Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The massive screen flickered to life. One by one, the golden lights lining the walls of the theater dimmed until the entire chamber was swallowed by darkness, leaving only the pale glow of the screen to illuminate the faces within. A low mechanical hum rolled through the room. Then, in the center of the black void, sharp white letters appeared.

A CERTAIN MAGICAL INDEX

Subaru stared at the title for a long moment, then leaned back with a dramatic groan.

"Seriously? That's the name?" he complained, folding his arms over his chest. "What kind of title is that? It sounds so... clinical. Like something you'd find in the back of a textbook. Where's the flair? The mystery? The dramatic punch?"

From a few rows behind him came a metallic chuckle.

"Bro, are you really mocking somebody else's title right now?" Al called, draping his one good arm over the back of the seat in front of him. "Did you already forget the one the Warden slapped on your life story? 'Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World'? That's not exactly short and elegant, my man."

A few snickers rippled through the theater. Subaru flinched.

"Okay, fine, you have a point," he shot back, face coloring. "It's a little long. But at least mine sounds cool! 'Re:Zero' has a mysterious vibe! This one sounds like a librarian's filing cabinet!"

"And what exactly is wrong with a filing system, I suppose?" Beatrice huffed from her seat on his lap. She crossed her arms and tipped her chin upward with all the dignity her tiny frame could muster. "An index is an organized catalog of knowledge. If this story concerns magic, then it is a perfectly respectable title, in fact."

"I agree with Beatrice-sama," Otto said, adjusting his hat. "A title does not need to be flashy. It merely needs to represent the subject properly."

Emilia tilted her head against Subaru's shoulder, silver hair slipping softly over his sleeve. "I think it sounds nice, Subaru. It has 'Magical' in it, so we know it'll involve the system the Warden mentioned. Though..." She blinked at the screen. "What makes an index 'certain'?"

"Who cares what it's called?" Garfiel barked with a grin, cracking his knuckles. "As long as this Kamijou guy throws hands, I'm in. Could call it 'A Certain Boring Book' and I'd still watch if the fights are good."

"A crude sentiment," Julius said smoothly, "but not an entirely incorrect one. The title is only the cover. The worth of this world and of its hero will be revealed by the story itself."

Subaru let out a long sigh, though the corners of his mouth curled upward. With Emilia warm against one side, Rem's fingers laced through his left hand, and Beatrice settled firmly in his lap, it was difficult to stay annoyed for long.

"Yeah, yeah. Fine. No judging the book by the cover." He looked back to the screen. "Let's see what you've got, Academy City."

The title dissolved back into darkness. For a brief instant, the screen went black again. Then a point of light bloomed at the center and rapidly expanded outward until a vast blue world filled the frame. Earth hung in the endless void, a curved horizon of brilliant ocean and drifting white cloud beneath the cold black of space. Sunlight spilled over the atmosphere in a radiant halo, turning the planet into a jewel suspended in eternity.

The reaction was immediate.

The idle banter vanished. A collective gasp rolled through the theater, then died beneath a stunned, reverent silence. Nearly every face in the room went slack with awe.

They came from a world with edges. A world whose land ended at the Great Waterfall, where the sea plunged endlessly into mist and mystery. The sight of an entire world—whole, round, and floating in nothingnessâ”struck at the foundation of everything they knew.

"By the Dragon..." Wilhelm whispered, the words almost too soft to hear.

"It's beautiful," Emilia breathed. She leaned forward, violet eyes wide and shining. "But... it's really a sphere? There isn't any edge at all? No Great Waterfall?"

Subaru's expression softened. Homesickness tugged at his chest as he looked upon a sky he would never stand beneath again.

"No edge," he said quietly. "My world's round. If you keep going in one direction long enough, eventually you come back to where you started."

Crusch's gaze stayed fixed on the screen, sharp mind already working past the wonder and into the implications. "That blue expanse... is that all water? There seems to be far more sea than land."

"Yeah. Ocean." Subaru nodded. "Earth's mostly water. This is what it looks like from way above the clouds."

He stopped there.

He had no desire to launch into an explanation about space, atmospheric layers, orbital mechanics, or the fact that the world was a giant sphere suspended in a vast vacuum around a star. After everything the theater had already endured, his brain simply refused to become a physics lecturer.

Then the Warden's voice rolled through his mind alone, deep and steady.

"Do not trouble yourself, Subaru. I did not bring them here expecting you to explain the architecture of the cosmos. Give them what simple context you can. I will handle the rest when the science grows too large."

Subaru exhaled in relief. “Thanks. Seriously, thanks.”

On his lap, Beatrice had gone utterly still. Her usual imperiousness had fallen away, replaced by unguarded wonder. Her little hands tightened in Subaru's jacket.

"How did they even capture such a sight, I suppose?" she murmured. "To reach that altitude physically would be absurd. The air would thin to nothing. No ordinary flying creature could endure it."

"Precisely," Roswaal said, leaning forward so far he looked in danger of sliding from his seat. His mismatched eyes glittered as he studied the image. "Even the highest dragons could never ascend so far. Was some extraordinary sight-sharing spell employed? Or perhaps a grand projection from the heavens themselves?"

Anastasia's scarf twisted between her fingers as fast as her thoughts. "How high up are we talkin' here? And how'd they send a viewin' metia that far in the first place? D'ya mean ta tell me they can just... look at the whole world whenever they want?"

"No dragons. No magic," Al said lazily from the back. "Science. Humans build enormous metal machines rockets and blast stuff past the sky with controlled explosions."

"They ride explosions?!" Garfiel roared, instantly delighted. "That's Badass!"

"Garfiel," Frederica chided, though her own eyes never left the screen. "Please mind your language. But... gracious. To think all of Lugunica might amount to no more than a tiny speck upon that sphere..."

Petra had both hands pressed to her cheeks. "Subaru-sama really came from there?" she asked, voice trembling with excitement. "It's so huge! Did you travel all over it?"

Subaru laughed awkwardly. "No way, I mostly stayed in one little corner of one country. Crossing the whole world takes a lot of time and money, Petra."

Meili said nothing. Her pale eyes remained fixed on the screen, glittering with wonder and then, just as quickly, shadowed by something sadder. Petra noticed the shift at once and leaned over to wrap her arms around the smaller girl from behind. Meili didn't protest.

"...What would Elsa have said about something like this?" she whispered.

Petra held her a little tighter.

Felt gripped her armrests and stared upward like she might pull the world down through sheer stubbornness. "You're telling me big bro came from a place that huge? Looking at that makes the capital seem like a bug's nest."

Reinhard's voice, when it came, was quiet and full of awe. "A world without mana, and yet they reached a vantage point beyond even our legends. It is humbling."

The Anastasia camp erupted next.

"Look at the white fluffy things!" Mimi cried, bouncing in her seat and jabbing a finger at the clouds. "Mimi wants to jump on them!"

"You'd fall through them," Tivey muttered, adjusting his monocle, though his own expression was no less captivated.

Hetaro nodded rapidly beside him, never blinking.

Ricardo threw back his head with a booming laugh. "Gahahaha! That's one hell of a playground! No wonder mini-boss turned out weird with a world that huge behind him!"

"It really does look peaceful, nya," Felix said softly, ears twitching. "Just blue and white from up here. It's hard to imagine a place so beautiful can still hide ugly things."

"That," Julius said, eyes reflecting the planet's glow, "may be the loveliest part. From this height there are no borders, no banners, no war lines. Only one world."

In the back, Priscilla lowered her fan just enough to expose a small, interested smile.

"Hm. A reasonably splendid view," she declared. "A blue jewel adrift in darkness... suitably extravagant. I suppose this Earth is not wholly lacking in worth, if it could produce a fool as persistently entertaining as you, commoner."

Rem's grip on Subaru's hand tightened, tender and warm. "It's so beautiful," she whispered. "To think Subaru-kun came from a place like that... I want to learn everything about it."

He squeezed back gently. "It has its ugly parts too. But... yeah." His eyes returned to the screen. "Seeing it like this again kind of hurts, not gonna lie."

The view slowly shifted. The curve of Earth drifted aside as something immense emerged from the darkness: a vast metallic structure of interlocking silver modules and branching frames, flanked by enormous blue panels that caught the sunlight like crystalline wings. It floated impossibly above the planet, serene and silent, a man-made fortress adrift in the void.

This time the silence lasted barely a heartbeat.

"W-What is that, nya?!" Felix yelped, half-rising from his seat. His tail puffed up so sharply it looked twice its normal size. "Is it a monster? A divine beast? Why does it have wings if it's made of steel?"

Beatrice stared without blinking.

Her mind flashed at once to Echidna's floating sanctuary—to land suspended by enormous magical force. But that memory only made what she was seeing now more terrifying. A structure that large, held that high, with no visible spell array, no circulating mana, no spirit signatures...

To sustain such a thing through ordinary levitation alone would devour magical power at a monstrous rate, she thought. A Great Spirit would exhaust itself almost immediately.

And yet the Warden had already said it: this was a society whose "Science Side" had achieved miracles of this scale without relying on magic at all.

Several rows back, Roswaal arrived at the same conclusion. His smile thinned.

His gaze drifted away from the screen and toward Subaru and Al.

The two boys from Earth were not cowering. They were not shaken. They were simply watching with quiet familiarity, like men observing an impressive carriage or a well-made bridge.

How curious, Roswaal thought. If such a structure does not overwhelm them, then the scale of their origin must be...

The Warden's voice slid into his mind like distant thunder.

"You are wise to be cautious, Roswaal. But do not leap too far. What you see now exceeds even the technology of Subaru and Aldebaran's original Earth. This world is decades ahead of the one that raised them."

For once, Roswaal's expression broke completely.

His left eye twitched. A bead of sweat slipped down his cheek.

Decades ahead...? A scientific marvel entirely devoid of mana, surpassing even the standards of otherworlders?

The thought lodged in him like a thorn.

Subaru, meanwhile, noticed the growing storm of confusion and decided he had better cut in before someone declared the thing a flying dragon king.

"Okay, calm down, everyone," he said, raising a hand. "It's not alive. That's a space station. Or maybe a satellite. Basically..." He scratched his cheek. "Think of it like a huge facility in the sky. Some of them are built so people can live there while they study Earth, observe weather, do research, that kind of thing—"

He never got to finish.

A blur of lavender and white launched over the seats.

Anastasia all but pounced onto the back of Subaru's chair, grabbing both his shoulders with terrifying force. Her eyes gleamed with naked mercantile hunger.

"Natsuki-kun," she breathed, voice thick with excitement. "Can ya make one? Somethin' even vaguely like that? A floatin' metal fortress that sees the whole world? D'ya know what kind of trade routes I could map? The information advantage? The monopoly? Name yer price!"

"Wha—Anastasia-san, personal space!" Subaru squeaked.

Before she could shake him, Otto exploded from his seat with all the force of a man defending both his friend and his future paperwork.

"Absolutely not!" he declared, planting himself between them like a bureaucratic shield. "Any and all knowledge from Natsuki-san's world will be evaluated, processed, and negotiated through the Emilia Camp's internal affairs office after our release from this theater. Under strict legal terms. Very strict legal terms."

"Now, now," Julius sighed, rising as well. "Please refrain from physically accosting the boy."

Ricardo laughed and hooked an arm around Anastasia's waist, hauling her bodily back over the seats despite her protests. "C'mon, Ana! Stop trying to buy the moon before the poor kid faints."

Once the chaos settled, Emilia tugged lightly at Subaru's sleeve.

"Subaru..." she said, eyes wide with earnest curiosity. "If it isn't using wind magic, and it doesn't have a crystal core... how is it staying up there?"

Crusch leaned forward. "I would also like to know. A fortress of that size, without visible support or propulsion, would be an overwhelming advantage in both war and transport."

"Big bro!" Felt shouted. "I wanna ride the flying metal box!"

At once, Petra, Meili, Mimi, Hetaro, and Tivey all voiced their agreement in one form or another. Even Beatrice gave a tiny, betraying nod where she sat, and Subaru felt his heart melt despite the pressure mounting around him.

Then everyone looked at him.

Children with sparkling eyes. Adults with hungry, calculating ones. Mages with analytic intensity. Merchants with financial greed.

Subaru broke into a nervous sweat.

"Uh. Well. It's... gravity, and..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You know. Falling, but not really falling, because—"

"If you have no coherent explanation," Priscilla interrupted, hiding a smile behind her fan, "then do not dishonor the room by babbling."

Subaru turned to snap at her, but the Warden's voice boomed through the theater first—deep, resonant, and carrying just enough amusement to sting.

"I understand that a world so unlike your own invites endless wonder, greed, analysis, and ambition. But expecting Subaru to answer every technical question is profoundly unfair. I am the one showing you this world, and yet very few of you have thought to ask me instead."

