What’s going on here? Someone spoke to me from behind and I didn’t even have time to turn around. I heard some weird and disconcerting sounds from my body and then my spine – yeah, that’s right! It pierced right through my back! So what happened to me!?”
He ran his hands along his chest and stomach.
“Huh? There’s nothing wrong with me?”
“Did you have a bad dream?”
The way her exasperation was gradually shifting to suspicion was adorable.
He wasn’t injured. His spine hadn’t been shattered, his flesh hadn’t been torn away, his clothes weren’t ripped, and there wasn’t a drop of blood on him.
The digital clock on a building wall said it was 9:15 AM.
What had he been doing for the past 15 minutes?
“You’re getting really worked up over nothing. Were you that afraid of heading out of the city to visit Shibuya? Look, your coat still has the price tag attached.”
“Eh? Huh?”
“Stay still. I’ll cut it off for you.”
Kumokawa Seria pulled a small pair of scissors from a portable sewing kit and cut the plastic thread. That upperclassman was so perfect she even showed off homemaking skills that felt incongruous with her sexy looks.
“Touma. Huff, puff.”
Then he heard Index’s voice. She had the cat on her head and Othinus on her shoulder, the latter trembling in fear while just barely out of range of the former’s front paws. The way that arrogant god was clinging to the white hood of the nun’s habit was just like a terrified girl in a haunted house.
“Huff, puff. W-we finally caught up, so let’s go get something to eat. Ugh, I can’t go on eating the mystery veggies I grew by sprinkling watered-down ketchup in a corner of the balcony.”
“Heh heh. Don’t worry, Index. Cotton candy can fill your stomach with its great size, but it started out as nothing more than grains of sugar. Humans can eat the mist or the air if they’re clever enough.”
“It isn’t fair that Sphinx has cat food and catches mice to eat.”
“And he’s trying to eat me as we speak. The animal lovers in this country get mad at you if you catch a pigeon and eat it, don’t they? I might try raising mice if they really did multiply as fast as people say, but apparently it isn’t true. Yikes, he’s trying it again! Human, bring me a book of your country’s laws! I need to find a legal way for me to eat this cat!!”
Technically, they were leaving the city to earn the money needed to buy food, not to directly get something to eat, but Index was skipping that first step in her head. Their New Year’s Tokyo survival life wasn’t over yet. And while they played that game, the god of poverty had grown to a hellish size.
Kumokawa placed a hand on her chin after listening to the poor student, the mysterious nun, the cat, and the god.
“Your idea of survival has a very urban slant to it and it’s based on Academy City standards. This is technically Japan’s capital, you know? And I thought you lived in the dorms where the adults are supposed to be taking care of you.”
Kamijou started to think he might have simply collapsed from hunger. People’s memories were malleable, so his mind might have invented a reason for passing out after the fact.
(Yeah, that sounds more likely. I mean, I already have amnesia.)
Now they all had to leave the city together.
They showed their departure permits at the east gate, which had a very open feel to it. It looked like no more than a small guard booth with a flimsy barrier like at a railroad crossing, but it actually had a thick shutter that would drop down like a guillotine and was guarded by dangerous firearms and unmanned weapons. Tracking nanodevices were injected into their arms with a pshh of air. The cat and god were exempt from that process, earning them an envious look from Index who hated injections (even when they didn’t involve a needle).
Kamijou looked back the way he had come while he stepped out past the thick wall.
“There’s usually a lot more Anti-Skill here. Are they all on winter break?”
“(Knowing the new Board Chairman, he might start using those mass-produced military clones to fill out the ranks of the city’s law enforcement. Someone has to replace everyone who was lost and, if he wants the people to support protecting them, it can’t hurt to give them an official position that lets them prove their worth to society.)”
“?”
The mysterious upperclassman was so perfect she always seemed to be a million steps ahead, but that led to one of her few flaws: she sometimes said things that were so far above his head he failed to understand what she was even talking about.
Leaving through the east gate placed them in the vicinity of Shinjuku, but since Kamijou’s gang was so devastatingly poor, they were forced to walk the rest of the way. He was so thankful for free apps at times like this. He checked his old folks smartphone and it told him they only needed to travel a few kilometers south.
