Inside the Windowless Building, Tsuchimikado Motoharu was sweating profusely beneath his sunglasses.
"Delusion? What I believe in and what I seek to accomplish may indeed just be a delusion," Aleister Crowley's voice echoed smoothly from the massive life-support tube. "But if a Magician lacks even the basic ambition to pursue a delusion, then they have already peaked. A Magician content with reality should have said goodbye to the world long ago."
Aleister closed his eyes, and a mechanical, emotionless voice seemed to synthesize from the surrounding machinery.
"Magic... should never have existed in this world to begin with. It is an anomaly that needs to be corrected."
...
The afternoon classes passed quickly, and Yuuya prepared to go home as usual. Today, however, he deliberately chose not to use Spatial Movement.
If a person relied on their Esper abilities for absolutely everything, life would quickly lose its meaning and mundane charm. Besides, taking a leisurely walk home with Index was quite nice.
Furthermore, Misaka Mikoto had specifically demanded that they meet in a certain park in the Seventh School District. The duel was already arranged. If he stood her up, given Mikoto's explosive and stubborn personality, she would probably try even harder to hunt him down, convinced that he was looking down on her.
"In that case, I shall respectfully comply with the Railgun's summons," Yuuya murmured to himself.
He scratched his temple, looking somewhat troubled. He still hadn't fully figured out the bizarre, randomized unlock condition for the Treasure Chest attached to Misaka Mikoto. The System had generated a final condition that literally required him to physically 'confirm' the size of the Level 5's modest chest.
Once the System's unlock conditions were firmly set, they couldn't be changed or rerolled. It was all his own fault. When the chest first generated, he had subconsciously wondered to himself: 'Is Misaka Mikoto's figure really exactly the same as the Misaka Sisters? The clones are supposedly slightly more developed due to the accelerated growth process...'
"Well, if it happens during the chaos of a high-speed battle, it's inevitable that we might accidentally bump into each other. There's nothing I can do to prevent the laws of physics, right?" Yuuya shrugged with a sly, shameless smile.
"Hey~"
Index looked up at Yuuya, who was rubbing his chin and smiling mischievously to himself. She blinked and asked in confusion, "What's wrong, Yuuya?"
"Nothing. I just thought of something really interesting," Yuuya deflected smoothly. "Index had a happy day today too, right? I saw you playing outside with the girls from the tennis club all afternoon."
"Going to school is so much fun! I want to enroll and go to school too!" Index said happily. It was a world of difference from when she was strictly learning nun etiquette and memorizing Grimoires in the austere London churches. She realized that the Science Side's schools were actually full of lively people.
"Fun? You're really just playing around during recess," Yuuya chuckled. "If you formally enrolled in school, you'd be just like me—locked in a stuffy classroom all day, listening to sleep-inducing science and math lectures. And if you failed your exams, there would be torture-like punishments waiting for you... like Komoe-sensei completely taking away your right to a summer vacation."
Yuuya's lips curled up, his expression suddenly turning terrifying and dramatic to scare her.
"Study science...?" Index shrank back, looking at him with deep disgust and fear, as if facing a terrifying tiger. "Then I definitely don't want to go to school anymore!"
"Does studying science mean I have to become a scientist? Scientists in Academy City are always so weird... they might be even weirder than Magicians!" she concluded.
"I was originally going to teach you how to use the basic home appliances in the apartment tonight," Yuuya sighed.
Index was an absolute, unparalleled expert when it came to the laws of magic, but she lacked even the most fundamental scientific common sense. The only technological things she could operate were things she was intimately familiar with, like turning light switches on and off or opening the refrigerator. She had even assigned the conceptual role of a 'magical familiar' to the barrel-shaped cleaning robot roaming their street.
'Doesn't she have a Perfect Memory?' Yuuya thought incredulously. 'How can she memorize 103,000 esoteric Grimoires but still fail to understand how a microwave works?'
Index immediately looked troubled by the prospect of studying appliances and quickly said, "But isn't having Yuuya around enough?"
"I can't be by your side 24/7. You should at least learn how to use a standard landline or cell phone in Academy City so you can call me if there's an emergency," Yuuya insisted.