"See?" Al called out, lounging with his feet kicked up. "That's what I've been saying. We know what this stuff is called, sure, but that doesn't mean we know how to build the damn thing. My bro over there knows a little more than me because he's younger and less fossilized, but not enough to hand you all the secrets of the universe."

Subaru rubbed his temples. "Exactly. Look, I get it. You all want blueprints for civilization. But I can only explain things in really broad terms. Scientifically, you're all kind of... behind."

"He means you're cavemen!" Al shouted helpfully.

Subaru went pale. "Al. Shut up."

He was too late.

THWACK.

Al got a nice kick from the side by Priscilla.

From the floor, Al gave a weak groan.

The Warden continued as though none of this were remotely unusual.

"As I was saying before the assault interrupted me: the issue is not that you lack intelligence. The issue is that your civilization has not yet uncovered the physical laws Subaru and Aldebaran's world learned to exploit."

That sobered the room at once.

"Listen well," the Warden said. "I am not asking you to stop reacting. I am not asking you to suppress your awe. I am asking only that you direct your more technical questions toward the correct source, so that we do not waste time. We have scarcely begun the scene itself and have already exceeded the expected word count."

The theater blinked as one.

"Word count?" Julius echoed, frowning. "What possible relation does—"

"Don't ask," Subaru muttered. "You'll regret it."

"Are we clear?" the Warden asked.

This time, nods spread through the theater in unison. From where he lay near the wall, Al raised a shaky thumbs-up.

"Excellent. Then allow me to explain."

The metallic structure drifted in perfect silence above the curve of Earth, its blue panels shining beneath the distant sun.

"Imagine," the Warden said, "that you stand atop a high wall and throw a stone. It travels forward, then drops to the ground. Throw it harder, and it travels farther before gravity drags it down. Now imagine throwing it so fast that as it falls, the world beneath it curves away at the exact same rate."

Silence fell again—this time thoughtful rather than stunned.

"The stone would still be falling," the Warden continued, "but it would never strike the ground. It would keep missing. It would fall around the world."

Beatrice's eyes widened first.

"So it is in a constant state of descent..." she murmured. "It is not resisting gravity. It is surrendering to it in a controlled manner, I suppose."

"Correct."

Tivey pushed his monocle higher. "Then the structure stays aloft not because gravity is absent... but because its forward speed prevents impact."

"Correct again," said the Warden. "This is called orbit. The heavenly fortress you see is always falling, yet always moving forward so quickly that the planet curves away beneath it. Inside, the people experience what you would describe as weightlessness. Without the constant push of the ground beneath their feet, the distinction between up and down loses its meaning."

Emilia's lips parted. "So the people inside... float?"

"Yes."

Mimi gasped in delight. "Mimi wants that!"

"Their supplies arrive by smaller vessels," the Warden continued, "machines built to endure tremendous force and heat. They are hurled skyward by engines so violent they resemble chained explosions. Within this station, a handful of people can live, sleep, study, and work. It is no city, but neither is it small. It is a citadel of research, suspended in the heavens not by mana, spirits, or blessing... but by a precise understanding of the physical laws that govern the stars."

No one spoke for several long moments. The cast simply stared at the screen, and in that silence something changed.

The first sight of Earth had inspired awe. This inspired respect.

Not for a blessing. Not for a divine artifact. Not for a miracle handed down by a god.

For humanity.

For the ordinary, magicless side of humanity that had looked at the sky, failed to touch it, and then decided failure was unacceptable.

Subaru felt Rem's fingers tighten around his hand again. Emilia remained leaned against his shoulder, eyes locked on the screen. Beatrice sat unusually still in his lap, her expression thoughtful in a way that made her look older than she appeared.

And somewhere in the back, even the skeptics had gone quiet. Earth kept turning. The station kept falling.

And the theater, packed with knights, spirits, nobles, merchants, killers, and kings, watched in silence as the science of this divided world proved that wonder did not need magic to exist.

The camera slowly zoomed in, diving smoothly through the thick blanket of white clouds. As the mist parted, it revealed a long, crescent-shaped chain of vibrant green islands entirely surrounded by the deep, sparkling blue of the ocean.

The reaction in the theater was much more subdued this time, though no less captivated. Instead of shouts of shock, the cast leaned forward with sparkling eyes, soft gasps, and expressions of quiet awe. Having processed the staggering reality that Earth was a sphere, they now waited patiently for either the Warden or their resident other-worlders to provide the context.

Subaru smiled, a wave of profound nostalgia washing over him as he recognized the distinct shape of his homeland. "So, this is it," he announced, his voice carrying a mix of pride and longing. "This is the island nation known as Japan. It's the country where Al and I were born and raised."

"It looks so isolated," Crusch observed, her amber eyes tracking the coastlines. "A nation entirely fortified by the sea. It must be a logistical nightmare to invade, yet equally difficult to govern if resources run scarce. How much of this world does your nation control?"

"Oh, just that island chain," Subaru replied casually, leaning back. "Earth is divided up a lot more than your world. Japan is just one of about one hundred and ninety-five different countries."

The theater froze.

"One hundred and ninety-five?!" Julius repeated, his usual knightly composure slipping as his eyes widened in sheer disbelief.

In their world, the continent was dominated by only four major powers: The Dragon Kingdom of Lugunica, the Vollachian Empire, the Kararagi City-States, and the Holy Kingdom of Gusteko. The sheer geopolitical complexity of managing nearly two hundred sovereign nations was staggering.

"How in the world does a planet function with that many borders?" Anastasia asked, her merchant mind immediately trying—and failing—to calculate the nightmare of international tariffs and trade agreements. "Do y'all just spend every waking moment at war with each other?"

"Well, there've been some really, really bad wars in the past," Al chimed in, rubbing the back of his neck. "But these days, it's mostly kept in check through massive global trade networks, international treaties, and the fact that the biggest countries have weapons so scary that going to war would mean blowing up the whole planet."

"Mutually assured destruction," Roswaal murmured, his mismatched eyes narrowing with dark fascination. "Hooow veeery efficient. Peace maintained not by a divine covenant with a Dragon, but by the absolute terror of total annihilation."

Before the conversation could spiral into a debate on modern warfare, the Warden’s deep voice resonated through the room.

“Before we continue, I would like to remind you all that while this is Earth, it is not technically the exact same universe that Subaru and Aldebaran hail from. There are a few distinct geographical and historical differences.”

"Like what?" Subaru asked, looking up at the ceiling.

“One of the most prominent being Academy City itself. In this universe, the city you are about to see occupies roughly twenty to thirty percent of the total land area of Tokyo, Japan's capital region.”

Subaru and Al’s jaws dropped simultaneously.

"Twenty to thirty percent?!" Subaru yelled, his eyes bugging out. "Do you have any idea how much real estate costs in Tokyo?! Buying up a third of the capital just to build a massive school city is insane! The budget for that must be astronomical!"

"No kidding," Al whistled. "Whoever runs that city must have deeper pockets than the entire Lugunican royal treasury."

“The history of this world diverges in fascinating ways, which you will discover as the story progresses. So, worry not about the logistics for now. Let us descend.”

The camera pitched downward, descending at a rapid, dizzying pace. The green mountains and coastlines blurred, instantly replaced by a sprawling, highly advanced metropolis. The sheer verticality of the city was breathtaking. Towering skyscrapers of glass and steel pierced the night sky, illuminated by an ocean of vibrant neon lights that painted the streets in artificial daylight. Atop many of these towering structures, massive, three-bladed wind turbines spun slowly and rhythmically in the night air.

The theater erupted into fresh murmurs of awe. The architecture of the capital city of Lugunica, with its stone walls and grand castles, paled in comparison to the sheer, imposing canyons of glass and steel. It was a forest of light.

Anastasia Hoshin was practically out of her seat. She wasn't looking at the neon lights or the massive buildings; her sharp, greedy eyes were entirely locked onto the spinning blades atop the roofs. She was practically drooling.

"Mr. Warden," Anastasia called out, her voice trembling with barely contained mercantile desire. "What in the world are those giant spinning cross-things? Are they some kind of weather-controlling magic?"

“Those are called wind turbines,” the Warden replied smoothly. “They are massive blades designed to catch the natural flow of the wind. The mechanical rotation is then converted into electricity—the energy used to power the city’s lights and technology.”

Roswaal tilted his head, bringing a hand to his chin. "Electricity... ah. So, using the natural wind, they generate the invisible energy required to power those 'metias'—or rather, the devices—that your society relies upon. Much like Subaru-kun's small folding communication box."

“Precisely, Lord Mathers,” the Warden confirmed.

Anastasia gripped her scarf tightly, her mind racing. "So you're tellin' me... they take the wind—somethin' invisible, free, and everywhere—and turn it into a resource that every single person in that massive city needs to live their daily lives? The profit margins... the sheer monopoly..." She took a shaky breath, sitting back down. "I need one of those. I need a wind turbine."

"Please calm down, Anastasia-sama," Julius sighed affectionately. "Let us focus on the hero we were promised, rather than the city's infrastructure."

As if on cue, the ambient hum of the city on the screen was abruptly shattered.

Fast-paced, frantic footsteps echoed loudly through the theater's speakers. The sound of someone running for their life.

The screen cut to a ground-level view of a brightly lit, modern street. A teenage boy with wildly spiky black hair sprinted desperately into the frame. He wore a simple, casual school uniform—a white collared shirt and dark trousers. His face was twisted in absolute panic, his lungs heaving as he frantically glanced over his shoulder.

Subaru sat up straight, instantly recognizing the boy from the Warden's earlier description. "There he is. Kamijou Touma."

"…Argh! Jeez, crap! You’ve gotta be kidding me!" Touma shouted, his voice cracking with exhaustion as his sneakers slapped against the pavement. "Why do I have such misfortune?!"

The camera quickly zoomed out and panned back, revealing exactly why the boy was running. Hot on his heels was a mob of eight angry, aggressive delinquents. They were dressed in loud, flashy street clothes, shaking their fists, bearing iron pipes, and shouting violent threats as they chased the fleeing teenager.

The tension in the theater instantly evaporated, replaced by a highly mixed wave of reactions.

Some of the cast burst into laughter. Felt was howling, slapping the armrest of her chair, while Garfiel let out a booming snort of amusement.

Others, however, simply frowned in confusion.

"Wait, hold up," Al said, pointing a finger at the screen. "Is this guy really the main hero? He looks like a total mob character! No armor, no weapons, and he's literally running away screaming about his bad luck!"

"Hey! What's wrong with an average-looking guy running for his life?!" Subaru immediately fired back, feeling incredibly defensive. "Not all heroes wear shiny white armor and carry legendary dragon swords, Al! Some of us have to survive on pure cardio!"

Reinhard, sitting nearby, offered a polite, somewhat apologetic smile. "I believe Subaru makes a fair point. True bravery often lies not in possessing overwhelming strength, but in facing danger despite one's ordinariness."

"Sure, sure, but look at him!" Al laughed. "He's getting chased by a bunch of street punks! I thought the Warden said he fought gods!"

"He appears to be severely outmatched," Wilhelm noted, his veteran eyes analyzing the situation. "He has no martial stance, his breathing is ragged, and he is outnumbered eight to one. Fleeing is the only tactically sound decision for an unarmed civilian."

Rem covered her mouth with her free hand, a soft, highly empathetic giggle escaping her lips. "Oh, Subaru-kun... the Warden was right. He really does sound exactly like you."

"Right?!" Emilia agreed, beaming brightly as she watched the spiky-haired boy run for his life. "He even yells about his bad luck just like you do when Garfiel chases you during training!"

Subaru slumped in his seat, crossing his arms and pouting playfully. "I do not sound like that. My 'running-for-my-life' scream is way more masculine."

"If by masculine, you mean it resembles a dying goose, then yes, Barusu," Ram chimed in from behind, her deadpan delivery earning another round of chuckles from the Anastasia and Crusch camps.

"Quiet, everyone," Crusch commanded gently, though a fond smile lingered on her face as she looked from Subaru to the screen. "Let us see how he handles this 'misfortune'."

"Seriously, what kind of bad joke is this?" Touma’s exasperated internal voice echoed through the theater speakers. On the screen, the spiky-haired teenager desperately pumped his legs, his lungs burning as he bolted down the neon-lit asphalt. "I've already sprinted nearly two kilometers, and there are still eight of them chasing me. Eight!"

The camera panned over his shoulder, showing the mob of furious delinquents still hot on his trail, their faces twisted in mindless aggression.

"I'm just an ordinary high school student," Touma’s inner monologue continued, dripping with self-deprecating despair. "I'm not some battle-hardened mercenary from a foreign legion, and I'm definitely not some cyber-ninja straight out of a sci-fi movie. There's no way I can take on eight opponents at once. Honestly, even three would be pushing it."