“The phone bill is due at the end of the month, right? Human, that means the 31st, so if you don’t get any money today, they’ll shut off your service.”
“…”
“Also, boy. If you thoughtlessly fail to pay your phone bill enough times, it will affect your credit rating. I believe there’s even an urban legend saying two or three late payments is enough to cut you off from getting a credit card. If you don’t want to be digging yourself out of this hole for the next decade or longer, you’re going to have to work your ass off today.”
The boy too poor to ride the train was persistently marching onward with his own two legs, but nothing anyone had to say to him was making him feel any better.
He passed by a man who seemed to be out on a pleasant morning jog. Kamijou’s gang could only be described as “trudging along”, but the distances involved were more the “casual exercise” variety.
Kumokawa toyed with the hair draped over her shoulder while walking alongside him.
“Here, I’ll hail a taxi for you. All it takes is a quick wave of my phone.”
“Stop it, you bourgeois. I’m here to make money, not spend it.”
“Did you forget to do the math? The taxi fare is the same no matter how many people you have riding with you.”
He had bigger concerns right now.
He took the fateful step.
“Ugh.”
Halfway down a seemingly ordinary road, he felt something crawling up him from his feet. He had stepped on something here. It was like he had crossed an invisible barrier. He wasn’t taking a train, so there was no obvious sign or set backdrop telling him he had arrived in Shibuya. He knew that, but still.
“I think we’re about at Shibuya now,” bluntly stated Kumokawa Seria.
“Eeek!!”
“I said ‘about’. We’re still in Harajuku. Hee hee.”
“…”
“Ow! Hey, cut it out! Don’t use your fist against a girl! Stop silently giving me a noogie!”
Thanks to that, Kamijou Touma was forced to scream again once they actually left Harajuku.
“Abwahhh!!!!”
“What’s wrong, Touma? Why are you trembling and sticking your head between my back and my hood?”
Index’s voice sounded so distant.
And he lost sight of where he even was.
There was so much color. Too much. There were clothing stores, record stores, and was that a store just for sneakers? Land here was so expensive that all the stores were tiny and seemed crammed together, but they all tried to stand out by using lots of primary colors and it made his eyes hurt. It reminded him of children’s building blocks or a notebook covered in thick lines from different colors of highlighter. He ended up recalling the trivia he had learned about a certain country developing an incapacitating weapon where they launched a grenade full of LSD into enemy territory.
“Why are they like this?” He spoke in a vanishingly quiet voice while trembling behind a girl a head shorter than he was. “Why are they all so supremely confident in their extreme taste in colors!?”
“Hm, are they though? Most people say Shibuya has gotten a lot chicer lately.”
Apparently it didn’t bother some people as much.
This did a lot more damage to Kamijou since he had drawn a line between the people who could survive here and those who couldn’t. He wanted to find some way of dragging this busty upperclassman onto his side of the divide.
“Do the people here hate how their surroundings look so much they feel the need to fill everything with their own colors!? That manga artist known worldwide for his sharp aesthetic sense caused so much controversy with his striped house, but the people of Shibuya don’t seem to care at all! It’s terrifying. If the people here can feel remotely relaxed looking at this colorful assault on the senses, then what color do they see when they look at a strawberry shortcake!?”
“I will admit things are wilder here than near the train station, but this is far from the worst area. I mean, all we’ve done is walk a bit south past that big shrine in Harajuku.”
“Hold on, Senpai. Why are you still dressed so lewdly when we’re in Shibuya? You’re dressed like a schoolteacher and also showing off your midriff. Won’t a group of hip hop guys in giant T-shirts surround you and harass you?”
“First of all, there aren’t groups carrying giant boomboxes around Shibuya. Second of all, not everyone here hates teachers. And third of all, ‘hip hop guys’ aren’t bad people.”
“And then I’ll be forced to intervene to help you. That sounds like misfortune to me, so I just know it’s going to happen!!”
“Hm. I like the sound of that, so maybe I should undo another button.”
He had to restrain the beautiful girl before she could invite in disaster.
At any rate, this was apparently not the center of Shibuya that Japan liked to show off to the world, but he was already feeling his HP dropping with each step he took. Demon Castle Shibuya was a fearsome place indeed.
