Kamijou had started crying at the warmth of her smile without realizing it, but then it finally occurred to him just how far they’d actually strayed from the conversation he’d intended.
“N-no, wait! Where on earth do you plan on going? I don’t know what’s going on, but if there are sorcerers prowling around nearby, then shouldn’t you just hide in my room?”
“No, because if I’m here, then the enemy will come here, too.”
“How can you know that for sure? If you don’t go around drawing attention to yourself and just stay put in my room, then there’s no problem, right?”
“But there is, okay?” Index pinched her clothes. “My Walking Church uses magical power. Well, the Church wants me to call it divine power, but it’s all the same mana anyway. Anyway, to put it simply, enemies seem to be tracking magical power.”
“Then why the hell are you wearing that transmitter?!”
“Because it has absolute defensive capabilities, okay? Though your right hand did smash it to pieces…”
“…”
“To pieces…”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, so stop looking at me with tears in your eyes like that! But if my Imagine Breaker broke it, doesn’t that mean it isn’t transmitting anymore?”
“Even if it didn’t, they still would have detected its destruction. Like I said before, the Walking Church’s defensive capability is Papal class. It’s basically like a fortress. If I were the enemy and I got word that a fortress had been broken, I’d head straight for it in an instant.”
“Wait a second. Then that’s all the more reason I can’t leave you. I still don’t believe in the occult, but…how can I leave you when I know someone’s after you?”
She gave him a blank, stupefied look.
He really, really could only see the face of a normal girl when he saw that expression.
“…All right, then are you willing to follow me into the depths of hell?”
She smiled sweetly.
That smile was so ripe with pain, it robbed Kamijou of his words.
Index was telling him gently…
…to stay away.
“I’ll be okay; I’m not alone. If I can flee to the Church, they’ll give me shelter.”
“…Hmm. And where is this Church?”
“London.”
“That’s really far! Just how far do you plan on running?!”
“Huh? Oh, it’s all right. I think there is a handful of dioceses in this country.”
Seeing Index standing there with her safety pin–speckled habit fluttering in the breeze gave the impression of a battered woman fleeing an abusive husband.
“A church, huh…I think there might be one here in the city.”
The word church evoked images of the setting for a giant wedding ceremony, but Japan’s churches were, frankly, dull. The culture of the cross had never been particularly thick here, and given that it was a nation prone to earthquakes, there weren’t a lot of buildings still standing with long histories. The church Kamijou had seen from the window of a train was just a prefabricated house with a cross on top…Though, on the other hand, an ostentatious church seemed wrong, too.
“Hmm. It can’t be any old church, though, since I belong to the Church of England.”
“???”
“Umm, well, Crossism is one thing, but there are a lot of different kinds.” Index smiled wryly. “First, you have Catholicism, the old way, and Protestantism, the new way. And even the old way, which I’m a part of, is split up into Roman Orthodoxism, centered on the Vatican; Russian Catholic, based in Russia; and English Puritanism, with its headquarters at St. George’s Cathedral. There’s more like that, too.”
“…If you went to the wrong church by mistake, what would happen?”
“I’d be turned away,” said Index, still wearing a cynical smile. “Russian Catholic and English Puritanism only really exist in their respective countries, after all. English Puritan churches in Japan are rare.”
“…” The direction of the conversation was not looking good.
Maybe Index had visited a ton of churches before collapsing out of hunger. If she was turned away at the entrance every time and kept on running, how would that have made her feel?
“It’s all right. It’ll only be like this until I find a Church of England–style church.”
“…”
Kamijou thought for a moment about the power in his right hand, then called after her, “Hey!…If you’re ever in trouble, you can feel free to visit again.”
That was all he could say.
Despite being the man who could kill even God.
“Okay. If I get hungry, I’ll come over again.”
Her smile was like a sunflower, and so perfect that Kamijou couldn’t say another word.
A cleaning robot passed by Index, diverting from its path to avoid her.
“Huh?!”
Her perfect smile was wiped off her face in an instant. She twitched, then fell over backward, as if her leg had suddenly cramped. With a painful-sounding slam, the back of her head collided with the wall.
“~~~! Wh-what is this weird thing?!” Index screamed, forgetting about her head.
“Look at the pot calling the kettle black. That’s just a cleaning robot.”
Kamijou sighed.
Its size and shape were similar to an oil drum. It had small wheels affixed to the bottom, and it spun a circular mop, which looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner, around and around. It also had cameras affixed so it could avoid people and obstacles, but this made it the mortal enemy of miniskirt-wearing girls everywhere.
“…Oh. I heard Japan had unrivaled technology, but you really are living in the age of mechanized Agathions.”
“Uhh, hello?” The weirdly impressed Index scared Kamijou. “This is Academy City. We’ve got stuff like this all over the place.”
“Academy City?”
“Yeah. Basically, the western districts of Tokyo were developing more slowly than the rest of it, so someone bought up all this land and built this city. We’ve got dozens of universities and hundreds of primary schools, all crowded together. It’s a city of schools.” Kamijou sighed. “An eighth of the city’s residents are students, and the buildings that look like apartments are all student dorms.”
Though, on its underside, the city necessitated Ability Development for its students.
“That’s why the city seems so strange. The automated garbage collection, the wind-powered generators, and that cleaning robot were all originally college lab experiments, and they’re all over the city. Our tech level has advanced about twenty years ahead of the rest of the world.”
“I see.” Index stared intently at the cleaning robot. “So does that mean that all the buildings in this city are affiliated with this Academy City itself?”
“Yeah…I mean, if you’re looking for something affiliated with the Church of England, it might be a better idea to leave the city. The churches around here are all probably just places you go to learn about theology and Jungian psychology.”
“I see.” Index nodded, finally remembering that her head was in extreme pain and cradling it in her hands. “Ow?! Ah, wait? Where did my wimple and veil go?!”
“What, you just realized now? You dropped it earlier.”
“Huh?”
What Kamijou meant was, You dropped it when you were changing inside the blanket. What Index thought he meant, though, was, You dropped it when you fell over when the cleaning robot surprised you. She searched around the floor of the hallway for a few moments, looking confused.
“Ah, I get it! That electric Agathion!”
Having entirely misunderstood him, she dashed off to chase the cleaning robot that had already disappeared around the corner.
“…Hah. She’s off.”
He looked back at the door. Index’s hood was still in there. He looked back down the hallway again, but the girl was no longer in sight. Their parting certainly hadn’t been the teary sort.
She seems like the kind of person who’d survive the apocalypse, he thought for some reason.