He rounded a sharp corner, his sneakers squeaking wildly against the pavement.

"At some point, strength stops mattering. Numbers are numbers. When you're outnumbered that badly, winning isn't a question of skill—it's simply impossible." Touma grimaced, his face a perfect picture of misery. "Damn it... why does this always happen to me?"

With a frustrated, desperate kick, he sent a grimy metal bucket clattering loudly across the pavement behind him to trip up his pursuers, and kept running as though he could outrun his misfortune itself.

"Oh, wow," Al commented from the back row, letting out a low, impressed whistle. "He has some pretty solid stamina if he's been running for over two kilometers at a full sprint. But still having eight guys on your ass after all that? Damn, that is some incredibly rotten luck."

Subaru, sinking a little lower into his plush seat, offered a completely flat, deadpan response. "If he were actually ordinary, the Warden wouldn't have brought us all here to watch his life story."

Julius Juukulius elegantly crossed his legs, resting his chin on his knuckles as he analyzed the tactical situation on the screen. "The boy's internal assessment is entirely correct. For an untrained civilian, engaging eight hostile targets is nothing short of suicide. Even three is pushing the limits of survival... though, as I recall, it is still technically doable. Isn't that right, Subaru?"

Subaru whipped his head around, his face flushing with a mix of embarrassment and indignation. He instantly knew Julius was referring to his very first day in Lugunica, when he had foolishly tried to fight off Ton, Chin, and Kan in the capital's alleyway.

"Hey! I took out at least one of them before I got jumped!" Subaru shot back, taking the comment as a slight to his pride. "And I didn't run away!"

"There is no shame in a tactical retreat, Subaru-dono," Wilhelm van Astrea interjected smoothly, his seasoned, scarred face perfectly serious. The old Sword Demon kept his eyes on the fleeing boy. "There are indeed ways a single man can defeat three, or even eight, opponents. But to do so without sustaining fatal injuries requires years of rigorous combat experience, spatial awareness, and the instinct to exploit an enemy's blind spots. For an unarmed student, running is the only intelligent choice."

Priscilla Barielle, however, was far less forgiving. She snapped her ornate fan open with a sharp, dismissive clack, her crimson eyes narrowing at the screen.

"How utterly repulsive," the Sun Princess scoffed, her voice dripping with aristocratic disdain. "We were promised a hero who shatters the illusions of gods. Instead, mineself is forced to watch a common coward fleeing through the streets like a frightened rat, rather than using his wit to overcome his lessers."

In the row behind her, Felt immediately bristled. The scrappy former slum-dweller shot out of her seat, pointing an angry finger at the fiery princess.

"Shut up, you stuck-up bitc—!"

"Lady Felt! Language!" Reinhard gasped in absolute horror, his perfect knightly posture going rigidly straight as he desperately waved his hands to placate his fiery candidate.

"—h!" Felt finished anyway, entirely ignoring her knight. She glared daggers at the back of Priscilla's head. "Out on the streets, you either fight back or you run when the odds aren't in your favor! There is no 'wit' when eight guys are trying to bash your skull in with iron pipes! What that guy is doing right now is called playing smart, something a pampered princess wouldn't understand!"

Priscilla merely huffed, her fan fluttering dismissively as if swatting away a fly, completely unbothered by the blonde girl's outburst. The rest of the theater collectively sighed, grateful that the argument hadn't escalated into a physical brawl.

The frantic sounds of the chase faded away. The screen blurred, transitioning from the dark, tense alleyways to a bright, colorful flashback.

The exterior of a modern, brightly lit building filled the screen. A large, cheerful sign above the glass doors read: FAMILY RESTAURANT JONATHAN'S.

"Yeah, this is all July 19th's fault. That's the only logical explanation," Touma’s voiceover echoed, sounding much calmer, though still incredibly annoyed. "The whole disaster started because I got carried away. 'Hooray, summer vacation starts tomorrow!' I was actually excited for once. That should've been my first warning sign." The screen cut to the interior of the restaurant.

 The Lugunican cast marveled slightly at the automatic sliding doors, the flawless glass windows, and the bright fluorescent lights that illuminated the rows of comfortable seating booths.

"After that, I somehow convinced myself to eat out, so I went into a family restaurant despite not even being hungry," Touma’s internal voice sighed. "Why? Because apparently, I was in such a good mood that I thought, 'Hey, why not splurge a little?'"

Subaru let out a loud, highly empathetic groan, slapping a hand over his face. "Oh, man. I feel that in my soul. That happens way too often."

"Yeah, it really does," Al nodded vigorously in agreement. "You get a little extra allowance, or you realize you don't have school the next day, and suddenly you're sitting in a diner at nine in the evening ordering a giant parfait you don't even want just because you feel like celebrating."

The merchants in the room, particularly Anastasia and Otto, exchanged approving glances. "A brilliant business model," Otto muttered. "Capitalizing on the euphoria of impending leisure time."

The screen showed Touma entering the restaurant. However, his cheerful mood instantly evaporated. His gaze locked onto a commotion happening at one of the corner booths.

Two older, rough-looking delinquents were aggressively leaning over a table were a young girl with shoulder-length brown hair was seating.

"There, I saw a girl who looked like she was still in middle school getting harassed by a couple of thugs who were clearly drunk," Touma’s voiceover explained, his tone shifting from annoyed to resigned. "And although getting involved in something like that would normally never occur to me... I thoughtlessly decided to help out."

Without a second of hesitation, the spiky-haired boy abandoned his plans for a peaceful meal and marched directly toward the hostile delinquents.

A collective, genuine smile of approval washed over the theater.

"Yeah! Get 'em, spiky guy!" Mimi cheered at the top of her lungs, throwing a tiny fist into the air. Beside her, Hetaro and Tivey offered firm, approving nods.

Emilia’s violet eyes softened incredibly, a warm, radiant smile blooming across her face. She leaned her head back against Subaru's shoulder, her heart swelling. "He really is just like you, Subaru. He complains about his bad luck, and he knows he isn't strong... but when he sees someone in trouble, his body just moves on its own."

"Indeed," Rem agreed softly, her blue eyes shining with profound affection as she gently squeezed Subaru's hand. "He cannot simply walk away from a crying girl. It is a deeply foolish, yet undeniably heroic trait."

Subaru blushed furiously, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "G-Guys, come on, don't compare me to him yet. He hasn't even done anything cool!"

From the back, Al let out a boisterous laugh. "Oh, man, here we go! Stepping in to save the cute middle schooler from some ugly thugs? Classic Earth romance trope right there! Next thing you know, she's gonna fall head over heels for—"

THWACK.

The sharp, incredibly painful sound of a heavy folding fan smacking against a steel helmet echoed through the room.

"Silence, you insufferable fool," Priscilla commanded, not even bothering to look at her knight as Al crumpled into his seat with a pained wheeze. "You are ruining the ambiance."

Subaru ignored his fellow other-worlder's suffering, his brows knitting together in genuine confusion as he stared at the screen.

"Wait a second," Subaru muttered, leaning forward. "He stepped in to save the girl from two drunk thugs inside a crowded restaurant. That's noble and all, but..." He gestured wildly at the screen. "How the heck did that escalate into him running for his life from eight guys in the main street?!"

The screen showed Touma marching right up to the booth, puffing his chest out in a desperate attempt to look intimidating. He planted his hands on his hips, trying to project the aura of a confident hero.

"Ahem," Touma coughed, pitching his voice lower to sound authoritative. "Guys, what are you doing? You can clearly see she looks troubled—"

He didn't even get to finish his heroic speech.

The heavy wooden door of the restaurant's restroom suddenly swung open with a loud bang. From the narrow hallway, a seemingly endless stream of flashy, muscle-bound delinquents poured out. There were six more of them, all cracking their knuckles, adjusting their leather jackets, and glaring directly at the scrawny spiky-haired boy who had just interrupted their friends.

Touma froze. His heroic posture completely deflated in an instant, his arms dropping limply to his sides as he stared at the small army of thugs.

"I always thought going to the bathroom in groups was reserved for girls" Touma’s internal voice noted, his tone completely deadpan and utterly defeated.

Subaru slapped a hand over his mouth, his shoulders violently shaking as he tried and failed to stifle a burst of laughter. "Oh, yep. I got my answer. That explains the math."

"Subaru, this is not the time to laugh!" Emilia scolded, her cheeks puffing out as she reached over and delivered a sharp, reprimanding pinch to his side. "He is in terrible danger!"

"I-I know, Emilia-tan, ow! But his inner monologue is just too relatable!" Subaru wheezed, rubbing his ribs.

Rem let out a soft, highly amused sigh, offering a wry smile. "Subaru-kun... your priorities are very strange sometimes."

Sitting in front of them, Crusch Karsten raised a delicate green eyebrow, her sharp mind processing Touma's bizarre observation. "Going to the washroom in groups... is that truly a custom among the women of Earth?"

"Oh, it's not just an Earth thing, Duchess," Anastasia Hoshin chimed in from across the aisle, waving a hand dismissively. "A lady rarely visits the powder room entirely alone. It's prime time for gossip and adjusting one's appearance away from prying eyes."

Priscilla merely scoffed behind her fan, though several of the other women in the theater—including Frederica and Petra—nodded in quiet agreement.

"Hey, don't let him fool you," Al called out from the back, leaning forward. "It's totally normal for guys to roll deep to the bathroom, too. Right, boys?"

Instinctively, Garfiel, Otto, Ricardo, and even Julius offered solemn, synchronized nods of agreement, an unspoken brotherhood of restroom solidarity passing between the men of the theater.

The screen instantly cut back to the frantic present. Touma was sprinting down the neon-lit street, his arms pumping wildly as the mob of eight thugs roared and cursed behind him.

"...I had to bolt before I even got to see my Hell Lasagna topped with goya and escargot!" Touma’s internal voice wailed, sounding genuinely heartbroken as he dodged a stray trash can. "And now they're treating me like some dine-and-dash criminal when I didn't even get a single bite! Seriously, what did I ever do to deserve this level of rotten luck?!"

Subaru physically recoiled in his seat, his face twisting in absolute disgust. "Okay, wait. Hold the phone. Hell Lasagna with goya and escargot? Bitter melon and garden snails thrown on top of pasta?! Yeah, no, that's a hard pass for me. His bad luck actually saved him from severe food poisoning."

"What is an escargot?" Felt asked, tilting her head.

"Snails. Cooked snails," Subaru clarified.

Felt gagged loudly, sticking her tongue out. "Gross! Earth food is weird!"

Beatrice looks disgusted making a frown which Subaru noticed and gave her a headpat to cheer her mood.

Al burst into laughter. "Hey, don't knock the cheap family restaurant menus! When you're a broke high school student, a five-hundred-yen calorie bomb is an absolute feast, no matter what kind of garbage they throw on top of it. He has a right to mourn his lost dinner!"

The camera followed Touma as he desperately scanned the bustling, brightly lit streets and narrow alleyways, looking for a place to hide or lose his pursuers. But everywhere he turned, his path was blocked.

The city was completely swarming with couples. There were couples holding hands on the sidewalk, couples feeding each other sweet crepes on the corner, and couples giggling softly under the romantic glow of the streetlamps. They were a wall of romantic bliss, completely oblivious to the boy running for his life.

"It's because it's July 19th! This whole cursed day is to blame!" Kamijou screamed inwardly, his voice echoing with the bitter, agonizing, soul-crushing complaint of a perpetually single high school boy. "Everything that's happened is the fault of this stupid date!"

The camera panned up to the night sky, focusing on the countless three-bladed wind turbines dotting the tops of the skyscrapers. To Touma's despairing, romantic-comedy-poisoned mind, the massive blades glittered beneath the moonlight and the neon city glow, rotating slowly like the sorrowful tears of some lonely, aristocratic bachelor.

In the second row, Otto Suwen pulled his green hat low over his eyes. A single, silent tear tracked its way down his cheek.

Garfiel blinked, leaning over to poke the merchant's shoulder. "Uh, bro? Why're ya leakin'? He's just runnin' past some people."

"You wouldn't understand, Garfiel," Otto whispered, his voice trembling with profound, melancholic solidarity. "The agonizing pain of the single man, surrounded by the blinding light of other people's happiness... it is a universal suffering that transcends all dimensions."

From the back row, Al leaned over the seats, aiming a teasing grin directly at the front row. "Well, I guess you can't relate to that bitter single life anymore, eh, Subaru?"

Subaru stiffened, a furious blush immediately exploding across his face. "A-Al! Shut up! Keep your commentary to the screen!"

Ricardo threw his head back, his booming, wolf-like laughter rattling the velvet seats. "Gahahaha! That's right! Our boy Subaru here isn't just single, he's a triple threat! He's hoarding all the romance for himself!"

