Vol 2 Chapter 4 (1/2)

Enirya G. Algonskaya stood unhappily in front of a small tenant-owned store inside the large commerce facility.

The metal shutter had been destroyed.

The s.p.a.ce must have only been rented. It did not look as if it was being used for any proper business. The metal shelves had a few large fish tanks on them and the tanks that were filled with dirt had a large number of dead ants scattered about in them.

The room smelled of insecticide, but an even more powerful stench was also there.

It was not iron.

It was blood.

“There is no official record, so someone most likely broke into an empty store and used it,” said one of her colleagues who was wrapped in bandages and searching on the Semipublic AR. “I sent images of them to a specialist and it seems the dead ants are definitely crimson long-legged army ants. Do you think this was something like a weapon manufacturing plant?”

“…”

“With the oranges here too, this matches up with the suspect’s testimony. Even the number of oranges matches up.”

“But we still cannot deny the possibility that she set all this up herself.”

“We found remains of what seems to be remote control equipment inside and some of us were rescued from the snowplow equipment by the suspect and the girl who seems to be an acquaintance of hers.”

“Even so.” Enirya’s expression did not change as she arbitrarily listed off the various possibilities that came to her mind. “Let’s just a.s.sume the machinery here had the specs needed to control the snowplow equipment. However, we cannot deny the possibility that the machinery here was being controlled remotely by different machinery in a different location. Misaka Mikoto could have used the snowplow equipment to hold us up while she attacked this place and ran off with the people and objects she did not want us to see.”

Enirya used her chin to point toward the stains inside the store.

“Is that from a human?”

“Most likely. We’re currently comparing it to the Russian authorities’ database…but given the amount, it looks like this was a murder with no corpse.”

“Blood for a blood transfusion could have been repeatedly taken from a single person over a period of time and then scattered about all at once here. It’s premature to a.s.sume there’s a corpse just because of the amount of blood.”

Despite saying that, Enirya felt it was more likely to have been an actual murder than some kind of act.

But…

“If this was a real murder, where is it hidden?”

“Yes, a body is rather large.”

“This shopping mall is a collection of manmade things. No matter where you go, the surveillance equipment is active and there are few places where something could be buried. After all, almost everything, including the ground, has been turned into a monitor for the Semipublic AR. The only places with dirt are the s.p.a.ces for the trees along the pathways, but those are pretty much just large flowerpots.”

“Let’s a.s.sume it was incinerated or disposed of with chemicals.”

“Even with those methods, it would take quite a bit of time to make sure not even pieces of the bones remained. If someone took that much time, I would think their preparations and work would show up on the surveillance equipment.”

But even so there were only blood stains there and no sign of a body.

“…Don’t you think this workload exceeds what could be done by an individual?”

“But it looked like the suspect was fighting alongside someone else against the heavy equipment…”

(That’s not what I meant.)

While muttering that internally, Enirya looked up at the pa.s.sageway’s ceiling.

To carry away and dispose of a body while slipping past the eyes of others and the cameras in that city would take quite a few people. But if there had been a large number of people in the vicinity of the scene, the surveillance equipment would likely have caught it.

(Dealing with a suspect who can manipulate electricity is tricky. I hadn’t thought of it before, but she might be able to interfere with the surveillance equipment.)

But she also made sure to think about possibilities that did not involve such mysterious things.

(So someone interfered with the surveillance equipment to hide a group, hm?)

Her job was to investigate and find every single one of those suspects.

She had to continue her investigation of Misaka Mikoto while making sure to look at all the possibilities before her eyes.

(But who could do that? If it has nothing to do with those mysterious psychic powers, then who could do that?)

Part 2

Mikoto decided to take a short break.

That had been her intention when she leaned up against the wall, but she ended up sleeping for over 5 hours straight. Her body had already not been at 100% due to jetlag and then she had been forced to run around all night due to the incident. Her weariness had been well beyond normal. There was also the fact that she had felt relieved that there was no longer a definite time limit on the living bombs that used oranges.

However, it had still been careless of her.

Her punishment for that carelessness was a close up shot of Lessar’s face when she woke up.

“Dwahh!?”

“C’mon, that’s a hurtful reaction to have, y’know? But I’m surprised you could sleep with all this security around. What were you going to do if a security guard ran across you? Even though the living bombs were stopped, the tourists still found out about the attack by the snowplows. Everyone’s talking about it.”

“Huh? I-I was asleep!? I…huh!?”

“…At least you’re doing an excellent job at being comically half asleep,” Lessar said while holding out a paper bag to an international fast food restaurant. “From the way you’re acting, I’m betting you didn’t have time to get anything to eat, either.”

“Thanks…but I’m not sure I want something this juicy right after waking up.”

“How about I coax you into eating it with a concept the j.a.panese seem to love. Heh, this is what everyone eats in the West.”

“…I’m not going to just do what everyone else does and become overweight. There are people in the West who get so they can’t even get out their door and have to call in the fire department, right?”