“What is your deal with Shibuya, human?” Othinus sounded thoroughly exasperated. “You saw worse than this in the world I created. And you walked through even more fashionable areas of London and LA without batting an eye.”
That was different. It was like how an actor in a foreign film speaking a foreign language looked cool no matter what they were wearing or saying, but it just seemed silly in a domestic film using your own language. He had been so overwhelmed by the scenery in the UK and the US that he had overlooked these differences, but they managed to hit home and rattle his soul when he was in Japan. The difference in style was terrifying! He was a high school boy so poor he couldn’t even shop at Uniqlo and wore synthetic materials that stank of insecticide, so he was afraid he might just spontaneously combust after trying to enter Shibuya. He trembled, feeling like he was violating a taboo along the lines of carelessly placing a metal spoon in the microwave.
“What are you so afraid of, boy? You’ve never been to Shibuya before, have you? So what do you even know about it?”
“I-I know enough!! Shibuya is a post-apocalyptic underground world of fashion where the buildings have numbers like 110 or 119 on them. If you let your guard down for a second, someone will have you carrying a mysterious herb for them!! And it’s dangerous for girls!!!!!!”
“Were you watching some kind of police special on TV? Is that why you think the world works like a video game rated 17+? Just so you know, your idea of Shibuya is about as accurate as a foreigner’s idea of geishas and ninjas.”
Kamijou jumped when a blaring siren and red-flashing lights drove past them from behind. He lost his balance and caught himself on his perfect upperclassman’s shoulder through her super-expensive-looking coat. For some reason, Kumokawa Seria was unable to suppress a grin.
“What the hell was that!?”
“A cop car? Oh, I guess they are fairly different from what Anti-Skill drives in Academy City. But you can find them year-round anywhere, so this isn’t even a Shibuya thing.”
“Then why is that gaudy car split in two!? How the hell did that happen? I thought Level 5s like that white monster didn’t exist out here! Or is there a wild Gemstone with some crazy power wandering around out here!?”
“Huh. Based on what I can find on this video site, it ran full speed into a stainless steel streetlight. The driver survived and no one else was hurt. Oh, and you called it gaudy, but the driver is an 83-year-old man from Osaka.”
“So if you make a mistake here, videos of it are all over the internet in the blink of an eye!? Whatever happened to privacy!?”
Kamijou was already imagining people pointing, laughing, and taking photos of his out-of-place clothing and him ending up with a 30-second rotating panorama video of him going viral on PokPok. In this land of fashion, a single fashion faux pas could plague you for the rest of your life. Scary stuff.
However.
“I’m hungry.”
The surprising number of ramen shops in the area must have been preparing their ingredients for the day. Index picked up the scent of seafood and pork and her comment provided a small injection of strength back into Kamijou’s breaking spirit. That was practically her catchphrase at this point, but it carried a lot more weight this time. They were still living their New Year’s Tokyo survival life.
He needed a job that would pay in cash today.
It didn’t matter what that job was. If he didn’t make some emergency income now, he would have a decent supply of dried human meat in his dorm room by the time the new school year started. As the manager of the dorm room’s kitchen, he wasn’t going to let that happen.
He pulled his old folks smartphone from his pocket.
“Okay, time to find a job. What should I start with?”
Part 2[edit]
It was basically a map app for his phone.
The location service only functioned in the designated area, so it unfortunately didn’t show anything until he was actually inside Shibuya.
The map displayed pins on the restaurants and companies looking for workers. Before entering any kind of search terms, the screen was filled with pins.
“Wow, that’s a lot. The world is overflowing with money!”
“Narrow it down with some search terms, human. You want the ones looking for same-day work that will pay today in cash.”
That took away most of the pins.
All the ramen shops and discount stores were gone.
If the pins were the Amazon rainforest, then the earth was in danger.
“Awww.”
“It’s a miracle anyone is paying in cash in this day and age. Now let’s see what’s left. I already know there won’t be any standardized convenience stores or chain restaurants.”
“Hmm.”
Kamijou was a little overwhelmed by the sweet scent coming from the beautiful upperclassman peering at the screen from the side, but he managed to tap a pin and read the bubble that appeared.
“ ‘Special Cleaning Service (Emergency). Urgent! Change into clothes you’re willing to get dirty and gather at Shibuya Station immediately. Tongs and baskets will be provided by the employer, but you will need to bring your own rubber gloves and boots.’ What’s that about?”
