ning.

She was not going to ask for any help and she would move her game pieces around to resolve this personal problem on her own.

The small girl placed a hand on her throat.

“All this talking is making my throat hurt. Something sweet would be perfect. ...Could you bring me a Shirley Temple? Hey, Mar-...!!”

She started calling someone out of habit, but she caught herself.

Kamijou, Index, Othinus, and Nephthys looked on in confusion as she cleared her throat.

Her face was a little red as she changed her target.

“Kamijou Touma, this is your home, so you have a duty to entertain your guests. You can find the instructions with a simple internet search for ‘Shirley Temple’, so don’t worry. A child could make one, so you have two minutes.”

“Oh, dear. It would seem spoiled little Birdway isn’t aware of the situation here. This room is currently only stocked with tap water, miso, and soy sauce! If you’re fine with some cold miso soup with no dashi, I could whip that up for you!!”

“This is even worse than I thought! This is unsuitable for human life!!”

“I completely agree, but let me add one more thing. If you hadn’t interrupted with your fight, the ingredients for our hotpot might not have gone to waste!!!!!”

This was only a petty but noisy argument, but Birdway was still the intimidating leader of the Dawn-Colored Sunlight, Europe’s largest Golden-style magic cabal. So if Kamijou Touma could drag that leader down to being a mere twelve-year-old girl, did he play the role of a joker?

Small Othinus sighed again and brown Nephthys shrugged.

“Since that solves your personal issue, can we get back to the Kamisato Kakeru issue?”

“I wish we could,” replied the fifteen centimeter Magic God with her arms crossed.

“The problem is Patricia,” explained Birdway with an irritated click of the tongue.

“Hm?”

“Didn’t I tell you she doesn’t know about magic? Even if I know this is the perfect answer using everything the magic side has to offer, I can’t tell her that. And even if I could, I wouldn’t recommend it. It would drag her to our side more than necessary.”

Any supernatural phenomena would need to be explained scientifically.

No matter how distorted it might be, she did not want to show the world of magic to her sister.

However...

“I see. Patricia doesn’t know how the magic works or how it would fix this, so from her point of view...’”

“How is she supposed to understand the logic of this cannibalization? Of course she’s going to think her sister is growing some strange tumor inside her body and then trying to force it into her mouth. Anyone would be horrified and I can’t figure out a way to convince her.”

Also, that black thing wanted Patricia’s body, so it would go on a rampage if anything tried to drive it out. That was what had led to the “sibling quarrel” Kamijou and Kamisato had been caught in the middle of. Not everything was going to go as planned.

“I’m calling this organ a fruit. Partly because I’m giving it nutrients so it will grow like a fruit, but also because it isn’t made for long-term storage. Once it finishes growing, it will rot and wither. Even if we cut it out and place in the fridge. If it’s wasted, there is no second chance. I need to make sure it grows, make sure I harvest it, and make sure it gets into my sister’s mouth. That’s the real problem here.”

“...”

“There’s one other thing I’m quite curious about and I would appreciate it if you answered me.” Birdway raised a finger. “Where did Patricia end up while I was unconscious?”

“Eh?”

Kamijou looked over at Othinus who only shrugged.

“At the very least, she wasn’t at the scene of the battle...”

When she heard his answer, Birdway gave the look of someone suffering from a cavity in their back tooth.

“If she’s wandering around alone, that isn’t much of a problem.”

Next, it all gathered together on a single point.

“But if that Kamisato person collected her, this could be trouble. I don’t remember much, but there was one other person there and his right arm seemed to be as much of a joker as yours.”

Part 9

“So Kamisato-han, do you prefer big or little boobs?”

Elsewhere in Academy City, someone else gave a completely different sort of serious expression.

After overcoming quite a lot, Kamisato had just finished the bath time that Claire and the others had insisted on.

He placed a hand on the side of his neck while speaking to a girl dragging a baggy lab coat behind her.

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re talking about what happened in the bath just now, boss! You had the most unconcerned look in your eyes as you swept the fogged-up glasses girl’s legs out from under her, sent her sliding along the wet floor to score a strike on Ellen, and finished it all off by grabbing my shoulders and throwing me!! How could you stay that calm? What do we have to do to get you all flustered and embarrassed!?”

“That’s right. You had such a varied paradise laid out before you, so shouldn’t one of us have gotten right in your strike zone?”

“Hmm?” said Kamisato as he tilted his head.

His neck would not crack.

He felt he needed to give some kind of answer, so he did.

