Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Chapter1
Chapter 1: Shirai Kuroko Does Not Hesitate[edit]
Part 1[edit]
The School Garden was a no-boys-allowed area of fancy girls’ schools located in Academy City District 7.
It was a strange place best described by the quote “above average is average here”. The European-style scenery had its safety and style boosted in every single detail and it was full of brand-name bag and accessory shops despite only a limited number of people being allowed in. That meant the entire corporate group had decided being a single rich girl’s favorite shop was more profitable than catering to the high foot traffic in the prime commercial real estate near a train station. How removed from ordinary time and space was the School Garden, you ask? It wasn’t unusual to find a middle school girl walking along the sidewalk while pulling on the reins of a white horse, its hooves clip-clopping along behind her.
The best of the schools there was Tokiwadai Middle School.
But even the upper classes spread rumors during their break time. Or maybe people like that were even more worried about titles and reputations than anyone else. Whispered voices rippled through the hallway of the Western-style school building.
“Oh, my, my, my☆ Is that Shirai Kuroko? She has made a name for herself in Judgment.”
“White Spring Holdings is a nationwide monster in convenience stores, drug stores, shopping centers, and casual stores.”
“Doesn’t she work as a herald for the #3 Level 5, Misaka Mikoto? Impressive work for a 1st year.”
She could only be described as strutting down the hallway.
But for the girl with chestnut twintails, this was normal.
(Hmph. It’s not like worrying about rumors is going to help you improve your skills.)
So Shirai paid no heed to the voices around her.
Even in the crowd filling the hallway between classes, she could easily make out that one back in the same uniform as anyone else.
That was Misaka Mikoto.
“Onee-sama?”
She called quietly from a distance.
No response. Mikoto didn’t notice her. That meant this was her chance. Hidden in the crowd, Shirai Kuroko licked her lips and silently activated her Level 4 Teleportation.
“Onee-sam-gwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!?”
Her cry rocketed up in pitch when a high-voltage current pierced her body. Her body drew an unnatural curve through the air like she had performed a double jump.
Misaka Mikoto did not even look back.
“I knew you were there.”
“Heh heh heh. Should I take that as an admission that we are connected on a deeper level and any feelings we hold are mutual?”
“How can you say that while convulsing on the floor? And sprawled out to boot.”
Mikoto’s cold voice was the usual as well.
But that wasn’t enough to get Shirai Kuroko down.
(Today is the Friday of my dreams.)
Yes.
Today was special.
(Onee-sama will spend all 48 hours of this weekend with me, her roommate! For two precious days, we will truly live together!! Eh heh heh. My preparations are flawless. I have everything from an enjoyable board game to an aphrodisi- ahem, I mean a strange foreign supplement drink to carry out my perfect love plan that is guaranteed to let me score!)
“Hey, Kuroko.”
“Um, yes!? Wh-what is it, Onee-sama?”
“Why are you acting so weird?”
Mikoto tilted her head with obliviousness on her face.
She must not have discovered the secret death game modifications Shirai Kuroko had made so their dorm room’s door could not be opened from the inside or outside without her permission.
“Have you heard of those Forest Light coolers? Instead of cooling things with ice, they use a chemical coolant and a big motor, so it’s more like a handheld fridge.”
“No, but that’s a camping company, isn’t it? Were you planning on becoming a camping girl in this high-tech city?”
“Ah ha ha. I was just thinking owning one would make it a lot easier to stay up all night. The dorm’s food is good, but they only serve it at set times, so I was hoping for a fridge and a microwave. But there isn’t room to hide a big appliance, so the dorm manager would discover them right away.”
“Staying up all night, you say?”
“But with something the size of a cooler, I could pull out a nice cold can of tea whenever I wanted. Oh, or I could keep a shortcake around. The options are endless! We could say goodbye to this restrictive lifestyle where we can only drink water and go to bed after light’s out. This is our way to rebel against the dorm manager!! Ooh, I bet I wouldn’t sleep at all during the weekends.”
(Th-there isn’t a hint of indecent thought when she talks about what she wants to do while staying up all night. Is that a halo I see behind her? I feel like such a weak person for coming up with this plan. Gasp!?)
Shirai shook her head.
Don’t let the heartwarming mood get to you!! How long are you going to let “being a decent person” get in your way, Shirai Kuroko!?
“Oh, I almost forgot.”
“Forgot what, Onee-sama?”
“You said your phone’s account was broken, right? But you hadn’t gotten around to resetting your profile?”
