Chapter 93

CHAPTER 1 A Sudden Beginning Open_the_Festival. 1 Touma Kamijou awoke on a bench in front of a station. “?” He got up and took a look around, scowling at the noise of trains, which carried well through the brisk November air. This was an Academy City station and one he recognized at that. None of the people going about their business took much notice of him, either. He was part of the city’s scenery, and he, in turn, gazed at the scenery of the city. More to the point. He had no idea why he was in such a familiar place. …Huh? I remember finishing my business in Hawaii and then heading to Baggage City in Eastern Europe and then… What happened…??? He could recall using his right hand to smash in the face of an eyepatch-wearing girl who apparently led Gremlin, but what had happened afterward? He tried to remember, but he found his memories buried under the static of intense pain and terror. Maybe he’d been barely conscious at the time, so his memory hadn’t been working properly. Little by little, though, the strangeness of the situation caught up to him. The air was a bit cold but that sense that something was wrong seemed to stab through his skin and into his body. Someone had brought him here from Baggage City. That was the only assumption he could make. On the other hand, how difficult would that have been? Baggage City was basically on the other side of the planet from Japan and the Far East. Crossing any national border with an unidentified boy who had clearly been caught up in some bad stuff must have been quite a struggle. That wasn’t all. Kamijou was in Academy City now: a place protected by a security system completely detached from the rest of Japan. Sure, a bunch of sorcerers—and teams of sorcerers—had snuck inside in the past, but would doing that have been feasible while hauling an unconscious boy like luggage? Well, somebody had pulled it off. They had lugged him to the other side of the world, then vanished without a trace. “……” He thought for a moment. …Fiamma of the Right. And, uh, Ollerus, was it? Was it them…?! Panicking, Kamijou looked around, but all he saw were familiar city sights and boys and girls moving to and fro as though nothing was wrong. There was no sign of the sorcerer who had rocked all of humanity or of the man who seemed like he would go a step further. But then it happened. Ka-clmp. A footstep. He heard it despite the sounds of life coming from every human body in this dense throng. The sound slipped into his ears, stimulating his brain as clearly as a drop of water falling from the ceiling deep in a cave. A chill ran down his spine. The noise had come from behind him. Right behind the bench he’d been sleeping on. Someone was close. Who was it? Fiamma of the Right? The man called Ollerus? As explained, getting Kamijou into the city would have taken a whole lot of work. But if someone had done so in spite of the challenges, then it must have been worth the cost. And whatever they’d gained, it hadn’t necessarily been through peaceful methods. Without a word, Kamijou balled his right hand into a fist. After tightening it as hard as he could, he slowly—very slowly—turned around. And there, he saw… “Wait. Fukiyose?” …Seiri Fukiyose, his classmate with a big forehead and long black hair (not to mention enormous breasts). She was wearing her long-sleeved winter uniform, and for some reason, she had a vinyl bag in each of her hands. They didn’t appear to contain food from the supermarket or convenience store but rather stationery and other sorts of tools. Kamijou frowned. “What are you doing here? Actually, what are you even doing at all?” “…What am I doing?” rumbled Fukiyose. “I can’t! Believe you’re asking me that!!! When you’re the one who skipped out on our Ichihanaran Festival prep, Touma Kamijooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!” “Guh-bwah?!” White spattered his vision. Fukiyose had swung around her bag and hit him right in the face, but it felt oddly hard and heavy. Little wonder, then, there was a humongous roll of duct tape inside. “Hey, wait… What is that thing, some kind of weapon prisoners came up with while locked up at the police station?! Gu-bwah?! Hey, you’re gonna crack my skull open!!!” “Pipe down!!! You’re getting no less than what you deserve!!!” Fukiyose took out from her bag the roll of duct tape—a genuine blunt weapon—and pulled off a long wide piece of tape, which she used to tie Kamijou’s hands behind his back. “I’m taking you in—back to the school!!! We have nowhere near enough people to make our class’s main attraction—our stall!!!” “Taking me in… Like, right now?! Oh, uh, but I should probably go back to my dorm first, you know? Like, I wonder if Index is doing all right, you know!!!” Ignoring his shouts, Fukiyose dragged Kamijou away like he was a murderer and she some kind of private investigator. 