The theater erupted into good-natured laughter.

Betty just puts a hand to her forehead. Subaru buried his face in his hands, groaning loudly. Beside him, Emilia hid her rapidly reddening face behind her hands, though her silver ears were burning bright pink. Rem giggled softly, pressing her flushed cheek lovingly against Subaru's shoulder, while Crusch coughed politely into her fist, her amber eyes darting away to hide her own intense blush.

The screen cut away from the romantic, bustling city streets to a much colder, industrial setting. A massive, arching steel bridge stretched across a dark, wide river, its metallic beams illuminated by evenly spaced, flickering amber streetlamps. The area was completely deserted, offering a stark contrast to the crowded city.

Touma sprinted heavily onto the pedestrian walkway of the massive structure. His rapid footsteps echoed hollowly against the metal grates. Finally, his stamina completely gave out. He stumbled, gasping violently for air, and collapsed to his knees, clutching his heaving chest beneath the glow of a streetlamp.

A collective exhale of relief washed through the theater.

"Finally," Petra sighed, wiping a bead of nervous sweat from her brow.

"He got away! See? He's pretty fast when he wants to be!" Mimi cheered, clapping her small hands together.

Al kicked his metal boots up onto the back of the seat in front of him, lacing his hand behind his head. "He made it. I knew he could do it. Outran all eight of 'em like a champ."

Subaru slowly lowered his hands from his flushed face. He turned his head with mechanical stiffness, his dark eyes locking onto Al with a look of absolute, unadulterated horror.

"Al..." Subaru whispered, his voice filled with dread. "What did you just do?"

Al blinked behind his steel visor. "What? I just said I knew he'd get away. He's safe."

"You raised a flag!" Subaru hissed, frantically gesturing at the screen. "You never, ever say 'he made it' when the main character collapses alone in a creepy, isolated spot! That is the universal law of tempting fate!"

Al froze. Slowly, he lowered his feet back to the floor. "Oh, crap. You're right. I totally just raised a massive death flag."

"A flag?" Julius repeated, his brow furrowing as he analyzed the strange terminology. "If you mean a forewarning of impending danger, then Aldebaran is entirely correct to be worried. Tactically speaking, fleeing onto an enclosed bridge is a terrible, amateur error."

Wilhelm nodded in solemn agreement, his hand resting instinctively on the hilt of his sword. "Indeed, Sir Julius. A bridge is a choke point. He has completely cut off his own escape routes. If the enemy catches up to him now, he is trapped. He will have nowhere to run but into the dark waters below."

The screen focused entirely on Kamijou Touma, who was currently slumped on the pedestrian walkway of the massive steel bridge. He was gasping for air, his chest heaving as the amber glow of the streetlamps illuminated his exhausted face.

"C-crap..." Touma muttered, his voice ragged as he glanced back over his shoulder toward the empty, quiet expanse of the bridge behind him. "Did I finally lose them?"

Desperately fighting the urge to just plop himself down on the cold metal grating right then and there, Kamijou looked up at the vast, starry night sky and inhaled a deep, shuddering breath.

"Wow, I really did solve the problem without punching anyone," Touma thought, a rare, genuine smile of relief crossing his face as he congratulated himself. "I think that deserves a pat on the back."

However, before the hopelessly unlucky boy could even begin to appreciate his hard-earned pacifist achievement, a voice cut through the silence.

"Man, what the heck was that? Are you pretending to be a good guy by sticking up for those chumps? What are you, some kind of overzealous teacher?"

Touma froze.

In the theater, the Re:Zero cast mirrored his reaction perfectly. They completely froze. They had all clearly seen that Touma had outrun the delinquents. They had seen the empty bridge. But now, seemingly out of thin air, someone else was there. And it was the distinctly sharp, unimpressed voice of a young girl.

In the back row, Ram’s eye twitched. A sudden, inexplicable wave of irritation washed over the pink-haired maid. She crossed her arms, her brow furrowing deeply. She didn't even know who was speaking yet, but the sheer haughtiness, the aggressive pride, and the condescending bite in the girl's tone rubbed her the wrong way. It was a strange feeling—like looking into a highly distorted, annoyingly electric mirror.

“Oho,” the Warden chuckled internally, amused by Ram’s subconscious recognition of a fellow sharp-tongued, prideful girl.

"Who is that?" Petra whispered, leaning closer to Frederica. "Did one of the thugs have a girl with them?"

While the younger members of the cast scrambled to figure out the identity of the mysterious voice, the more analytical minds in the room had already pieced the puzzle together.

Anastasia Hoshin tapped her chin with her fan, a knowing smirk spreading across her face. Roswaal L. Mathers hummed a low, highly amused note, his mismatched eyes gleaming. Priscilla Barielle didn't even bother to hide her smirk, having deduced the arrival the moment she heard the pitch of the voice.

And then there were Subaru and Al.

The two otherworldly boys hadn't figured it out because of tactical deduction or logical reasoning. They had figured it out using something far more powerful: Anime Logic.

Subaru slowly leaned back in his seat, a massive, incredibly smug grin spreading across his face. He crossed his arms, nodding sagely to himself like a master who had just predicted the flow of the universe.

Beatrice, sensing her contractor's sudden spike in smugness, looked up at him from his lap. "You look incredibly foolish right now, I suppose. Did you figure out who the voice belongs to, in fact?"

"Oh, Beako, my sweet, innocent spirit," Subaru chuckled, adjusting an imaginary pair of glasses. "It’s elementary. When an ordinary high school boy saves a girl from thugs, and then inexplicably loses said thugs despite his terrible stamina... the universe dictates only one absolute truth."

"Which is?" Julius asked from the row behind, genuinely curious about Subaru's deduction.

"The girl he saved is actually a total badass, and she's right behind him," Subaru declared proudly.

As if proving Subaru right, the camera slowly panned to the left. Emerging from the shadows of the bridge's steel suspension cables, a young girl with shoulder-length chestnut brown hair walked casually toward him. She was wearing a light pink hoodie and a pink skirt. Touma turned around, his eyes widening as the screen finally revealed her face.

Mimi immediately leaped up, pointing excitedly at the massive screen. "Oh! Oh! I know her! That's the little miss herobro saved at the restaurant!"

Tivey pulled his sister back down by her cloak with a heavy sigh. "Mimi, please sit down. And what in the world is a 'herobro'?"

"It's a bro who is a hero! Duh!" Mimi grinned. Hetaro just nodded along, long accustomed to his sister's insane nicknames.

Ricardo threw his head back and let out a booming laugh that shook the seats. "Gahahaha! Look at that! Al was right on the money! The kid steps in to save the cute girl, and now she's tracked him all the way to a romantic, isolated bridge! She definitely came to confess her undying love!"

"Told ya!" Al shouted triumphantly, pointing a finger at the screen. "It's the classic Earth romance trope! The knight in shining armor gets the girl!"

Al immediately flinched, instinctively grabbing his steel helmet with his lone arm, fully expecting another brutal strike from Priscilla's fan for his outburst. He squeezed his eyes shut... but the strike never came. He peeked open one eye to see his lady entirely focused on the screen, her crimson eyes narrowed in deep thought.

"A confession of love?" Priscilla scoffed softly, completely ignoring Al's cowering. "Do not be absurd, dog. Look at the context. Why would a helpless maiden follow her savior into the dark, alone, to an abandoned bridge? She had no reason to pursue him unless she is not helpless at all."

"I have to agree with the Princess," Anastasia added, her Kansai accent thick with suspicion. "It makes zero logistical sense. If she was a normal civilian, she'd have run straight to the city guards—or 'police,' as Natsuki-kun calls them. Stalkin' a boy who's currently being hunted by an angry mob is a terrible life choice."

Crusch Karsten nodded firmly, her amber eyes analyzing the girl on the screen. "Indeed. A civilian would flee. A predator, however, follows the trail."

Emilia, sitting beside Subaru, puffed her cheeks out in mild protest at the cynical adults. "You guys are overthinking it! She probably just felt really bad that he got chased away before he could eat his dinner. She's definitely just here to say thank you for his brave effort!"

Rem, however, exchanged a highly doubtful look with Subaru. "Emilia-sama... Rem believes her tone did not sound particularly grateful."

Subaru nodded in agreement, scratching his cheek. "Yeah, Emilia-tan, I hate to break it to you, but 'What are you, some kind of overzealous teacher?' isn't exactly the standard Earth way of saying 'Thanks for saving my life, let's go on a date.'"

"Subaru is correct," Julius observed, his knightly instincts flaring. "Listen to her diction. 'Are you pretending to be a good guy?' She is not expressing gratitude. She is questioning his motives. She sounds almost... insulted by his intervention."

Felt looked completely lost. "Insulted? Why the heck would she be insulted that some guy stepped in to stop two drunks from harassing her? That's just ungrateful!"

"Allow me," Reinhard van Astrea spoke up gently, his voice carrying the calm, absolute authority of the Sword Saint. His blue eyes seemed to glow faintly for a fraction of a second. "Using the Divine Protection of Empathy... I can read the emotional resonance she is projecting on the screen."

The entire theater quieted down, eager to hear the Sword Saint's absolute judgment.

"Well?" Garfiel asked impatiently. "Is she lovestruck or what?"

Reinhard shook his head slowly. "No. She is not happy in the slightest. In fact, she is highly agitated. There is a deep, competitive frustration radiating from her."

Emilia tilted her head, completely baffled. "Agitated? But why?"

The rest of the cast looked equally confused. Why would a victim be angry at her savior? Ram, however, simply narrowed her eyes at the girl on the screen, that strange, itching feeling of familiarity growing stronger.

On the screen, Touma stared at the middle schooler, his exhausted brain struggling to process her sudden appearance and her aggressive tone. He thought back to the eight thugs who had inexplicably vanished.

"...So is that it?" Touma asked, his voice laced with sudden realization and a hint of dread. "Does this mean those guys stopped following me because..."

"Yeah," the girl answered casually, her expression completely bored.

She raised a hand and casually flicked a strand of her chestnut hair. "They were being a pain, so I fried 'em."

As her finger brushed her bangs, a sharp, violent crackle of noise split the air. Brilliant, blinding sparks of blue-white electricity violently arched around her forehead, illuminating the dark bridge like a strobe light.

The reaction in the theater was instantaneous and explosive.

"FRIED THEM?!" Otto shrieked, nearly leaping out of his seat. "Did she just casually admit to murdering eight people?!"

"Whoa, whoa, wait!" Subaru yelled, waving his hands frantically to calm the terrified merchant down. "She probably just means she electrocuted them! Tased them! Knocked them out! She didn't cook them alive, Otto!"

"She took out eight armed men in the span of a two-kilometer sprint," Wilhelm noted, his eyes widening in genuine respect. "And she did it so efficiently that the boy didn't even hear the battle."

But while the fighters and merchants were reeling from the violent implication of her words, the magic users in the room were undergoing a collective existential crisis.

Felix gasped, his cat ears flattening against his head. "Wait... what was that light, nya? Was that... magic?!"

"No," Roswaal breathed, his voice entirely devoid of his usual sing-song cadence. He leaned so far forward he was gripping the velvet seat in front of him. His mismatched eyes were blown wide, completely locked onto the fading sparks on the screen. "That was not magic. There was no chant. No incantation. And most importantly..."

"There is absolutely no mana, I suppose!" Beatrice cried out, her small hands gripping Subaru's tracksuit tightly. "Betty is watching closely! The air around her is completely devoid of spirits, and she did not draw upon a single drop of internal mana! Yet she generated raw, concentrated lightning!"

Julius stared at the screen, his elegant composure entirely shattered. "To generate a high-tier offensive spell with a mere flick of the hair, without a gate, without a spirit, and without mana... How is such a thing possible?"

Subaru, realizing the absolute bombshell that had just been dropped on the magical society of Lugunica, offered a slightly nervous, highly excited grin.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Subaru announced, gesturing grandly toward the girl on the screen. "Welcome to the Science Side. The Warden mentioned that this city forces students to develop their brains to get psychic powers, right? Well, you're looking at one of them. That's an Esper."

The theater fell dead silent, the sheer, terrifying reality of Academy City finally crashing down upon them. A world where a 14-year-old girl could generate lightning from her mind without a single drop of mana.

And Kamijou Touma, an ordinary, powerless boy with terrible luck, was standing right in front of her.

The screen lingered on Touma’s exhausted, slumped form as the crackling blue-white electricity from the girl’s bangs finally faded into the night air. The heavy tension of the deserted steel bridge seemed to press down on him.

"Whoa..." Kamijou sighed, a sound that carried the weight of a thousand minor inconveniences.

His internal monologue picked up again, dripping with utter exhaustion. "July 19th had been unlucky even by my standards. I’d wasted money on a terrible, boring manga. I forced myself to eat at a family restaurant when I wasn't even hungry. And, to top it all off... I ended up rescuing a group of drunk, violent delinquents from a certain, incredibly troublesome girl."