“Y-yes. You apparently have to visit the carrier’s service counter to do that, but I can still send messages with a social media app, so I’ve been putting it off. What about it?”
“Since she couldn’t reach you the usual way, Konori-senpai of Judgment told me to pass on a message. If you’re on social media, you should just friend her so she can contact you there.”
There was a reason Shirai used an invite-only social media site. If she was friends with Konori, Uiharu, and other people she worked with in real life, she couldn’t relax and talk freely on there. But her Onee-sama did not understand this because she was a loner with no interest at all in joining an online community (even though she could freely hack into whatever community she wanted).
But she had a bigger issue to worry about.
She knew this wasn’t a message she wanted to hear, so she needed to prevent Mikoto from speaking another word. And with that making the perfect justification, it was time to seal those lips with a kiss.
But Shirai couldn’t quite muster the courage, so Mikoto continued with a smile.
“She says your martial arts proficiency is dropping. You should really thank her because she’s offering to sacrifice her entire weekend to help you retrain.”
All sound vanished.
Light spread out before her eyes, erasing the scene around her.
After passing on the message, Misaka Mikoto left. Shirai hadn’t even heard her beloved Onee-sama’s parting words.
“…”
Shirai Kuroko was left all alone in the world.
She slowly collapsed in the middle of the hallway, hung her head, and bit her lip. The stream of students parted around her and some gave her worried comments from afar. Those polite and kind girls failed to consider that being treated with such care could be the most painful thing of all at times.
Was she going to give up? Today was the Friday of her dreams. She had waited so long for this weekend. She had modified the dorm room’s door and window, checked and rechecked the flowchart she had written up to cover every possible eventuality over the coming 48 hours, and even set up a pink gas. But now it was game over before GM Shirai Kuroko could even attempt at reaching paradise? Really? Misaka Mikoto was the Railgun and she had a physical sixth sense using microwaves, so do you have any idea how difficult it was to set all that up without her noticing!?
She already knew the answer.
The words spilled from her slanted lips.
“…You’re dead.”
Konori Mii.
I must murder that ultimate busty glasses girl to reach my goal!!
Part 2[edit]
School was out for the week.
Shirai Kuroko left the School Garden and walked through the evening city. With the weekend coming up, the boys and girls headed for the shopping district had a spring in their steps.
Shirai wished she could join them. Oh how badly she wished it.
(If I skip out on it, she would only contact the dorm manager. Then my sealed room of love and desire would be completely wasted. I just know that terrifying dorm manager would kick down the door in her anger. Kh, I shouldn’t have done it at home!!)
Preventing Konori Mii from calling would mean fighting that busty glasses girl anyway. And trying to physically stop the non-busty glasses dorm manager was a fool’s errand. Strategize all she liked, she would never find a solution to that one. Why did her daily school life have to include impossible problems like that?
That meant the best case scenario was defeating Konori Mii in a single blow today and gaining her freedom right away. If absolutely necessary, she could treat Saturday as a spare day and use that to finish the battle. Then she could finally begin her death game of love with her beloved Onee-sama on Sunday!!
“Sigh.”
(Really, a Tokiwadai student shouldn’t be walking along the streets like this at all. It’s just so easy to forget that when Onee-sama, Shokuhou Misaki, and others at the top ignore the school buses and move around however they like.)
Konori was apparently waiting at a Judgment training facility in District 7. Shirai just knew the blazer glasses girl was standing tall at the center of the dojo with her arms crossed. With a snort of excitement about the coming fight, of course. Even Shirai Kuroko was a little scared of thoughtlessly challenging her to a fair fight. So what else could she do? She had time before she arrived, so she wanted to work out a strategy now.
She started with the basic information.
(Konori-senpai. The problem is she really is skilled enough to warrant that honorific from me.)
Konori Mii was a high school girl who also worked for Judgment.
They went to different schools, but they still saw each other often enough since they both worked in District 7. She had a slim build and big boobs that seemed to show how much more mature she was, but her glossy, shoulder-length black hair and intellectual glasses gave her the appearance of the diligent honor student. She did just as good at school as that impression would suggest, so the teachers had to like her.
But Shirai Kuroko was most interested in her esper power.
Level 3 Clairvoyance.
That was lower level than Shirai’s Level 4 Teleportation, but the numerical value didn’t mean much with such different genres of power. Academy City preferred not to lump all esper powers into the two general categories of ESP and PK, but such a plain example of ESP could be a pain to deal with.
Her power let her see through objects. A very simple description.
But what did that really mean?