2 The smell of alcoholic disinfectant hung in the air. The room was so fresh and clean that it was uncanny. Inside was a unique chair with an electric-powered reclinable back. Situated on either side of the chair was a workbench, each cluttered with devices, most of them about the size of a ballpoint pen, perhaps. None of the shiny, silvery, metallic devices would have been sold in any convenience store, though. One had a sharpened edge, another was affixed with a small mirror, and yet another looked like a motor-powered circular pencil sharpener that could whittle down tough objects. If someone had known what they were, they would have begun to tremble, for they were all the tools of a professional. Tools to inflict incredible pain and agony, such that if you asked one hundred people at random, you might find none who could endure them. “Let me make one thing clear,” whispered a man wearing a strange outfit. It wasn’t a white lab coat but something more akin to raincoat, as it was made with water-resistant material. The man kept his hair fully concealed underneath a vinyl cap, and thanks to the large mask on his face, his features were unreadable. Nevertheless, his perfectly hidden body revealed more about his personality and intent than any facial expression could have. “Any attempts to endure this will fail. This isn’t the sort of thing you can hold out against with grit and exertion, got it? You were brought here to finally reap what you’ve sowed. You ignored our warnings. Unfortunately, we can no longer show mercy.” The man spoke with eyes more inorganic than a security camera. “Understand that flailing about will do nothing. The more you resist, the longer the agony will last. Your best option is to simply accept it. Then, at least, I can end this without pain.” On the special electric-powered recliner sat a blond girl of about eight, with two or three other men dressed the same as the first positioned around her. The chair was fully reclined to be like a bed, however, so maybe it would be more accurate to say she had been “laid” on it. The men looked down at her with impassive faces. “Ah, ah…” The girl let out a moan, but nobody batted an eye. They were professionals. Thus, despite knowing exactly how much pain their work could inflict, they would never let up. They were well aware of what awaited them if they let their emotions convince them to show mercy: a horrid end. “Am I clear, Fremea Seivelun? If I am, then let’s begin. If you want something to hate, then hate your own actions—the ones that brought you here.” The device, sharpened to a razor point, moved toward her forced-open mouth. “Ahhh… Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” Out in the waiting room of the dentist’s office, Shiage Hamazura heard the soprano shriek and looked up from the motorsports magazine he’d read to the point of wearing it out. On the wall in front of him hung a handmade poster that read, HEALTH TIP FOR ALL THE GOOD LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS: DON’T FORGET TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH BEFORE YOU GO TO SLEEP! Relaxedly, he turned to the girl in the pink tracksuit sitting next to him, Rikou Takitsubo. “I bet dentistry is the only job in Japan where people compliment you for confidently making little girls cry.” “…I think there are others. What about people who run haunted houses? And the guys who dress up as namahage on New Year’s Eve and go around scaring kids?” “Wait, they make money?” At the moment, Fremea was getting some reconstructive surgery done on the inside of her mouth. Evidently, her stubborn insistence on having a cup of hot chocolate every night before bed in defiance of Hamazura’s and Takitsubo’s warnings had ended in disaster. She was only eight, so she probably still had her baby teeth, but it seemed they weren’t yet ready to fall out naturally. Getting a cavity because you ignored taking care of your teeth, only to have to get it filled? That seemed to Hamazura like a whole lot of unnecessary pain. 3 “Um, look, Kami. As a human and a teacher both, I have to say your truancy is developing into a serious problem. It’s sort of like, well, extra homework and remedial classes ain’t comin’ close to covering everything you’ve missed at this point, or something…” “Yhm, mmm.” “Just to make sure you’re fully aware, it’s like, high school ain’t compulsory education, ya jerk, but of course, we’ll want to think about how you’ll recover from all your absences. Just what kind of problems have you even been having, though?” “Mrrh-hmm…” “And on a fundamental level, how the heck do you keep getting so beat up?! Did you stick your face in a beehive or something?!” In the average high school hallway, with shouting echoes courtesy of Komoe Tsukuyomi, the pint-size teacher who stood at 135 centimeters tall, Touma Kamijou’s hands were tied behind his back with duct tape. His classmate Fukiyose had punished him by dragging him all over the city. Then he’d tripped over a slight bump in the road and had fallen hard. His face had dropped straight into her soft, bounteous upper regions, and—well, you get the picture. Fukiyose had shut the classroom’s sliding door, then shoved Kamijou in the back. “Get in there, punk! One deserter, all rounded up.” Just like that, she’d gone back to her post. Inside, the classroom had literally none of its usual atmosphere. The desks had all been pushed to the back of the room to make space for hardware tools and several large plywood boards. Fukiyose had mentioned something about building a stall, but it wasn’t like these were easily assembled building blocks. They were just big sheets of wood, nothing more. The idea was to bring them outside on the day of the Ichihanaran Festival