“It’s probably related to a railroad accident. So are the trains stopped right now? We were right to walk to Shibuya then. And I would skip that one. Unless you want to have nightmares full of red and black body parts, that is.”
“There’s also this one: ‘Sanitation Job. All applicants must pass an allergy patch test for formaldehyde and methyl alcohol.’ ”
“That would be for scrubbing corpses floating in a pool of chemicals.”
“ ‘￥￥￥ Much welcome for young and no disease history with healthy organ. Easy job of change into surgical gown and take sleepy pill for best sleep of life $$$’ ”
“Do that and they’ll take your organs! Wow, every one of these jobs is urban legend tier and completely void of morals!! That last one was even in broken Japanese!”
Kumokawa-senpai was supposed to be the Shibuya expert, so Kamijou really wished she wouldn’t get so freaked out. He felt like he had been following a guide deep into the jungle only to find them half in tears and scratching their head trying to figure out where they were.
“So what would be a safe bet?”
“You are asking to be paid in cash – that is, to not leave a paper trail – in an age where all money is digitized either in your bank account or as electronic money on your phone. Most places find using cash to be a pain these days. You should have expected this sort of job when you narrowed down your search that way.”
“Hey, human.” Othinus sighed on his shoulder. “What about this one?”
“?”
“You would be delivering food on a bike. And Shibuya serves an inordinate amount of energy-boosting ramen and garlicy pork bowls, perhaps for all the workers delivering clothing and club equipment. It even says the employer will pay for the bike if you use one of their company’s rentals.”
Part 3[edit]
Kamijou Touma was mildly impressed as he stepped out of a rare(?) non-chain gyudon place.
He looked down at the weighty plastic bag he held.
“Huh, so they seal up the top of the bag and the box’s cover with tape. Not that I need to get inside it just to deliver it.”
“Touma, I smell beef. Drool.”
“I imagine the tape is to keep the deliverer from sneaking some of it like a certain nun is planning,” said Othinus. “But they could make you the perfect delivery boy in more ways than one if they attached a smaller baggie to the underside of the box. You never would know what you were carrying.”
Stop trying to scare me, he thought just as the 15cm god slipped inside the plastic bag. At her size, simply taping up the top wasn’t enough to keep her out.
“No sign of drugs or other dangerous objects. You’re in luck, human. You might not end up on the run from the police for your measly delivery fee.”
“Oh, so I’m not the only one feeling wary of the post-apocalyptic crime land of Shibuya.”
Kamijou sounded exasperated as he removed a key from the rental board. It was known as a rental bike, but it was more like a kick scooter made by attaching T-shaped handlebars to a skateboard.
Index and Kumokawa rented their own kick scooters. A white nun’s habit and a sexy schoolteacher suit were about the last outfits you would expect of someone using a kick scooter.
Whether they were powered or not, any kind of bicycle or board had to be ridden at the very edge of the road, right next to the sidewalk, but it was still pretty dangerous with all the cars parked on the curb and trucks unloading deliveries. Plus, Shibuya was a hilly place with a complex street layout. He had his phone attached to the handlebars with the map showing him where to go, but he had no idea which light to watch when he came to a five-way intersection. So it wasn’t uncommon for a gaudy coupe or a miniature one-person car to honk at him from behind.
“Why am I the only one wearing a backpack?” he asked.
“I don’t need any money, but they let you rent the scooter even if you don’t complete any jobs.”
“A-and you, Othinus-san?”
“Explain to me how I’m supposed to operate a kick scooter at 15cm tall, human.”
“Index!?”
“What’s a job?”
The cat mewed lazily atop the nun’s head.
That was too many “we’re not helping” notifications at once. I was right about having to do all the work myself! he lamented.
The train station area came into view.
Maybe it was the holiday season and maybe it was the railroad accident Kumokawa had mentioned, but there were a surprising number of people around. Everything around him was still part of this fashion zone, but he was still relieved to see the familiar sign for a major bookstore chain. Anyway, it looked more like people were coming here to see the scramble crossing than they were on their way to get somewhere else.
Kumokawa Seria nodded in slight exasperation while waiting for the light to change.
