Toaru Majutsu no Index:Mental Out SS

A Certain Scientific Mental Out: The Queen’s Play[edit]

Part 1[edit]

Their eyes met in that moment.

“…”

They were in a fairly large park in Academy City’s District 7.

Shokuhou Misaki made an effort to remain calm and graceful no matter the circumstances, but she knew she had carelessly frozen for three full seconds here.

Although he only paused in surprise because he nearly bumped into someone.

“Oops. Um, are you alright?”

Kamijou Touma.

She knew all too well that pointy-haired boy could not remember her name or what she looked like. The thought irked the Queen so much she felt like her immediate surroundings had been cut away from the peaceful Sunday afternoon.

“(I know, I know.)”

She was urged on by her aide Kobayashi Satori who was telepathically linked to her from a short distance away.

As if she wasn’t a part of all this.

“Huh? Isn’t that a Tokiwadai uniform? Y’know, that electric girl’s school.”

“Kh… Ah ha ha. You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

The honey blonde girl laughed it off with her long hair blowing in the wind.

Shokuhou realized it would seem unnatural for her to know who he meant by “electric girl”.

She was pretending to have only just met him, after all.

The honey girl, who wore a winter blazer uniform with a brand-name bag worn over her shoulder, continued a mental conversation while making sure none of it showed on her face.

“(Again, I know.)”

Shokuhou didn’t like how the emotion in Kobayashi’s telepathic voice hinted that she was mainly doing this out of curiosity, but letting it show on her face would only confuse him.

Shokuhou made up her mind.

She chose what she should say with a smile.

And the honey blonde girl carried it out splendidly.

“Good day to you. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am Shokuhou Misaki☆”

Part 2[edit]

Their gazes clashed in that moment.

“…”

This time, it was Shokuhou Misaki and Misaka Mikoto.

They glared at each other from extreme close range.

This happened three days before.

But instead of being in the shady area behind their school, they were on the stage in prestigious Tokiwadai Middle School’s gym. The auditorium would have been a better place for a stage play, but since this would require a lot of moving around and raising of voices, it must have been classified as a joint gym class instead of the performing arts. And in fact, the girls were all wearing the sleeveless shirts and shorts of their gym clothes instead of their winter blazer uniforms.

Yes.

This was a stage play and a joint class.

The teacher elegantly clapped her hands to gather the students’ attention.

“Listen up, all you second years. I assume you have all found your groups and received your assignments? For this joint class, you will be crossing the usual class boundaries to work with your schoolmates from other classes. I hope you will build a greater sense of unity from this. And these new stimuli will help grow your mind – that is, your Personal Reality – which will in turn help develop your esper power. Do you understand?”

The students all answered in the affirmative.

The joint class meant more people than usual. For Shokuhou, this meant a lot of girls she didn’t recognize.

And, of all things, those two had ended up in the same group. Maybe it was wrong to think of things this way in a city of science, but Shokuhou had to wonder if a probability-manipulating demon was lurking somewhere in their school.

Mikoto blatantly scratched at her head in front of Shokuhou.

“Let’s see. Our group was assigned Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The Queen elegantly held a hand to her mouth and didn’t bother stifling a yawn.

“Yawwwn… All these classes that focus on physical activity are such a pain. Seeing how nice the weather ability is, I would much rather take a nap. But if I try to sneak out…”

“Hey.”

“…then this girl who is mysteriously immune to my power gets after me. It’s not like my attendance ability affects you in any way, so can you please just leave me be, you hotblooded idiot?”

That was why Shokuhou Misaki could not lie down on a nice sunny patch of grass and take a nap. Even the joint drama class was better than being chased down by that billion-volt electric girl.

(Is there any way I could use this situation to my advantage?)

“Ugh, I’m so sleepy.”

“Why are you so tired?”

“Unlike a child like you who crawls into bed as soon as it gets dark out, I am an adult who knows how to make use of the night hours☆”

Those two were arguing yet again.

And despite her perfect smile, Shokuhou’s encirclement was not perfect this time.

“Are you serious about that, Shokuhou Misaki? You really think staying up late makes you an adult? Peh heh heh. You know, little girl, any grown woman with any concern for her looks and health tries to avoid late nights first and foremost. Did you not know that, you damn brat?”

“Wait, kh, did I really just get outplayed by a meathead like Misaka-san!?”

“And I barely had to try, Little Queen.”

Misaka Mikoto smiled wickedly and gently placed her hand atop Shokuhou’s head.

While she had the upper hand when it came to group mind games and scheming, when it came to physical one-on-one conflicts, (blushing and tearful) Shokuhou couldn’t even brush that hand off of her head. Misaka Mikoto was immune to her Mental Out, so Shokuhou had no defense when that girl used brute strength against her. If she wanted to, the #3 could pin Shokuhou to the floor and sit on her.

But the Queen wouldn’t let it end here.

She had been pushed so far her anger circled back around to calm.

And then the trembling girl made a decision.

(I-it’s on now. Yes, I know exactly what to do. If this is how it’s going to be, I will enjoy this joint drama class in a classy adult way you could never even dream of, Misaka-saaan!!)

The other girls didn’t dare approach the #5 and #3 (despite all being powerful espers themselves), so they watched from afar and whispered amongst themselves. There was no rule of etiquette requiring it, but even the spreading of rumors was done quietly at a classy school.

“U-ugh. Misaka-sama and Shokuhou-sama are in the same group? That basically tells us which group is getting the top spot before it even begins.”

“I feel bad for the girls in their group. They have to play a part like the human king or Puck the Fairy with those two monstrous stars stealing all the attention.”

“(Eep…)”

“You shouldn’t have said that, Matsuzai-san! Kinoshita-san just collapsed from the pressure! Hey, Otonari-san, you’re on the health committee, right!?”

While a mixture of comedy and tragedy played out around those two, Shokuhou childishly pouted her lips and spoke up (while working through some complicated calculations in her head).

“Of all the Shakespeare plays, why did it have to be A Midsummer Night’s Dream? You have the worst luck ability with these things, Misaka-san.”

“What play would you have considered good luck?”

“Hamlet or Macbeth. Then I could have dramatically killed you on stage☆ But A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy, so no one dies.”

Shokuhou sounded quite serious as she held the tip of her white-gloved index finger in her mouth.

Mikoto (who was entirely immune to the Queen’s spoiled child act) sighed in annoyance and began flipping through the booklet with a school library sticker on it.

It was common to feel like you had a decent knowledge of world-famous works but to actually be missing important parts of the setting or plot. Like that Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, not the monster. So she was reviewing the basics.

“Let’s see… A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy and one of Shakespeare’s early masterpieces.”

“By the way, the ‘midsummer’ in the title refers to the summer solstice, so it takes place in late June, rather than what we would think of as midsummer☆”

Shokuhou poked her head in from the side and Mikoto gave her an irritated look.

“So a more accurate title would be An Early Summer Night’s Dream? Anyway, it gives a story summary here. It’s a comedy set near Athens where a number of human men and women arrive in the forest ruled by Fairy King Oberon and Fairy Queen Titania, but a fairy called Puck gives a love potion to the wrong person, causing all sorts of trouble.”

After reading through that, Mikoto looked up.

The #3 clearly had several questions already.

“Me playing Fairy Queen Titania I can understand, but why are you playing Fairy King Oberon? That makes us a couple…”

“Don’t blame me. You said you were sick and tired of always playing the prince roles, so you threw a fit and demanded to play a cute girl this time.”

“Gh.”

“You claim to be a lonely ace, but you are quite popular with the girls during these joint classes, you know? Peh heh heh☆”

Shokuhou hit Mikoto where it hurt, so she could only groan. And then Shokuhou delivered the finishing blow.

Like she had been waiting for the opportunity.

“Misaka-san, the one thing you really need in your life is anger management lessons. Now, take a deep breath. Hold it for six seconds. Trying to force down anger never works, so try to forget all about your stubborn ideas about what everyone is supposed to do☆”

“You have some nerve saying that after intentionally provoking me!!”

The standard choice for prince roles shouted while red in the face. The other girls watching from a distance cheered, so they must have assumed those two were already practicing their acting.

In these joint drama classes, there were mainly two roles the girls fought over. One was the princess or the queen. The other was the handsome prince or knight. The male roles had a certain charm to them, as demonstrated by a certain theatre troupe.

And in that sense, that pair’s roles had sent a stir through the other students.

Their expectations had been overturned.

Who could have predicted the Shokuhou Misaki would play the king and the Misaka Mikoto would play the queen!?

Some of them looked horrified.

“(Why do they look so surprised? What’s wrong with me going for the cute princess or queen role?)”

“Shedding tears of blood?” Shokuhou waved a hand and then brushed her long honey-blonde hair off her shoulder. “This isn’t easy for me either, you know? You might not know what it’s like since you’re so used to playing the male roles all the time, but now I have to study the male mind to help get into the role. And take a look around you. Do you see any male voices I can seek out here in Tokiwadai to get a firsthand opinion?”

“…”

Mikoto looked somehow skeptical even though Shokuhou had given her what she wanted.

Of course, Shokuhou believed in manipulating the overly trusting and taking them for all they were worth, so she actually preferred someone who wasn’t misled by surface-level charisma.

Mikoto was still staring at her.

“Enough. You can get away with skipping class using those remotes of yours, so you must have another reason to be here. What is it?”

“Well☆ If I’m going to be here, I might as well make the most of it, don’t you think?”