and construct the stall on the spot. The class’s reasoning for this was simple: If they built it in advance and left it outside, there would be nothing stopping aggressive jerks from just coming around and busting up the whole thing. People who liked breaking windows for no particular reason would probably be more than willing to destroy a stall, too. In a city whose 2.3 million population was 80 percent students, minor scuffles like that happened pretty much all the time. As Kamijou lay there like a friend to all earthworms, Motoharu Tsuchimikado and Blue Hair approached him—without any apparent intention of taking off the duct tape. “Whaddaya think, Kammy? It’s a cultural festival, yeah? Don’t we wanna play it by the book and, y’know, put up a café or a haunted house? In, like, a cosplay sense!!! On the whole, there’s really nothing to do at a takoyaki stand! And it’d be too unbalanced if we dressed up like maids to make it!!! That would swing things in way too comical a direction!!!” “…Apparently, there’ll be none of the beauty pageants for the girls these cultural festivals always have, either. Not even any embarrassing swimsuits. What’s with that? What’s the point of a cultural festival if there’s no culture?” I don’t know, but I don’t think maids and swimsuits are a very deep examination of culture, thought Kamijou. He knew these two would never be willing to listen to his honest opinion on the subject, though. He twisted his wrists again and again in the duct tape, struggling to peel off the sticky bits. “The Ichihanaran Festival’s meant for the city, right? Trial experiences for schools, open campuses, stuff like that. The festival’s all any of the teachers can think about right now—it’s basically one big commercial directly tied to enrollment rates. They’re throwing their weight around. The event isn’t supposed to be rowdy, is it?” “You stupid moron!!! Over at Eiri Academy High School next door, they’re having a beauty contest like normal people!!! And they have swimsuits!!! And they said kids from other schools can join in on the fun, so there’s even rumors Kumokawa will be part of it!!!” “We’re in high school, you know!!! We have way more freedom during this festival than we did during middle school!!! You’ve gotta want to see what lies just ahead on the sexy road only high school kids are allowed to see!!!” “Fine! I’ll go!!! Even though that’s literally the only thing that ever gets pubescent boys to do literally anything!!!” Touma Kamijou, the murderer, confessed at last. No matter what anyone said, the way to get the most students over to this school would be to offer something attractive. If they stuck to their stupid honesty and settled on an event that adults would consider “worthy” of being in a cultural festival, they’d bring in exactly zero people. Blue Hair stuck up his index finger. “Right. So it’s not too late. I think we should have the girls man the stall in swimsuits!!!” “They can’t be in swimsuits while running a food stall. They’d get burned by the oil. And then Ms. Komoe would get buried in written apologies,” said Kamijou. “In that case, we should make a girl accidentally burn a takoyaki, then punish her by forcing her to cover her face in egg white and mayonnaise while interacting with customers.” “I don’t think that’s gonna go down nearly as well as you seem to think it will. If she’s dripping in all that liquid, she’ll just look totally gruesome. That whole thing about a girl being more charming with a dollop of whipped cream stuck to her cheek is a fantasy.” “I don’t want to hear your negativity, man! The hell’s wrong with some fantasy?! What, are you in your rebellious phase? Do you have to be contrarian every chance you get? Huh?!” On one side was the cold-blooded Blue Hair, who seemed perfectly willing to actually rough up a classmate whose hands were tied behind his back, and on the other was the wild beast Touma Kamijou, resident of the concrete jungle, jumping at the boy’s flank and snapping at it. Motoharu Tsuchimikado, meanwhile, began calculating—at a level more precise than what you’d need for atmospheric reentry—the ideal angle at which he could dive into this brawl himself and get walloped in such a way he would go careening into a nearby girl. And then Seiri Fukiyose, the executive officer for every Ichihanaran Festival, exploded. “Rrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! If you aren’t gonna contribute, I’ll slice you up into little strips and put you in fortune cookies as a nasty surprise, you assholes!!!” That would definitely get the stall shut down immediately—and also make the headlines. 