This was all definitely because they hadn’t decided on how to contact one another or on a meeting point to get to later. But he had never even thought they might end up taking separate paths, so what was he supposed to do? As he mulled over what course to take, he left the gap between shops, sword dragging behind him, and returned to the circular viewing course—
—when just then, someone suddenly rammed into him from the side.
“?!”
It was the perfect sneak attack, launched from the shadow cast by the wall of a shop. He lost his balance, then immediately threw his sword to the side—he at least wanted to avoid impaling himself the instant he fell over.
Things had completely switched around from just a minute ago as he was tackled to the ground. He was able to take the fall, though, so he didn’t suffer as heavy damage as the girl had. He clenched his fists to defend against being straddled and attacked further…
“…What?”
…but he opened them back up. If this were an enemy, something was odd. A black hood, a black habit, and not a single inch of skin exposed from finger to toe despite this heat…The sister’s arms were behind her back, with her right hand and left elbow—and vice versa—stuck together, all wrapped up with white sticky tape. Her mouth had been sealed with the same tape, too. He looked closer to see that it was like cloth, and there were tons of strange symbols written all over it that looked kind of like slightly misshapen Japanese characters.
And, well, anyone could have looked to see it was Orsola Aquinas.
Slump
. Kamijou could feel his whole body draining of strength at the overwhelming relief.
“Mgh! Mghh-mgh mhhff mggh mffh mgh mmmm mgh mmmmgh mgh ffffm mmmff!”
Orsola, her mouth covered by the strange-looking amulet thing, was looking at him, desperately trying to convey something to him.
“Huh? You came all the way to Japan, so you want to go see real-life sumo wrestlers, you say? You know, not every single person in this country does sumo wrestling. You really are an old lady, aren’t you?”
“Mgghhh!!”
“What? Hey, wait, that was a joke!!”
Before he could defend himself, a fairly serious head-butt crashed into the pit of his stomach. He fell onto the ground with Orsola. At first he just coughed a few times, but then he noticed his hand on something soft. She didn’t seem to realize it, but it was her large, warm, pulse-conveying chest.
Buh! Bghahh?!
His face turned bright red as he crawled out from underneath her, then ran his right index finger along the talisman thing covering her mouth. She looked surprised for a moment—he had touched
her, though indirectly, on the lips—but a moment later, when she saw how the talisman thing had come off so naturally, her surprise was multiplied by a factor of ten.
“E-excuse me. You are the one who I met at the bus stop earlier, aren’t you? But, why…?”
“I came to rescue you, obviously! Ah, shit, I’ll explain what’s going on later. Let’s just get out of here!”
Kamijou looked to and fro, and after making sure nobody was around, he picked up the dress sword he had thrown to the ground before.
Orsola was gaping a little. She spoke—not to him but to herself. “Wh-what?
“Are you really…here to rescue me? And it has nothing to do with the
Book of the Law
…?”
“
Like I give a shit about something that stupid!
Do I look weird enough to you that I’d come all this way for one old book?!” He madly scratched at his head and shouted, causing Orsola’s shoulders to quiver.
“I-I see. Umm, well…Thank you for taking care of me.”
“…Sure. I don’t really need thanks or anything. Anyway, what are you doing out here? What happened to Amakusa?”
“Th-they appear to be fighting with the Roman Orthodox Church. I managed to escape in the chaos…Amakusa does not seem to be familiar with this sort of restraining and confinement, however.”
Dress sword in hand, he went behind her and destroyed the seals on her arms as well.
Orsola rubbed her now-freed hands and said, “Th-thank you very much. But, hmm…How did you…?”
“Hm? I just have that kind of ability…But it’s complicated, so maybe I shouldn’t bother with any weird explanations. You’d be stumped if I suddenly started rambling about scientific ability development, right? And by the way, you sure do seem calm in this situation. You’ll need to be a little more serious than that if we’re going to get away.”
“Nevertheless, they have been fighting near the entrance, and I
was unable to go over the fence because my hands were tied—what should I have done? I had no choice, so I was searching for another…ex—?”