“?”

“The play includes a wide variety of characters, but Oberon and the other fairies generally can’t be seen by the humans even if they are standing next to them and speaking loudly. The one exception is when a fairy allows themselves to be seen or when they aren’t their usual self due to the love potion ability.”

“I see.”

“The key to the story is the love potion made from a flower called love-in-idleness – which is apparently a pansy that meets certain conditions. It is made by Fairy King Oberon and he gives it to his servant Puck. By applying the magical potion to a sleeping person’s eyelids, they will fall in love with the first person they see after waking. Oberon made it to get back at Titania after a fight.”

“I see, I see.”

“Puck ends up using the love potion on the wrong person, which leads to trouble that affects Titania and almost every other character. …Do you see now that Oberon is the perfect part for me? I’m not the type to be mentally manipulated by an outside force. I need to be the one who manipulates others and amuses myself watching the aftermath. Yes, my heart is pounding just imagining you rolling around the stage☆”

“Yet again, I feel like punching her would be doing the world a favor.”

The Queen hopped down from the stage to dodge a lightning spear. (She would never admit it, but the unathletic Queen’s action was better described as tripping and falling off the stage.)

And so, Shokuhou Misaki had an urgent task.

The success of the joint drama class was reliant on her studying the male mind firsthand.

(Not really, though☆)

Academy City’s #5 Queen stuck out her tongue.

One name came to mind. She already knew exactly who her target would be!!

Part 3[edit]

It was Sunday at a completely ordinary park in District 7.

Just like the public square by the train station, it was a classic location for guitarists, comedians, and other performers to build up their courage on the weekends. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon to see people in costumes or masks holding a tablet script in one hand and raising their voices on the grass or along the walking paths.

Among all that, a pointy-haired boy’s eyes widened.

He was Kamijou Touma.

“A Shakespeare play? That’s incredible. Do they really do that kind of thing at Tokiwadai? Isn’t it a middle school?”

“We do☆” replied a honey-blonde girl with a hand over her smiling mouth. She wore a winter blazer uniform, but that was because Tokiwadai students were required to wear their uniforms even when out in the city on the weekends. “I’m really not sure what to do. How am I supposed to play a male role when there aren’t any real gentleman around to base my performance ability on?”

“I still can’t get over that you perform plays for school. I mean, I’d probably fall asleep just watching one, but you have to memorize all your lines and get up on the stage.”

Kamijou Touma was in high school and the honey-blonde girl was in middle school, but the latter’s knowledge and mental maturity were clearly greater. To be blunt, the boy seemed childish to her.

Kobayashi’s voice sounded in Shokuhou’s head.

“(Hee hee. How cute. Yes, he probably wouldn’t know what to make of Shakespeare’s plays, would he?)”

<Queen, why are you being so unusually lenient in your judgments of people today?>

“(Ehh? Now you’re just being a silly billy.)”

Kobayashi’s telepathy allowed her to mentally communicate with people over a distance. It was a convenient mental power, but since it worked through the medium of words, she could not share images, alter formless memories or personalities, or influence facial recognition or a meetup place.

After hearing that, her enemies tended to take her lightly, but that power was actually very powerful in combat.

Anyone who wrote it off as no more than a psychic cellphone needed to take a step back and think it through. How had Kobayashi Satori risen to the position of the largest clique’s intellectual strategist, placing her right alongside the stupidly strong Hokaze Junko?

She was skilled enough that even the Queen at the top of the clique couldn’t predict which of those two would win if they went all out.

<Queen, couldn’t you just find a random boy and use one of your remotes on him? Why take the time to get him to tell you about his male mind when you have Mental Out?>

“(Sure, I could copy over the full contents of his mind, but where would I store all that personality data? If I save it to my mind, it would end up mixed with my own personality and I would be permanently stuck with masculine speech patterns, mannerisms, and stride.)”

The two girls continued their telepathic discussion.

The only one in the dark was the pointy-haired boy seated on the bench next to the honey girl.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream…”

“Hee hee. Do I need to give you a plot summary?”

Little by little, the honey girl was growing more comfortable around him.

Although this was still nowhere near as close as that pair had once been.

“(…)”

Shokuhou Misaki had seriously cursed her luck when she ended up in the same group as Misaka Mikoto for the joint drama class, but maybe A Midsummer Night’s Dream wasn’t so bad after all. It was the Queen’s style to make use of everything she could, so she had used the play to let her contact him over the weekend.

He would forget any of it happened afterwards, but even so.

(Heh heh. Misaka-san could never spend a relaxing Sunday with him like this.)

“(Why wouldn’t I?)”

“Bfff!!??”

Kamijou took a puzzled look around, so Shokuhou quickly recovered and blended into her surroundings.

Kobayashi’s telepathic voice now had an appraising tone to it.

“(Cough, cough. Ugh. I am as sure as sure can be. Phew. Of course I am. What kind of dangers or surprises could we run into in a park on Sunday? And why should I be scared of a high school boy just because he’s already left the category of middle school? I can bend a boy or two to my will in no time at all!!)”

(I’m definitely erasing this memory from her mind later.)

<Queen, I can hear everything you’re thinking. And that low, ultra-serious whispering is terrifying coming from Academy City’s #5.>

Even Kobayashi sensed danger here.

The honey girl made sure none of this showed on her face as she smiled and continued her conversation with Kamijou Touma.

She raised a white-gloved finger before saying more.

“While it is Shakespeare, no one dies an emotional death in this one.”

“Ugh!? I’m a little disappointed you managed to predict my own lack of imagination. Did a middle schooler really see right through me!?”

That had apparently stabbed deep into his high schooler pride.

After hearing his comment, Shokuhou sighed too quietly for anyone to hear.

“(You aren’t making fun of me, are you, Kobayashi-san?)”

<No, I would never. You are the beloved leader of our clique.>

“(Hm, at least you know that much. By the way, Kobayashi-san, are you making fun of me?)”

The Queen had the strongest mental power and the aide was specialized in telepathy alone.

They both specialized in the mind, so of course Kobayashi knew all the tricks too.

In fact, she might know them better than Shokuhou who could brute force everything with her power.

“(You will?)”

That shut Shokuhou up.

She led the largest clique, but she couldn’t completely deny the power contained in the difference from one school year to the next. She would scoff at and brainwash an adult agent or researcher who crossed her, but she was more obedient here.

A third year.

That placed Kobayashi at the very top of the middle school world, which may have warranted a certain amount of respect.

“(Fine. Where do you think we should start, Kobayashi-san?)”

“Bff! E-excuse me?”

Shokuhou accidentally spoke out loud.

But Kobayashi apparently didn’t mean anything weird here.

Shokuhou forgot all about the boy’s presence and stared over at Kobayashi from a short distance away.

“A ball is the one and only place where princesses and princes can meet, hold hands, and show off their charm to each other. They gather attention with their outward beauty, demonstrate their inner purity with their elegant movements, and measure their compatibility by how well they dance together!”

Shokuhou wondered why she should go to a ball and dance with a bunch of boys when she was already in a one-on-one situation with a boy.

Plus, this was modern Japan.

Who would be dancing in a Sunday park?

…Well, there were some girls in baggy T-shirts and shorts energetically dancing in front of the phones they had set up in the flower beds with special stands. Probably because (much to Shokuhou Misaki’s chagrin) dancing was a widely accepted thing to learn at school. That just confused matters. That was not at all the ballroom dancing you would see at a ball! Why must they play that loud dance music from their wireless speakers and show off their athletic ability in a public space like this!?

“…”

For some reason, Kobayashi felt the need to keep the upper hand in this truly sad situation.

And in her ignorance, she was, in a way, invincible.

“?”

On the bench, the pointy-haired boy gave the honey girl a puzzled look.

She had gotten too focused on the telepathic conversation.

She must have been neglecting the spoken conversation.

“(Kobayashi-san.)”

<Understood, Queen. You can count on me. I know exactly what needs to be said.>

“Do you enjoy dancing, Kamijou-san?”

“Eh? The people who do it really seem to enjoy it, but it honestly feels like a different world altogether. I could never dance in front of people.”

Kobayashi commented in Shokuhou’s head.

“(…I suppose.)”

“(Oh, shut up. Yes, I already know he’s one of those people!!)”

The strategist’s mental voice carried a hint of exasperation.

Directed at Shokuhou, not Kamijou.

“(I know my right from my left!! It’s just that I have a perfect image of the performance in my head, but the person in the mirror refuses to move the way I want her too!)”

The incapable Queen felt a need to draw an entirely unnecessary distinction there.

But even with all this going on, the honey girl’s smile remained perfect.

“Really? Then are you exclusively a listener when it comes to music?”

“What else would I do? Oh, you mean like karaoke? I never do that.”

“I meant writing your own on the computer☆”

“There’s no way I could do that.”

The honey girl was smiling on the outside, but she continued the telepathic strategy meeting on the inside.

<Oh, I know. If you don’t like the idea of a ball, it might be a good idea to correspond with him via letter instead of jumping straight into a joint activity. Coming up with secret nicknames for each other is a great way of demonstrating your intelligence and charm to your beloved. Like Prince of the Icy Blade or Rafflesia Princess!!>

Had Kobayashi’s worldview drifted off to the Palace of Versailles full of long eyelashes and perfect proportions? The Queen was suddenly curious what she would find on Kobayashi’s bookshelves. And why was her strategist comparing her to a giant grotesque flower?