4 The Ichihanaran Festival was a supermassive cultural festival held in Academy City. The major event featured trial experiences at schools and open campuses, which meant it was directly linked to school application rates. This, in turn, made even preparing for it a large-scale project. And it came with a tradition attached: The teachers of the city gained a lot of authority. Though it didn’t matter to a kid who had just been all over Hawaii and Baggage City, there had been no classes in recent days, and public transportation was now running around the clock. The unspoken rule was nobody was allowed to stay over at school for more than one night. With that in mind, putting the entire class on a work rotation didn’t break that rule. The main difference between this festival and its twin—the Daihasei Festival, a supermassive athletic fair—was how the outside world played a part. While the Daihasei Festival brought together many people from across the globe, the Ichihanaran Festival chiefly targeted the students already in the city. The former demanded care, in a way, not to flub the whole thing in front of people who didn’t know much about cutting-edge tech or supernatural abilities. The latter, though, came off as quite a bit more relaxed. That said, because it was aimed at other Academy City students, cheap, gimmicky devices wouldn’t be enough to steal the attention of potential visitors. Every single school needed to bring out every last bit of cutting-edge technology they had and provide something that could shock even students who lived side by side with Academy City’s tech and esper powers. In that sense, this cultural festival was the most difficult in the world. That said, the degree to which someone viewed the task as a challenge or found value in the work really depended on the individual. And on that note… “First things first, Kamijou. You’re staying overnight. What did you expect after ditching so often?” …after High Supreme Judge Fukiyose passed down her sentence, Kamijou cried out like Munch’s The Scream. “Wait, what?! Hold on, when am I gonna get to go back to my dorm?! If Index finds out I’ve been in the city without coming home, she’ll blow her top!!!” Game Master Fukiyose turned a deaf ear to his lament, however, and continued to push everything forward. Her first order to Kamijou after unbinding his hands from the duct tape had been to buy food. It was around lunchtime. Usually, they ate in the school cafeteria, but apparently, their meager facilities weren’t able to provide food for every single classmate—not when those students populated such a destructive battlefield. The better choice would be to buy up a bunch of cheap bento boxes and instant ramen at a big supermarket. Unfortunately, rumors of such places being safe oases in the desert had spread quickly among other schools. Now there were small-scale skirmishes breaking out, though not on the level of cafeterias or school stores. “We need each meal to be two hundred yen or less. And we need them to contain vegetables of some kind, like a salad, if possible. Got it?” “Dang. If we had three hundred yen to work with, we could get regular-sized beef bowl platters. In this day and age, a plain old hamburger with nothing on it costs over one hundred…” “Factor in the nutritional value. For example, if Kiritaya is having one of its super–beef bowl sales, that’s 380 yen a meal. But that’s obviously over twice the amount of a regular platter, so divide by two, and it fits in the budget… Honestly, everyone’s going to be checking local shopping district websites on their phones right now. If you just go looking for whatever has the cheapest single portions, you’ll end up clashing with other schools.” “…If I’m gonna buy that much, shouldn’t I call ahead? Bigger places would be able to handle orders of that magnitude.” “If that worked, then all the restaurants would just make everything in advance and pack it up. But there’s over two million people in this city, and eighty percent of them are suddenly descending on those eateries looking for the same food at the same time,” explained Fukiyose. She narrowed her eyes. “Anyway, I’ll give you the money, but don’t let your rotten luck trip you up and wash it all down a river.” “…I can’t make any promises, I’m sorry to say.” “I’ll put the cash in a waterproof envelope. With my phone. With its GPS on. Will that work?” Kamijou would need more than two hands to hold the amount of shopping bags required to carry a few dozen people’s worth of food. Instead, he brought out a handcart and left the school. Despite preparations being underway, he sensed a timid disconcertment everywhere he looked. There were a lot of students around, most likely because it was lunchtime. All the kids tasked with procuring food were running this way and that. …If we want vegetables for under two hundred yen, sandwiches are probably the easiest option. But convenience stores won’t work, since they package each sandwich separately. I guess I’ll stop by a few of those uncomfortable restaurants meant for really big eaters. They’re like bookstores—if you buy a ton at once, they give you a discount, so the more a customer gets, the less comes out of their wallet. That should be enough for the entire class to get a full meal. Kamijou normally made food for himself to begin with, so his first idea was to just make it all himself. But he had dozens of classmates. He doubted his home cooking skills would cover that many people. He could fend for himself, but even he wasn’t good enough to cook things in a pot as big as a bathtub and not burn them. And pumping out a couple dozen meals with regular-sized utensils would take hours. …I always thought restaurant food was only so expensive because the flavors are richer. But maybe there’s a lot to say about professional cooks, he thought to himself profoundly as he headed to a super-huge sandwich shop. Then, suddenly… …he felt like he’d just overlooked something he couldn’t