Sometimes, interacting with Magicians was incredibly frustrating. Some older Magicians genuinely believed that since a phone operated without mana, it must exact a hidden toll from the user—like draining their lifespan—to transmit a voice across the world. That was why many traditional Magicians were terrified to even touch a mobile phone.
"Okay... I'll try my best," Index said, though she still sounded hesitant.
Soon, the two of them arrived at the designated park. Yuuya had assumed Mikoto would arrive late to make a point, but unexpectedly, he spotted her already there. She was standing in front of a juice vending machine, lifting her leg.
WHAM!
She delivered her signature, 45-degree diagonal kick directly to the machine's coin slot. The thumping sound of her leather loafer hitting the metal chassis was incredibly powerful.
"That's strange. The free drinks came out perfectly yesterday. Could it be because I completely broke the internal mechanism yesterday, so Judgment replaced it with a brand new one?" Mikoto muttered to herself, crossing her arms and feeling deeply frustrated that her trick hadn't worked.
"What exactly are you doing? Do you really want to drink an unpaid, stolen can of cold juice that badly?" Yuuya said with amusement as he looked at Mikoto, who was standing with her arms crossed in a particularly dashing, delinquent-like manner.
"Uh...!" Upon hearing the familiar, teasing voice, Mikoto jumped in surprise. She quickly turned her head, her face flushing as she spoke impatiently.
"You've finally arrived! I've been waiting for you for so long! How are you going to apologize for making me wait out here?" Mikoto demanded arrogantly, placing her hands on her hips in a self-righteous pose.
'This guy actually made me wait!' she thought indignantly. 'I'm a maiden, for goodness' sake, and he has absolutely no sense of punctuality or responsibility as a man!'
"Hey, don't change the subject. You still haven't explained why you were brutally assaulting that vending machine," Yuuya rolled his eyes, refusing to take the bait. He gestured toward the dented machine, pleading for justice for the innocent appliance. "Has the proud Ace of Tokiwadai really fallen so low as to use violence to get free drinks?"
Mikoto's eyebrow twitched, knowing perfectly well that he was just trying to rile her up. "You're so annoying! Why do you have to meddle in my business?! It's just that the vending machine here ate my 10,000 yen bill a few days ago! I'm just getting the money it owes me back in juice!"
"The maintenance cost of repairing the chassis you just dented would be vastly more than the price of a single canned drink," Yuuya joked.
"Ugh! Shut up! Besides, I have been waiting for you for over an hour! You should apologize properly!" Mikoto stepped forward, one hand on her hip, the other pointing an accusing finger right at Yuuya's face.
"I remember the agreed duel time was exactly 5:00 PM. It is currently only 4:40 PM. Did Misaka-san get so excited to see me that she moved her schedule up early?" Yuuya immediately pulled out his smartphone, showing her the digital clock to completely dismantle her argument.
"This... you... Ugh! Shut up! I'm going to beat you down right now and show you exactly how powerful the Railgun is!"
Caught red-handed in her lie, Mikoto blushed furiously. She angrily retorted, her bangs crackling with dangerous blue electricity, displaying her unusual, defiant fighting spirit.
"Okay, okay. Just don't cry and complain to your dorm supervisor when I beat you," Yuuya smiled knowingly, his eyes half-closed. "Let me make it absolutely clear beforehand: you are no match for me. I could literally catch a Railgun coin with my bare teeth."
Seeing that Yuuya was actively looking down on her, Mikoto's immense pride and absolute refusal to admit defeat flared to life. Her brown eyes narrowed dangerously, and she let out a cold, competitive smile.
"Is that so? You think you can catch my Railgun with your teeth? Good. I'm going to electrocute you until you turn into a twitching Gekota frog today!"
Intense, high-voltage blue arcs of electricity violently crackled around Mikoto's body as her magnetic field shot up into the evening sky.
...
Meanwhile, hidden in the deep shadows of the park's bushes, a figure in a Tokiwadai uniform covered her face with her hands. She sank to her knees on the dirt, appearing to be in a state of utter, melodramatic despair.
"How... how could this be?! This can't be happening!" Shirai Kuroko wailed silently, biting a handkerchief. "I found it so strange that Onee-sama suddenly claimed she wanted to go play video games at the arcade alone today! She would never normally brush me off like that! So that's why... Waaaaah...! Onee-sama is having another secret rendezvous with that filthy ape!"
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