“Hey? I-is something wrong? You’re glaring pretty intensely over there.”

“It’s nothing☆”

The honey girl seated next to the boy on the bench was so focused on the telepathic conversation she was neglecting her reactions to him.

Shokuhou Misaki took inspiration from a smiling college couple she saw walking along nearby.

She gave an idea in her mind.

“(Doesn’t a Sunday date in the park mean things like scooping ice cream up in a tiny spoon and feeding it to each other?)”

“I could rest my head on his shoulder while sitting next to him, or I could use my thigh ability to give him a lap pillow.”

Something had quickly become apparent to Shokuhou.

As much as Kobayashi Satori was trying to control the situation as the older one, she was a Tokiwadai girl through and through. She had zero experience with boys. So much for her supposed experience as a third year. Her view of boys was even more distorted and unreliable than a long-eyelashed shoujo manga!!

“(I can’t have you murdering him here in broad daylight, you stupid third year.)”

Shokuhou mentally provided that exasperated response.

And while her focus had been elsewhere, the pointy-haired boy had started acting oddly.

“Hmm?”

“…”

When the honey girl shook her long blonde hair and turned to look at him, the older boy looked away.

It was amusing to watch.

The honey girl turned her body toward him, placed her hands behind her back, and peered up at him from below. Since they were both seated on the same bench, this put her very close to him.

“Hee hee? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, my bad. It’s just, well, I noticed this sweet scent, so I was thinking about how much beauty care girls have to deal with. I’m in high school and all I do is wash my hair and face, so I was feeling really childish and silly.”

Was that his problem?

The honey girl kicked her slender legs below the bench and sighed softly.

“I don’t think that has much to do with being an adult or a child.”

“Eh?”

“Skincare products for men are common enough nowadays, but it is true there are far more cosmetics for women.”

“…Is that so?”

“It is,” replied the honey girl with a firm nod.

While they couldn’t wear too much because Tokiwadai’s rules were (extremely) strict, the girls there still applied a barrage of various colors and moisturizers to their hair, skin, and nails.

“This is a bit of sidetrack, but you know how the Curriculum has us write while looking in a mirror to help draw out brain functions we ordinarily never use?”

“Yeah. When I get too focused doing that, I get nauseated like I have motion sickness or something.”

“Results from that lesson have shown that girls are better at it than boys. At first, there was a lot of talk about the ratio of sex hormones creating distinct male and female thought process or even that it was the result of male and female brains being structured differently.”

“At first? So was that not the reason?”

“In truth, it was nothing more than girls being more accustomed to making precise hand movements while looking in the mirror due to applying lipstick and eyeliner every morning.”

“…”

“Hee hee. The oddities in everyday life usually have mundane explanations like that. For example, boys in their school’s drama club could complete the task as easily as the girls because they regularly applied makeup for their club activities. All in all, this means girls are still more accustomed to performing skincare than boys in Academy City. For now anyway☆”

The honey girl teased the end of her long blonde hair and smiled as she gave her conclusion.

This time, it was Kobayashi who sent a telepathic question.

The Queen was not crass enough to mention the more realistic girl scent found in sweaty cheerleading teams and girl’s kendo teams. She would only mention that it was said in Tokiwadai that the sweet illusion was only preserved by the power of showers and deodorant.

“(I don’t think fiction has anything to do with it.)”

Shokuhou mentally responded in exasperation.

“(Did you know there is a theory saying teenage girls avoid their fathers because their brains are programmed to dislike the smell of their male parent to avoid an unfortunate attraction accidentally forming between them? Your father doesn’t actually have a powerful old man smell.)”

Kobayashi wasn’t sure what to make of this since she had lived away from her parents in Academy City for so long.

Now, if you were to uncritically accept that theory, it would lead to the strange conclusion that teenage girls wouldn’t avoid the smell of old men other than their fathers, but enough of that.

From here, Shokuhou added in her own theory.

“(In that case, couldn’t the exact opposite happen for the opposite sex of your own age? Our brains could be programmed to enjoy how the opposite sex smells so we will naturally approach each other. That would mean our bodies aren’t actually emitting anything sweet smelling☆)”

From there, it was the same thing that drew people to sugary, carby, and fatty shortcakes. On an instinctual level, humans were made think that the things they required were beautiful and delicious so they would overindulge in them. The future was bright and humanity’s prosperity would not end. How many billions of humans lived on Earth nowadays?

“(Of course, I will admit that silly fantasy is propped up by the sweet smelling perfumes and deodorants the adults sell.)”

“Bfff!?” spat Shokuhou.

If that were true – really true – what would it mean that the boy so strongly associated her with a honey scent!?

“(Eep.)”

<Hm. That would imply the gentlemen are using some form of self-suggestion. They do say love is blind. In the most extreme cases, they will say their favorite idol does not use the restroom. Gentleman in particular seem to trap themselves in their self-made fantasies when they have a crush on->

“(%@&$-beep-beep-beep-grind-grind-beep-beep-beep*♭☆÷〒)”

<Ow!! Queen, what is going on in your mind!? That unverbalized noise is too loud! Are you trying to destroy my mind with old computer code sounds that make me expect you to spit out a long sheet of paper from your mouth!?>

“(Gasp!? P-pardon me. I lost my cool.)”

Shokuhou Misaki took a deep breath to intentionally calm herself.

(Even if that is the case, it didn’t necessarily mean he had a ***** on me.)

<Queen, you need to think more clearly. Hm, this isn’t more noise. A portion of your thoughts is heavily coded, preventing me from reading one of the words.>

“(Cough, no digging deeper.)”

<Hm. I don’t see any way in right away, but a truly randomized code without any kind of pattern to it should be the most difficult kind. …No, I see it now. The key lies in the five basic tastes, including umami, which can be mechanically converted into numbers. If I use this…>

“(I said no and I meant it!!!)” shouted the queen, half in tears.

Of course, Kobayashi’s telepathy only allowed her to converse in words, so she couldn’t actually directly steal flavor memory data from Shokuhou’s mind.

Then the pointy-haired boy tilted his head while seated next to the honey girl.

“Hmm. If I wanted to start on skincare, what would be a good place to start? Is there any one thing that’s most important?”

“…Why not start with hand cream?”

“Are you making fun of me? How stupid do you think high schoolers are?”

“What about you? Did you realize that line of questioning is sexual harassment on the level of asking what part of my body I wash first in the bath?”

“Gfhhh!!?”

“I’ll take that as a no☆”

The honey girl couldn’t stop grinning.

She may have discovered how she would be enjoying her Sunday.

“(Don’t distracted me during this crisis, Kobayashi-san. You’ve made such a mess of things here I need to find a way to fix it all as soon as possible!!)”

“(What kind of threat?)”

“Bff!?” spat Shokuhou Misaki.

(It’s always something!)

“?”

Kamijou Touma looked around in confusion, so Academy City’s #5 quietly cleared her throat.

The Queen was aware that Mikoto and Kamijou had developed a connection much like the one between Shokuhou and Kamijou. So what would happen if the aggressive #3, who had an extremely short fuse, happened to see the Queen here with the pointy-haired boy?

With no real evidence, the Queen of Tokiwadai’s largest clique arrived at a conclusion.

(If I’m found here, I’ll explode and die.)

<You’ll die?>

“(Yes, die. Blown to smithereens.)”

To reiterate, Misaka Mikoto was immune to Shokuhou’s power. If Shokuhou’s presence was detected here in a one-on-one situation, she would be taken out by a physical attack. She would have a hard time escaping to safety, to say nothing of winning.

“(Why did that impossibly overleveled enemy wandering the dungeon at random have to show up now!?)”

<Oh, dear. I just remembered that this park is the one where Misaka Mikoto is known to show up and kick one of the vending machines. That means this was her territory to begin with. So she didn’t come to us – we accidentally went to her☆>

“(That doesn’t matter at this point.)”

Sunday only came once a week.

Shokuhou wanted to enjoy it.

So she wasn’t letting the #3 ruin it for her.

<Queen, I can hear those thoughts. Anyway, follow my lead. We will move from here, taking him with us.>

“(As long as we don’t run into her while we try to escape.)”

<Don’t worry. Misaka-sama has not noticed because I am keeping silent, but I have already established a telepathic link with her. As long as she does not move outside my telepathy range, I can read her verbalized surface-level thoughts and track her location☆>

In that case…

“(Kobayashi-san.)”

<Yes, Queen. It’s time to go.>

“Kamijou-san☆ I’m a little thirsty.”

“Eh? Wah!?”

The honey girl stood from the bench and took the older boy’s arm with a smile.

And she pulled him to his feet.

“(Um, Kobayashi-san, Are you tracking my location, his location, and Misaka-san’s location in relation to each other?)”

Kobayashi Satori’s telepathy was reliant on proximity.

She could track the number and location of her targets whether or not she could see them, even if they were on the other side of a wall. But if she moved too far away, her connection would be severed.

So as convenient as the power was, her own position was fairly important when it came to grasping all the movement across the field.

“I need a drink☆”

“There’s a vending machine over- hey, um, where are you going?”

“You don’t actually expect me to drink that carbonated garbage full of chemical ability, do you?”

The honey-blonde girl clung to the pointy-haired boy’s arm and leaned her weight outwards. She was amused to find how easy it was to steer him around.

Kobayashi apparently had a question about this.