Before Orsola could finish, he grabbed her arm and dove into the narrow space between the two shops again. She nearly screamed when she saw the Amakusa girl lying there, but…
“…Quiet!”
…he hissed a warning and covered her mouth with his right hand.
They ran through the space and pressed themselves against the back wall of one of the shops. The pitter-patter of multiple sets of footsteps echoed from the front of the circular viewing course, then went away. It felt to him like they had realized Orsola had escaped and were looking for her rather than trying to follow him or Index and Stiyl. Them gripping strange swords and axes and hurling orders every which way struck him as extremely ominous.
When he heard their footsteps grow distant, Kamijou slid down the wall onto the ground. Orsola did the same, sitting elegantly next to him.
The place where Kamijou and Orsola took a seat seemed to be in a blind spot for Amakusa. There was a handful of low-hanging trees in the area behind the shop, and if they kept themselves low, they wouldn’t be seen from afar.
But on the other hand, now that they’d found themselves a little hiding place, they were now unable to make a move. They heard the footsteps of the young men and women of Amakusa running around the viewing course just nearby intermittently, so if they were to leave they would be spotted right away.
He was worried about Index and Stiyl. Now that he’d secured Orsola’s safety, if they were stuck in the park unable to escape, they would be in needless danger. But there was no way for him to contact them, and it would be reckless to leave this place and look around the park for them.
“That special movement method thing can only be used from 12:00 to 12:05, so if we just stay put, it would ruin Amakusa’s plan, but…”
He went to check the clock on his cell phone, but the liquid crystal display backlight would stand out in this darkness, so he decided against it.
It’d be real nice if I could use this to contact them, though
, he thought. Index’s cheapo phone was in their cat’s mouth, and there was no way for him to know Stiyl’s number.
When he stretched his legs, still sitting, they met the hilt of the dress sword he’d put on the ground. The sound and feeling brought Kamijou’s attention from the inside back to the outside.
And that made him finally notice how heavy his breathing was.
He wiped his forehead and his hand came back with a lot more sweat than normal. Perhaps it was because of the tension—but just moving his body a little had made him break out into a sweat like he’d just run a marathon.
Oh?
noticed Orsola, who took the lace handkerchief out of her sleeve. Kamijou tried to back away from her on the ground—he had a bad feeling about this.
“N-no. Don’t worry, it’s not a problem and look it will get your handkerchief dirty and this happened at the bus stop too didn’t it and
mgh
?!”
Before he could finish, he found the flower-scented handkerchief pressed against his face despite his argument.
“If you do not wipe it properly, you could come down with a summer cold. Now, then. Come to think of it, I get the feeling I did this sort of thing at the bus stop, too.”
“I just said that same thing eight seconds ago, you know! You’re just like an old lady—you never listen to people, and wait that hurts, that hurts!! Please, could you not stuff it in my mouth and no—
grgh
?!”
Kamijou, suffocating a little, desperately tried to repel this handkerchief assault, but he came up empty. Once Orsola had thoroughly deployed her handkerchief, she gave such a brilliant smile that he could almost see the nimbus behind her.
“Excuse me, but you were a citizen of Academy City, were you not?”
He coughed and groaned. “…Hm? Well, yeah.”
“Then forgive me for asking, but what would someone from Academy City be doing in a place like this? It doesn’t seem to be unrelated to the Roman Orthodox Church’s movements, but I was of the impression there were no churches in Academy City.” Her voice sounded mystified.
His answer, on the contrary, made it sound unimportant. “Well, it’s a little special in my case. I know a couple English Puritans. I just got wrapped up all of a sudden in this, and now they’re making me help them with God knows what.”
Her shoulders twitched. Her action looked like she had heard something she couldn’t ignore. “Umm, should I not have? You were part of Roman Orthodoxy, right? Do the Roman Orthodox and English Puritans not get along with each other?”
“No, that isn’t it at all.” She made a slow movement, as if she were thinking about something. “I would like to make certain—you are helping now because you were requested to cooperate by the English Puritan Church, yes?”
“That’s right.” Kamijou nodded along, and Orsola stopped for a moment in thought.
“Oh? You are sweating a bit, aren’t you?”
“No, seriously, I’m fine already!”