“You aren’t wrong about that, but it’s the 31st. You can find people gathering for New Year’s countdown events all across Japan today.”
He still thought Shibuya was weird for setting this area of road as their final destination.
Just he was wondering if there were any ordinary homes around when land was so pricey in Shibuya, he discovered this delivery was meant for the back entrance to a multi-tenant building. He nervously pressed the intercom for workers and a tanned woman emerged with cream-colored hair swaying. She was around college age, her white camisole seemed insufficient for December 31, and one of the shoulder straps had slipped down.
“Oh, good. My gyudon with extra meat and red pickled ginger is here♪”
She was a very fluffy person. She made no attempt to cover up and various parts of her were quite jiggly. They didn’t know each other’s names and they could only confirm each other’s identities using the one-time-use 8-digit ID number displayed on their phones. He felt like this was managing people’s data even more coldly than they did in Academy City. The fluffy tanned woman checked the contents of the bag first and then turned her interest toward the boy who had delivered it. She waved the phone she had pulled from between her jiggly breasts.
“So you’re stuck working on New Year’s Eve too, huh? I sympathize, so hold your phone out so I can give you a full 5-star rating! I’ll even give you a 2-coin tip for braving the cold☆”
“You’re working too?”
“As a call girl. I’ll finally be getting some sleep after eating this. I’m always so tired once morning arrives.”
“…”
Japan’s largest shopping district was too much for him.
He scrolled through the list of jobs and found someone nearby who wanted a special winter meal from a burger shop. (It was a chain known around the world, but it was only found in Shibuya in Japan.) He had seen this meal advertised in LA, so it must have arrived on Japan’s shores as well. He figured he might as well, so he accepted the job and set out to use his kick scooter to deliver a fast food meal that included a giant burger with beef, pork, and chicken between the buns.
“What a weird place. When you look down any of these narrow roads, you see nothing but bars and small theaters.”
“This is Dogenzaka after all. And boy? That sign you’re staring at is for an adult establishment,” nonchalantly explained Kumokawa Seria-senpai while walking alongside him.
Index didn’t seem to know what that meant, but he could feel the great pressure of Othinus glaring from his shoulder.
At any rate, he continued making similar deliveries.
Before long, he could spot his fellow bike deliverers riding around. He even exchanged a nod with a young man in a helmet who was passing by going the other way. It was a small thing, but it made him feel like he knew what he was doing.
“I think that’s ten deliveries now. Touma, I want to eat lunch.”
“Holy crap. Look at my phone. I have money. I was so poor, but now my funds are going up, Index-san! Man, I’m a little afraid the yen is going to collapse if you can get money this easily!”
“How much did you make? I’ve heard you’re supposed to eat soba on New Year’s in Japan! I want juwari soba with big shrimps on top.”
“I have a whole 980 yen! It’s a miracle. How much is that divided between you, the cat, the god, and me, Index!? We have to divide that by four and then by three meals for each day, so that means-”
The nun kicked off the ground to take her kick scooter on a journey somewhere, so he had to grab her shoulder and stop her.
“What, do you have a problem with this, Index?”
“I want shrimp soba! How much more do you have to work before we can get a least 100 yen per person each day!?”
“You have to be crazy to think we’ll be eating shrimp tempura, Index! Besides, soba tastes better if you go with the nihachi noodles that mix in some wheat and thickener instead of being pure buckwheat!!”
“In your personal opinion, boy.”
“Index, you fool, you can’t expect us to be rolling in money after this. This delivery service is only marginally more expensive than picking it up yourself and the company and the government have to take their cut first, so we’re never going to end up with more money than what the customer paid for the food themselves. This is what happens when you get complacent. Apologize to the money, girl!!”
Index glanced over at something.
There was an unapproachable group of gyarus who didn’t just look like the most popular people in their class or their school but in the entire galaxy. They were lined up at a donut shop where the handwritten blackboard-style sign gave a price of more than 1000 yen for a single donut sitting on a paper plate with a massive pile of whipped cream on top. The price would go up even higher if you added photogenic colorful powders made from cinnamon or mint. Candles and sparklers that had no affect on the flavor or nutrition were listed as 300 yen each.
“Interesting. So those things are popular outside of Academy City too.”
“Touma, look at that number.”
“E-eating out is always expensive. You can’t base anything on those numbers.”