<Odd. I thought gentlemen stood their ground better than this, but he is surprisingly easy to move around. The slightest bit of force seems to be enough to steer him left or right.>

“(Kobayashi-san, are you familiar with the idea of basic needs? Those are needs people seek out on reflex before their rational mind can even kick in.)”

“(Yes, like that. Around thirty of them are well known, but one of those is a need for friendship. That instinctual need has people try to make friends regardless of status or position so they can flatten out the hierarchy and free themselves from the tension that creates. And speaking of tension, being alone with a girl would mean a lot of tension for a boy, don’t you think?)”

Need for friendship.

Those words slipped quietly from the honey girl’s lips, making the pointy-haired boy frown.

“What does that mean?”

“If you want a close-to-home example, it’s what makes you feel like the 5-minute TV horoscope actually knows you or makes you uncritically accept everything written in a celebrity’s health book.”

“Hm, I think I see what you mean.”

“Or it’s what makes a lonely boy feel like he’s sought out real advice after reading the bogus dating tips that plague the internet and fashion magazines☆”

“Gfhh!?”

Kamijou Touma groaned after that knife to the heart from this younger girl.

The honey girl displayed a confident smile, but…

<Queen, the complete silence in your mind is scaring me. What is this emptiness supposed to mean? Did that mention of dating tips damage you as well by any chance?>

Shut up.

Hey, pointy-hair, when did you ever have a need for tips like that?

But if taking his arm was enough to manipulate that older boy as she saw fit, then victory would be hers.

For now, they had to escape the impossibly overleveled enemy that was the #3.

To repeat, encountering her now could only mean one thing for Shokuhou: explode and die.

“(Misaka-san is bad enough, but I’m also afraid of her friend Shirai-san showing up. Her supposedly Level 4 Teleportation would make it impossible to shake them just by escaping into the crowd.)”

<Oh, but our school’s Judgment seemed busy at the moment. Probably something related to that recent case. I know our Makigami-san was running around working on it.>

I see.

“Hm, I’ve seen a few kids with Gekota balloons. Do you think they’re handing them out in this park?”

Shokuhou didn’t have time to cry out in surprise.

<Queen, a left at the next fork.>

“This way, Kamijou-san☆”

“Whoa, whoa! That’s soft! Hey!”

Shokuhou just barely avoided an encounter by hiding behind the spectacular pillar of water erupting from a fountain. She recalled that a sufficient quantity of water could block electromagnetic waves.

“Huh, I never knew the fountain went off at the top of the hour. I’ve seen it so many times but I never put it together.”

“Enough of that, Kamijou-san. We need to hurry away from this fountain!”

“Why- eh? Hey!?”

The honey-blonde girl took this chance to escape onto a walking path to the side (while squeezing the older boy’s arm tight so she could steer him as she saw fit).

“(Misaka-san wouldn’t leave her dorm during the weekend for no reason. Kobayashi-san, her verbalized surface-level thoughts are good enough – just tell me what she’s thinking. If we know the reason behind her inexplicable appearance here, we can predict what she’ll do and more easily avoid her.)”

<Queen, extroverted people generally do head out during the weekend without any particular goal in mind. The small stimuli and discoveries found in their surroundings help refresh them.>

“…”

Shokuhou had no rebuttal.

At any rate, they needed to focus on avoiding Misaka Mikoto. Because she didn’t want to explode and die.

Part 4[edit]

Kamijou Touma looked down at the paper cup in his hand.

He tilted his head.

“Including tax, that was only 321 yen for two drinks. …I don’t get it. Why is this tea in a paper cup okay when the canned drinks were out of the question?”

“Your ignorance is showing. The world is not so simple that price is directly correlated with quality. Did you think the mineral water sold at a tourist markup in amusement parks had some special ingredient inside?”

While avoiding Misaka Mikoto who would (according to Shokuhou) make them explode and die, they had arrived at a section of the park where food trucks sold bentos, drinks, and more. All the temporary obstacles were perfect for someone who wanted to stay hidden.

Kamijou looked up and tilted his head further.

“By the way, do all Tokiwadai girls like to go behind the food trucks?”

“There’s so much to see back here☆”

The honey girl hid the truth behind a smile and listed off some plausible reasons.

They were all accurate even.

“All the front counters are nice and clean, so you can’t judge the difference there.”

“I suppose…”

“But circle behind the trucks and you can find all sorts of valuable information ability: you can see how they cook, you can check the collapsed boxes to see what ingredients they use, and you can find out how clean they keep things that won’t be seen.”

The honey girl smiled and raised a white-gloved finger.

“This is worth remembering. A food truck that is messy and dirty in the back will be a complete disaster ability on the inside. And by checking the company names on the boxes and labels, you can make a decent guess where their ingredients come from and what kind of chemicals they use☆”

“(Anyone with sense does.)”

On this alone she would not compromise.

The pointy-haired boy stared into his paper cup in a way that suggested he didn’t drink black tea very often.

“I never knew there were so many different kinds of black tea. I knew it could be bitter or sweet, but this is more sour. Is it supposed to taste that way?”

“Hee hee. Most tea plants for black tea are Assam or a derivative, but the flavor changes depending on the location it was grown: Nepal, Nilgiri, Darjeeling. When you stop and think about it, it is strange, isn’t it?”

“What do they even mean by steaming the tea? How does that compare to the canned stuff?”

“…”

In a way, no one was more unshakable than someone who didn’t care.

Shokuhou was reminded of the nature survival travel show (which had made her feel like she had visited the destinations despite lying on the sofa the entire time) where an expert had used a handmade water bottle purifier to filter and drink puddle water.

The honey girl sighed and spoke.

“Why do I get the feeling you think a strawberry shortcake is something you get by pointing into the display case at a cake shop?”

“Wow, it’s like you profiled me. Baking is a complete unknown territory for me.”

She had meant it as an insult, but he was instead impressed.

Had that been accurate?

She had meant it to be over-the-top enough for him to argue back and keep the banter going.

Both the Tokiwadai girls, who may have been more familiar with tea than ordinary water, felt mildly guilty.

The honey girl opened her mouth while holding a hand to her forehead to keep her blowing blonde hair under control.

“It is a common mistake, but profiling is not meant to read the thoughts of a specific person.”

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head, but he seemed interested.

The honey girl cleared her throat.

“The essence of profiling is quizzing all of humanity on the same questions. Do you get what I mean?”

“?”

“Well. For example, you take a set of criteria – mid-teens, female, plenty of spending money, accompanied by an older boy – and then you ask the exact same question to all the girls who meet those criteria. It could be something like ‘what do you want to eat on this Sunday afternoon?’ If you asked this during a food festival with 100 food trucks gathered in the park parking lot, you would probably find their answers trended in a certain direction, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t get much of the thick cutlet sandwiches or the greasy stamina-building garlic gyudon, but you would get a lot of sweets. Um, like macarons and crepes.”

(Now that’s an extremely biased answer based on the fantasies of unpopular boys, but that isn’t the point here.)

(Shut up☆)

“If you accurately record the distribution of those trends, they can come in handy later on. Let’s say you come across a girl in her mid-teens who has plenty of spending money and is accompanied by an older boy – like me, for example – then you can make an educated guess about what I might want to eat on a Sunday afternoon even though you’ve never met me before.”

At that point, the honey-blonde girl softly pressed her light-pink lips against the rim of her paper cup.

It wasn’t a porcelain cup, so the tea was cooling faster than she was used to.

Kobayashi’s voice played in Shokuhou’s head.

“(Profiling is not a bloody thing only used in criminal investigations. It’s just that the public agencies in charge of law enforcement can indiscriminately gather people’s personal information without any backlash, so they’re open about doing it. The technique is actually used in all sorts of fields, including sales and internet advertising.)”

The honey girl kept up a perfect smile to hide the telepathic conversation going on in her head.

And she continued her conversation with Kamijou Touma at the same time.

“Basically, profiling is a surveying technique that combines a massive amount of data in the form of ‘this kind of person generally likes or dislikes these things’ or ‘people who like or dislike these things are generally this kind of person’ to narrow things down as much as possible. The more questions you can ask, the greater the detail of the conclusions you can draw.”

“Huh.”

The pointy-haired boy didn’t seem to be listening. Like he was in a boring class.

Girls could tell just how much attention was being directed their way.

So the honey girl decided to give this conversation a bit more of an impact.

“That means it doesn’t work with someone you know nothing about. A mismatch in the profiling renders it useless.”

“Eh?”

The pointy-haired boy turned forcefully toward her.

She had his attention.

“For example, police dramas often have the police say they learned their profiling techniques directly from the American FBI, right?”

“Yeah. Once you hear that, you know they can catch even the most genius criminal, right?”

“Ah ha ha. If you ask me, a real genius would use their prized brain ability to stay out of a situation that forces them to commit a crime in the first place. …Also, those techniques wouldn’t be any use in Japan. After all, their data comes from tens of thousands of Americans from all across America and what good is data on people from a gun culture when it comes to solving crimes in Japan?”

“Oh, you’re right… Guns are everywhere in America, so criminals there would naturally come up with different ideas.”

“Right. Japan has different average incomes, family structures, home sizes, distances between houses, daily routines, bans on weapons like guns, and other rules, so if you want to solve crimes here, you would need to redo all the data collection in Japan☆”

So even a 180+ IQ genius investigator couldn’t use that technique on their own. Being a group was the greatest strength of an investigative agency.

But more importantly…

“If you want to read an individual’s mind, you might be better off using a polygraph – that is, a lie detector.”

