Chapter 12

And on top of being weak, he tried to reason his weakness away. Because of that, he never grew. “If you had used the power you used to make Skill-Out to help people weaker than you, everything would be different!! If you used that power you have to fight against strong espers to help those in trouble, you’d all be accepted by the people of Academy City!! I don’t understand why I even have to spell any of this out for you!!” “Shut up!!” shouted Hamazura, face twisting. “That’s how our Level Zero leader, Ritoku Komaba, lived his life, and he just got killed earlier today. Trying to protect the weak, even though it wasn’t his place! In the end, we can’t do the same amazing things as him. If back-alley dropouts like us tried to do what he did, society would just look down their noses at us!!” “Is that right? But he had something that you don’t. I don’t know what kind of person he was, but his world must have been a lot bigger than yours! Isn’t that why he fought until the end without running away? To protect his own, without calling them weak! Did people really look down their noses at Komaba? I bet he fought and died for it. He tried to protect his own even if it meant dying! That was why he was revered in Skill-Out, right? Unlike you!!” “How dare you…” A few heavy words escaped Hamazura’s lips. The words seemed to be teeming with filth. “How dare you talk down to me like that! You’re a Level Zero! You don’t have any real strength! How dare you act so high-and-mighty!!” Hamazura regripped his police baton and charged in, his legs trembling. Kamijou clenched his fist. He wasn’t scared of this guy anymore. Now that he’d peeled away the monster’s skin, this was all he was. “You haven’t been mocked because you lack power. And I’ll prove it to you right now.” Ignoring Misuzu as she tried to stop him, Kamijou took an intentional step forward. Not even thinking about the baton headed his way, he simply gripped his own fist more tightly. “This is the difference between you and me! You can do something about those stupid illusions yourself, you ass!!” A dull wham rang out. The police baton and the fist each slammed into their respective targets. Blood spilled from cracked foreheads, and both of them wobbled as they lost their balance. But only one of them fell. The other would never fall. 11 Kamijou wanted to just go back to his dorm and sleep, but Misuzu insisted his blood loss was awful and not to be trifled with, so he ended up waiting for an ambulance. A big reason for his initial refusal, as pathetic as it sounded, was that the medical fees and hospital bill would strain his finances. With that, he was now lying in a stretcher, the first stage in getting into the ambulance. Along with the ambulance crew wearing white helmets was, for some reason, Misuzu, who was peeking out at him. “Academy City really isn’t safe after all. Well, I guess no city is safe. Maybe there’s nowhere in the country we can safely leave our children.” Kamijou couldn’t hear much of what Misuzu said over the clattering of the stretcher’s wheels. “…To tell the truth, I came to bring Mikoto back.” But those words, for whatever reason, rang oddly clearly. Misuzu’s eyes lowered. “It’ll get dangerous if a war starts. The news said Academy City is safer than any other city in Japan, but we could just flee overseas in that case. It’s a shame about the university I attend, but I’ll have to take an extended absence. I could take a year off just fine anyway, and I don’t have any intention to quit yet—I was serious about writing that report, though.” She said that with a laugh. It must have come out naturally when she looked at Kamijou’s face. “But, well, I’m more at ease now.” Before Kamijou could ask about what, she continued. “In the end, my problem is the same as his, from before. No matter where we run, nowhere is truly safe. People in those other places can change their minds all they like. Which means, instead of carelessly changing where that girl lives, it might be safer to put her near a kid like you.” In the meantime, they reached the ambulance. Kamijou felt a little shaking near his back; maybe they were folding in the legs under the stretcher. The ambulance would probably leave immediately. Misuzu, perhaps realizing that as well, got to her point and spoke it quickly. “Anyway, I’m saying that if kids like you will protect Mikoto, there should be no problem at all.” The stretcher with Kamijou on it was loaded into the ambulance. At first he’d only been vaguely listening to what Misuzu was saying, but he finally frowned. Kids…? Plural? Before he could ask about it, the ambulance’s back doors slammed shut, and that irritatingly loud siren started to blare.