“Ahh, we’re finally back home.”
“Welcome back… I’m already exhausted…”
December 11, 5:30 AM.
It was early morning. The spiky-haired high school boy named Kamijou Touma was utterly exhausted after running around the city all night in full bad boy mode. And the white nun named Index had been left behind the entire time. The 15cm fairy named Othinus and her natural predator of a calico cat were also there, but none of them were aware what fate awaited them just 5 seconds after opening the door to the student dorm room.
“The freeze-dried stuff sure has come a long way, nyah. I wonder if they have risotto. (Munch munch)”
“This wonton soup is soaking into my stomach like something out of hell. (Slurrrp…)”
“Maybe there’s no point in asking professional idiots like you, but why do you have a lighter?”
There was something there.
The dorm room had been intruded upon by a nyah-nyah boy with blonde hair and sunglasses that did not suit him at all and a hoodie bikini rabbit-ear antennae girl with a badly broken heart that made speaking to her awkward. And they were eating something.
“What are you doing? Why are you eating my food, Tsuchimikado!? And Fran, too!? I have no idea when you two became friends and – oh, I can’t believe you! How can you just eat all of the human food I’d been looking forward to!?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t check inside the fridge or rice cooker if I were you. …It’ll remind you of the old term ‘mental BSOD’.”
“Are you serious!? Ahhh!! How could you? And this stuff too!? Ahhhh!!”
Kamijou Touma ignored the warning, opened one door to hell after another, and staggered backwards like he had taken a beating in a fighting game. The refrigerator and rice cooker gave off a rotting smell and they definitely looked like somewhere you would find a cursed item.
“The crunchy cat food’s bag must have been open because it’s all gone bad,” said Fran. “You’ll have to use what’s left of the canned stuff tonight.”
“Why is the cat the only one that gets better than normal food in this disaster? I refuse to accept that.”
Kamijou groaned his question, but the cat only mewed happily.
Academy City’s infrastructure had recovered after the major blow from the heat wave and the Elements, but there was only so much that people could do with their individual appliances still broken. For about a week, the electronics stores and online stores would be hit by a big pre-Christmas wave. …Since he lived in a dorm, he wondered if the school might help raise some money, but that would not work when they usually brought in their own appliances.
“You boiled water, so is the gas working?”
“Yeah, but the microwaves broke the ignition device, so you have to turn the knob and then get it started with some chopsticks lit with a lighter, nyah. Do it with the lighter directly and you’ll burn your fingers, so be careful.”
“Maybe there’s no point in asking professional idiots like you, but why do you have a lighter?”
Even so, that was fortunate.
It was super primitive and difficult to control, but they could get cold and hot water. That meant they could take a bath by filling the tub with cold water and then adjusting the temperature with the hot water from a kettle!!
“I can tell from the look on your face!! The thing you’ve been missing recently has gotta be girls taking baths!! Ah ha ha!!!! Eh heh heh!!!!!!”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Tsuchimikado. And you’ve been missing throughout this entire heat wave and Elements mess, so what were you up to?”
The next thing Kamijou Touma knew, the nyah-nyah idiot’s nonsense had cooled the heroines’ eyes down to absolute zero. He had no idea why, but it seemed his title in life had just declined drastically.
The 15cm god on his shoulder made an extremely arrogant comment.
“Peep and I’ll kill you. And I mean that literally, not just as divine punishment.”
“You don’t even need a sink to bathe. All you need is a teacup, so you were taking baths like normal during the heat wave. You damn bath-lover.”
Whatever the case, it was best to let sleeping gods lie. She was only 15cm, but that was still 15cm. And she used a spear and bow instead of her bare hands. Think of dangerous animals like hornets, spiders, or scorpions and it was obvious that her size was plenty big to kill a human.
However…
“(But if you insist, make sure you get permission first. It’s the sneaking around without telling me I don’t like.)”
“Hey, god, let’s not blush and whisper that extra part in my ear!!”