How exactly did she see through things? Did the material or thickness matter? Was a liquid or solid easier to see through than the other? Did she have an easier time seeing through a concrete wall a meter in front of her or a single piece of paper 100 meters away? When she saw through something, did the thing completely vanish from her view, or did she still see it as translucent? What happened if something else moved in front of something she was looking through? Etc., etc.
Shirai didn’t know any of those specific conditions. She worked with Konori on a regular basis, where they watched each other’s backs as they captured and arrested criminals. Konori had directly told her a fair amount about her power. But was that really everything? Couldn’t she have forgotten to mention something because she knew it all so well herself?
The rules were easy to grasp and share with something physical like the Railgun. You could see it happen, you could measure its effects with precision equipment, and you could analyze the footage in super slow motion to determine its range, its power, and how far you needed to escape to be safe. But with precognition, telepathy, and other ESP powers that only activated in the esper’s head, it was really hard to tell how incredible the power was at a glance. But it was definitely there.
Think of it like chess.
When lining up all the pieces and staring at the board, you would want to analyze the situation 100 moves in advance and choose the best possible piece, but what if your opponent placed a piece you had never seen before on the board? What if they explained how that Sentai-style rubber monster moved, but you didn’t understand what that meant? Could you really come up with a winning strategy? What if you thought you had the perfect defense in place and then one piece suddenly warped to the other side of the board? That one unexpected move would cause your entire strategy to fall apart.
“Yes.”
After some thought, Shirai Kuroko nodded all on her own.
She had arrived at the Judgment training facility, a boxy building that looked like a somewhat fancier city gym. She was pretty sure it was also used for naginata and aikido tournaments. She showed her armband to the adult gate guard, walked in, and saw a sign saying to take a left and walk 150m to reach Martial Arts Dojo 1.
(Since the presence of an uncertain piece prevents me from using the standard moves, the margin of error will grow the longer the battle lasts and that will ultimately lead to disaster.)
In that case…
She slowly breathed in, out, stopped, and focused her mind.
She Teleported into thin air.
She was limited to distances within 81.5m and weights less than 130.7kg.
So 50m was already within her movement range.
“Sharahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”
She moved to the very center of the tatami-covered Martial Arts Dojo 1 where Konori Mii awaited. The black-haired glasses girl really was standing tall in her uniform with her arms crossed. Shirai Kuroko appeared 4m above and behind her and sent a dropkick toward the back of her head.
If she feared the unpredictable margin of error, then her best bet was to end this before it went on too long.
She needed to launch a speedy strike.
“How dare you interrupt my weekend death game of love with Onee-samaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
Dffdfaiuerbwlkgvbah!?
The resultant impact was so loud the young woman with a crew cut and a model’s figure doing indoor weight training and the Yamato Nadeshikos engaged in a fierce aikido battle with their hakamas rubbing together gasped and looked to the center of the martial arts dojo.
The girl there had shoulder-length black hair and intellectual glasses.
Without a single wrinkle or stain on her blazer uniform, Konori Mii smiled and pushed down with her heel. That was of course a lovely gift for the back of defeated Shirai Kuroko’s head.
Thus spoke the smiling busty glasses girl: “I could see you☆”
“U-ugh? O-of course you could.”
To turn the uncertain into the certain, Shirai made a mental note of what she had learned.
Konori Mii’s Clairvoyance could accurately see through reinforced concrete walls to detect an assassin silently approaching from 50m away.
Part 3[edit]
After her surprise attack ended in failure, Shirai Kuroko had the rules explained to her (while she was forced to sit in the middle of the dojo and reflect on what she had done).
- The battle will take place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In other words, the time limit was midnight on Monday morning. During that time, Shirai Kuroko could attack Konori Mii at any time, both public or private. Konori would not make any preemptive strikes on Shirai.
- If Shirai managed to restrain Konori even once, she would win. Her goal was to get the provided handcuffs on both of Konori’s wrists. She was permitted to knock her unconscious, put her in a joint lock, or attack her weak points to accomplish this.
- Konori would win if she avoided capture until the time limit. No matter how many times she fought off Shirai, the combat training could not end from her side until the time limit.
- Shirai had to fight on her own.
- There were no restrictions on using her powers or a weapon, but she could not harm other people, property, buildings, etc. As a Judgment member, she had to fight while obeying all ordinary rules and regulations such as traffic laws.
“Any questions?” asked the busty black-haired glasses girl after explaining it all.
“If a complete surprise attack couldn’t overturn the great skill difference, do I have any chance of winning this?”