The honey-blonde girl smiled and stepped closer.

She stood right up next to the boy.

“Our words can lie, but our bodies cannot. Stage magicians and gamblers often use that fact to read people. For example, if I place my hand against your chest, I can feel your heartbeat.”

“H-hey?”

“Minute movements of the eyes and facial muscles and irregular breathing are also simple ones to look out for. The most classic example is sweaty palms. If I simply hold your hand like this – my, my – is holding a girl’s hand making you nervous by any chance?”

Taking this any further looked like it would make the pointy-haired boy fall backwards and dump his hot tea over his head, so she decided to spare him anymore.

“Well, I will praise you for taking a sip before adding any sugar or milk.”

“What, are you saying drinking tea plain is the mature thing to do?”

“Of course not. The flavor of tea and coffee is greatly influenced by what you drink them with. If you drink tea with a sweet shortcake, you wouldn’t be able to taste the sugar in the tea even if you did add some.”

The honey-blonde girl looked to the side.

Right there was an option that had apparently met her exacting standards.

“A dessert food truck?”

“They have a lot of mobile shops, but I suppose they just barely earn a passing grade.”

The truck sold financiers that, even after lowering the price as much as possible, did not rely on artificial flavors and sweeteners for a cheap flavor boost.

She had used her eyes much like a soccer player pulling a feint, but she had actually made use of one of the basic needs: the need for friendship. Everyone felt some desire to be freed from the tension when they were asked for their opinion, so as the tension and doubt grew inside them, they tended to follow the other person’s gaze to seek out the correct answer.

The honey girl smiled a little at successfully luring him in that direction.

“Do you have plenty of spending money, young gentleman?☆”

Part 5[edit]

“Ugh. Is this one of those ‘signs’?”

Makigami Komaki, a member of the Shokuhou Clique and of Judgment spoke half in exasperation and half in fear. She was in the entranceway to Tokiwadai Middle School, viewing the rows of shoe lockers.

Today was Sunday.

She had donned her uniform and come to school today because she wanted to avoid any watchful eyes.

Shirai Kuroko, also of Judgment, ran her fingers along the “sign” in question.

“This is one of the nametag stickers they sell at the school store to label your umbrella or whatever, isn’t it? There seem to be more of them again,” sighed the twintails girl.

There had long been stories of burglars and salesmen adding strange stickers or graffiti to a home’s mailbox or nameplate as a sign to their colleagues, so was this some version of that? These stickers were small and sold at the school store, so even the stricter teachers wouldn’t take issue with them.

“So someone applies this sticker to their shoe locker…”

“To ask our mystery perp to attack them in the near future.”

That logic made no sense, but it was the truth.

That arrangement had been uncovered while questioning a few of the victims.

Makigami held her index finger to her slender chin.

“This takes a biological interpretation of a vampire, right?”

“Right. It’s based on the stories of the victims experiencing powerful pleasure when they were bitten and had their blood sucked. There is a theory that if you rapidly remove blood from someone without triggering their sense of pain, the process of blood loss would create an illusion of feeling good.”

In this case, the willing victims said they had never seen the attacker, so the attacker had not approached them directly and cut them with a blade or extracted the blood with a tube.

It was likely some kind of esper power.

Unlike inhaling lighter gas or drinking cold medicine, this blood loss ecstasy did not involve ingesting a chemical substance, which made it hard to detect. The downside went without saying: if it was done by an amateur, it could kill the victim.

Talk of this case had rapidly grown within Tokiwadai of late.

Nine girls were known to have fainted because of it. They were thought to simply be anemic at first, but it turned out they had severe internal bleeding.

Furthermore, if the point was to experience pleasure, this was a strange case where the fainting was an unfortunate accident for both the attacker and the victims. Who could say how many girls hadn’t passed out and had managed to leave before they were discovered.

Shirai Kuroko called up some recorded voices on a special phone with its security boosted to Judgment standards. These were the results of the questioning she completed during the week.

“I am Yanagisakiin Rondo from the gymnastics team. You wanted to know about internal bleeding, correct? Yes, bumps and falls are not the only way to bruise. You can tear your muscles or blood vessels if they cannot withstand your body’s movements. That is why I always tell the underclassmen to watch what they eat and make sure to stretch before bed.”

“My name is Matsuzai Shouko. My club? The biology club. You wanted an opinion from a nonathlete’s perspective, right? The capillaries are thinner than hairs, so they can break from nothing more than mental stress. Probably the most well-known example of the link between mental and physical damage is stomach ulcers.”

“I am Otonari Hibiku from the health committee. The total number of internal bleeding victims? Hard to say… We have no way of identifying them unless they fainted or came to the infirmary for advice. We are all wearing our winter uniforms now, so if only there was some way of recognizing it through the blazer.”

“Kinoshita Hagoromo. I’ve heard of that. They use those stickers as a sign, right? The source of the rumors? Don’t ask me. Oh, right. I do the school announcements, so can I add this to the lunchtime news items? …No!? Boo, boo! It seems to me we can reduce the number of victims by making sure everyone knows to be careful.”

Makigami Komaki was usually the type to be right out there with Shirai Kuroko working on the weekend, but even she sounded fed up with this case.

“That’s quite a scattering of people. Could you not find any one line of investigation to follow?”

“Oh, shut up,” quietly spat Shirai Kuroko.

They knew these were intentional attacks rather than accidents or illness, but they couldn’t even identify the cause of the internal bleeding. Thus, she had tried questioning a wide variety of people. The inability to narrow down the focus of the investigation would be enough for an expert to tell she was having difficulties.

“It’s like a crossword puzzle. Instead of writing down the answer right away, you need to fill in the surrounding words to give yourself the hints you need. This is not a quiz game where we need to slap the buzzer as quickly as possible. We cannot afford a single mistake in this investigation.”

“Let’s just hope someone else isn’t attacked in the meantime.”

Students left school store stickers on their shoe lockers as a sign.

Painless blood loss was used to achieve a kind of pleasure at the risk of their own death.

And…

“But it doesn’t always follow the sticker signs. It could be the perp searches out victims based on their own rules and, when they feel like it, also attacks anyone who has given the sign.”

“Which makes counting the total number of victims such a challenge.”

“Whoever is behind this, we need to be careful.”

Part 6[edit]

The honey girl and the pointy-haired boy left the food truck area.

They continued down a narrow walking path.

Did girls always want to move around some after eating something sweet?

“(I can’t believe how many people wander around outside on the weekend without any real goal in mind.)”

“(Doesn’t serotonin make you feel pain? Just like histamines?)”

A small slanted sign alongside the pondside walking path said not to feed the birds.

“The birds are still gathering here even though no one will just innocently feed them anymore,” said Kamijou Touma. “If only they could read that sign and realize they were wasting their time.”

“A giant AI will probably be able to decode the birds’ chirping ability eventually. I know I’ve heard about fish communicating using vibrations in the water.”

“You mean like those toys that tell you what a dog or cat is feeling?”

“I was thinking of something a little more precise than that☆”

Neither Shokuhou nor Kobayashi could communicate with fish, birds, or anything else nonhuman. If they could perfectly understand animals’ thoughts, they might find themselves eating a lot less meat.

A telepathic voice knocked on Shokuhou’s mind.

<Queen, Queen.>

“(What now? I was finally enjoying some peace and quiet.)”

“(Argh!! Kobayashi-san!)”

“Whoa! What now? Wow, that’s soft!?”

The honey-blonde girl quickly grabbed Kamijou Touma’s arm and practically swung him around to change course.

Shokuhou even heard a rustling sound.

Coming from the bushes.

Shokuhou Misaki and Misaka Mikoto were less than 5m apart.

(Ugh.)

Shokuhou groaned inwardly.

And.

“Ah, eh, ih, uh, eh, oh, ah, oh!!”

She heard some weird noises.

No, that was a voice.

She gave a surreptitious glance in that direction to see Mikoto doing something next to the pond. She was holding a aluminum Gekota helium balloon between her hands and staring intently at it.

No…

“I am Fairy Queen Titania! The Fairy King you may be, but you have no right to make my decisions for me!!”

That was Titania.

Shokuhou didn’t think that line existed in the script worked on by the director, but Mikoto was probably saying whatever came to mind to help get into the part.

What was this?

Tokiwadai’s Ace was taking the play unexpectedly seriously.

A parent and child passing by gave her an amused look, girls her age aimed their horizontal-oriented phones her way, and a youth who looked to be from a theatre troupe gave her a look of newfound rivalry, but Mikoto shook her blushing head.

“Ugh…this is so embarrassing. But don’t let it get to you. The whole point is to practice doing this in front of people! You can’t take the easy way out just because you’re in her group!!”

Shokuhou Misaki froze in place for a moment.

And someone else seemed greatly amused.

Even over telepathy, it was obvious that the third year, who wasn’t part of the play, was grinning.

<My, my. Queen, do you see now that you’re doing something wrong here?>

“(You really do need to shut up, Kobayashi-san.)”

“Hee hee☆”

“(Are you trying to anger me?)”

But Shokuhou had decided on this plan, so she would stick to it. Even if she stalled out now, it wouldn’t matter how much she appealed to Mikoto’s emotions – being discovered here would still mean exploding and dying.

Shokuhou was doing this to ensure the joint drama class was a success.

Gaining a detailed understanding of the male mind was the quickest way to get into character as Oberon.