He had no idea if she was tempting him or refusing him, but he knew taking her seriously would only place him on the receiving end of violence. So as his understander’s words caused Kamijou to act suspiciously, Tsuchimikado finally answered the question.
“Well, if you must know what I was doing, I was looking after my stepsister Maika.”
“Mh… A surprisingly noble goal, good sir.”
It sounded simple enough, but surviving those few days had meant facing the heat wave, the Elements, and human rioters. Protecting a single girl throughout that hell would have been no easy task. Kamijou knew firsthand that the environment had been far too harsh for “normal” ideas like protecting one’s family to unconditionally apply. And yet this boy had kept true to his “normal”.
He continued speaking like a soldier home from the battlefield.
“…Heh. The thing about guys is, we’re willing to become a hero at any time for our little sisters.”
“And you are a pervert to the core, good sir.”
“Now, it’s time to get to the main point, nyah. Listen carefully, Kami-yan.” Tsuchimikado munched on the emergency food meant for a day off of school during a typhoon or snowstorm. “There’s this guy called Board Chairman Aleister, right? Well, I kinda shot him in the head, so can you help me make a getaway?”
“That sure was a casual way of dropping that bombshell. So should I be calling Anti-Skill!?”
“…Even though he’s the kind of guy who can get right back up after taking a bullet to the head?” asked Fran.
“I don’t think his ability to survive it gives you free rein to shoot him all you want!”
“Now, now, Fran-chan. He didn’t see it himself, so you can’t expect him to understand that fear.”
Tsuchimikado sighed like Kamijou was the ignorant one. It did not come up much, but he discovered that it was rather irritating to have your common sense questioned by someone who had shot someone else in the head.
“Anyway, I had been doing some inconvenient dirty work for Aleister in exchange for him protecting Maika, but he screwed it up this time, nyah. He was never exactly trustworthy and his interests are a little out of whack with everyone else. …So if I didn’t give up on him here, I really could lose her.”
Meanwhile, Index’s eyes had grown wide as dinner plates as she held the cat.
“Aleister?”
“That’s right, nyah.”
“You don’t mean the Aleister Crowley, do you!?”
“It’s a pretty famous name, so did you think he was just borrowing it, nyah? …Sorry, but he’s the real deal. This is Edward Alexander himself. He survived his historical ending in 1947 and he lives on to this day.”
“Hm? Hmm??? I have no idea what you two are talking about, so could you start from the beginning?”
“You be quiet, Touma!!”
“Now another one of you is questioning my common sense!?”
“Nyahhn!!”
“And even the supposedly clueless cat is looking down on me!?”
Pets were quite good at observing the behavior of their owner(?). As he tumbled down to the bottom of the family hierarchy, Kamijou was left tearful and confused.
“What, what? So are you saying we live in a world where you can shoot a Mr. Crowley of the Aleister family in the head no questions asked?”
“Really, human…? First of all, Aleister Crowley is not his real name, but more importantly, it’s a Western name. The first name is the given name and the last name is the family name. I’m fairly certain that’s common knowledge in this world.”
No matter how sad the contents of his head, his small understander was kind enough to not give up on him. That allowed him to close up his tear ducts while he curled up and trembled. He could not forget that there was such a thing as a soft barb in this mysterious world.
“But anyway, I picked a fight with the head of Academy City, so I can’t stay here. You know my position here, right? I’m a double spy for Academy City and the Anglican Church. So once that balance is broken, I’ll be known as an enemy. That’s fine and all, but I want to avoid having Maika used as bait for me, nyah.”
That meant he would be escaping with his stepsister Maika. That was apparently a rule he had placed on himself. And it was probably more important to him than the planet as a whole or the entire human race.
“Do you have anyone to rely on…?”
“A major one right here.”
For some reason Tsuchimikado pointed his spoon at Fran who was forming a united front with him.