“Of course you do. Isn’t middle school a little young to be so jaded you give up before you even try?”
Shirai groaned like a dog forced to wait for food and the glasses upperclassman smiled.
“Shirai-san. Your Teleportation is very useful, but that’s why you have a tendency to rely on it too much. When you fight, you plan things out based on your power, don’t you? But there are so many things that can keep you from performing the necessary calculations in your head: injury, illness, a flash of light, and gas to name a few. If you want to survive on the job, you need to fix that bad habit.”
With that said, Konori Mii gallantly departed the dojo.
Still seated on the floor with her head drooping, Shirai watched her go. The instant she disappeared through the door, Shirai teleported a few metal darts, but it didn’t seem to work.
“Drat. And she had to have had her back turned then.”
She doubted Konori had a constant 360-degree view from using her power. She always turned her head and expanded or contracted her pupils, so her power had to be linked to her ordinary vision.
So she had the ability to see her target through any walls, doors, or whatever else were in the way, but also…
(She’s clever. She knows how to search out what she needs to see.)
Shirai couldn’t deny that.
Seeing more than most people meant having more junk data that got in the way of what you wanted. It was like using a search engine that didn’t match your search terms very well. Yet Konori never seemed overwhelmed by the glut of information she provided herself.
She had the perception to accurately detect someone showing signs of planning a pickpocketing within the large crowd flooding the train station during the morning rush hour. Her experience in Judgment had built up an ability to focus on what she needed to see which allowed her to utilize her simple power. It was that ability that told her Shirai Kuroko would immediately make another attack, so she didn’t even need to look back and check.
Anyway.
“Grrr. This could not be more annoying, but I’ll do it!!”
Shirai Kuroko vanished into thin air in her seated position.
The very next moment, she had finished teleporting to the roof of the large training facility. Konori Mii was someone she absolutely did not want as an enemy, but she couldn’t wait around when she had a time limit to beat. And the more formidable this opponent, the less she could afford to waste time.
(With every tick of the clock, my lovely weekend with Onee-sama is slipping away! I need to finish this now!!)
The basic strategy for fighting an Academy City esper was as follows:
1. Confirm what you need to stay alive.
2. Keep in a safe position or keep whatever other conditions keep you safe while you observe and analyze your opponent’s power and the results of that power.
3. Use that information to come up with a way to defeat your opponent using your own power.
Of course, in a real battle, both sides would be working to ensure the other side couldn’t achieve those conditions so easily, but when you knew the path you had to take, it was easier to recover after being derailed. The fundamentals were still important.
(In that sense…)
Down on the surface, the glasses girl walked out the building’s front entrance. Konori had left the dojo first, but Shirai’s Teleportation meant she could still get ahead of her and set up an ambush. Shirai crouched silently at the edge of the tall roof, looked down at her upperclassman’s head, and sighed.
(She’s waiting for me to make my move. That means she’s given up on step 1 and is welcoming me to do step 2. She might as well be mocking me. Does she really think she can hand me that kind of advantage and stop me on step 3 alone?)
When Shirai reached for the thigh belt carrying several metal darts, Konori stopped, turned around, and smiled up at her.
“Kh.”
Simply ducking down wasn’t enough. After hiding like that out of habit, she realized the building didn’t provide cover against someone with Clairvoyance. She clicked her tongue and moved from building to building a few times, but Konori’s gaze tracked her throughout.
(She can see through more than just a wall. She must be able to accurately see through an entire building!)
This went well beyond seeing a photo contained within a thin envelope. Based on this, it was possible Konori could read the text on the 100th page of an encyclopedia without even opening it.
“On the other hand…”
Something about Konori’s Clairvoyance had already caught Shirai’s attention.
She didn’t need an answer right away. Revealing someone’s power was a lot like that game where you planted flags in a grid to locate the mines. You started by risking your life with some clicks, viewed the numbers you had revealed, confirmed where some mines had to be from that, and worked your way from there. In that sense, making a grand declaration of the answer right off the bat was much more likely to get you blown to kingdom come.
“Oh, it’s the Judgment lady. Are you heading home?”
“It’s the Musashino Milk person!”
“Wow, you all are friends with a high schooler?”
Neighborhood children greeted Konori Mii when she walked through the shopping district. Any Judgment member became known to small children just from telling them to head back to their dorms. Shirai Kuroko got the same treatment when she walked by the park.
(It looks harmless enough, but it’s actually a real danger when you’re tailing someone or doing a stakeout.)