“Do I need to read it out loud for you?”
It was too depressing, so Kamijou quickly covered Index’s mouth with a hand.
It was already midday. At this rate, how much could he even make if he worked his rear off all day? He could probably make a decent amount if he focused on doing this for an entire month, but they didn’t have time for such a long-term plan. But after leaving Academy City for this, he wanted to earn enough to stop worrying about collapsing from hunger.
Also, the delivery job paid the same whether he was delivering a premade meal from a convenience store or a fancy bottle of wine. Nor did he get more for delivering over longer distances like a taxi would. That meant completing more jobs was the only way to earn more.
So…
“Distance is the most important factor.”
“?”
“I want as short a distance as possible between the store and the client for a higher turnover rate. That has to be the trick to making the most money.”
Unfortunately, the map app didn’t display elevation differences, so the simple distance wasn’t always the best metric in such a hilly area.
The list of jobs would not stop scrolling as more and more came in. Since this was all food, it made sense there would be peak hours, but that also meant there would be dead hours. If he wanted to complete a lot of jobs, he needed to really hustle during the lunch hours.
“Let’s see. The closest one would be…the hell is this?”
One job had him bringing food to the center of the public square in front of the train station. On his way toward the bus terminal, he saw a bunch of people in the crowd making weird poses with their phones covered in lenses and microphones bigger than the phones themselves. Shibuya contained a lot of colorful people who barely seemed real, but this looked more like cosplay. After all, the most conspicuous girl only wore something like a training swimsuit below a translucent raincoat. She had the coat closed in front, but that did nothing to hide the slim body within. The large hood and baggy hem of the raincoat made her look like a comical ghost or maybe a clione. She wore a colored contact in one eye and an eyepatch over the other. The eyepatch was presumably see-through from the other side so it wouldn’t hinder her depth perception.
Kamijou was nervous to approach the younger girl.
“Your food is here. Will I get in the way of the cameras if I approach from here?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not streaming right now. But I might have had to kill you if you let the viewers see a guy anywhere near me on stream.”
The small girl looked to be around the first year of middle school, but since she was a customer, she didn’t bother being polite with him. Fortunately, Kamijou didn’t mind after spending so much time around that arrogant, belligerent electric middle schooler (with a flat- well, never mind that).
The cosplay ghost asked him a curious question.
“What is that on your shoulder? A bipedal dancing robot?”
“Shut up, little girl. Keep your hands off me.”
“And it talks!? Wow, do you do tech review videos or something? And the cat on your head is the gold standard! You have my support since I don’t do the robot or animal genres.”
Now the middle school girl was being casual with a cat and a god. Did kids fear nothing at that age? The eyepatch ghost confirmed the delivery on her phone before taking the bag in both hands.
“Oh, right. This Japanese-style pasta has mentaiko with extra butter but no shiso, right?”
“Eh? I honestly couldn’t tell you.”
“Sorry, my bad. I forgot the delivery workers can’t see inside. There’s nothing wrong with shiso, but people tend to just shove a whole bunch of the chopped leaves in their food and then then the whole thing tastes and smells like nothing but shiso, shiso, and more shiso. The miracle that is shiso requires a more delicate touch♪”
It was hard to tell if she liked shiso or not.
She had also mentioned streaming, so she must have been active on a video site. Kamijou had wondered if this was her and her friends having fun in the big city for winter break, but apparently not. The baggy sleeves girl started discussing something with her friends who were carrying phones covered in so many extra lenses and microphones that they looked ready to evolve into six-legged mechanical lifeforms.
“Hey, so how are my numbers doing? No, not my viewer count. What are the donations looking like? Nice, I already have 19 silver coins! Just 10 minutes and I’ve already got about 150 thousand going straight into the bank account I have in my sister’s name. I told you midday on the 31st was the best time. All the people who couldn’t get a ticket to an idol’s New Year’s concert are going to be online with their would-be ticket money burning a hole in their pocket☆”
“I hope lightning strikes you to teach you a lesson about life, you spoiled brat” would be a very rude thing to say to a customer, so Kamijou instead kept a smile while sending waves of dark energy her way.