As she spoke, Mikoto dug through the paper bag. She avoided the heavy main foods like the hamburger, the greasy nuggets, and the thick sausage and instead chose the lighter things like the salad and the French fries. The heavy meat dishes ended up in Lessar’s small stomach.

Mikoto looked at Lessar’s chest.

“(…Is this difference in our appet.i.tes what decides the winner?)”

“…If you’re interested, you can ma.s.sage them a bit. Just don’t treat them too roughly.”

(I can’t stand how confident she is!!)

Mikoto turned her anger on the French fries and started eating through them violently.

“But…”

“What?”

“…You came back to me.”

“?”

Lessar looked confused.

Mikoto had thought of Lessar and the others from the occult convenience store as possible suspects for whoever had attacked with the snowplows. She had thought they might have destroyed the occult convenience store like that in order to destroy their point of contact with Mikoto who was getting too involved in some plan they were putting together.

But even after the destruction of the store, Lessar had come and contacted her. That theory no longer held any meaning.

Had Mikoto just been over thinking things?

“What time is it?”

“It’s already noon.”

“…I didn’t intend to sleep that long and my head still feels heavy.”

“Of course it does. Look where you were sleeping. That’s the first time I’ve actually seen someone sleeping while standing up.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.” Mikoto let out a slight yawn as she spoke. “But you didn’t know I was here, right? You had to have run all over the place in order to search for me.”

“I just felt I had left things unfinished with you.” Lessar shrugged. “If you just disappeared and I didn’t hear anything about you, I would have been worried. But you certainly finished things in a showy way. Just because the person behind this set you up, you shouldn’t make them disappear leaving a bunch of blood behind. Isn’t that taking things too far?”

“…Hm?” Mikoto frowned.

She felt like there was a gap between how she and Lessar saw the situation.

“Wait a second. What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean? By the time I caught a peek of the store you attacked, it was all over. It looked like an abandoned store where some kind of tragedy had occurred to me. You did that, right?”

“Ah…eh!? N-no!! It was already like that when I got there!! I didn’t snap and go on a rampage!!”

“Hehh. So splitting up like that does create a discrepancy in information. How about we go over all the information we have to make sure it’s all in order?”

“We would need somewhere where we could speak safely to do that. I’m still being pursued by the security guards after all. It’s actually strange that I wasn’t found while sleeping here.”

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

Lessar winked and pointed toward the entrance to a delivery entrance.

“I know a good place.”

Part 3

“Welcome to Nihon Daruma’s North Gate store.”

Mikoto was dumbfounded upon hearing Bayloupe say that in an utterly halfhearted way.

Her mouth flapped open and closed as she looked back and forth between Lessar at her side and Bayloupe behind the register counter.

“What? What is going on? Wasn’t the occult convenience store blown away by that construction equipment…?”

“Didn’t you hear her say this is the north gate store? It’s a different one. Didn’t you notice that we headed in a completely different direction? Or are you still half asleep?”

“…I see. It’s a convenience store, so it’s a chain…”

Mikoto had found it strange that a single store as suspicious as that existed, but it seemed the hidden parts of the planet were a bit bigger than she had thought.

As before, the shelves were covered with strange things such as dried bats and bagged crystals. As Mikoto looked around at it all, Lessar opened her mouth to speak.

“Let’s talk in the back. We have a backroom for the staff.”

“Oh, the place you take pickpockets.”

“Some people call it a break room.”

As Lessar continued muttering, she led Mikoto through the door behind the register counter and into a room beyond.

Two girls were intertwined together sleeping on a couch.

“Bh!?”

“Floris! Lancis!! Quit awakening strange new tendencies and wake up! We need to use this room!!”

“Wait…um…aren’t we being a little too intrusive here...?”

“Don’t draw back!! It’s fine. They’re normal! Lancis just has a bad habit of climbing into others’ beds when she gets sleepy!!”

Lessar struck the two girls’ heads and they opened their eyes looking annoyed. Mikoto had met the forehead girl named Lancis before, but it was the first time she had met the girl named Floris. She was a white girl with bright, almost whitish blonde hair that reached down to her shoulders.

Floris listlessly rubbed at her eyes while looking at Mikoto.

“Nn. Are you that middle school girl that Lessar got wrapped up in some strange stuff?”

“Y-yes, I suppose.”

“Sorry about that.”

After saying that, Floris peeled Lancis off of her who was still sleepily clinging to her. She then grabbed the other girl by the nape of the neck and left the backroom.

“Okay, just sit down wherever. I’ll go get some tea.”

“…I don’t really want to sit down here. It isn’t going to be all sticky, is it?”

Mikoto was cautious, but the incidents from some alternate dimension did not end there. The color and smell of the tea Lessar brought was clearly from the realm of the absurd and the snacks to go with the tea were some unknown objects that looked like black dried squid chopped up into the shape of sheets.

Mikoto grabbed one of the dried snacks between her thumb and forefinger.

“What is this?”

“Bat.”

“…”