afford to. “……” Kamijou stopped. Nothing around him had changed; the air was still thick with the hurried tension so characteristic of the Ichihanaran Festival. It was unique, so in another way, you could also describe it as abnormal. But there was something else. Something that blew all that tension out of the water. Something enormous. He was sure of it. But there was a problem. Whatever they were, they were no katana exposed to daylight, ready to kill at a moment’s notice. They blended in perfectly. They were just a part of the scenery. And so everybody overlooked them—despite them being so enormous, so dangerous, and so clearly lethal should you carelessly approach them. Hawaii. Baggage City. Gremlin. The great darkness spreading throughout the world’s depths. They were of the same magnitude—possibly even thicker. As Kamijou recognized the threat, he stayed still, then did a slow 360-degree turn. He observed everything around him. When he did, he found the origin of the unsettling feeling. They were only thirty meters away. They were on a level such that someone exposed to them would break out in a cold sweat, even from the other side of the world, and they were leaning against a roadside tree, watching him. Strictly speaking, they were not Gremlin. However. In a way, they might have been even more abnormal than that organization. Ollerus. The man he’d encountered deep within Baggage City. The man who should have become a magic god. “Heya.” The man barely parted his lips to speak. He left his tree and began to walk over. “Fiamma of the Right and I made a bet about whether you’d notice me or not. Now it looks like I’ll be treating him to dinner… Although you did spot me in the end, so you’re not that dull.” A magic god. The word didn’t refer to a king among demons but to someone who had, as a result of their mastery over sorcery, set foot into the domain of the divine. This was a monumental achievement among sorcerers. It was said you could only become a magic god by acquiring the knowledge of the 103,000 grimoires in Index’s head, then learning to wield that information to its fullest extent. As Kamijou went over this, another thought rose up in the back of his mind. Wasn’t that just like a Level Six? Everyone whispered it was possible, in theory, and the rumors went that one would eventually appear at some point in history, somewhere in the world—but also that nobody could actually pull it off. And yet Ollerus had touched that same domain. The way he’d damaged his own reputation by saying he should have become a magic god, along with the way he didn’t make himself out to be more than he was, perhaps raised more hairs than the alternative. He was a monster. A monster of unknown power. One whom Kamijou couldn’t even begin to imagine. Ollerus spoke to him again. “You should be about stable again now. Why don’t we continue our conversation from Baggage City?” “……” “I’m sure you have a whole pile of questions at this point. About Gremlin, about that Othinus girl leading them, about their ultimate objective, and about the term magic god linking me with Othinus. And above all else…” Ollerus paused for a moment, then continued, speaking clearly. “…about Imagine Breaker and its secrets—or, more relevantly, what it even is.” He spoke in the same manner as a boxer who stepped into their opponent’s space. It was like he was breaking through something that had barely been holding him back before, producing a current nobody could ever hope to stop. Kamijou gulped. It took several seconds for him to realize the sound had come from his own throat. Why now? Of all the times, why now? When he’d finally started to feel like he was back in his world, helping his class set up for the Ichihanaran Festival? He thought it over. And finally, he exhaled a big breath, then… Dash!! He ran away at full speed from Ollerus, because he knew this conversation was going to be way too annoying and take way too long. And now it was Ollerus’s—the man who should have become a magic god—turn to be shocked. “Hey… Hey!!! This was supposed to be a serious scene! I’m dangling Imagine Breaker’s true identity right in front of you, and you’re not even biting?! You’re really not gonna take the bait? I didn’t know kids these days were so hard-boiled. Hey!!!” “Can it!!! I’m terrified of what my class will do to me if I don’t get them food! Everyone knows I already skipped out on so much prep! Put yourself in my shoes! What would happen if I abandoned this task and went off somewhere?! They’d beat the crap out of me! No, worse!!!” Everyone knew that when experts like Ollerus started talking, they took forever to get to the point. And Kamijou wasn’t mentally prepared for that yet. Please just give me a few rom-com scenes and a fan-service scene in between or something!!! Kamijou begged. When your schedule was booked, it was always best to escape things before getting caught up in them. 5 “And that’s why I called you behind the gym,” said Ollerus with a look of feigned innocence to Kamijou, who had let down his guard after finishing shopping for lunch without issue. The boy’s right hand was already curled into a tight fist. “…What do you want? To confess your love to me? To fight where other people can’t see? I really hope it’s the second one, if at all possible.”