The friendly ghost must not have been very attuned to other people feelings because she chose to speak to Kamijou’s group some more while opening the clear plastic lid to her Japanese-style pasta (skillfully avoiding getting the baggy plastic sleeves dirty in the process). She apparently opted for chopsticks even though it was pasta. Instead of giving him a tip through her phone, she gave Index the very first bite.
“Hee hee. Is it good?”
“Yeah! Restaurant food is always so good!!”
“It doesn’t taste like shiso?”
“You just wanted a taste tester, didn’t you?”
The ghost shrugged off Kamijou’s exasperated comment and started eating the skinny pasta after mixing in the chopped green onion, mentaiko, and melted butter.
“The Dr. Police are already here. I saw them earlier, but it looks like they’re just sneaking around keeping an eye on things for now.”
“You mean those police officer doctors who show up on TV during Halloween?”
“There was an underground ad from what looked like a burner account offering 100 thousand yen worth of crypto for anyone who punches those showoffs in the middle of the scramble crossing. But they’re cops, so it’d probably be safer to make money by streaming it than by trying it myself.”
“…”
Was this place completely devoid of morals?
The list of jobs shrank considerably after 1PM. People’s mealtimes stayed fairly consistent even during winter break. An older guy who had ordered a large cutlet curry (was it listed as Kanazawa curry?) had told Kamijou he would have to wait until after 10 PM if he wanted to make some real money. There would apparently be a rush of orders for New Year’s soba.
“We’re in high school, so we aren’t allowed to work past 10.”
“Did that accursed misfortune follow me all the way to Shibuya!?”
But he still gave it his all.
The more he rode his kick scooter around, the more money he made.
“W-wow. This job is incredible! I already have 2500 yen!!”
“Human, take a look at that convenience store. It’s help wanted poster says they pay 1500 yen an hour.”
“I hate to wipe that smug grin off your face, Othinus, but are you stupid? We could never do that job. We’re beginners at this working thing. Convenience stores do just about everything from home deliveries to accepting public utilities payments, so amateurs like us couldn’t just step in and start working there. That’s a job for specialists. Every time you line up to check out, make sure to thank them for supporting our everyday lives.”
Kamijou’s group quit working just as the big wave of jobs faded away into nothing.
But one thing still bothered him.
“How do I convert this into cash?”
There were small boxy structures similar to unmanned convenience stores located here and there. They functioned as stations for the kick scooters and accepted the synthetic backpacks used by the delivery workers. There was a machine about the size of a vending machine at once corner and he held his old folks smartphone up to that when the artificial female voice told him to.
“Whoa.”
With a surprisingly deep metallic sound, a few cheap-looking gold coins fell into the opening near the bottom. They reminded him of toy coins or casino chips.
He hesitantly collected them.
“I’m supposed to trade these for cash at a convenience store or drugstore, right? That seems unnecessarily complicated. Why not just give me the cash to begin with?”
This technically qualified as paying him with cash on the same day, but it seemed convoluted. He didn’t use the service much himself, but couldn’t they just have you pay with your phone instead?
Then Kumokawa muttered something under her breath.
“(The idea is probably to have people circulating pieces of ordinary plastic like they have value. It’s an investment meant to eventually allow a limited number of private companies to take control of the currency system away from the governments of the world. You can’t say White Spring has no ambition. Their lack of tradition makes them a lot less reluctant to attempt bold new ideas.)”
“?”
Since he had to receive his cash at a convenience store, Kamijou was afraid he would spend it all immediately. The hot snacks next to the register were awfully tempting. The fried chicken and fries they had in the glass case were basically a trap. The sound of the frying oil joined with the visual and olfactory allure to ensnare your soul.
The convenience store worker seemed accustomed to the process. Registers these days had you insert the coins into the machine like with a vending machine, so that apparently determined if the coins were real or not. At long last, he had some paper money in his hands. After receiving that like he had turned in a winning token at a candy shop, he just stared at the money with one foot still on his kick scooter back on the sidewalk.
After taking a break for that, he couldn’t regather the mental strength needed to start working again.
And something else surprised him as he stared blankly at the alternate dimension that was Shibuya.
“Huh? I’m weirdly used to it now.”
“The way you were freaking out over it before was the weird part,” said Kumokawa Seria.