The adult teachers would say the students of Judgment weren’t supposed to be tailing people through the city in the first place.
It looked like Konori really wasn’t going to launch a surprise attack. The twintails girl knew she had been spotted, but she still moved between rooftops to follow Konori through the evening shopping district. She zigzagged between buildings on either side of the road, but Konori still looked up, smiled, and waved.
“Damn, she’s just making fun of me now! …Oh?”
Then Konori looked away.
She looked kind of awkward about it.
She may have seen Shirai’s underwear since the girl was so far above her.
Clairvoyance seemed like a poor match for such a decent person. Impure and indecent Shirai (who somehow carried a heart of justice at the same time) could not have been more jealous.
A drop hit her on the nose.
She looked up and noticed a menacing look to the sky. She teleported down to the arcade below to get out of the rain and saw Konori jogging away beyond the crowd. Konori looked tempted by the nearby bathhouse, but she decided to head home instead, suggesting she didn’t have an umbrella.
To avoid getting caught in the rain, the upperclassman girl was returning to her dorm without taking any detours. (Shirai wished she could do the same.) She entered what looked like a fashionable new apartment building. Shirai approached the entrance anyone was allowed in.
“Hm.”
She had visited here once before, but half-remembered memories could be more dangerous than no memories at all. Standing around wasn’t going to locate Konori’s room, but searching through the manager’s room would be wrong. A thought occurred to her, so she walked down to the large bicycle parking area in the basement.
Parking spots in places like this tended to be tied to the rooms. And a bicycle would have a purchase record at the store. But the clincher was how Judgment equipment could convert those numbers into a name. This was technically an official job, so she looked own at her phone.
(Here we go. Konori Mii’s registration number is 38A5172. Oh?)
She walked through the underground bicycle parking and found an unexpectedly large motorcycle parked in Konori’s space. It wasn’t a standard model. A large model had its engine swapped out for one with less displacement so it was legal for under-18s to drive.
At any rate, this told Shirai which room was Konori’s, which meant she could observe her through the window. The electric bicycle parked next to the motorcycle meant Konori had a roommate.
(Could I take a hostage? No, that’s a bad idea. It would be completely over the line with a civilian, but maybe just barely acceptable with a Judgment member. Still, it would be too risky when I don’t know who they are or what they can do.)
Whoever they were, this roommate had to be on par with Konori Mii. Shirai sensed something frighteningly unfathomable about this mystery figure. Focusing on Konori alone sounded like a good idea when the alternative could mean getting caught in a crossfire.
Once aboveground again, she found the sun was already setting.
This battle was allowed to be a long-term thing instead of a short-term showdown where a split-second decision determined everything. Shirai bought a sweet bread and some milk at a nearby convenience store (that belonged to her family’s holdings) and teleported up to the emergency stairs on the building across from the student dorms.
“Munch.”
(I’d say this new product is a keeper. The light green veggie paste doesn’t get in the way of the sweet of the bean paste and it still gives you a day’s worth of nutrients, so it’s the perfect sweet bread for a stakeout.)
Although the limited number of jobs allowing for legal stakeouts might be a problem in it finding success. She had heard anti-stalker laws sometimes affected private investigators whose jobs weren’t authorized by the authorities. Calling themselves journalists was a handy loophole there, so it wasn’t uncommon for PIs in Academy City to officially call themselves freelance reporters or cameramen. There was always a technicality to be found.
“Musashino Milk. Konori-senpai seems obsessed with the stuff.”
She wished she had some binoculars, but they didn’t sell those at a convenience store. Instead, she aimed her phone’s camera and zoomed it in as far as it would go.
Her eyes suddenly met Konori Mii’s.
“…”
That clinched it.
The other building was 300m away. Plus, it was sunset with night falling over the city. During an idol concert on an outdoor stage, you would need binoculars to even see the idol’s expression from this distance, but Glasses Girl Konori stared right at Shirai while holding a carton of that Musashino Milk and enjoying some balcony camping with her roommate. The two girls had pulled some beach chairs and an electric barbecue set onto their balcony.
(I was wondering how she managed to avoid my darts so easily.)
In that case…
Shirai looked away from her high-tech screen in exasperation and took sip of her milk carton through the straw.
(By seeing through the dust and dirt or the air itself, she can eliminate any margin of error introduced by light refraction and attenuation. This gives her truly perfect vision. She can see the space around her without any distortion, so she can dodge without any margin of error.)
