"Gurgle, bubble, gurgle..."
Shirai Kuroko continued to frantically pantomime like a panicked wild monkey. Her bizarre performance finally pushed Misaka Mikoto past the limit of her patience.
"Kuroko, if this is just another one of your unhinged sketches to get my attention, I am completely tuning you out," Mikoto stated flatly, crossing her arms.
'Onee-sama, please wake up! This filthy ape is actively plotting against your pure maidenhood! Aaaaaah!' Kuroko screamed internally, her eyes bloodshot as she vibrated with the desperation of a bull being led to the slaughter.
Just as Mikoto's patience completely expired and she began calculating a high-voltage electrical shock therapy session to forcefully reset her junior's brain, Kuroko's vocal tracks suddenly snapped back to normal. She blinked, instantly dropping her wild gestures, and plastered on a bright, completely innocent grin.
"Haha! Onee-sama, I was entirely just joking! Haha! I suddenly discovered a highly amusing new pantomime game, and I simply couldn't wait to perform it for you! Hahaha!"
Laughing hysterically to cover her tracks, Kuroko skipped right back over to Mikoto's side. Mikoto stood completely bewildered, staring at her roommate as if she had officially lost her last remaining marble.
Nearby, Yuuya let out a quiet chuckle and deactivated his subtle telepathic frequency block, his eyes returning to their casual, lazy state. There was absolutely no way he was going to let a chaotic factor like Kuroko ruin the terms of his hard-won victory.
"Seriously... Kuroko has been acting completely crazy today," Mikoto sighed helplessly, resting her hands on her hips.
"So, do you want a rematch, Misaka-san?" Yuuya offered with a brilliant, teasing smile, jingling a fresh set of arcade tokens. "I can even generously give you a hundred-point handicap to make it fair."
"I am absolutely not playing another round with you! I have no desire to make myself unhappy today," Mikoto snapped, her lips twitching as her mood hit rock bottom. She felt like a complete idiot for challenging him in the first place.
It seemed that ever since she met this guy, she had never managed to secure a single victory against him in any category. His personality was far too capricious, making it impossible to predict his next move.
'This jerk is practically my natural nemesis, sent down by the heavens specifically to break my spirit,' Mikoto thought miserably.
"Wow, what a pity," Yuuya sighed in mock disappointment. Inwardly, however, he thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of completely dominating the battlefield and crushing the pride of high-level opponents.
On the other side of the arcade aisle, Saten Ruiko and Uiharu Kazari were quietly observing the interaction. Saten felt a strange, tight sensation of discomfort building up in her chest as she watched her Senpai and the Tokiwadai Ace chat so familiarly.
When she heard Yuuya formally lock in the terms of their "date" tomorrow, that heavy feeling in her chest grew even worse.
'It really seems like Takahashi-senpai enjoys being around Misaka-san,' Saten thought, her eyes downcast. 'But according to Shirai-san, they aren't in a romantic relationship at all—they're just turbulent acquaintances. A date just means two people hanging out together, right? It doesn't inherently mean he's planning to confess his feelings to her... right? But looking at Misaka-san's incredibly flustered expression, it doesn't look like a normal hangout at all.'
'Wait, what on earth is wrong with me...?' Saten suddenly caught herself, shaking her head. 'Why has my attention been completely glued to Takahashi-senpai and Misaka-san this entire afternoon?'
Saten patted her own cheeks firmly, asking herself the terrifying question: 'Could it be... that I've actually fallen for Takahashi-senpai? The girls in my class always say that the moment you start liking a boy, half of your daily thoughts are involuntarily consumed by him.'
A few hours later, the group of six finally exited the neon-lit arcade. Mikoto threw her arms up, raising her chin as she executed a massive, deeply exhausted stretch.
"Ah~ I swear, playing video games against a freak like you is infinitely more physically draining than a real supernatural duel."
As the words left her mouth, Mikoto shot a deeply disapproving, sideways glare at Yuuya. The high schooler was walking casually beside her, looking entirely unaffected by the hours of hyper-intense operational gaming.
'This guy... how can a monster like this even exist within the physical laws of nature?' Mikoto thought in absolute awe. 'It's as if there is literally nothing in the world this guy cannot master flawlessly.'
In the span of just a few short hours, her underlying impression of this arrogant jerk had been completely turned upside down.
Not only did he possess manual operational skills precise enough to easily claim a world championship at an international esports tournament, but he had also casually walked over to the arcade snack bar to mix them custom fruit juices and cold mocktails like a professional mixologist. Later, when they passed a promotional grand piano in the mall lobby, he had casually sat down and performed a flawless, complex piece at the tier of a legendary maestro—even composing a beautiful, original modern score within a matter of minutes that guaranteed a chart-topping hit.