The theater was silent for exactly three seconds before Subaru slapped his forehead, a loud, incredulous laugh bursting from his chest.

"Oh! Oh, I see!" Subaru cackled, pointing at the screen while looking back at his friends. "So that means this entire time, he wasn't saving the helpless girl from the thugs! He was saving the poor thugs from her!"

"Yeah, bro, that is a textbook subversion of expectations right there," Al chuckled, shaking his head in sheer amusement. "The classic 'damsel in distress' turns out to be the 'dragon in a dress.' Gotta love it when the universe plays a joke on the good guy."

Felt let out a loud snort, crossing her arms behind her head. "Hah! I like her style! Let those drunk idiots think they've got the upper hand, and then zap 'em into next week! Serves them right for picking on a kid!"

"Though it does make Kamijou-dono's heroic intervention somewhat tragically comedic," Wilhelm noted, a rare, faint smile touching the corners of his scarred lips. "He risked his own life and ran two kilometers in sheer terror... all to protect the very men who were chasing him."

Emilia giggled softly, hiding her mouth behind her hands. "It's a little sad, but it is very sweet in a clumsy way. Even if she didn't need it, he still tried to do the right thing."

The camera shifted to show the girl standing proudly under the amber glow of the streetlamp, her hands resting casually on her hips. Her posture was completely relaxed, yet she radiated an aura of absolute, undeniable confidence.

"A girl whose name I still don't even know," Touma’s voiceover continued with a weary groan.

"For nearly a month, she had appeared out of nowhere, challenged me, lost, and then challenged me again. Today was clearly no different."

The casual banter in the theater instantly ceased. The air in the room seemed to freeze solid.

"Wait. What?!" Subaru shouted, leaning so far forward he almost slid out of his plush seat.

"Hold up! Back the carriage up!" Al yelled, his singular hand gripping the headrest in front of him.

Julius Juukulius, whose elegant composure rarely broke, stared at the screen with wide, incredulous eyes. He looked from the spiky-haired, entirely unarmored boy on the screen, to the girl who had just casually admitted to frying eight men. "She... challenged him? And she lost? For a month? How is that remotely possible?"

"That makes absolutely no sense," Felt barked, her red eyes darting around the room as if looking for someone to explain the joke. "She's the girl who just fried eight grown men in an instant! She shoots lightning from her forehead! And she challenged a guy who has no weapons, no armor, and terrible stamina... and she lost?!"

"That is exactly what his internal thoughts implied, my lady," Reinhard murmured, his own blue eyes narrowed in deep, analytical thought. The Sword Saint's mind was racing to calculate any possible scenario where a normal human could defeat a lightning user unarmed.

Wilhelm stroked his beard, his brow furrowed heavily. "In a battle between a powerful magic user—or an 'Esper,' as Subaru called her—and an unarmed civilian, the civilian dies. Period. Unless... unless he knows some highly specific martial trick, or there is a massive tactical factor that we are currently unaware of." The old swordsman looked up toward the darkened ceiling, wondering if the Warden would chime in to explain.

But the Warden remained entirely, conspicuously silent.

In the back row, Priscilla Barielle snapped her crimson fan open, a sharp, knowing smirk gracing her lips. "How dreadfully slow you all are. The answer is staring you right in the face. This boy is no ordinary commoner."

"What are you implying, Priscilla?" Crusch asked, turning slightly in her seat to face the Sun Princess.

"Mineself implies that a rat does not defeat a hawk unless the rat possesses teeth made of steel," Priscilla declared haughtily. "This Kamijou Touma must possess something akin to an unusual, hidden power. Much like the jester sitting in the front row, who hides a terrifying Authority behind the guise of a fool."

Anastasia Hoshin nodded slowly, her calculating eyes gleaming. "The Princess is right. The Warden promised us a hero who shatters the illusions of gods. You don't do that with just a good sprint and a loud voice. He's hidin' somethin' big."

Roswaal L. Mathers smiled, a chilling, eager expression that stretched across his painted face. "Iiiiindeed. A boy without mana, without psychic ability, who routinely defeats a girl capable of producing raw lightning. I am veeery curious to see what kind of anomaly this 'Science Side' has produced."

Meanwhile, Ram was sitting with her arms crossed, a deep, highly visible scowl marring her delicate features.

"Ram, is something the matter?" Frederica asked gently, noticing her fellow maid's sour expression.

"That girl," Ram stated flatly, glaring at the electric middle schooler on the screen. "Ram finds her entirely annoying. She loses for a month straight, yet continues to harass an innocent boy who clearly has no interest in her childish games? Such baseless, stubborn pride is irritating."

And it reminds me too much of a certain blonde drill-loli, Ram thought to herself, though she wisely kept that part silent.

Down in the front, Subaru's mind was moving at a mile a minute. He locked eyes with Al across the seats.

"Al," Subaru whispered loudly. "He's the Main Character."

"He's the MC, bro," Al nodded solemnly, confirming the undeniable laws of anime narrative. "If he's a seemingly normal guy in a crazy magic-science city, and he's beating up high-tier electric chicks without breaking a sweat... he's got a cheat skill. He has to."

"Exactly!" Subaru grinned, pumping a fist. "He's hiding a secret weapon! I knew this guy was going to be awesome!"

While the boys celebrated their meta-knowledge, Emilia looked at the screen with a deeply troubled, sorrowful expression. Her hands clasped together in her lap.

"But... why does she want to fight him so badly?" Emilia asked softly, her violet eyes filled with genuine distress. "He just wants to live a normal life. Fighting will only cause them both pain and hurt. Why can't they just talk it out?"

On the screen, Touma mirrored Emilia's exact sentiments. He ran a weary hand through his spiky black hair, looking at the electric girl with a mixture of dread and utter confusion.

"...Wait, what did I do again?" Touma asked, genuinely struggling to remember if he had ever actually wronged this girl to earn a month of relentless, violent stalking.

The chestnut-haired girl narrowed her eyes, the air around her practically humming with static electricity. She pointed a delicate, accusing finger directly at Touma's face.

"I will not allow a stronger human than me to exist," she declared, her voice ringing with absolute, unshakeable conviction. "That’s enough of a reason."

Touma just stared at her. His internal voice returned, sounding so tired it bordered on depression.

"Even characters in fighting games these days have better, more fleshed-out setups than her" Kamijou thought.

"What kind of garbage logic is that?!" Felt barked, leaping up from her seat once again. "She wants to beat him up just because he's stronger than her?! That's the stupidest, most arrogant reason to start a fight I've ever heard! If you pick a fight with someone stronger just to prove a point, you deserve to get your teeth kicked in!"

"Now, now, little miss," Ricardo chuckled, scratching his furry chin. "Pride's a funny thing. When you're used to bein' at the top of the food chain, findin' someone who brushes off your best attacks can drive a warrior a little crazy."

Garfiel slammed his gauntlets together, a fierce, toothy grin spreading across his face. "I dunno, I kinda respect it! If there's a wall in front of ya, ya smash it! If the captain beat me, I'd challenge him a hundred times till I proved I was the strongest! That's just how it goes!"

"You are a meathead, Garfiel," Ram sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Do not equate your barbaric impulses with honorable conduct. This girl is not a warrior seeking growth; she is a child throwing a temper tantrum because she did not get her way."

"Ram is correct," Julius added, shaking his head in disappointment. "True strength is not measured by standing above all others. It is measured by how one uses that power to protect those below them. Her reasoning is profoundly immature."

Subaru and Al, however, were entirely focused on Touma's internal commentary.

"Fighting games!" Subaru gasped, pointing at the screen. "He referenced fighting games! Oh man, he really is just a normal Earth teenager!"

"I wonder if they have Street Fighter in Academy City," Al mused, tapping his chin. "Honestly, though, Kamijou makes a solid point. 'I fight you because you're strong' is total arcade-mode boss logic. She needs a better backstory."

Crusch Karsten observed the interaction with a critical eye, leaning back gracefully in her seat. "Regardless of her childish motivations, she is clearly a formidable force. And Kamijou Touma has defeated her for thirty consecutive days."

She looked directly at the back of Subaru's head. "Whatever secret he is hiding... I have a feeling we are about to witness it firsthand."

“I’ve had enough of you making me look like an idiot,” the girl on the screen spat, amber sparks snapping angrily at the edge of her bangs. “I’m a Level Five, got it? Do you honestly think I’d use my full strength against an incompetent Level Zero? I know plenty of ways to cook a weakling, you know.”

A quiet chill slid through the theater.

The way she said it carried more than arrogance. It was not merely the boast of a strong person looking down on the weak. It was the language of a society that had turned strength into rank, rank into identity, and identity into a weapon.

Subaru grimaced. “Yeah... there it is.”

Emilia glanced at him. “There what is?”

“The ugly part,” Subaru said softly. “Academy City doesn’t just give people powers. It sorts them. Labels them. And once a city starts ranking kids by worth...” His expression darkened. “Things get messed up fast.”

Rem tightened her hold on his hand. She did not miss the bitterness in his voice.

Unlike ordinary cities, Academy City did not reserve danger for armed criminals, assassins, or hidden monsters. The delinquents from earlier were nothing special. They were Level Zeroes, failures of the city’s curriculum, students whose brains had been pushed, prodded, and tampered with in the pursuit of power, only for them to awaken nothing at all. “Impotents,” some called them. Washouts. The true predators were not street punks. The true predators were the elites who had survived the system and risen above it.

Felix’s ears flattened. “They experiment on children, rank them by how useful they become, and then mock the ones who fail? That’s horrifying, nya.”

Julius’s face had gone cold. “A city that claims to educate its youth, yet openly breeds contempt among them... how vulgar.”

“Um, about that,” Kamijou replied, sounding more tired than afraid. “I already know you’re one in three hundred thousand, but you should probably stop talking down to people if you want to live a long, healthy life.”

Felt snorted. “He’s got guts, I’ll give him that.”

Al barked a laugh from the back. “Bro really saw a lightning tsundere and chose sarcasm.”

Subaru pointed toward the screen. “That’s how you know he’s a real Earth protagonist. Terrible survival instincts, but excellent comeback timing.”

“Shut up,” she snapped. “Those guys use drugs and shove electrodes into their brains, and they still can’t even bend a spoon. If they aren’t talentless, what are they?”

This time Kamijou did not answer immediately.

And before the silence on the screen could deepen into something uglier, the Warden spoke.

“As this city’s ranking system will be important going forward, I shall explain it in fuller detail.”

The theater shifted its attention from the screen to the unseen voice that ruled it.

“In Academy City,” the Warden said, “students are categorized by the strength and utility of their Esper abilities. The lowest rank is Level Zero: those with no meaningful power at all.”

Garfiel immediately jabbed a thumb toward Subaru with a grin. “Like Cap.”

Subaru turned so fast Beatrice nearly bounced in his lap. “Excuse me?”

Otto, with the kind of dry timing only Otto could manage, adjusted his scarf and said, “To be fair, Natsuki-san could probably still defeat Petra in a direct contest.”

A wave of laughter rolled through the theater.

Petra puffed her cheeks. “Otto-san!”

Subaru clutched his chest in mock pain. “Betrayed by my own camp...”

The Warden continued, faintly amused. “Level One Espers possess only weak or highly limited powers. At best, they are capable of minor, inconvenient, or narrowly specialized feats.”

Reinhard hummed thoughtfully. “Something akin to the Divine Protection of Salt Reasoning, perhaps. Useful, but not powerful.”

“A fair comparison,” the Warden said.

Reinhard nodded as if he had just passed a classroom exercise.

“Level Two Espers possess powers somewhat more practical in day-to-day life, though still not overwhelmingly strong. Their abilities can be useful, but rarely decisive in battle.”

The Warden paused, then added, “Think of them as similar in usefulness to a Ground Dragon’s Divine Protection of Wind Evasion... or Felt’s Divine Protection.”

Garfiel slapped the back of Subaru’s seat. “Brotto, Cap’s Patrasche is a Level Two!”

Subaru’s expression instantly melted into offended devotion. “Patrasche is at least a national treasure tier, thank you very much. My lovely dragon transcends your rankings.”

At once, three different pouty looks hit him from three different angles.

Emilia frowned. Rem’s cheeks puffed slightly. Crusch arched a brow with suspicious elegance.

Subaru looked from one to the other. “...Huh?”

Beatrice sighed. “You really are helpless, I suppose.”

Priscilla clicked her tongue. “I had already assumed gutter rat would rank low.”

Felt shot upright. “What’d you say, you stuck-up bitch?!”

“My lady,” Reinhard said at once, already exhausted.

The Warden pressed on before the argument could ignite fully.