When you took a casual picture with your phone, did you ever find the color looked wrong? That wasn’t necessarily a problem with your settings or the specs of the phone camera. The scenery humans saw was actually fairly distorted. The moisture and temperature differences in the air would weaken or bend light. When light passed through a small gap, it would diffract. When it hit a wall, it would reflect. So even with the sun as the only light source, the light could be coming in from multiple directions at once. Why did the morning and evening sky look so different? No one was checking the clock and repainting the sky. It was a natural phenomenon caused by the bending and absorption of different wavelengths of light.
But those distortions meant nothing to Konori. Her Clairvoyance let her ignore any and all obstacles keeping her from seeing her target. She could see the world as it really was, with no margin of error, so she would never make any mistakes.
She had truly perfect vision.
A millimeter as seen by Shirai was not as accurate or valuable as one as seen by Konori.
(She wears glasses, so it would be wonderful if her poor eyesight drags down her power as well.)
That was only a prediction – or a hope really – on Shirai’s part. She could not objectively prove it. In fact, didn’t Konori point at distant things and shout instructions when she was using her Clairvoyance? Did she not use her power at all times because she would bump into the nearer obstacles?
This was even more trouble than Shirai had thought. Ordinary human eyesight had certain limits. The air itself would gradually attenuate light, so you could not see clearly past a certain distance. But Konori could ignore the air in between, so that attenuation by distance didn’t apply to her. Konori probably wouldn’t lose sight of Shirai even if she tailed her from more than a kilometer away. And going indoors or underground to hide herself wouldn’t work when Konori could see through those obstacles, at least to an extent.
“I really hope she wouldn’t be able to see through a 5km wall…or through the horizon.”
Konori’s inability to see through the earth was only wishful thinking on Shirai’s part and not actually proven. She couldn’t rely on that yet. And if Konori climbed up onto a broadcast tower or something, the distance to the horizon changed, allowing her to easily break through that wall.
This was only training, but in a real battle, there was no rule preventing Konori from using a weapon. What if she used a projectile weapon – such as a bow and arrow that used both an arrowhead and an acoustic weapon, or an anti-materiel rifle with a ridiculously long range – and lay in wait to launch a surprise attack?
“The more I learn, the more that power feels perfect for a delinquent who specializes in sneak attacks.”
That comment earned her a glare from the glasses girl 300m away. Apparently she knew how to read lips. She could see everything at this distance, even with a wall or door in the way. Trying to find a blind spot to sneak up on her was never going to work. There was no point in challenging her on her turf like that.
Had Shirai been wrong to even try using sneak attacks against Konori in the first place?
But the attack in the dojo had proven well enough that directly challenging her wouldn’t work either. Konori had more than just her Clairvoyance. Her old-fashioned fighting skills were top notch as well.
Shirai had to keep her from using her Clairvoyance and from using her more ordinary skills.
She still didn’t have enough information. The special circumstances and conditions created by challenging Konori Mii still gave that upperclassman girl the advantage.
Shirai had to tear that down. She couldn’t win with the standard anti-esper combat rules. She had to set things up so the circumstances and conditions worked against Konori.
Dressing in layers to withstand the snowy mountain’s chill wasn’t enough.
She needed to be willing to trigger an avalanche that swallowed them both.
“…”
Shirai Kuroko leaned on the emergency stairs railing and sipped more milk through the straw while she considered the problem.
What if?
Part 4[edit]
Shirai Kuroko continued monitoring Konori Mii’s dorm room while changing position a few times.
Eventually, dawn arrived.
She had been tempted to attack at a late-night hour such as 2 or 3 in the morning, but she had resisted. Attacking a foe in their sleep was a standard tactic, but Konori would definitely be expecting it. The presence of that roommate was bothersome as well. She could slip past any security on the doors or windows by teleporting in, but a late-night attack lost its advantage if Konori and her roommate were taking turns keeping watch throughout the night. And that was exactly what happened.
(In that case…)
The dawn began to color the sky and some moped newspaper deliverers and jogging girls were out and about.
Shirai Kuroko let out a white breath, held her can of tea between her hands, and thought. The can touted its “new and improved flavor!”, but she found it to be one of the worst downgrades she had ever had the displeasure of tasting. Still, it warmed her fingers from the morning chill.
(Could I manage if I aimed for a moment when her roommate can’t be with her?)
It was precisely 6 AM.
Konori got up bright and early even on the weekend. Shirai could barely stand it after having her highly impure plans for the weekend ruined.
Regardless, she chose this as her moment to attack.