“She too is a magic side spy sent to monitor Kamisato Kakeru for the Anglican Church. That means our situations are similar. Since she works directly for Archbishop Lola Stuart, Aleister has his eyes on her, so we’re escaping the city together. And that means we have more authority than a normal magician, nyah.”
“I’ve called an Anglican unit to the outer edge of Academy City, but they are no more than a retrieval unit and they lack the firepower needed to destroy the wall and get inside. But if we can manage to get out of the city…”
“They’re apparently magicians who specialize in concealment, so they can hide all trace of our escape. We won’t need to worry about anyone pursuing us.”
Leaving the city.
That sounded simple enough, but this was Academy City.
To prevent leaks of technology that could be used to develop next-generation weapons or esper powers, the entire city was surrounded by a thick wall and who was allowed in or out was greatly restricted. Breaking through that would be quite difficult. In all seriousness, they could get shot at with no warning whatsoever.
“Even if you are lucky enough to escape, will you be returning to England? Just like, um, Stiyl and Kanzaki?”
“C’mon, now. Even if I’m leaving enemy territory with the support of a standing member of the UN Security Council, I’ll still be on the run. Why would I give away the answer here, Kami-yan? And there are a lot of other options, like Canada or Australia. It can be easy to forget with the EU controlling the European economy, but the old British Commonwealth still exists.”
They were working on a scale where they had to take geographic history into account. Kamijou was not at all jealous and he in fact found it incredibly irritating as someone who did not want any problems to occur.
“But, well, I have no right to stop you.”
“If you did stop me, I’d just get killed.”
“…It’s gonna be lonely without anyone in the room next door.”
“Mh.”
“This means you and Maika will be gone, won’t it? I know these are only temporary student dorms and we have to say goodbye eventually, but it’s a shock to have it thrust on me so suddenly like this.”
Tsuchimikado froze in place.
Kamijou had a bad feeling about this.
“Wait… Don’t tell me…”
“…That’s right. I still haven’t explained anything about quitting school and running away. Yeah, Maika doesn’t know anything about this.”
“Welcome back… I’m already exhausted…”
December 11, 5:30 AM.
It was early morning. The spiky-haired high school boy named Kamijou Touma was utterly exhausted after running around the city all night in full bad boy mode. And the white nun named Index had been left behind the entire time. The 15cm fairy named Othinus and her natural predator of a calico cat were also there, but none of them were aware what fate awaited them just 5 seconds after opening the door to the student dorm room.
“The freeze-dried stuff sure has come a long way, nyah. I wonder if they have risotto. (Munch munch)”
“This wonton soup is soaking into my stomach like something out of hell. (Slurrrp…)”
“Maybe there’s no point in asking professional idiots like you, but why do you have a lighter?”
There was something there.
The dorm room had been intruded upon by a nyah-nyah boy with blonde hair and sunglasses that did not suit him at all and a hoodie bikini rabbit-ear antennae girl with a badly broken heart that made speaking to her awkward. And they were eating something.
“What are you doing? Why are you eating my food, Tsuchimikado!? And Fran, too!? I have no idea when you two became friends and – oh, I can’t believe you! How can you just eat all of the human food I’d been looking forward to!?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t check inside the fridge or rice cooker if I were you. …It’ll remind you of the old term ‘mental BSOD’.”
“Are you serious!? Ahhh!! How could you? And this stuff too!? Ahhhh!!”
Kamijou Touma ignored the warning, opened one door to hell after another, and staggered backwards like he had taken a beating in a fighting game. The refrigerator and rice cooker gave off a rotting smell and they definitely looked like somewhere you would find a cursed item.
“The crunchy cat food’s bag must have been open because it’s all gone bad,” said Fran. “You’ll have to use what’s left of the canned stuff tonight.”
“Why is the cat the only one that gets better than normal food in this disaster? I refuse to accept that.”
Kamijou groaned his question, but the cat only mewed happily.