“What does size matter as long as it fits with the rest of you?”

“Wah!! I don’t think this is a case of being too embarrassed to answer properly!! I really think he just doesn’t care!”

“You’ve gotta love someone who can speak excitedly about anything. I really do respect that. That’s what it means to be passionate.”

“Listen, boss, let’s start by discussing our base definitions. We can’t make these grow or shrink based on whether they ‘fit the rest of us’!!”

“More importantly...”

“What could be more important!?” lamented the glasses and delinquent girls, but Kamisato continued on regardless.

“I went along with your demand, so can we get down to business now?”

Yes, Kamisato had a lot to deal with.

Patricia’s incident needed attention and so did that of the other right hand user.

He was prepared to flip the switch and get to work, but...

“You’re right,” said Ellen. “How about we get something to eat?”

“....................................................................................................................................................................................”

One hand was not going to cut it any longer, so he covered his face with both hands and curled up on the nighttime road.

He truly could not understand how these girls thought.

Long-haired baggy lab coat forensics girl Ellen tilted her head despite having been the cause.

“Huh? Did I say something that weird?”

“No, not really. ...Oh, no. Is he feeling dizzy?”

“How could someone think of getting right to work when they just arrived in a new town and haven’t even tried to local food? Besides, we need to plan out what we’re going to do. Do you expect us to chat out here in the freezing December air? C’mon, we just took a bath.”

The only sensible one remaining, ten-year-old Patricia, only gently patted his shoulder.

Tears did not suit Kamisato Kakeru, so he gathered his strength and got back in the fight.

“What is this? Patricia’s incident is already straying from the main task, so when did this subquest get started? What’s next, defeating the Four Heavenly Kings who guard the barriers of the different continents and then gathering the seven crystals? Well, that’s easy. We just need to save up a hundred thousand platinum, buy our own ship, set sail for the small island at the end of the world, climb to the top of the universe tree, and ask the goddess there what to do.”

“Kamisato-han.”

“Boss...”

“I don’t know what’s got you so worked up, but seriously thinking about being reincarnated in another world is a serious warning sign. If something’s bothering you, you can always tell us.”

A distant look filled the normal high school boy’s eyes.

For some reason, he recalled a passage from a book about raising cats.

Give up on the idea of getting them to do anything or stop doing anything. Either learn to enjoy watching them do whatever they want, or do something to draw their attention away from whatever you don’t want them to do.

That thought caused something to escape him.

He placed a hand on the side of his neck and words flowed from his mouth like they were his very soul.

“There might not be anything I can do...”

A hand patted his shoulder several times.

It was Patricia.

“You can’t go crazy here. If you break, who will be there to give the sensible opinion? To be blunt, I’ve had enough of it myself.”

She was exactly right.

A normal high school boy could not just silently accept this absurdity.

He did not need to actually win the argument. He only had to keep the retorts coming.

He mustered up some courage and tried speaking again.

“I doubt this will help, but I’ll repeat myself. Kamisato Kakeru doesn’t know when to give up, so I’ll say it as many times as it takes. There’s a girl here who holds some great secret and is caught in the middle of some kind of incident. Let’s go. Let’s save her. Why can’t you get that into your heads? The quickest route is right in front of us, so I can’t imagine why we would choose to take a detour.”

But he did not get through to the girls.

Delinquent girl Elza shrugged with her wildly cut brown hair looking a bit like fox ears.

“You say that, but this is how the world works. When you reach a new land, you start with the local cuisine. How are you supposed to stay motivated without that?”

“And I can’t understand how someone could choose not to take a bath when there’s one right in front of them.”

They seemed to be operating under a different set of rules.

While boys handled everything in the “coolest” way, girls handled everything in the “cutest” way, so there was a fundamental discrepancy in their thought processes. Since he did not know their rules, it all had a lazy, shallow, bland, and unprincipled scent to it, but it was apparently an important part of their ignition process.

“Is this the monstrous product of the Yutori Education?”

“Hey, you’re our age, so don’t act like it doesn’t apply to you.”

“What years does that cover anyway? I feel like the answer has as wide a scope as the four thousand years of Chinese history.”

Realizing that persuading them with logic would be impossible, Kamisato gave up the fight. It was not that they had no logic to their argument; his logic and their logic were simply too incompatible. He decided that going with the flow would be faster than trying to install his own logic in each of them.

“So what do you want to eat?”