“Level Three is the first rank generally considered combat-capable. At that point, an Esper becomes meaningfully dangerous.”

He allowed the statement to settle before adding, “A rough comparison might be Crusch’s Divine Protection, or Otto’s own.”

Garfiel lit up. “Brotto! You’re a Level Three!”

Otto blinked. “I am?”

“Yes,” the Warden said. “Your Divine Protection is far more battle-relevant than many assume. Information, communication, environmental awareness, the ability to coordinate lesser creatures, and your own above-average tactical mind make you dangerous under the right conditions.”

Otto sat a little straighter at that.

Frederica smiled warmly at him. “That sounds quite accurate, Otto-sama.”

Ram, naturally, ruined the sweetness immediately. “How inspiring. Barusu’s wallet is now officially combat-capable.”

Even Otto had to laugh at that.

Crusch, meanwhile, had gone quiet, visibly considering her own Divine Protection in a more martial light than before. Subaru noticed and thought she looked one step away from redesigning battlefield doctrine in her head.

“Level Four,” the Warden continued, “are rare and formidable. They are of significant military value and can defeat large numbers of those beneath them.”

“Tactical value...” Crusch murmured.

“For military force,” Wilhelm finished, his voice grim.

Anastasia tapped her fan against her palm. “Then folks at that rank would be equivalent to the real heavy hitters in a camp. Say... Iron Fang-class.”

Mimi shot her hand into the air like an eager child in school. “Yeah! Mimi and Boss are Level Fours!”

Hetaro and Tivey both looked mildly offended she had not included them first.

The Warden answered, “Yes. Iron Fang-class is a fair comparison. Garfiel’s Divine Protection would also fall near this level.”

Garfiel puffed up instantly, punching the air. “Brotto! Captain! Behold! My amazin’ self is a Level Four!”

Subaru gave him a solemn thumbs-up. “Our shield.”

Otto sighed the sigh of a man who had long ago accepted that Garfiel would turn every compliment into a parade.

Frederica’s eyes softened with sisterly pride. “Garfiel, I am happy for you.”

Beside her, Petra had sunk lower in her seat, visibly fuming. She had clearly done the math and discovered she ranked near the bottom of the theater’s accidental power chart.

Subaru noticed immediately.

Without warning, he stood, leaned over the seatback, and gave Petra a gentle pat on the head.

“Hey. Rankings are dumb. You’ve got your own strengths.”

Petra looked up, startled, face pinking.

Meili, sitting nearby, put on a shamelessly pitiful expression and widened her eyes.

Subaru sighed. “You too.”

He patted her head as well.

Frederica let out a soft giggle.

Then the Warden spoke again, and the warmth in the room vanished.

“The highest natural public rank in Academy City is Level Five.”

He paused.

“These are the city’s monsters. Individuals of such overwhelming ability that, under the right conditions, a single one could destroy an entire nation.”

The theater exploded.

“What?!” Subaru and Al shouted first, louder than anyone.

Crusch went rigid, a bead of sweat sliding down her temple.

Wilhelm’s hand tightened around his cane.

Fighters all across the room reacted at once with disbelief, anger, or stunned silence. Even those who had just accepted the existence of Espers found this claim far harder to swallow. No matter how you looked at it, the only person who could conquer a nation alone was Reinhard. To think that a world had created seven people who could match the Sword Saint—and they did it with science—was a terror they couldn't grasp.

Felt half rose out of her seat, stumbling over her words. “Y-you’re saying there are people on Rein’s level?”

“Relax,” the Warden said. “There are only seven known Level Fives.”

“That does not make it less terrifying!” Felt shouted.

It really didn’t.

Reinhard sat in silence. He was intrigued, genuinely wondering if these seven individuals felt the same crushing loneliness that he did, but the look on the electric girl's face on the screen made him feel a deep, hollow sadness. Loneliness, he thought. Or the shape of it.

Julius whispered to himself, his hands trembling in his lap. "Seven people like Reinhard..." He couldn't even fathom the scale of destruction.

Felix voiced the practical horror for the rest of them. “How, nya? How can that city still be standing if it has seven people like that walking around?”

Priscilla, annoyed by everyone else’s panic, snapped her fan open. “You silly cat. If the city did not possess methods to control its own monsters, why would it have created them at all?”

That quieted some of the shouting, but not the unease.

Roswaal, meanwhile, was sweating.

To create even one individual comparable to Reinhard through pure science would have been beyond anything he had considered possible. Seven? Seven such beings? The thought itself was monstrous. And if the Science Side could manufacture miracles like that...

What could the Magic Side do?

His mind, inevitably, curved back toward the dead. Toward Echidna. Toward resurrection.

Then Tivey, who had been silent until now, asked the question that froze the room.

“Is there a Level Six?”

Silence hit the theater like a blade.

Every head turned.

Every thought in the room shifted in the same terrible direction.

If Level Five meant nation-destroyer... then what could Level Six possibly mean?

Stronger than Reinhard?

Stronger than anything this world could imagine?

The Warden did not answer.

He simply remained silent.

That silence was worse than any spoken explanation could have been.

Confusion curdled into dread. The cast began spinning out theories almost immediately, and not one of them was comforting. Emilia looked worried. Rem frowned. Crusch’s eyes sharpened. Julius went stiff with calculation. Even Wilhelm looked grimly unsettled.

Then Al, to his credit, decided the room needed pulling away from that cliff immediately.

“Hey,” he said loudly, pointing at the screen, “did anybody catch what the girl implied? There’s some serious discrimination going on in that city between students of different levels.”

There was a pause.

A very small pause.

Then Priscilla smacked him across the helmet with her fan hard enough to send him lurching sideways in his seat.

“Is that not painfully obvious, jester?”

Subaru didn’t even defend him.

“Yeah, Al,” he said, deadpan. “I thought everyone got that from the lightning-powered classism.”

Anastasia clicked her tongue. “Why waste precious time stating the obvious?”

Al slumped dramatically. “I was trying to save the mood.”

“You failed,” Ram said.

But he had not, actually.

Because the room had moved on.

The terror of the unspoken Level Six remained lurking in the background, but the cast’s thoughts had returned to the world on the screen, to the broken structure of Academy City, and to the dangerous girl still standing before Kamijou Touma with sparks dancing at her bangs.

And somehow, impossibly, that felt safer than imagining what the Warden had chosen not to say.

“If you want to bend a spoon, you can just use pliers. And if you want fire, you can just go buy a lighter for a hundred yen. We don’t need telepathy; we have cell phones. Superpowers aren’t all that special.” This was coming from Kamijou, who carried the stigma of having been labeled a “useless” esper by the Sensors during a citywide physical examination.

Subaru nodded almost at once.

“That’s actually... a pretty reasonable take,” he admitted, leaning back in his seat while Beatrice remained perched in his lap like a tiny, dignified judge. “If you already have a better alternative, then of course the power itself doesn’t feel miraculous anymore. Once something becomes replaceable, people stop worshipping it.”

Al shrugged from the back row. “Yeah. I mean, I get what he’s saying. If you’ve got tools, machines, and normal ways to do most things, psychic powers stop being magic and start becoming convenience. Though,” he lifted a finger, “that logic definitely doesn’t apply to everything. Shooting lightning is still crazy.”

Anastasia, meanwhile, was already tapping her fan against her chin thoughtfully. “A lighter,” she murmured. “Add that one to the list too.”

Otto groaned. “Of course that’s your takeaway.”

“They’re all wrong in the head. You’re just bragging about some by products called supernatural powers. Wasn’t the entire goal to try and go beyond that?” Touma continued.

A shiver passed through the room.

Level Six.

The idea returned at once, unwelcome and heavy.

Roswaal’s painted smile thinned.

Reinhard’s gaze narrowed.

Even Anastasia, who had tried to keep a calm analytical expression throughout most of the viewing, looked slightly more tense than before.

“Huh?... Right, that. How did it go again?” The girl said, scratching her cheek as if she were half mocking the idea and half trying to remember it properly. “‘Man cannot measure God; therefore, we must first obtain a body beyond that of man, or we can never arrive at God’s answers’?”

Touma’s sarcastic comment didn't help.

In the back row, Roswaal’s breath hitched. Is 'Level 6' on par with a god? Or is it something like Od Lagna itself? He fought to keep his composure, trying not to let his terror show, but his hands were trembling beneath his sleeves. Across the theater, other people reached similar, deeply unsettling conclusions.

She stopped. The air changed silently. The Girl said, her voice dropping into a cutting, sarcastic tone, "…Well. That’s what strong people would say, isn’t it?"

"Huh?"

The girl speaks with a sarcastic touch "Strong people, strong people, strong people. They don’t understand how much of a struggle it is to try and accomplish anything because they happened to be born with natural talent. What you just said sounded exactly like a line from the hero in some comic book—oblivious and cruel."

Everyone noticed the sudden shift in his tone. Subaru and Al felt the raw, jagged frustration in her words. They had been thrown into a world where they were constantly surrounded by people who were so overwhelmingly strong that their own efforts often felt like grains of sand against a mountain.

Many of the cast members frowned, forced to acknowledge the bitter truth in her words.

Even Reinhard, the strongest being in their world, felt a pang of genuine hurt.

Felt, sitting beside him, immediately reached out and gripped his hand. "Don't you listen to him, Rein. She's talking about people who look down on others, not you."

A mechanical whirring rose from the river beneath the bridge. There were only seven espers of her caliber in the entire city. How much of their humanity had they sacrificed to reach those heights? A dark malice flickered in her eyes at the thought.

Many of the warriors in the theater grew quiet at that.

They understood sacrifice.

They understood training.

They understood giving away pieces of one’s life in the pursuit of strength.

But this... this sounded colder than that. More clinical. Less chosen.

Subaru’s face softened with quiet sadness.

Emilia pressed just a little more closely against him. Rem’s thumb moved gently over the back of his hand.

Roswaal, of course, chose that moment to hum. “Hmmm. I wonder how many of those seven have retained even the bare minimum of humanity.”

“Shut up, clown,” Garfiel snarled instantly.

“Garfiel, sit down,” Ram ordered with a click of her tongue. Then, folding her arms, she added in a colder voice, “You already know that not all great power is used with dignity.”

That shut him up.

Elsa flashed briefly through his mind.

Julius nodded slowly. “Yes. There are many who surrender too much in their pursuit of strength.”

Felix and Crusch thought, at once and without needing to say his name aloud, of Biehn Argyle.

The screen moved forward.

Kamijou refused to accept it. He rejected that nihilism with a singular, stubborn resolve. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Take a look at the physical exams, will you? My level is zero, and yours is five—the highest! Ask anyone walking by, and they’ll tell you exactly which is better!"

Science fueled Academy City’s development—pharmaceutics, neurology, cerebral physiology. Even without any talent, if you made it through the standard curriculum, you’d at least be able to bend a spoon with your mind. Yet, Touma Kamijou still couldn't do anything. The city’s sensors had verified a total lack of talent in him.

"'Zero talent,' huh?" Al muttered, his visor glinting. "I have a feeling we are about to see the exact opposite of that." Many heads nodded in agreement.

"Zero, huh?" the girl repeated, turning the word over in her mouth. She reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out an arcade token. "Hey, do you know what a railgun is?"

"Hm?"

The color drained from Subaru and Al’s faces simultaneously.

"Um... is she about to do what I think she's about to do?" Subaru asked, his voice trembling as he looked toward the empty air where the Warden sat. The Warden did not reply. The fear in Subaru's voice was so palpable that the rest of the cast noticed it immediately.

"Subaru, what's wrong? Is a 'railgun' something really bad?" Emilia asked, holding his hand tighter. Rem looked at him with wide, worried eyes.

Al spoke aloud so everyone could hear him, his voice uncharacteristically serious. "You all know I’m not a big science guy, but a Railgun is something that everyone in my world has heard about at least once in their life. And let me tell you... it mostly comes from military history. It’s not a toy."

That single word—military—made everyone realize the girl was about to unleash something on par with a national army. They remembered the Warden's earlier statement: Level Fives could destroy a nation by themselves.

“It’s a weapon that fires metal shells using superpowered electromagnets,” the girl explained. “Same principle as a maglev train.”

Clink.She flicked the token into the air and caught it on her thumb.“Something like this.”

Then she fired.

An orange beam of light tore past Touma’s head.It was so fast it did not register as a thrown object at all. It looked like a laser, a line of incandescent force born from her thumb and extending death straight through the night.

A heartbeat later, the thunderclap came.

The sound smashed into the bridge like a giant’s hand. Touma stumbled, nearly losing his balance as the shockwave rolled over him. He spun. Behind him, the asphalt had been gouged open for thirty meters, the concrete cratered inward as if struck by artillery. Heat shimmered in the air. The afterglow of the shot still lingered like a scar.