The bespectacled honor student was completing the first step of her morning routine.
In other words, Shirai teleported into the bathroom while Konori was taking her morning bath.
She probably hadn’t seen it coming.
In fact, she must not have expected Shirai to try anything now. For once, (naked and showering) Konori Mii raised a flustered voice.
“Geh! You’re attacking now, Shirai-san!? Have you no tact at all!?”
“Hwa ha ha!! So you’re the type to keep your glasses on in the bath, sexy glasses Konori-senpai? As for tact, you should thank me for not attacking you on the toilet!!”
Girls could say some awful things to each other when backed into a corner.
Something heavy snapped loudly at the air.
Konori Mii proved herself a fearsome combat freak by immediately grabbing a wet towel from the towel rack and using a snap of the wrist to send it out like a whip. Even an ordinary towel got pretty heavy after absorbing water. If it had hit Shirai in the face, it could have broken her nose or even her neck.
But she dropped her hips down to dodge the attack to her face.
However, this spectacular dodge wasn’t fueled by the extreme sexual frustration of losing her weekend of intimacy with her captivating Onee-sama. Konori must have figured it out herself since she groaned in frustration.
“Kh!!”
“What’s wrong? Is that snap of your wrist all you can use? Looks to me like you can’t put your full weight behind your attacks!!”
“This is why I don’t like this cramped bathroom!! I wish I could build a full bathhouse here!!”
After lowering her hips, Shirai aimed a tackle for the busty upperclassman’s navel. The condition of the floor affected Shirai too, but wearing shoes gave her the edge. Konori sent a knee toward Shirai’s face to prevent the tackle, but Shirai didn’t let that stop her. She took the knee to the forehead, sent her wet hand out, and snatched up the shower hose spraying hot water all over the steamy bathroom.
As expected, Konori had to pull her hips back because her feet slipped.
If that knee had had her usual force behind it, it would have ended the fight right then and there.
No one could defeat Konori Mii if she went all out? Fair enough. Then what if you set things up so going all out would cause her to self-destruct?
The bathroom was small, so she had trouble finding the space to use her arms and legs like she wanted.
And the tile floor had a polyurethane mat on it, so her wet, bare feet slipped easily.
She wanted to fall back, but that would mean placing her feet on the edge of the tub.
“Trying to sneak around against your Clairvoyance was the wrong way to go about this.”
Whoever had more data had an advantage. Whoever made the surprise attack had an advantage. People didn’t question such obvious facts, but that prevented them from ever breaking free of those assumptions.
So you had to look at it with fresh eyes. If you didn’t change your way of thinking, you could never defeat Konori Mii.
In other words…
“I needed a situation where you seeing me doesn’t change anything!!”
Shirai Kuroko smiled with her uniform drenched.
With the shower hose still in hand, she kicked the faucet, cranking up the temperature setting. Konori could use her Clairvoyance to stage the perfect evasions, but she had no way of avoiding the arc of hot water sprayed across the entire cramped space.
“Tch!! In that case!!”
“You didn’t think that was all I had planned, did you?”
The hot water was a threat, but it wasn’t a solid wall. Konori could break through it. Once she realized her disadvantage, she would tackle right through even if it meant taking some damage. It was indeed the most correct choice.
Which was why this wasn’t Shirai’s real attack.
She had something else up her sleeve.
“For example, I could step forward and show you something you actually don’t want to see!!”
Shirai used her other hand to trigger a camera flash with her phone.
Thick, white steam filled the bathroom like cotton candy, but it wasn’t enough of an obstacle to block the bright flash. And if Konori was using her Clairvoyance to see through all such obstacles, the flash would have hit her unobstructed.
“Kyahhh!!”
“When I was moving between the shopping district’s roofs below the thick clouds, you unnaturally looked away a few times when you seemed to be tracking me perfectly well from the ground.”
The blinding effect would only last an instant.
So Shirai used that instant to swing the shower hose and wrap it around Konori’s neck.
She created another situation where the girl couldn’t dodge even if she saw the attack coming.
“That was due to the lightning in the clouds. The thick rainclouds and the air do nothing to attenuate the light for you, so looking up at the lightning with your Clairvoyance active would be suicidal!!”
Her next attack proved to be the finishing blow.
She yanked on the thick hose like it was a dog’s leash, pulling Konori’s head toward her. When the upperclassman girl staggered forward with her full weight behind it, Shirai slammed her elbow into the girl’s face.
Part 5[edit]
Soon thereafter, Shirai Kuroko was forced to take a seat on the living room floor.