“So then you are of English Puritan descent, not Roman Orthodox?”
“Urgh,
now
we’re back on topic?! W-well, no, it’s nothing crazy like that. Oh, and just so you know, I don’t have any pull with them. I’m from Academy City, after all.”
“I…see.” For some reason, she smiled in relief. “Indeed you are. It is obvious that one like you is better off having no connection to our world of the church.”
“…That right? Hmm. Then I guess there’s really no point in my holding on to this,” he said, looking at the cross Stiyl had given to him when they parted ways. He didn’t know what kind of power it had, but he’d caught it with his right hand, so it probably didn’t do anything anymore.
“Oh. Did you receive that from your English Puritan acquaintance?”
“You can tell?”
“Crossism may be one religion, but there are various forms and types of the cross—like the Latin cross, the Celtic cross, the Maltese cross, Saint Andrew’s cross, the pectoral cross, and the papal cross.”
“Huh, I see. But there’s no point in my hanging on to this. I’d feel bad holding it as someone, er, outside the profession. So I’d like to give it to you, if that’s okay.”
He thought he’d said it casually, but Orsola nearly jumped off the ground. “Oh, my, is that all right?!”
“Um, yeah, sure. I don’t know why Stiyl gave it to me at all, but it probably doesn’t have much meaning. I mean, he knows I can’t use magic…He likes being sarcastic, so he could have just given it to me as a prank. Also, I don’t think this cross has any value anymore. I don’t have a clue about sorcery, but my right hand already touched it, after all,” said Kamijou, handing the cross necklace over to Orsola.
But then for some reason, she grabbed his hand like she was giving him a handshake. Then, she covered it with her other hand. “I have just one request to make of you.”
“Eh, uh…what?” The blundering Kamijou’s voice nearly cracked at the sensation—her hands were softer than he’d imagined.
“Would you be willing to put this around my neck yourself?”
“Huh? Well, sure, I don’t care.”
At his answer, Orsola closed her eyes and raised her chin to make it easier to put the necklace on her. It almost seemed kind of like she was looking for a kiss, and he dropped his gaze in a fluster. But that only brought into view her chest—which was ample already, now emphasized even further by her upturned chin.
Bgah?!
He nearly exploded.
“? Is there something the matter?”
“N-no…Nothing’s wrong! Seriously, nothing!”
“?” Orsola seemed confused, her eyes still closed. Flustered, he undid the thin necklace clasp. And then he brought it around Orsola’s throat, which was covered by white cloth. After doing that, he
realized he should have just gone behind her. When he did it from the front like this, it looked like he was trying to embrace her. It immediately set him on edge. His fingers touched the back of her neck. After his hands rattled a few times in nervousness, he finally managed to link the necklace chain back together.
Looking satisfied, she ran her fingers over the cross at her chest a few times. He watched them nonchalantly, and then realized his eyes were being sucked in by the swelling of her chest and quickly looked away. Even paying the least bit of attention to it would bring him to ruin. Unable to endure the silence, he groped around for any topic at all to talk about.
“By the way, you knew how to read the
Book of the Law
, didn’t you?”
“The way to read it—well, it’s more like the way to decode its encryption, but…” During the first part of her sentence she looked carefree, but then her body tensed up.
“Uhh, no, that’s not it. I don’t want you to tell me. I just kind of wanted to know why you were investigating that book in the first place. It’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it?”
Orsola stared at him for a little while but finally loosened up. “It would not be wrong to say that I desired power from it,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you know about the original copies of grimoires? Or how they cannot be destroyed by any means?”
“Mm. Yeah. I only heard it from someone, though. What was it? The characters, phrases, and sentences in a grimoire are like magic circles or something?”
“Yes. A grimoire is like a blueprint. It means that grimoires that show how to control lightning will end up also having safety measures that create lightning. With ones as strong as the original copies, even if a person has no mana, it amplifies the minute energies flowing from the earth, becoming a self-defense magic circle that continues to work almost permanently.” She briefly looked like she was thinking about something. “With current technology, it is impossible to get rid of grimoires that have reached this state. The most that can be done is to seal it so that nobody may ever read it.