The theater went dead silent.

No gasps.

No shouts.

Just stunned, appalled silence.

Emilia covered her mouth.

Crusch went perfectly still.

Otto looked like his soul had briefly left his body.

Anastasia’s eyes had gone comically wide, though no sound came out of her.

The triplets stared with open mouths.

Even Priscilla, too proud to show honest shock most of the time, had said nothing.

Roswaal was sweating now.

Wilhelm’s eyes had widened.

Reinhard’s face remained composed, but only because it had gone so rigid it looked carved from marble.

And then the Warden, as though determined to twist the knife deeper, spoke calmly into that silence.

“That attack was not launched at full power.”

The room did not breathe.

“And she is regarded only as the third strongest of the seven Level Fives.”

That broke them.

“What?!” Subaru and Al shouted again.

Otto made a strangled sound.

Felix’s tail puffed to double size.

Felt simply stared, her expression caught between awe and horror.

They had thought the theater had reached the ceiling of shock.

The Warden had just calmly pointed out that there were still four people in this city even more terrifying than the girl who had casually fired a coin like an anti-fortress cannon.

“A coin has a lot of power when it’s moving at three times the speed of sound,” the girl remarked almost casually, as if she were discussing weather. “Though it melts from air friction before it even reaches fifty meters.”

The bridge groaned beneath the stress. Bolts shrieked. Steel trembled.

Roswaal’s eyes narrowed slightly as his mind finally grabbed hold of something familiar enough to categorize. “How curious... such an attack, achieved through acceleration alone. Similar in principle to Greed, is it not?”

That made a number of eyes widen.

And when they thought about it, yes—he was right.

Not identical. Not remotely. But in the broadest, most terrifying sense, the attack carried the same dreadful simplicity as Regulus’s violence: overwhelming force born from a law the victim could not easily contest.

Kamijou felt a chill, as if someone had thrown dry ice in his blood vessels.

"Y-you... Don't tell me you used that to get rid of those guys!"

Reinhard’s eyes darkened, his hand gripping the pommel of his sword.

Felt shouted, "Yeah! I was thinking the same thing! That's insane!"

"She would not do that, right?" Emilia asked, her expression deeply worried. "Even if they were bad people, she wouldn't use such a powerful weapon on them... would she?"

"Don't be stupid! I don't use this on just anyone," she answered, sparks dancing in her brown hair. "I don't plan on turning into a homicidal maniac, you know. For those pathetic Level Zeroes... this was more than enough to get rid of them!"

Emilia breathed a massive sigh of relief, though her hands were still trembling.

Suddenly, a pale blue spark leaped from her bangs—and a spear of lightning blasted toward him.

There was no way to dodge that. It was a bolt of electricity fired from a Level Five, moving at the speed of a strike from a storm cloud. Thoom! The explosion followed instantly. Kamijou had thrown his right hand up by instinct. The electric spear collided with his palm, the current dissipating and showering the steel framework of the bridge in blue sparks.

She stared at him, baring her teeth in frustration. "Tell me. Why the heck don't you have a scratch on you?"

The theater stared in utter disbelief.

Priscilla was the first to recover. She smiled, slow and smug. “So. This is the thing that makes him worthy of the center stage. At last, I am interested.”

Across the theater, Subaru and Al slapped hands without even looking at each other.

“I knew it!” Subaru burst out, grinning like a child who had just found hidden treasure. “There had to be a hidden card!”

Beatrice looked deeply annoyed by the volume of her contractor’s excitement, but her own eyes had not left the screen for a second.

Felix leaned forward. “You figured it out, Subaru-kyun?”

Subaru nodded quickly. “One of the oldest tropes, baby.”

"Subaru, can you explain it?" Anastasia asked, her tone shifting into a register that made Emilia, Rem, and Crusch visibly uncomfortable.

Subaru just laughed. "I guess he will reveal it to us."

The high-voltage current should have been enough to burn through the steel, yet it hadn't even singed his skin. Kamijou’s right hand had completely nullified the attack.

"Jeez, what is that power supposed to even be? It's not in Academy City's data banks, that's for sure. If I'm one in three hundred thousand, you're the city's only one-in-two-million natural disaster. If you go around looking for fights with that anomaly, then I'm gonna have to crank up the voltage a bit."

Touma muttered, "...Yeah, says the one who always loses."

Her response was another Lightning Spear, flying at Mach speed. Again, it struck his right hand and discharged harmlessly, like a popped water balloon.

This was the Imagine Breaker—the death of illusions. In a city where powers were built on mathematical formulas and divine-like miracles, he was the error that canceled them all out.

Subaru sat up tall. "Here it is! The power to cancel out other powers!"

The theater was collectively bewildered. To say they were stunned was an understatement.

"So he can nullify any attack?" Anastasia whispered, trembling at the implications. Otto looked equally pale.

Reinhard was, for the first time in his life, genuinely afraid. If that person could truly nullify miracles... a dark, dangerous thought entered his mind, but he quickly banished it, forcing himself to remain calm.

Felt grinned. "That's so cool! I knew there was something special about him!"

Magic experts like Roswaal, Beatrice, and Foxidna were having a full-blown panic attack, wondering about the implications of a power that could overwrite the laws of the universe itself. Crusch finally understood why this boy had been chosen as the protagonist.

Wilhelm, thankfully, remained the voice of reason. “We should not leap to conclusions yet.”

Priscilla nodded once. “The old warrior is right. If the power is as straightforward as Subaru claims, then it must have limits.”

As if obeying her directly, the screen answered.

However, the Imagine Breaker had limits. It only worked on supernatural phenomena, and only within the reach of his right hand. If a fireball exploded, the flames themselves might be negated, but the concrete shrapnel it sent flying would still tear through his clothes—or his body.

I thought… I thought I was dead! his mind screamed, even as he forced a calm, composed grin.

Priscilla looked satisfied. “There. As expected.”

Subaru murmured, “So it’s all concentrated in one arm.”

Emilia tilted her head adorably. “So the attack has to hit his right hand exactly?”

Rem, thinking with frightening honesty, said, “Then he could still die very easily from a strike like my morning star.”

Every head near her turned.

Subaru stared.

Beatrice stared.

Emilia stared.

Crusch stared.

Rem blinked, then lowered her eyes just a little. “...Was that strange to say?”

"I mean... that brat seems like a guy who has good stamina, but..." Ricardo trailed off.

"His only power is within his right hand, which only nullifies unnatural attacks, so technically..." Tivey added.

"If he were to be attacked by normal objects, he wouldn't be able to defend himself," Julius finished the assessment.

 “A double-edged sword,” Wilhelm said.

Priscilla leaned back. "But you lowlifes are ignoring one important detail..." Everyone looked at her, some with annoyed expressions. "...that this city is filled with people like her." She pointed at the screen.That settled over the room at once.

Right.

Touma’s hand was terrifying.

But he lived in a city built on powers, full of students trained around those powers, and his miracle only covered one hand, one reach, one angle, one instant. He was not invincible.He was standing in the middle of a slaughterhouse with a perfect shield strapped to only one arm.

Even as his heart hammered against his ribs, Touma forced a crooked grin onto his face. “Man,” he sighed, “such rotten luck, huh?”

“You really are unlucky,” the girl agreed.

The last shot was of the city and a lightning strike was shown.

Thus ended the day of July 19th.

Subaru blinked at the screen.

Then he looked up toward the Warden. “So... that’s the end of the episode?”

Silence.

The Warden stared at him.

Subaru immediately wilted. “Did I say something wrong?”

The Warden released a long, deep sigh that resonated through the theater like a judgment from the heavens.

“That,” he said at last, “was merely the prologue.”

Subaru’s jaw dropped.

“What?!” Subaru shouted.

Reinhard spoke up in a perfectly polite tone.

“Yes, Subaru. Roughly three minutes and forty seconds. Approximately two hundred and twenty seconds of footage.”

The entire theater turned toward him.

Deadpan.

Felt slapped his arm. “Did you really count it?!”

Reinhard blinked once. “Yes, my lady.”

A pause.

Then, with the same calm seriousness one might use to report troop movement, he added, “The Divine Protection of Screenplay Details is quite useful.”

WTF? Subaru and Al thought in perfect, horrified unison.

The screen displayed a cramped, dimly lit dorm room. In the background, a television was playing a loud, cheerful advertisement. The announcer’s voice boomed: “If you’re an Aquarius born between January 20th and February 18th, you’ll have extremely good fortune in love, money, and business! No matter how improbable the circumstances, only good things are headed your way! Go buy a lottery ticket! Just don’t get carried away with your newfound popularity with the opposite sex—no two- or three-timing, now.”

The theater remained largely silent as the cast processed the sheer absurdity of the broadcast. Nobody quite understood the concept of an "Aquarius" or "lottery ticket," though the cultural implication was clear.

Al let out a loud, wheezing snort and said "Man, the TV’s really trying to set the kid up for failure, huh? Bro, I’d say that deal is pretty perfect for you, eh?"

Subaru turned crimson "I don't need a TV to tell me my love life is a minefield, thanks."

Emilia tilted her head in confusion. Rem and Crusch, however, had both gone a delicate shade of pink at the phrase three-timing, and the timing of that reaction was unfortunate enough that Subaru immediately noticed and somehow became even redder.

Petra pouted.

Frederica covered a small laugh behind one hand.

Anastasia, predictably, was less interested in romance than in the mechanism. “It’s a very strange form of marketing,”

On the screen, Touma groaned from somewhere beneath a tangle of blankets. “Man... I knew this would happen. I knew it, but still...”

It was July twentieth, the first day of summer vacation, and Kamijou Touma was already at the end of his rope. His dorm room was sweltering. A lightning strike in the middle of the night had fried eighty percent of his appliances, including his refrigerator and everything inside it. When he’d tried to open a cup of yakisoba—his last emergency ration—he had dumped it straight into the sink. Then, while searching for his wallet so he could go out and buy breakfast, he had stepped on his credit card and snapped it.

Al let out a low whistle. “Man. Warden really wasn’t exaggerating.”

“Yeah,” Subaru said, wincing in sympathy. “That’s not ordinary bad luck anymore. That’s the universe actively leaning on the scale.”

Then something in the scene clicked for him, and he sat up a little straighter.

“Wait,” he said, eyes narrowing at the room on the screen. “He lives alone?”

Several heads turned toward him.

Subaru pointed at the screen. “That’s a dorm. A student dorm. Which means...” He frowned. “Does every student in that city live like that? Alone? Where are the parents? The teachers? The supervision?”

Anastasia looked equally sharp now that a structural question had appeared. “A city full of children ranked by military value, medicated into superpowers, and apparently housed separately from their families,” she said slowly. “That’s either efficient or deeply suspicious. Maybe both.”

The Warden answered before the speculation could spiral too far.

“What you see is a student dormitory,” he said. “A building designed specifically for Academy City’s youth. Each student is provided with a single room containing basic living necessities: a bed, bathing facilities, a kitchen space, and a balcony.”

Subaru blinked. “That’s... actually pretty bare-bones.”

“It is meant to be functional,” the Warden replied. “Any additional comforts—televisions, kitchen appliances, storage, decoration—must be acquired by the students themselves.”

The others still looked uncertain, and Subaru noticed at once.

He smiled a little and shifted into explanation mode.

“You guys remember my house and the school I told you about, right?”

A few of them nodded. Emilia at once. Beatrice with reluctant dignity. Otto with the face of a man already bracing for another Earth lecture.

“In my case,” Subaru continued, “home and school were close enough that I could just walk back and forth every day. But this city sounds different. It’s huge, and the students come from all sorts of places. So instead of sending them to school from home, the city just keeps them there.”

Otto nodded slowly. “A centralized residential education system.”

“Exactly.”

“That still sounds lonely,” Emilia said quietly.

Subaru’s smile dimmed for a moment. “Yeah. It can be.”

Anastasia suddenly stood up and pointed both fingers toward the screen like a commander spotting enemy movement. “No, hold on. I can’t let this pile up any further. What’s a refrigerator? What’s a debit card? What’s a—”

She got no farther.

Foxidna gently tugged at her sleeve with her tail and said, with all the patience of a mother who had done this before, “Subaru will explain those later, daughter. Let the story breathe.”

Anastasia huffed but sat back down.

Just as Touma decided to sulk back into bed, his phone rang. His homeroom teacher’s voice crackled through the speaker: “Good morning, Kamijou! You’re dumb, so you need to come in and take your makeup classes.”

Al and Subaru burst into laughter immediately.

“Oh no,” Al wheezed, leaning back in his seat. “Bro, not remedials.”

Subaru pointed at the screen with the righteous delight of someone who had just found a fellow sufferer. “That brings back memories.”

“Oh?” Emilia asked, turning toward him with curiosity bright in her eyes. “Are those classes fun, then? Why does he look so sad?”

