“Okay! Teacher printed some things, so she’s going to pass them out first. We’ll be using these for this makeup class, okay?”
Kamijou had been in this class for a semester already, but he still thought it was preposterous.
When Komoe Tsukuyomi, the homeroom teacher of Class 1-7, stood behind the podium, all you could see was her head. At 135 centimeters tall, she was famous for being unable to pass roller-coaster safety requirements. No matter how you looked at her, she was a twelve-year-old girl, on whom you’d expect to see a yellow safety hat, a bright red backpack, and a standard-issue soprano recorder. The young female teacher was considered to be one of the school’s seven mysteries.
“If you want to talk, then Teacher won’t stop you, but you really should listen to what she has to say! Teacher worked hard to make these quizzes, so if you do badly, you’ll have to play the see-through game as punishment!”
“Wait, Miss Komoe, are you saying we have to play poker with our eyes closed? That’s for the Clairvoyance Curriculum! I, Touma Kamijou, am very worried that we’ll end up staying here all night trying to win ten times straight when we can’t even see our own hand!”
“Yes, well, Kami doesn’t have enough Development credits, so he’s going to have to play the see-through game no matter what, right?”
Ack! Kamijou choked. Her smile was all business.
“…Hmg. It seems Komoe thinks Kami is cute as hell.”
This was from a blue-haired class representative (a male one) with an earring sitting next to him. Kamijou didn’t understand.
“She may look like she’s having a good time trying to reach up the blackboard like that, but can’t you feel the pure evil flowing from her?”
“…What? If I got a bad grade and she started insultin’ me, I wouldn’t mind a bit. Hey, your EXP is quite high, having verbal play with a little kid like that!”
“…So you don’t just have a Lolita complex—you’re a masochist, too?”
“Aha-ha! I don’t only like little girls, I also like little girls!”
Are you an omnivore?! Kamijou almost shouted.
“Hey, over there! If you say another word, you’re doing Columbus’s egg, okay?”
“Columbus’s egg” meant just what it sounded like. He would have to balance an egg upside down on his desk without any support. Even students specializing in psychokinesis had to exert their brains to the brink of exploding to make the egg stay still, since if they used too much psychokinetic power, the egg would break. Difficulty: lunatic. If you didn’t succeed, you would end up in detention until morning.
Kamijou and Blue Hair had the wind taken out of them and returned their attention to Komoe Tsukuyomi behind the podium.
“Is that okay?”
The smile on her face was absolutely terrifying.
Even though Miss Komoe liked being called “cute,” she despised being called “little.”
However, she didn’t seem to care much about being looked down upon by the students. It was kind of inevitable in this Academy City. With 80 percent of the entire population being students, it was a veritable neverland. Even compared to normal schools, these “salaryman teachers” were treated harshly. Moreover, a student’s strength was based as much on his or her powers as academic ability.
A teacher was someone who “develops” students, and the teachers themselves lacked these talents. The gym teacher and guidance counselor here could blow away even Level Three monster-students with a single fully trained fist. Sort of like a member of the “elite squadron of foreigners,” but it would be cruel to expect something like that from Miss Komoe, the chemistry teacher.
“…Yo, Kami.”
“What do you want?”
“Did ya get turned on when Miss Komoe told ya off, bro?”
“That was just you, moron! Just shut up, idiot! I haven’t awakened any psychokinetic ability, so I don’t have time to play with a lowbie. And quit it with that fake Kansai accent already!”
“…D-d-d-don’t call it fake! I’m really from Osaka, dude!”
“Shut up, you rice-farming country bumpkin. You’re ticking me off. Quit making dumb comments already!”
“W-we don’t farm rice! Ah, ah, aah! Takoyakis are so good!”
“Stop forcing it! Are you gonna eat rice with takoyaki for me? Just for your character?”
“What are you trying to say? Even people from Osaka don’t eat takoyaki exclusively all the time.”
“…”
“They don’t, do they? I don’t think they do…Er, wait. Maybe…No, no way…But…Huh? Which is it?”
“Your armor is cracking apart, you Kansai wannabe.”
Kamijou sighed and looked out the window.
This makeup class is pointless. I should have stayed with Index.
The habit she’d been wearing, the Walking Church, certainly had reacted to his right hand (although reacted might have been putting it too mildly), but it still didn’t make him believe in magic per se. Ten to one, she’d been lying about most of it, and even if she hadn’t been lying deliberately, she might have just been confusing the occult for simple, natural phenomena.
But still.
…I let a big one get away, huh?
He let out another sigh. He was just going to be chained to his desk in this classroom, boiling hot for lack of an air conditioner. He should have given that “swords and magic” fantasy a shot instead. It even had a cute heroine thrown in for good measure. (He hesitated to call her pretty.)
“…”
He remembered the hood that Index had left in his room.
In the end, he hadn’t returned it. He knew that it wasn’t because he couldn’t return it. Even if he’d lost sight of her, he probably would have been able to find her pretty quickly if he’d tried. And even if he hadn’t found her by now, he’d currently be running around the city with her hood in one hand.
When he thought back on it, he felt that maybe he wanted to keep some sort of a connection. That maybe she would one day return to retrieve what she had forgotten.
The girl in white who’d graced him with a perfect smile…
He needed to leave a connection behind.
He was scared of his memory of her disappearing like an illusion.
What the hell?
After mulling it over rather poetically, Kamijou finally figured it out.
He realized that he didn’t dislike the girl who’d fallen onto his balcony. He at least liked her enough to regret not having to deal with her again.
“…Ah, damn.”
Tsk. Had he known he’d feel this way, he’d have tried to stop her.
Now that I think of it, I wonder what she meant when she said she carried 103,000 grimoires.
Kamijou had been told that the people after Index, the magic cabal or whatever (does cabal mean it’s a corporation?), were chasing her because they wanted the 103,000 grimoires she possessed and was continuing to run away to protect.
And what she carried wasn’t a key to a huge warehouse packed with books or a treasure map or anything.
When Kamijou’d asked where they all were, Index had said, Right here. But as far as he could tell, there wasn’t a single book on her. Besides, his room wasn’t big enough to hold 103,000 books in the first place.
I wonder what that was about?
He considered the situation, tilting his head slightly. Her habit, the Walking Church, had reacted to his Imagine Breaker, so not everything she’d said was a complete delusion, but…
“Hey, Teach? Mr. Kamijou’s ogling the girls’ tennis team outside and isn’t paying attention to your lecture,” declared Blue Hair in his forced Kansai accent. Kamijou grunted out a “Huh?” and his train of thought made a U-turn back to the classroom.
“…”
Miss Komoe was silent.
She looked like she was in serious shock to discover that Touma Kamijou wasn’t entirely focused on her class. Her expression was akin to that of a twelve-year-old in winter discovering Santa’s true identity.
Immediately, the class, defending a little girl’s innocence, directed hostility-laden, piercing stares at Kamijou.