Academy City’s infrastructure had recovered after the major blow from the heat wave and the Elements, but there was only so much that people could do with their individual appliances still broken. For about a week, the electronics stores and online stores would be hit by a big pre-Christmas wave. …Since he lived in a dorm, he wondered if the school might help raise some money, but that would not work when they usually brought in their own appliances.
“You boiled water, so is the gas working?”
“Yeah, but the microwaves broke the ignition device, so you have to turn the knob and then get it started with some chopsticks lit with a lighter, nyah. Do it with the lighter directly and you’ll burn your fingers, so be careful.”
“Maybe there’s no point in asking professional idiots like you, but why do you have a lighter?”
Even so, that was fortunate.
It was super primitive and difficult to control, but they could get cold and hot water. That meant they could take a bath by filling the tub with cold water and then adjusting the temperature with the hot water from a kettle!!
“I can tell from the look on your face!! The thing you’ve been missing recently has gotta be girls taking baths!! Ah ha ha!!!! Eh heh heh!!!!!!”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Tsuchimikado. And you’ve been missing throughout this entire heat wave and Elements mess, so what were you up to?”
The next thing Kamijou Touma knew, the nyah-nyah idiot’s nonsense had cooled the heroines’ eyes down to absolute zero. He had no idea why, but it seemed his title in life had just declined drastically.
The 15cm god on his shoulder made an extremely arrogant comment.
“Peep and I’ll kill you. And I mean that literally, not just as divine punishment.”
“You don’t even need a sink to bathe. All you need is a teacup, so you were taking baths like normal during the heat wave. You damn bath-lover.”
Whatever the case, it was best to let sleeping gods lie. She was only 15cm, but that was still 15cm. And she used a spear and bow instead of her bare hands. Think of dangerous animals like hornets, spiders, or scorpions and it was obvious that her size was plenty big to kill a human.
However…
“(But if you insist, make sure you get permission first. It’s the sneaking around without telling me I don’t like.)”
“Hey, god, let’s not blush and whisper that extra part in my ear!!”
He had no idea if she was tempting him or refusing him, but he knew taking her seriously would only place him on the receiving end of violence. So as his understander’s words caused Kamijou to act suspiciously, Tsuchimikado finally answered the question.
“Well, if you must know what I was doing, I was looking after my stepsister Maika.”
“Mh… A surprisingly noble goal, good sir.”
It sounded simple enough, but surviving those few days had meant facing the heat wave, the Elements, and human rioters. Protecting a single girl throughout that hell would have been no easy task. Kamijou knew firsthand that the environment had been far too harsh for “normal” ideas like protecting one’s family to unconditionally apply. And yet this boy had kept true to his “normal”.
He continued speaking like a soldier home from the battlefield.
“…Heh. The thing about guys is, we’re willing to become a hero at any time for our little sisters.”
“And you are a pervert to the core, good sir.”
“Now, it’s time to get to the main point, nyah. Listen carefully, Kami-yan.” Tsuchimikado munched on the emergency food meant for a day off of school during a typhoon or snowstorm. “There’s this guy called Board Chairman Aleister, right? Well, I kinda shot him in the head, so can you help me make a getaway?”
“That sure was a casual way of dropping that bombshell. So should I be calling Anti-Skill!?”
“…Even though he’s the kind of guy who can get right back up after taking a bullet to the head?” asked Fran.
“I don’t think his ability to survive it gives you free rein to shoot him all you want!”
“Now, now, Fran-chan. He didn’t see it himself, so you can’t expect him to understand that fear.”
Tsuchimikado sighed like Kamijou was the ignorant one. It did not come up much, but he discovered that it was rather irritating to have your common sense questioned by someone who had shot someone else in the head.
“Anyway, I had been doing some inconvenient dirty work for Aleister in exchange for him protecting Maika, but he screwed it up this time, nyah. He was never exactly trustworthy and his interests are a little out of whack with everyone else. …So if I didn’t give up on him here, I really could lose her.”