So the honey girl left the center of the storm with the pointy-haired boy’s arm still in her grasp.

“So you see…”

The pair strolled along the park’s walking path.

And they discussed the plot of the play.

“Fairy King Oberon cannot forgive arrogant Queen Titania for constantly making fun of him.”

“I see.”

“So he decides to get back at his wife.”

“Get back at her? But aren’t they family?”

“Specifically, he has his servant Puck use a love potion on Titania so she would fall in love with an ugly man. Then he would laugh at her until his sides split.”

“But wait, isn’t she the king’s wife!? Why would he want to have her fall in love with another man!?”

“I want to know what was going on in Oberon’s head through all this, so my question is simple: what line of thinking would lead a man to do something so outrageous?”

The honey girl was answered with silence.

It seemed like the pointy-haired boy had an answer but was hesitant to give it.

He spoke carefully, with the tension of someone disarming a bomb.

“As a high school boy, it’s really awkward to have to explain this to middle school girl.”

“?”

Eventually, Kamijou Touma asked an odd question while trembling.

“I-is it possible that king was, uh, really into NTR?”

“I’m not sure what that acronym is supposed to mean…no, don’t bother explaining. Please don’t, actually. Not when I can sense such a dark and wicked aura ability coming from you!”

The honey girl was giving him an icy glare, but Kamijou failed to notice.

He crossed his arms and tilted his head as he walked on.

“Also, how does that even get back at her? If someone calls you an idiot, I can understand arguing back that you aren’t an idiot, but if you instead decide to turn them into an even bigger idiot, aren’t you just accepting their claim that you’re an idiot?”

“Hm. Now that you mention it.”

“I could even understand working to improve yourself so they would rethink their opinion of you, but not this.”

“Hmm.”

That viewpoint hadn’t occurred to Shokuhou.

As the #5, she was made fun of so infrequently she didn’t know much about how to respond to it.

Oberon’s response was a poor one.

Even if he was completely successful, all he ended up doing was showing off his own vulnerabilities and ugliness.

(Hm, it isn’t a direct insight into Oberon’s thinking, but maybe it could help my performance.)

<My, my. But isn’t that how most of your arguments with Misaka-sama play out? You’re so busy bolstering your defenses out front that you’re wide open from the sides.>

(Do I need to kill you, Kobayashi Satori?)

Shokuhou visibly stewed for a bit while she worked to find something else to ask the pointy-haired boy about.

“Then what about this?” asked the honey-blonde girl. “After learning the love potion had been used on the wrong person, the fairy king harshly berated his servant Puck. Then he used his command ability to order Puck to pair the men and women up with their appropriate partners again.”

“So all he does is yell at people without actually doing anything to help?”

Part 7[edit]

She was on the ****** committee.

So she would fulfill her duties.

So many people in the world were burdened with so much str***. So many carried that invisible weight on their backs. Maybe it was a sign of the times, but the burden was too great for many, crushing them. As a member of the ****** committee, she was supposed to look after her fellow students’ health, so she couldn’t just ignore this problem.

(I need to remove it.) So she would give them a break.

She would free them.

(I will remove it all. I am on the ****** committee, so I will fulfill my duties. And that means freeing the students from that invisible weight.)

She could use her power to cause painless in****** bleeding. That led to blood **** ***tasy. Their minds would forget about reality, much like drifting off to sleep. Everyone had pleasures they could not resist. The people of the modern era succumbed to the weight of their stress because they had been pushed to the point that they couldn’t even do this.

She had saved many girls this way already.

Some girls had heard the rumors and secretly asked her to trigger the internal bleeding.

She was more than happy to.

She was ******* ****** and everything she did she did for the hea*** of her schoolmates.

(Academy City’s #5, Queen of Tokiwadai’s larg*** **ique.)

She had her next target.

(The poor thing has no choice but to waste her precious weekend with some uncouth boy to help with the joint drama class.)

So she did not hesitate to take action.

There was no reason at all to reject the pursuit of health.

People needed to pursue health even if it meant placing restrictions on their happiness or desires.

Her telepathy linked to others by “sharing their presence”. So even if she couldn’t see her target, she could forcibly establish a one-way link as long as she could sense their presence.

She had to sense that presence.

She had to combine their minds into one.

Her power let her establish a wordless understanding, like between tennis or badminton d**bles partners or fig*** skating pairs. She could establish that understanding in less than a second and take it even further.

As can be seen in the existence of the term “combat stress”, manipulating the mind could cause bleeding within the body.

Like how people in bomb shelters could begin bleeding from the heart.

Her target this time was the #5 and the Qu**n of the largest clique.

Her presence would stand out even in a weekend crowd.

She accurately read that presence and combined with it.

“1 vs. 1 – one-way forced link.”

(Got her!!)

And once she had the link, she only needed a few more conditions to be met before she could bring down anyone, no matter who.

<My, my. You think you have a link, do you? And who exactly do you think you are linking with while ignoring my presence?>

Her breathing stopped.

Her mind went blank – all her thoughts vanishing for a few seconds.

And by then, the counter-link was already in place. In addition to her one-way link to her target, a separate link had been established coming back from her target.

She had been masking her thoughts by applying noise using the wind direction value as the encryption key, but that had probably already been removed.

Now her mind was an open book.

(The winds are changing? Like a single gust was blowing in one direction but then the air swirled around and blew back the other way!?)

Now they had two-way communication.

Shutting down the link and physically running away was no longer an option.

<!?>

This other girl had read her identity.

She must have snatched away the list of terms that had come to mind as things Otonari wanted to keep secret.

Was that how she had outsmarted Otonari?

But what exactly had she done?

Otonari understood her reasons, but what had she actually done?

Why couldn’t Otonari hear Shokuhou Misaki’s mind?

Why was she hearing someone else’s voice instead?

Was it like a tunnel? Did they both have a link to Shokuhou’s mind and they were essentially sending their winds through that single long tunnel to clash at the center point?

No.

Otonari didn’t sense Shokuhou Misaki at all. This was not the #5’s mind. She had targeted the Queen, but she had ended up with a link to someone else’s mind.

Was that even possible?

Otonari could access the voice of anyone’s mind, but this was a first for her. It was a lot like dialing the wrong phone number, but how could that happen when establishing a link with her esper power!?

This phenomenon was unknown to Otonari, but it was known to the other girl.

This unknown in the territory she excelled at brought her fear.

<The truth is much simpler.>

She heard a light thud.

It made no sense.

A golden color had been tossed to the ground. The thing lying at her feet looked like the shed skin of a mysterious animal, but it was in fact a long blonde wig.

This revealed a girl with a bob cut.

<What!? Kobayashi…Satori?>

Part 8[edit]

Going all the way back, it had begun with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

To perfect her performance as Fairy King Oberon, Shokuhou Misaki had wanted to learn about the male mind firsthand. …Or so she claimed as an excuse to leave the no-boys-allowed School Garden that weekend.

They understood her reasoning.

But the Queen of the largest clique was the very peak of the sheltered girls who were meant to be strictly protected by the School Garden’s no-boys-allowed rule. Even in the dorm, her room was in a special area.

The clique girls who worked as her bodyguards were not about to let her contact a random gentleman found wandering outside.

“You mustn’t leave the School Garden and approach one of those fearsome wolves, Queen!” (Wavy Blonde)

“Out of the question. Have you forgotten why no boys are allowed here?” (Black Hair and Glasses)

“Queen, Queen, Queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!” (Ringlets)

(Hm, what a pain.)

She could have tried to run off, but she did not want to play a hellish game of tag with that extra-large party set of super strong girls. Tokiwadai was supposed to be populated by sweet and gentle girls, so what was with this intimidating and heavy atmosphere? She had worked so hard to gather the game pieces she needed to set up an unbeatable lineup on the board, so why was her own ultimate party turning against her now?

“Sigh. I take the throne of the biggest clique and now my own people backstab me. You know you’re shining bright when you learn how Oda Nobunaga and Caesar must have felt☆”

And so Shokuhou grabbed her TV remote. For starters, she messed with that pain-in-the-rear intimidating group so they would see Shokuhou Misaki as Misaka Mikoto and vice-versa. Once those powerful pursuers had run off after the wrong person, the #5 girl slipped away.

But…

“Found you, Queen☆”

“Pant, pant. Wh-why can’t I ever lose you, Kobayashi-san!?”

“There is nothing you can do when I know it’s coming. You use your remotes to aim your Mental Out, so as long as I keep an eye on your visual range, I can easily avoid it.”

“…”

“I am a third year and you are a second year. I can never hope to compete with your level as an esper, but we both have mental powers. Hee hee. You did begin developing your power before arriving at Tokiwadai, but have you forgotten that I was the one who taught you several tricks for making practical use of your power, my adorable little Shokuhou-chan?”

Shokuhou clicked her tongue and swiftly aimed her remote, but the Kobayashi smiling there was in fact a reflection in a wall-sized mirror for gymnastics or ballet.

She was always so meticulous and cautious.

And they had known each other long enough that she could predict what Shokuhou would do.

Shokuhou heard Kobayashi’s voice in her head.

Shokuhou could do anything related to the mind, but Kobayashi only had telepathy and so she had worked hard to develop as many uses for it as possible.

In some cases, she could partly outdo Shokuhou.

(Trying to make yourself seem important by claiming to be my teacher? Going to go around telling people you taught the famous Mental Out everything she knows?)