All his hard work had only earned him 2500 yen. But once he got over his nerves as a beginner, he would get more efficient. If he worked through the evening snack time and the late-night mealtime, he could earn 5000 yen or even a fantastic 10,000 yen. Although a high schooler was only allowed to work until 10 PM.
“Are you going to grab lunch somewhere, boy?” casually suggested his busty black-haired upperclassman.
“I take it back! That donut shop from earlier had a single donut costing more than 1000 yen! I could spend 100 years here and I swear I’d never get used to it. Eating out in fashionable Shibuya has got to be like highway robbery. I came here to earn money, so I refuse to head back in debt!!”
“If you say so. By the way, a multinational restaurant at the Miyashita Ark near the station is doing one of Japan’s ridiculous food challenges. If a single person in the restaurant miraculously manages to finish their XXL bucket-sized shrimp and cheese French ramen, then everyone in the restaurant at the time gets their food for free. Here’s a photo from their website. You can judge the width of the bowl by comparing it to the chopsticks next to it. Use the position of the light source and the bowl’s shadow to calculate its depth.
“Index, I need an expert opinion here. Could you polish this off, soup and all? What about those gross-looking shrimp heads?”
“Bring it on!”
“That settles it then.”
“Wait, I was suggesting this as a challenge for your stomach of a growing boy,” muttered Kumokawa Seria, but he ignored her. He wanted to make sure he could win this one.
These kinds of challenges were used to draw in customers, but they were designed so no one would succeed. Serving size affected the customer’s satisfaction just as much as flavor and it also directly affected the ingredient costs. The experts at a restaurant had already researched everything from their small size to their XXL size, so they had all the data they would need on making an amount that looked doable but no one could actually finish. This would have been calculated out as coldly as the height of a prison fence. But there was one thing they wouldn’t have accounted for: a being whose gastronomical limits far surpassed humanity’s had been released from the giant cage that was Academy City. By the time they realized their mistake, it would be too late. This was about talent, not technique. There were monsters out there who could bring down an entire casino by accurately predicting where the roulette ball would end up just by listening to the subtle differences in the spinning of the wheel. In the same way, some people had had inborn eating talent that no amount of hard work could ever match. She was one of them.
“This French ramen is incredible. Is this photo modified? The soup looks like a neon orange. What did they boil in there to give it that color? Okay, Senpai, which way to that Ark-”
For some reason, he stopped talking midsentence.
He felt a chill.
He felt a painful tingling in his skin, but what had caused this?
He didn’t understand where this extreme tension was coming from. He felt paralyzed while his instincts took over and he froze in place.
This wasn’t the first time.
This had happened once before.
Just like the anaphylaxis that set in after being stung by a venomous hornet, once your body had learned the sensation, it would violently reject it the next time around. After some thought, Kamijou Touma arrived at an extremely simple answer: this was a trauma response.
But what in the past had left such a powerful emotional scar on him?
(No.)
He naturally pressed his hand against the center of his chest.
His palm was soaked with sweat.
There was no wound or blood there. His clothing wasn’t even torn.
But.
When Kumokawa Seria had helped him up near District 11’s east gate, she had cut the price tag from his coat with the small scissors in her sewing kit. But hold on a second. How could such a desperately poor boy have afforded new clothes? There had to be more to this. Something had happened to him outside of his own memory. In other words…
(No! That wasn’t a dream after all!! I don’t know what happened to the big bloody hole through my chest, but someone must have at least bought new clothes to replace my torn and bloody ones!)
He gulped and realized that he could gulp.
His self-imposed paralysis was gone.
If fear had seized his body because he had sensed something in common with that last time, then a threat had to be approaching in the same way. He spun around with all his might. He didn’t care if he broke his hipbones doing it.
And…
“Impressive.”
He heard a voice.
An alluring and bewitching female voice.
It slipped into his ear, seemingly separating him from the peaceful scene around him.
The first thing he saw was a large cloth. She was standing right in front of him, but it felt so unreal that each individual part seemed to be going wild in his vision. It all refused to form a single cohesive image in his head, like a Rorschach inkblot test that kept transforming into shapes that would horrify the psychologists familiar with all the most dangerous responses.
But he could understand her voice.
“You actually managed to turn around this time.”
A woman’s hand shot straight toward him and swung to the side, tearing away so much flesh from his side that his spine was visible.