“Ehhhh!? That’s your territory since you arrived here ahead of us, boss!! Isn’t there...y’know, something good? An Academy City specialty or something that would give us a day’s worth of material for a blog!?”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking for... As you can see, Academy City is nothing but metal and concrete.”

“Now, now. You need to actually look, boss. That kind of thing doesn’t matter when it comes to regional specialties! Hakata has tonkotsu, Osaka has takoyaki, and Nagoya has...what does it have? Was it miso cutlets or Ogura toast? Regardless, it’s got something! You have to have seen it already, but you just ignored it!! C’mon, dig through your memories!!”

“Sorry, but this city has everything from the salt butter ramen of the north to the soki soba of the south.”

“Thaaaat’s borrrring!! Having everything is the same as having nothing of your own! It’s like the souvenir shops in Tokyo or Osaka train stations!!”

“How about you apologize to the station attendants?”

As Elza scratched at her head with both hands (which needlessly jiggled her breasts), gardening club member and glasses girl Claire tilted her head.

“Is there really nothing here? It’s all like a national convenience store chain?”

“You can apparently get dishes from over 190 different countries in District 4, but I haven’t heard anything about an Academy City original. They have normal fried eggs and toast for breakfast.”

“Oh dear.”

“Although I think the meat is all cloned and the vegetables are all automatically grown in agriculture buildings. Not counting what some of the rich eat.”

Elza perked back up.

“I don’t think you know how important what you just said was!! That’s it, boss! That sounds as crazy as a burger made from a million worms! You couldn’t experience that in any other city!!”

“You’d eat a worm burger if it was local specialty, Elza?”

Ellen sounded surprised, but the delinquent girl did not seem to get the point.

“Eh? Why not? If you go to China, you’ve gotta try the scorpion skewer. If you go to Australia, you’ve gotta see what the moth larva ice cream tastes like. And if you go to Mexico, you’ve gotta order the cactus steak. Why would you go to a Japanese restaurant after traveling to the other side of the world?”

With that, their dinner plans settled on the incredibly vague plan of “anything’s fine”.

Even buying a convenience store meal or going to a family restaurant would be enough to see what cloned meat tasted like, but...

“Wouldn’t a supermarket still be open this late?

“Oh, nice choice. If the other option is a premade meal heated in the microwave and cooked a little in a frying pan, we should probably get Master Chef Elza to cook us up something good.”

“S-stop that!! I-I’m not all that good at cooking! I only do it if I absolutely have to!!”

Elza blushed while holding the bottle of coins between her arms. She apparently had trouble with anything that did not fit her delinquent image.

Kamisato finally recalled that the pointy-haired boy had been carrying some plastic bags.

“Claire, Elza, you’re exhausted from all this bickering, aren’t you? We don’t have to go all out today, so why not just go to some random gyudon shop and-...”

His collar was grabbed at Mach speed.

By who? By Ellen, Claire, and Elza at the same time.

The glasses girl in the shoulder-exposing dress spoke up with a smile.

“Some lovely high school girls are talking about home cooking in front of a boy. You can’t compare that to ‘some random’ gyudon shop. Do you understand? Try to realize what’s going on here, got it?☆”

Their aura had completely changed.

Kamisato Kakeru was hit by “Intimidate” and cannot move!!

Meanwhile, the girls quickly let go of his collar.

“Okay, let’s find a supermarket to search for some ingredients. Elza will take the main role and I’ll take the support role. Does that sound good?”

“D-don’t just decide what I’ll be doing!! But if you insist, I guess I’ve got no choice!!”

“Ehh? Wait, wait. Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Ellen, you’re in charge of switching on the rice maker. That’s an incredibly important job.”

With that, they entered a nearby supermarket.

The sales were all over and only the wilting leftovers remained in the fresh food section, so Ellen and Elza spoke back and forth as they looked around.

“So are we making Japanese, Western, or Chinese food?”

“I’m thinking we should make whatever we can make with this sad lineup that looks like an oil crisis just hit. Dammit, the place is about to close, but someone with some decent housewife skills bought up all the relatively decent stuff. And that rundown apartment’s gas range was pretty small, so I doubt it has much firepower. We need something easy to make, with a flavor we won’t get tired of, but that has at least a little surprise to it... A meat and vegetable combo would be good. ...Maybe stuffed cabbage or stuffed bell pepper.”

That was when a groan reached them.

They turned around and found Patricia in her skintight jogging wear and down jacket. She was still keeping her silence despite supposedly being a part of the group.

She must have realized her mistake when they all turned her way, so she looked away and blushed a little.

“Ahem.”