“Of course not. I am not that shameless. I am merely a third year, which makes me your big sister in life – just like so many other girls in Tokiwadai☆”

Kobayashi smiled and returned to her physical voice.

Of course, she could still hear Shokuhou’s mental voice and chose exactly the words that would most irritate the Queen.

“If I called the rest of the clique here, that would be checkmate, but is that what I should do? I have to admit a curiosity in this person you were willing to go to such lengths to meet. So how about it? May I accompany you in place of the rest of the clique?”

The bob cut girl raised her index finger.

And the classy upperclassman girl made a suggestion.

“But what if I were to stand out front and you hung back while you learn about the male mind? Various interests would love to get their hands on you, so you must constantly consider your own safety. Plus, you have Mental Out. This way, you will not directly contact the gentleman, which should just barely convince the rest of the clique.”

“Hm.”

(It isn’t like he would remember it even if I did meet him face-to-face. But there is a chance he will remember what I say if I say it through Kobayashi-san. A slim chance ability, but one worth testing, I would think.)

(Well, I know this is going to be a pain regardless, so I can bring Kobayashi-san into this and then erase every memory related to him afterwards.)

<Again, I can hear you!>

Kobayashi bristled and yelled in Shokuhou’s mind, but Shokuhou’s mind was made up.

This memory would be hers alone.

She had made that decision from the day she had learned she couldn’t share such memories with him.

<First, I will need a long blonde wig and color contacts. I already have the uniform, but I will need the gloves and socks too. …That handbag is from a luxury brand and a limited edition product, so acquiring an identical one on short notice would be difficult. I can convince our costume girl to make a quick mockup. Should I also wear thicker soles and pad my bra a bit? Queen, I will also need to know your underwear brand and what shampoos or perfumes you use.>

“I really don’t think you need to be so thorough, but I will leave those quality decisions up to you. For one thing, there is no real way this can fail. If you say you are Shokuhou Misaki, he should believe you. Because it’s hard to spot a fake when you can’t remember what the real one looks like.”

<?>

Part 9[edit]

And so the vanguard and rear guard were swapped from the beginning.

Kobayashi had disguised herself with a blonde wig and approached Kamijou Touma while she and Shokuhou maintained a real-time telepathic conversation.

That was why Otonari Hibiku’s link had failed.

No matter how great her power, she could never establish a link with the person she wanted when she had physically targeted the wrong person.

The honey girl she had targeted was Kobayashi Satori, so she had linked her mind to Kobayashi Satori’s mind.

She would never be allowed a link to Shokuhou Misaki.

Part 10[edit]

Just because a girl had blonde hair and shined as sweet as honey did not mean she was Shokuhou Misaki. A careful examination of Shokuhou and Kobayashi’s conversation would have showed some oddities.

For some more obvious examples…

“Bfff!!??”

Kamijou took a puzzled look around, so Shokuhou quickly recovered and blended into her surroundings.

<Queen, a left at the next fork.>

Shokuhou just barely avoided an encounter by hiding behind the spectacular pillar of water erupting from a fountain. She recalled that a sufficient quantity of water could block electromagnetic waves.

<Such violent thoughts. Why do you get like this whenever it comes to Misaka-sama?>

Shokuhou visibly stewed for a bit while she worked to find something else to ask the pointy-haired boy about.

There were the many actions and expressions she made which would have been strange to do right in front of Kamijou and there was the way Kobayashi spoke as if she were in the lead.

So.

They had lured in the attacker.

Kobayashi Satori spoke through her telepathy.

<!? How…?>

In the crowd not far away, a redhead girl with wavy, shoulder-length hair gasped. The teachers’ strict uniform checks were not performed on the weekends, but she was still wearing her Tokiwadai uniform.

Was she the attacker?

It was strange to only see what she looked like after their minds were linked.

Kobayashi Satori grinned.

If Shirai Kuroko of Judgment were here, she might have checked her recorded voice data and deduced the attacker’s identity by asking how Otonari Hibiku had known the victims had all been wearing blazers which had covered up the signs of internal blooding on the upper body.

But that kind of logical reasoning was not necessary in Academy City where people had esper powers at their disposal.

Sometimes they could jump straight to the answer.

“Gh!!” groaned the pointy-haired boy.

Someone had tackled him from the side. Shokuhou Misaki had dashed over from a short distance away, crouched down, and slammed into him, knocking him over where they both slid along the ground, removing that outsider from the battlefield. Around half of that had been her tripping over her own feet and falling head first into the boy’s gut, but that miraculous timing may have been part of the blushing and flustered Queen’s superb luck.

Now Kobayashi could concentrate on the battle between telepaths.

She silently thanked the Queen for that.

Telepath vs. telepath.

The battle had already begun.

In fact, in a battle between telepaths, there was no point in throwing punches or kicks. Their minds were already linked. They could read each other’s thoughts, so even swinging a metal bat from head on or firing a submachinegun from close range could be easily dodged by reading the enemy’s aim just before the attack.

In terms of a shogi match, it may have been like pitting the most powerful AI against an exact copy while they were linked by fiberoptic cable. They would only reach repetition draw after repetition draw.

And in fact…

“!!”

<!?>

Kobayashi kicked at Otonari’s ankle and threw an eye poke with one hand, but Otonari swung her body to dodge them both. Otonari sent out her palm as a counterattack, but Kobayashi stepped back, preventing Otonari from grabbing her blazer’s collar to hold her in place.

Their throws, strikes, and holds were all identical because they were both trained in the self-defense techniques taught at Tokiwadai.

For better or for worse, neither one had an edge.

(Sigh, if I had only trained beyond the standard, I might have won this easily. Is this the price of my laziness for letting Hokaze-san handle all of the physical fights?)

Like this, they could exchange thousands of blows without causing any significant damage.

Kobayashi telepathically checked on something.

This meant attempting to cause physical injury or damage was the wrong way to go about this fight.

They had to outdo their opponent with their esper power.

The only way to end this was to break their opponent’s mind.

(That could mean distracting her by applying screaming and shouting to her auditory cortex so not even covering her ears can block it out, or combining the sounds of things like dentist’s drills or fingernails on glass drawn from my memory and sending them all into her brain at once.)

<Again, I can hear you. And if that’s the best trump card you can think up now, then I have the upper hand. You’re too focused on the term ‘mental power’. You’re forgetting that the mind and the body are a single large system.>

Otonari Hibiku’s Level 4 Mind Anaphylaxis could break anyone’s mind.

But it required three steps to activate.

1. Link to the target’s mind and prepare.

2. Send more than 20 thousand telepathic messages a second to instill a trauma in them.

3. Physically trigger that trauma from the outside to destroy their mind.

<!?>

Heights, sharp things, people, blood, enclosed spaces, open spaces, water, school, corpses, foreign countries, machines.

And many more.

It didn’t matter what phobias Kobayashi had to begin with. Otonari could create whatever new ones she liked.

Most likely, everyone could think of at least one phobia they had to some degree. Maybe it was blades and maybe it was heights, but it would be more worrying for someone to not fear anything at all. There were so many familiar examples, but it was still not entirely known what caused phobias.

They were said to be an overreaction of the mind and the result of a mistaken accumulation of experiences in pain, suffering, and failure, but that learning process could be artificially applied by an esper.

Using telepathy.

An esper who could only control a mental voice could not directly damage someone’s mind, but that did not mean they were not a threat.

At more than 20 thousand messages a second, they could convey information far faster than a physical voice that sent vibrations through the air, so they could compress a massive amount of information and send it straight into their target’s brain where it would stick.

<No.>

But a telepathic voice rejected that idea.

After accurately intercepting Kobayashi’s mental voice, she confidently pointed out the failure in Kobayashi’s prediction.

(Self-destruct cacophony! Max volume!!!)

Kobayashi immediately used her telepathy to artificially rattle her own inner ear, confusing and blocking out her own senses to protect herself.

<It’s no use.>

But these words cruelly slipped right past those defenses.

Because they were telepathic.

<I’ve given you gynophobia. Cut yourself off from the outside world all you like, you cannot escape your own internal gender identity, Kobayashi-senpai.>

Part 11[edit]

The explosion was invisible.

Because it happened on a mental level.

Kobayashi Satori screamed, clawed at her chest, and dropped straight to the ground. Otonari Hibiku had seen this same scene many times. She had found it odd that people always held their chest rather than their head when it happened. People thought with their brains, but did this mean their mind was located elsewhere?

Mind Anaphylaxis.

As her esper name suggested, Otonari managed her power by envisioning it as an allergic reaction. What if, theoretically, you could implant a completely fictional allergy inside a target and then expose the poor victim to the matching allergen? Pollen allergies could not be prevented by hard work or willpower. If someone with a severe allergy was forced to eat their forbidden food, it could kill them.

This did the same thing but in the realm of the mind.

It was an inner death brought about by the self, not external violence.

So no matter what Kobayashi did, she could never avoid the resultant damage.

“Now, then.”

Otonari Hibiku turned around.

She had met an unexpected delay in linking with Shokuhou Misaki, the original person she wanted to help, but that just meant she had to repeat the three steps. As a health committee member, she could not just let the Queen of the largest clique continue to suffer under all that stress.

She would provide a sort of pleasure from painless psychogenic internal bleeding.

That would provide a break and mental liberation.

It would be brief and it would be forced against her will, but her soul would be cut free from the weight of reality.

But then the health committee member’s feet stopped.

Otonari had noticed something.