He did all of this while remaining fully, smoothly aware of whenever Kuroko or his detractors tried to throw trick questions or traps his way, deflecting them effortlessly.
The word "genius" didn't even begin to accurately describe his existence; he was a literal, rule-breaking anomaly. Realizing the sheer disparity in their capabilities, Mikoto felt that losing a video game to a multi-talented monster like him wasn't actually shameful at all. In a twisted way, his absolute perfection almost commanded respect.
'But... I still have to spend the entire day tomorrow going on a formal date with this guy because of that stupid wager!'
Mikoto suddenly slapped her own cheeks with both hands, the crushing weight of tomorrow's reality pressing down on her shoulders, leaving her completely listless and nervous.
'What am I supposed to do...?'
"Since the afternoon heat is getting pretty intense, why don't we all go grab some cold drinks together?" Yuuya suggested, pointing toward a refined cafe and ice cream parlor just a short distance down the street.
"Hooray! That sounds amazing, Yuuya!" Index perked up instantly, her green eyes flashing with the light of salvation. "I was honestly about to faint out here from the blazing sun!"
"Well, wearing heavy, multi-layered ceremonial robes that cover your entire body from head to toe in the middle of July... if it were me, I would have been hospitalized with severe heatstroke hours ago," Saten noted softly, staring at Index's pristine Walking Church fabric.
The group quickly navigated into the air-conditioned sanctuary of the ice cream parlor, securing a set of corner tables right next to the massive glass display windows. Because a standard four-seat table wasn't large enough to accommodate six people, Yuuya and Index took the adjacent table right next to the four girls.
"Speaking of which, Kuroko," Mikoto started curiously, holding her frosty cold drink with both hands as she leaned forward. "Aren't you supposed to be incredibly swamped with your official duties at Judgment lately? How do you have so much free time to hang out today?"
"Sigh... to be completely honest with you, Onee-sama, the city's security sectors have been thrown into absolute chaos due to the viral spreading of a bizarre urban legend called the Level Upper," Kuroko explained, her shoulders slumping with visible exhaustion the second the topic was breached.
"Lately, an unprecedented wave of crimes has been committed by low-level Espers. The vast majority of the suspects are either Level 0s who have mysteriously acquired active abilities overnight, or low-tier Espers whose calculation capacity suddenly multiplied out of nowhere, allowing them to enact violent revenge against their schools. Anti-Skill has been forced to deploy all of their reserves just to assist the local Judgment branches. Securing even a few hours of personal leave today was an absolute miracle."
"Level Upper?" Mikoto repeated, her brows furrowing as she took in Kuroko's deeply troubled expression. "Is that specific rumor the reason you've been looking so incredibly stressed out over the past week?"
"Yes," Kuroko nodded heavily, taking a sip of her drink. "At first, the 177th Branch assumed these were just isolated, standard juvenile delinquency cases. But the progression of the incidents quickly became completely abnormal. According to the formal interrogation logs, every single one of the criminals explicitly confessed that they used a tool called the 'Level Upper' to forcefully elevate their Esper tiers."
Kuroko let out a frustrated sigh, resting her chin in her hand. "Although it sounds scientifically impossible under Academy City's strict curriculum guidelines, their brainwave outputs don't lie—their calculation levels were definitively boosted. Most of the perpetrators we arrested were operating at Level 3 or higher, and a few had even cracked the Level 4 threshold. It is completely unbelievable when you look at the city's central database, which lists their official profiles as mere Level 1s or Level 2s."
"That does sound incredible," Mikoto murmured, listening intently. "But if they have the physical evidence of the boosted levels, why is the investigation stalled?"
"Because something completely inexplicable happened right after the arrests," Kuroko said, her voice dropping into a grim whisper. "Every single suspect who was placed in the holding cells suddenly collapsed into a profound, unresponsive coma. The central hospital specialists stated that their conditions are due to a severe, systemic brainwave disorder, but they can't find any physical trauma or chemical toxins."
"Worse yet, the phenomenon follows a terrifying pattern: every single time I began to interrogate a prisoner and reached the absolute, vital core of the conversation to ask for the source of the item... they would inexplicably lose consciousness right in front of my eyes. It's as if an automated kill-switch is active inside their brains."
As Kuroko finished her explanation, she completely slumped forward onto the cafe table, thoroughly defeated by the loss of their primary leads.
"The Level Upper..." Saten Ruiko suddenly repeated in surprise, her voice cutting through the heavy silence of the table. "Judgment is treating it like a physical device or a drug, right?"
"Huh?" Kuroko and Mikoto snapped their heads up, looking at her in confusion.
"But... the Level Upper isn't a tangible item at all," Saten stated, looking at her phone screen. "It's just an audio file. It's a song."
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Give me powerstones.
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