“Oh, what’s the matter? Do you not like bell peppers?”

“Th-that isn’t it! I’m definitely not a picky eater at my age!!”

Even adults were picky eaters, but Patricia apparently saw things differently. She may have been a bit of a perfectionist when it came to the idea of being “grown up”.

“Don’t worry. Leave it to our Master Chef Elza and the battle with your pickiness will be blasted beyond the horizon by a single beam blast.”

“H-hey! How many times do I have to tell you I don’t like housework!! And doesn’t that make me sound kind of dangerous or massive!?”

“Which side are you going for, Elza? You don’t want to seem like a maiden but you don’t want to seem like a macho either, so I can’t tell what you want to be.”

The conversation log began scrolling downward again, so blonde forehead girl Patricia cut in before some weird assumptions were made about her.

“I said that isn’t it!! I’m not a picky eater!!”

“Oh? Then I can just use a raw bell pepper. Maybe I’ll wash one up and shove the whole thing in the middle of a salad.”

“Mgh.”

“Or if you want something healthy, I could throw five or ten of them in a blender to make a bell pepper smoothie. 100% pure vegetable juice! It might taste bad, but don’t worry!!”

“Uuh!?”

Elza took pity on the tearfully trembling girl, so she let out a gentle sigh.

“...Fine, then.”

“?”

“Listen, little girl, I’m going to make a prediction. You’re going to overcome one of your dislikes today. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll rewrite your definition of bell peppers.”

“Wh-why are you trying to sound so cool? Besides, I’m not a picky-...”

Patricia began waving her arms, but then she realized something.

At some point, she had joined their conversation.

She was no longer just watching the conversation log scroll by; her own name was included.

“...Huh?”

She had been the one to speak those lines, but she still tilted her head.

Not even she knew how to define this.

Part 10

Leivinia Birdway stood out on the dorm room’s balcony.

The dorm buildings were gathered together like bookcases in a library or shoe lockers at a school and she stared at the moon in the sliver of the night sky visible between those buildings.

The blue sheet was pulled back and Kamijou stepped out.

He wrapped his arms around himself to fight the cold and let out a white breath.

“What are you doing, Birdway?”

“Can’t I at least enjoy the moonlight in peace?”

“I get that you’re sulking over the lack of a hotpot, but come on in. Watching you is enough to make me feel like I’m freezing.”

“You really are-...! No, never mind. Complaining isn’t going to change anything about you.”

“?”

At any rate, Kamijou and Birdway returned to the room. It was still cold thanks to the broken window, but it was better than the exposed balcony.

Inside the room, bandage-covered Nephthys still had her sensual chocolate-colored body sprawled out on the ground as she crawled over and messed with the TV remote. Index and Othinus were watching in silence.

However, Kamijou called out to stop her.

“Wait, Nephthys! The variety shows on weekday nights are always...!”

“Um?”

“...food reports, cooking contest quizzes, and other shows meant to draw the attention of housewives!!”

It was too late.

The flat screen was filled with an entire chicken. And it was fried. It was completely fried. The golden breading produced crunching and sizzling sounds as small drops of oil burst out, steam gently rose against the black background, and the camera slowly rotated around it.

“The Christmas season is here, so the sales of chicken are on the rise! Yes, we’re here at Maruichi, known for frying up an entire chicken in the fiercely fought food wars of District 15. You might think Christmas means turkey, but chicken and other birds are gaining ground and the rush of preorders has forced them to build up some emergency lines.”

The first to burst into tears was Index.

She held a hand to her mouth, collapsed to the side, and began wailing.

“Fgoumaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

“Index, I know how you feel, but let’s try to maintain our ability to communicate!!”

As Kamijou tried to calm the girl, fifteen centimeter Othinus pressed her index finger against her temple.

“So this is what the Japanese idiom ‘poison for the eyes’ refers to. I thought you needed the thought-process of Japan’s culture of shame to understand it, but now I understand all too well.”

“Yes. As a god, receiving insufficient offerings is not exactly fun.”

“C’mon, can’t we start seriously worrying about dinner now?” asked Kamijou. “I know Birdway is in a lot of trouble, but doesn’t that mean we need to be able to bring our A game!? ...Ah.”

Meanwhile Birdway gave an exasperated sigh.

“The amateur high school boy is one thing, but the rest of you are a grimoire library or a Magic God that was willing to kill herself for her ceremony. I’m pretty sure you can control your autonomic nerves and thus control your digestive system.”

“...”