Kobayashi Satori was supposed to be in a state of mental confusion and collapse, but the telepathic link from her was still connected to Otonari’s mind.

The girl was still alive.

<This…isn’t over.>

Otonari turned back around.

Toward the girl who had collapsed but refused to give up and was digging her nails into the ground.

Otonari’s top priority was Shokuhou Misaki.

She had eliminated Kobayashi because the girl was in the way, but she felt no real need to fully obliterate her mind. Whether her plans worked or not, a strategist hidden backstage could not actually harm her. So it hadn’t mattered if Kobayashi was alive or dead as long as she could not intervene.

And yet.

Did she want the pleasure of blood loss that badly?

“I…”

This was not telepathy.

It was a real voice spilling from the unsteady girl’s mouth.

“I thought I knew all of the Queen’s vulnerabilities… Her soft spots and her warm aspects.”

Kobayashi’s skin was pale and her lips blue, like she had ice water dumped over her head.

Cyanosis had set in.

She was trembling and her eyes could not focus on a single point.

Otonari Hibiku knew that physical damage caused by the mind could not be suppressed by sheer force of will. Just like people could not will away an allergic reaction, the damage of an internal explosion caused by outside stimuli was even more frightening than an attack with a knife or a bullet.

And yet.

“But the Queen showed me a new side of herself today… She hid and grew flustered, she became jealous when things did not go the way she wanted, and she seemed happy even as I toyed with her. I do not know who he is. The Queen will probably erase this memory so none of this will remain in my mind. But I still have one thought: How can you call this a great pressure? Don’t barge in, pretend you understand, and mess with her mind.”

<…>

“You say there is no good reason to die for a clique? Don’t make me laugh. I am happy having seen this side of the Queen just once, even if the memory is erased and even if it ends up killing me.”

<Oh, really?>

Otonari continued using telepathy.

Kobayashi Satori consciously calmed her breathing.

She furrowed her brow in concentration.

The next exchange would likely be the last.

Prepared for exactly that, Otonari Hibiku gave a snort of laughter.

Maybe so.

Otonari Hibiku clearly had the upper hand as a telepath.

However.

Kobayashi Satori hadn’t even considered using her own inadequate skills.

<Wide-band indiscriminate link at recon ship level.>

<?>

Otonari didn’t even have time to gasp.

<No, Misaka doesn’t want to go home!! Misaka wants to play with this ball! says Misaka as Misaka keeps just out of your reach!!>

<I-it popped!? My partner…my Gekota ballooooon!!> <Wow, I’ve got so many new viewers! But why?>

<Mama, I want ice cream.> <Nooo! The vending machine ate my money!>

<Hey, I found 100 yen.> <I’m sooooo bored.> <Papa’s lost his home, so what’s he going to do on Monday?>

<Choropin! No, that’s no good. Yakky!☆ Yeah, that’s a good greeting. Next, I need to decide what to call my fans.>

<Oh, no. I dropped the attaché case! Where did it go!?> <Ugh, this public voice practice is embarrassing.> <Uuuiharuuun☆> <Gyahh! M-my skirt!?> <If anyone lays a hand on my girl, mama will show them why she used to be feared as a demon.>

<Kinuhata, I wouldn’t go that way if I were you.> <Super what kind of signal did you pick up this time?>

<Where’d my frisbee go? Huh, what’s this bag?>

<Eh?>

<!!> <!?>

<??>

A torrent of information rushed into Otonari Hibiku’s mind all at once.

What did it matter that Kobayashi couldn’t do it on her own? A telepath’s true value was found when they linked to other minds.

“The extreme rejection of an invented phobia is one thing.” Kobayashi smiled thinly. “But different people’s differing feelings of love are something very real that our own minds cannot understand. Forcing other people’s philias onto a mind is much more difficult for the structure of the brain to handle.”

The sound of her target’s brain cells frying seemed to sneak into Kobayashi’s hearing through the telepathic link.

Otonari Hibiku’s shoulders slumped to one side.

“Bh.”

She tried to say something.

But she crumpled to the ground before getting a single word out.

Part 12[edit]

It was over.

The issue was settled for the time being.

“Gh, ahh…”

As soon as the relief hit, so did something else.

Kobayashi Satori doubled over and held her mouth.

But she just barely avoided coughing up blood.

She consciously formed a smile.

“Queen, it’s safe n-“

She stopped midsentence.

The link was still active.

(What!?)

Sending so many thoughts into Otonari’s mind might have even physically damaged her brain, but she was still moving her trembling hands to claw at the paved path.

<I…>

Her bloodshot eyes were directed not at Kobayashi but at Shokuhou Misaki who stood a short distance away.

No amount of pain could stop her benevolent violence.

“Quee- gah!?”

Kobayashi tried to call out a warning, but her body shook below her. She had not escaped unscathed either. There were no external signs of bleeding, but several of her blood vessels must have burst, causing severe internal bleeding.

And it would all be for naught if this continued.

No matter what she did, she couldn’t protect Shokuhou Misaki!!

Pop!

It almost seemed too easy. The invisible Mind Anaphylaxis was suddenly negated.

But not by the Queen.

Not even Shokuhou Misaki could do that.

That left only one person who could have done it – someone who was a complete mystery to Kobayashi.

“?”

The pointy-haired boy.

It all vanished as soon it touched his arm.

He likely had no idea what he had done.

<…Gh…>

Gathering all her strength into one final attack and having that negated for no apparent reason must have finally broken Otonari’s spirit. She finally relinquished her grip on consciousness.

And while clinging to the pointy-haired mystery boy’s arm, Shokuhou Misaki secretly stuck out her tongue.

(Is that it?)

Kobayashi Satori gravely gulped.

Her memory of this would likely be erased by the #5, but she still sensed something in what she had just seen.

(Is that the final trump card the Queen has been working so hard to keep hidden?)

Part 13[edit]

The real Shokuhou Misaki took the pointy-haired boy’s arm and stuck out her tongue.

She was safe as long as she had him.

She had a baseless confidence in that.

Of course, Kamijou Touma probably didn’t know a single thing about this case.

The Level 0 would have been oblivious to the telepathy flying back and forth beneath the surface. In that final moment, he hadn’t even been aware of the deadly Mind Anaphylaxis that Otonari Hibiku had launched at Shokuhou Misaki.

But none of that mattered.

Any supernatural power that contacted his right hand would be negated, no matter how brutal it might be.

That was how Kamijou Touma’s Imagine Breaker worked.

(Knowing him, this never could have happened by chance or as a lucky fluke.)

Shokuhou Misaki was certain of that.

She had been close enough to him to know the effective range of his right hand and to understand just how thoroughly misfortune plagued him.

(Which means this luck must have been mine while I shine as bright as Yang Guifei or Elizabeth I.)

A situation much like this one had failed in the past.

Kamijou Touma had pushed himself too far protecting the girl and suffered irreparable damage.

The brain damage he received prevented him from remembering Shokuhou Misaki’s name or what she looked like. The relationship they had up until then had crumbled away.

She knew that.

But even so.

Shokuhou Misaki couldn’t help but smile.

She made sure no one else would notice.

And she relished this moment.

(There really is nothing like having a boy protect you☆)

He had been her prince from the beginning.

There was no need for a fairy’s love potion applied to her eyelids so she would fall in love with whoever she saw first.

Part 14[edit]

Monday arrived.

“Hmm. What could have happened? As best as I can tell, I’m missing all my memories of Sunday.”

“Kobayashi-san, if it’s a mental thing, shouldn’t you go to the Queen for help?”

Time flowed as slowly as ever at Tokiwadai.

Perhaps gathering so many high-level esper girls in one place had distorted relativity in some way.

“Queen, Queen. What could have caused this?”

“It’s a punishment for pressing your boobs against his arm so much. Even if it was a necessary part of your acting ability.”

“?”

Kobayashi calmly tilted her head at what the Queen muttered under her breath.

Shokuhou Misaki, Misaka Mikoto, and around 10 other girls had changed into their gym clothes and gathered in a single spot. Each group was in a different location, but they had chosen Tokiwadai Middle School’s courtyard.

The groups were all practicing their plays.

“We have the costume fitting after lunch. You’re playing Oberon, so they need to give you a masculine silhouette, right? I honestly don’t know how they’re going to manage it. They can wrap bandages around your chest as tightly as they want – I just don’t see it happening.”

“And turning you into Titania presents a problem in the opposite- no, never mind. That’s a problem for the girls trying to earn points in the costume department to worry about.”

“Don’t look down at my chest while you say that, dammit.”

“You brought up chest size first and now you complain when it comes back to bite you?”

But Shokuhou seemed more confident than usual.

Fairy Queen Titiana, aka Mikoto, gave her a puzzled look.

“You seem weirdly sure of yourself. Did you have some kind of breakthrough?”

“Hee hee.”

Fairy King Oberon, aka Shokuhou Misaki, suppressed a laugh before replying.

“Let’s just say I now have the experience ability needed to give real depth to my performance☆”

Toaru Majutsu no Index:Mental Out SS

Contents

A Certain Scientific Mental Out: The Queen’s Play[edit]

Part 1[edit]

Part 2[edit]

Part 3[edit]

Part 4[edit]

Part 5[edit]

Part 6[edit]

Part 7[edit]

Part 8[edit]

Part 9[edit]

Part 10[edit]

Part 11[edit]

Part 12[edit]

Part 13[edit]

Part 14[edit]

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