Her twintails and uniform were wet, her risqué underwear showing through the latter.
“Um, Konori-senpai?”
“Yes?”
The other girl did not look pleased as she put on her spare glasses.
The underclassman hesitantly spoke up after committing the unthinkable act of hitting a glasses girl in the center of the face.
“I believe the deal was that, if I won, I was rewarded with the freedom to enjoy my weekend as I liked – which, I might add, is how weekends are supposed to work regardless – so what am I doing here?”
“Didn’t I say up front you had to obey all of Academy City’s rules and regulations during this training? This is trespassing!!”
The glasses girl blushed red as she shouted, but her roommate only laughed in carefree amusement.
However it had happened, a win was a win.
Konori looked upset, but she knew it would be petty to overturn Shirai’s win and declare it a forfeited game. Nor did she go beyond verbal complaints and make it physical.
Shirai had won.
The wild animal named Shirai Kuroko had won her freedom!
Now no one could stop her!!
(No one stands in my way any longer. Wait for me, Onee-sama. Dwa ha ha ha!! My DIY locked room survival game full of 108 delightful traps awaits us both!!)
Something dripped onto her lap.
Something red.
“O-oh? Shirai-san, you have a nosebleed. A really bad one!!”
“Oh, don’t mind this. I simply got a little carried away with the unrealized fantasies in my head.”
The long-haired roommate gave the glasses girl a skeptical look.
“Mii, what did you do to this girl?”
“Hm, maybe kneeing her in the face wasn’t the best idea.”
“No, I would think not. You need to remember your knee is the ultimate weapon that can one-hit KO a macho man three times your weight. Remember that guy who turned himself into a deadly street fighting machine with his personal style of MMA? Or that sumo wrestler who was banned from the ring after it came out he was using steroids?”
What had this strait-laced busty upperclassman been up to in the past? Shirai Kuroko was growing more and more worried, but then the upperclassman turned her attention Shirai’s way again.
And with a weirdly panicked smile.
“Sh-Shirai-san? How about we get you checked out at the hospital? I know it’s Saturday, but they still do exams during the mornings.”
“No, wait, I said not to worry about it, remember!? I promise you I’m not injured! This is only the result of some wholesomely lewd fantasies!!”
“Mii… Should I call an ambulance? She’s completely incoherent now. I’m afraid you might have given her brain damage.”
“How rude can you be, mystery roommate!?”
Part 6[edit]
She disappeared.
She ran away.
With her task complete, she had no obligation to stick around. She couldn’t have them underestimating her Teleportation. As long as nothing interfered with her mental calculations, it was impossible to keep Shirai Kuroko restrained.
She knew exactly where to go.
No one could deny that she had defeated Konori Mii. She had used up Friday night doing it, but Saturday and Sunday were hers for the taking.
“Heh. Heh heh heh.”
No one could stop her now.
Everything was fine.
She was in luck. She had the wind at her back. Destiny was calling her. The power of love was infinite. A tanker truck full of jet fuel could drive straight at her right now and she felt confident she could stop it with her bare hands!! This was a holy revelation. She had something divine within her. She knew she was going to score today. She had never been surer of anything in her life. And that gave her a great power. The bright and colorful power of looooove!!!!!!
“Eh heh heh. Wait for me, Onee-sama! No one stands between us nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!”
“Shirai? Awfully bold of you to walk right in the front door after staying out all night.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
“Um?”
“Any last words?”
“Madam Dorm Manager, may I ask what possible reason you have to treat me like this?”
“Those are some unique last words. Don’t worry. I will make sure to carve them into her headstone.”
Wait.
Please wait!!
I haven’t gotten any sleep and I was out doing Judgment work I didn’t even want to do, so why am I returning from defeating the final boss to find the dorm manager standing in front of me as the secret ultra-hard DLC boss designed for only the most masochistic players!? What was my horoscope today? Am I cursed to find stupid-strong people in glasses standing in my way wherever I go!?
Shirai Kuroko’s mind turned to her pocket.
Or rather, the phone inside it.
“O-oh, no!? I never fixed my broken account. Are you saying you sent me a final warning email that I never even saw!?”
“Enough nonsense. Face reality, Shirai.”
The dorm manager’s glasses flashed.
It was no use. Not even her Teleportation was enough to escape.
This woman had no esper power, but Shirai could have sworn she saw the growing silhouette of the ultimate monster who every single Tokiwadai student feared.
“Your life ends here.”
“Is that anything for a teacher to tell her student!?”