“What? Why do you look so lost in thought?”

Birdway looked to Kamijou in confusion as he silently looked down.

More specifically, he looked down at the hand on his pants pocket.

“This is...bad. I was hoping to save us, but I might have just thrown new fuel on the fire. However, even if it might help us get through this, keeping quiet isn’t my style.”

“Get to the point.”

“What if... Hypothetically now, Birdway.”

Kamijou Touma began speaking in a heavy, heavy voice as he slowly slid a hand into his pocket.

“What if the vacuum sealed fish sausage I got while trading with my classmates at an early lunch just so happened to still be right here in-...”

He was not allowed to finish.

The girls rushed forward to devour Kamijou Touma’s sausage.

Part 11

Now, it’s time to eat!!

But to make a long story short, Elza felt utterly disgraced after all her boasting.

After putting on the apron with practiced ease (while not wanting anyone to notice how practiced it was), the large breasted (she also did not want anyone to notice how large they were) delinquent girl had yet to complete a single dish in the rundown apartment’s kitchen.

After all...

“Who keeps sneaking ‘secret ingredients’ in the second I turn my baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!?”

As Demon Lord Elza’s eyes glowed red and her fox ear hair bristled, the first to avert her gaze was baggy lab coat forensics girl Ellen. Sweat poured down her face as she spoke up in a trembling voice.

“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Liar!! Who else could it be!? Look, this thing coming out of the stuffed cabbage pot deserves a mosaic over it! What kind of chemical flavoring did you add to make that happen!? Is it some new weapon meant for the roaches that have grown resistant in the city!?”

“Come now. That isn’t what this is at all! I thought through it all logically, put together the chemical formulas, and mixed it all up according to the equations, so it has to taste good!!”

“Don’t bring hexagonal chemical formulas into the kitcheeeeeeeeeeen!! We’re not trying to make mustard gas in this poooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!!”

Glasses girl Claire was collapsed by the wall in the cramped room. One shoulder strap of her apron-like white dress had slipped down and the giant tropical flowers growing from her head seemed to have wilted.

“Ah, it feels like I just had harsh undiluted American weed killer dumped over my head... How about we go somewhere else while we let the place air out? Leaving without locking up is dangerous, but the window was broken in the first place.”

“If a burglar sticks his hand in the pot, we might get a reward for public service. Talk about easy.”

“Are you even listening!? Just like with quantum theory, the idea is already complete. It’s just that the experiment to reproduce it inside the device happened to fail this time! It isn’t that I have no sense of taste!!”

“You need to rethink your idea from the second you started bringing up quantum theory where the result changes based on whether it’s being observed or not!!”

And so they made an emergency evacuation.

The residents of the rundown apartment were drawn out by the sudden stench, so Kamisato Kakeru bowed down and explained the situation. Among them, an extremely short female teacher smiled bitterly and helped out, so they avoided making the news and ending up as a trending topic on websites.

Once he was finally freed from his apology press conference, Kamisato Kakeru breathed a heavy sigh.

“To sum up, this will all be over if we leave the room for about two hours. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll have to eat out tonight.”

“That teacher sure was amazing. The instant she saw Ellen’s cooking, she began searching for its weakness and sealed it off with that stuff that solidifies tempura oil. I could tell she wasn’t your average person as soon as she faced that mosaic-deserving mass without running away.”

“Huh? Does this mean I’m going to be teased about this for two or three days straight?”

“More importantly, where should we go? There are a lot of options for eating out.”

They began thinking, but the first to hesitantly raise her hand and open her mouth was Patricia.

“U-um.”

“?”

“I’m fine with anything, but I would like to try Japanese ramen. The last time I was here I didn’t really have time.”

Kamisato thought to himself that “Japanese ramen” had an interesting ring to it. That may have been how Westerners saw it. He remembered seeing an online news article about ramen encroaching on the territory of the previous Three Sacred Treasures that were sushi, tempura, and sukiyaki. Of course, anything in Japan was thoroughly localized for Japanese people, so there were all sorts of options that had never existed originally, much like eating pickled vegetables with curry rice. Regardless, it was an odd turn of a phrase in a number of ways.

And at the same time...

(Will the girl way of thinking allow ramen at night?)

Kamisato had no issue with heading out to a ramen place, but would Ellen and Claire be willing? He was honestly quite worried about that. He could imagine them saying they would only drink weird-colored mail-order smoothies after eight at night.

However...

“Hm, not a bad idea.”

“Yes, I think it takes our-->>

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