Meanwhile, Index’s eyes had grown wide as dinner plates as she held the cat.
“Aleister?”
“That’s right, nyah.”
“You don’t mean the Aleister Crowley, do you!?”
“It’s a pretty famous name, so did you think he was just borrowing it, nyah? …Sorry, but he’s the real deal. This is Edward Alexander himself. He survived his historical ending in 1947 and he lives on to this day.”
“Hm? Hmm??? I have no idea what you two are talking about, so could you start from the beginning?”
“You be quiet, Touma!!”
“Now another one of you is questioning my common sense!?”
“Nyahhn!!”
“And even the supposedly clueless cat is looking down on me!?”
Pets were quite good at observing the behavior of their owner(?). As he tumbled down to the bottom of the family hierarchy, Kamijou was left tearful and confused.
“What, what? So are you saying we live in a world where you can shoot a Mr. Crowley of the Aleister family in the head no questions asked?”
“Really, human…? First of all, Aleister Crowley is not his real name, but more importantly, it’s a Western name. The first name is the given name and the last name is the family name. I’m fairly certain that’s common knowledge in this world.”
No matter how sad the contents of his head, his small understander was kind enough to not give up on him. That allowed him to close up his tear ducts while he curled up and trembled. He could not forget that there was such a thing as a soft barb in this mysterious world.
“But anyway, I picked a fight with the head of Academy City, so I can’t stay here. You know my position here, right? I’m a double spy for Academy City and the Anglican Church. So once that balance is broken, I’ll be known as an enemy. That’s fine and all, but I want to avoid having Maika used as bait for me, nyah.”
That meant he would be escaping with his stepsister Maika. That was apparently a rule he had placed on himself. And it was probably more important to him than the planet as a whole or the entire human race.
“Do you have anyone to rely on…?”
“A major one right here.”
For some reason Tsuchimikado pointed his spoon at Fran who was forming a united front with him.
“She too is a magic side spy sent to monitor Kamisato Kakeru for the Anglican Church. That means our situations are similar. Since she works directly for Archbishop Lola Stuart, Aleister has his eyes on her, so we’re escaping the city together. And that means we have more authority than a normal magician, nyah.”
“I’ve called an Anglican unit to the outer edge of Academy City, but they are no more than a retrieval unit and they lack the firepower needed to destroy the wall and get inside. But if we can manage to get out of the city…”
“They’re apparently magicians who specialize in concealment, so they can hide all trace of our escape. We won’t need to worry about anyone pursuing us.”
Leaving the city.
That sounded simple enough, but this was Academy City.
To prevent leaks of technology that could be used to develop next-generation weapons or esper powers, the entire city was surrounded by a thick wall and who was allowed in or out was greatly restricted. Breaking through that would be quite difficult. In all seriousness, they could get shot at with no warning whatsoever.
“Even if you are lucky enough to escape, will you be returning to England? Just like, um, Stiyl and Kanzaki?”
“C’mon, now. Even if I’m leaving enemy territory with the support of a standing member of the UN Security Council, I’ll still be on the run. Why would I give away the answer here, Kami-yan? And there are a lot of other options, like Canada or Australia. It can be easy to forget with the EU controlling the European economy, but the old British Commonwealth still exists.”
They were working on a scale where they had to take geographic history into account. Kamijou was not at all jealous and he in fact found it incredibly irritating as someone who did not want any problems to occur.
“But, well, I have no right to stop you.”
“If you did stop me, I’d just get killed.”
“…It’s gonna be lonely without anyone in the room next door.”
“Mh.”
“This means you and Maika will be gone, won’t it? I know these are only temporary student dorms and we have to say goodbye eventually, but it’s a shock to have it thrust on me so suddenly like this.”
Tsuchimikado froze in place.
Kamijou had a bad feeling about this.
“Wait… Don’t tell me…”
“…That’s right. I still haven’t explained anything about quitting school and running away. Yeah, Maika doesn’t know anything about this.”