Subaru pressed both hands together like a man about to deliver tragic truth. “Emilia-tan. If a student skips too much class, or gets terrible scores, or for any other reason fails whatever standard the school wants, they have to take extra classes while everyone else gets to enjoy vacation.”

Emilia’s eyes widened. “Oh. That’s cruel.”

Crusch let out a soft, amused breath. “So if your work is inadequate according to the authority judging it, your free time is confiscated.”

Julius nodded at once. “That is quite normal, actually.”

Felix’s ears dipped. “Ugh. It sounds too much like training reviews, nya.”

Felt groaned loudly. “That sucks.”

Mimi, Hetaro, Tivey, Petra, and even Meili all murmured some form of agreement. In that moment, the younger half of the theater was united across worlds by their hatred of academic consequences.

Fortune-telling was always wrong, and good luck charms were no better. This was Touma Kamijou’s life. Luck had long since turned its back on him. It was enough to make him wonder if he was even related to his parents. It just boiled down to the fact that he had bad luck. Like, so bad it was almost a joke. But he wasn’t going to sulk about it forever. Touma Kamijou didn’t rely on luck, and that enhanced his ability to act.

"Hmmmm," Roswaal hummed, his eyes narrowing in the back row.

"What is it, Roswaal-sama?" Ram asked, her voice sharp.

"I have a theory as to why he is so unlucky," Roswaal said, his gaze fixed on Touma’s right hand.

"Oh, so you noticed," Priscilla remarked, not looking away from the screen.

Felt scoffed. "What the hell are you implying, you bitch?!"

"My Lady!" Reinhard gasped, though he looked deeply pained.

Anastasia added, "Touma’s luck is very unnatural, that's for sure."

Petra whispered, "Are you saying it's related to that right hand?" Meili looked surprised, her eyes wide as she watched Touma.

Subaru clenched his chest. "Every amazing power comes with a downside."

"All right, then. The main problems right now are my card and the refrigerator." He changed into his summer clothes, his head throbbing from lack of sleep. He had stayed up late in a misguided attempt to enjoy the first night of vacation, but he tried to remain optimistic. Making up four months of cut classes in a single week is a pretty sweet deal, though, he thought.

"Yeah, it is," Subaru and Al whispered in unison.

He opened the screen door to the balcony to air out his futon. From his balcony, he could see the neighboring building just two meters away. “The sky’s so blue, and yet my future so dark!” he joked, though his attempt at wit only deepened his gloom.

Crusch’s mouth twitched upward. “His humor is a bit tragic.”

He hoisted the futon off his bed, stepping on a forgotten, rock-hard piece of yakisoba bread from the back of his dead fridge. Squish.

"Noooooo!" Mimi shouted, looking horrified.

"Hope we don't have any rain today," he muttered. As he stepped out, he froze. A white futon was already draped over his balcony railing. He lived alone—he was the only one with access to his terrace. Upon closer inspection, he realized it wasn't a futon at all. Hanging over the ledge was a girl.

"Huh?!"

She was draped over the rail like laundry, limp and exhausted. She looked to be about fourteen or fifteen, with fair skin and long, silver hair that obscured her face. Her clothing was striking: a full-length, white silk habit embroidered with gold. It looked like a nun’s garb, but the gaudy, vibrant colors made her look like some kind of strange, elegant teacup.

A collective reaction swept through the theater, almost perfectly matching Touma’s shock.

“Does that happen often in your world, Natsuki-san?” Otto asked, deeply suspicious already.

Subaru gave him the flattest look imaginable. “No. I mean—no. Not usually. People do not normally appear on balconies.”

Al spread his hands. “Yeah, bro. Doors exist for a reason.”

Emilia leaned forward, worry taking over instantly. “Is she hurt? She isn’t moving.”

Beatrice’s expression sharpened. Roswaal’s smile changed too even Reinhard narrowed his eyes just slightly. There was something about the clothes.

As she slowly lifted her head, Kamijou couldn't help staring—less because of her beauty and more because she was obviously a foreigner. Remembering his terrible English skills and an old teacher's warning about dealing with foreigners, he immediately dreaded the possibility that she might start speaking to him in a language he couldn't understand

Roswaal leaned forward.

Reinhard was the first to say it aloud. “That attire is religious.”

Subaru blinked. “You can tell that just from the outfit?”

Roswaal gave a soft laugh. “Even across worlds, certain symbols refuse to dieee, Subaru-kun.”.

"English?" Crusch murmured.

“It is one of the languages that is very common in the world,” the Warden explained. “Subaru and Al belong to Japan, a country which has its own language, which is not so common. Not all know every language, so that’s why Touma is a little scared of this foreigner.”

 “That explains his fear,” Julius said.

Subaru scratched his cheek. “Yeah. If some random foreign girl appeared on my balcony and started speaking fast English at me, I’d panic too.”

Al snorted. “You’d smile, nod, and die inside.”

“Correct.”

“Ai…” she whispered, her voice dry.

Kamijou retreated, his foot finding the discarded yakisoba bread again with a sickening squish.

“I’m hungry.”

In that moment, Kamijou imagined that his feeble brain had substituted the unfamiliar language she was speaking with Japanese, like when dumb elementary schoolers make up silly lyrics to foreign songs.

"Pftt!" Felt and the younger members of the cast started laughing.

Subaru and Al exchanged deadpan stares.

The younger members of the theater started laughing first.

Then Felt.

Then Garfiel.

Even some of the adults couldn’t quite suppress it.

“Hungry.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said I’m hungry.”

The silver-haired girl slightly impatiently addressed the calcified Kamijou. This was no good. Clearly, this was very not good. This... This just sounded like Japanese.

That got a fresh round of laughter.

Otto pinched the bridge of his nose. “He really is spiraling.”

“Respectfully,” Subaru said, “if a nun-looking foreigner appeared over my balcony and spoke perfect Japanese after looking half-dead, I would spiral too.”

Kamijou, desperate to avoid getting involved with a collapsing foreigner on his balcony, looked at the moldy yakisoba bread from the floor.

"Oh God, he wouldn't," Felt said, grinning from ear to ear.

Julius pinched the bridge of his nose.

Emilia looked with worry. "Is he about to..." she began, unable to finish.

He picked it up and thrust it at her. "Here."

“Ewwwww,” Mimi cried, instantly scrunching up her face. Even Hetaro and Tivey looked deeply offended.

Ricardo burst out laughing.Al nearly slid out of his seat.

Petra, meanwhile, had gone oddly quiet.

Subaru glanced back at her. She avoided his eyes. Meili noticed at once and smirked.

“You did something like that once, didn’t you?” Subaru asked.

Petra squeaked. “N-no comment!”

Meili’s smile sharpened with wicked amusement.

The girl took the bread without hesitation. Wrapper and all. Then she bit down. Hard. Along with a healthy chunk of Touma’s hand.Touma’s shriek rang through the tiny dorm room like a man whose soul had just been personally insulted by fate.

The theater lost it.

Even Wilhelm’s stern old expression cracked.

Felt slapped her knee.Ricardo howled.

Subaru doubled over laughing while Beatrice sat in his lap looking deeply unimpressed with humanity as a species.

“Deserved,” Ram said flatly.

“Absolutely deserved,” Otto agreed.

Emilia covered her mouth, half horrified and half amused. “She bit him!”

Rem, though trying to remain elegant, could not quite suppress the small smile at the corner of her lips. “It was a poor offering.”

Crusch actually laughed then—a soft, startled sound, but a real one.

The girl on the screen swallowed the last of the miserable food she had extorted from him, then straightened with a solemnity that would have suited a saint if not for the way she had arrived half-dead over his balcony railing.

“First,” she said, lifting one finger as if she were about to begin a formal lecture, “I should introduce myself.”

Touma stared at her in exhausted disbelief. “...Uhh, first, why were you even hanging there?”

The theater reacted exactly as one might expect.

Felt threw both hands up. “Yes! Finally! Ask the important question!”

Al leaned back in his seat and muttered, “Wow. She’s that type of girl, huh? Gets rescued, extorts food, ignores the actual question, and starts with introductions.”

Petra’s eyes beamed as she looked at the screen. "So this is the 'Index' from the title! She's actually kind of cute, even if she is a bit strange."

The girl placed a hand against her chest. “My name? It’s Index.”

Touma’s eyes went wide. “That’s a fake name no matter how you look at it! You’re an ‘index’? Like from the back of a book?!”

The theater burst into varying degrees of amusement.

Subaru pointed accusingly at the screen. “Exactly! Thank you! That is not a normal human name!”

Emilia gave him a patient look. “It might be normal where she comes from.”

“It is not normal anywhere,” Subaru said with conviction.

“Subaru,” Beatrice said flatly from his lap, “you come from a world where people are named things like ‘Light,’ ‘Hope,’ and ‘Snow,’ in fact. Do not start.”

Al barked out a laugh. “Bro got checked by his own spirit.”

Meanwhile, three people in the theater had stopped laughing entirely.

Beatrice, Roswaal, and even Priscilla were now glaring at the nun’s outfit on the screen, their magical senses clearly agitated by the visual information.

Index tilted her head, apparently unbothered by Touma’s disbelief. “As you can see, I am a member of the Church. That is important. Oh, not the Vatican one, but the Puritans of England.”

Touma stared at her like a man hearing three separate languages at once. “I have no idea what any of that means, and are you ignoring my question?!”

Crusch folded her hands in her lap. “So she belongs to the Magic Side.”

The Warden’s silence confirmed it strongly enough that Roswaal smiled.

“Youuu are correct, Duchess,” he said, sing-song voice softer than usual with fascination. “That cloth she wears is no ordinary religious garment. It holds a rather powerful spell.”

Beatrice clicked her tongue. “And not a simple one, either, I suppose. It is layered. Dense. Refined. Betty would say the structure is unusually complex.”

Index nodded as though introducing church affiliation to a stranger in his kitchen was the most ordinary thing in the world. “Hmm, I’m talking about Index... Oh, if you want my magic name, it’s Dedicatus545.”

Julius straightened. “There. A pattern.”

Subaru glanced back. “What, you figured something out already?”

"And there seems to be a special name designated to a magician, much like a true name for a spirit," Julius mused, his hand hovering near his sword hilt. "This 'Dedicatus545'—it implies a hierarchy or a specific order of sorcery."

“A title after initiation,” Felix guessed.

“Or a name taken upon entering some sacred office,” Crusch added.

“Hello? Heeelloooo? What kind of alien is speaking on this frequency?” Kamijou had no patience left for listening to this girl and picked at his ear with his pinkie finger. She started gnawing on her thumbnail. Maybe a nervous habit? Why exactly are we sitting politely around my glass table like this is some kind of job interview?

Al chuckled darkly. “Bud has no clue.”

Subaru nodded in complete sympathy. “Not even a little. From his point of view, she just fell off the roof dressed like a holy festival and started throwing around international church politics.”

Touma’s eyes flicked toward the clock. He needed to leave soon or he’d be late for his makeup classes. But there was no way he could just leave this bizarre foreign nun alone in his room. That sounded less like a decision and more like the beginning of a criminal charge.

Several people in the theater smiled at that thought.

There was something very familiar in the way Touma’s conscience worked.

He wanted out. He knew he should leave. He also clearly could not force himself to walk away from someone who looked half-starved and half-hunted.

Subaru recognized the pattern instantly and, judging by the side-eyes drifting toward him, so did everyone else.

He slumped in his seat. “I get it, okay? You don’t all have to turn your heads like that.”

Garfiel grinned. “Too late, Captain. Yer lookin’ mighty familiar right now.”

Rem’s smile was impossibly soft. “Subaru-kun and Kamijou-san do seem alike in some ways.”

“In the worst ways,” Otto muttered.

Index folded her hands with saintly poise. “I would be very grateful if you filled up this ‘index’ with food.”

Touma recoiled. “Why?! If I triggered some strange flag and ended up in the ‘Index route,’ just kill me now!”

Index blinked. “Is that slang? I do not understand.”

Al made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Bro...”

Subaru shot him a warning look at once. “Al, stop. I know exactly what you’re about to say, and I refuse to be associated with it.”

Index leaned forward slightly, eyes utterly serious. “Look, if I take three steps out that door, I will die of malnourishment. And before I do, I will scrawl a message next to my corpse. I will draw your face. And I will tell them you held me captive and forced me to cosplay.”

Touma’s entire body jerked in panic.“You might say what?!”

This time the laughter in the theater came fast and sharp.

Priscilla actually smiled. “That brat has more wit than I expected.”

Anastasia tapped her fan against her cheek. “That’s a very effective tactic. Immediate guilt, public accusation, social ruin. Efficient.”

Otto looked pained. “I don’t want to praise blackmail, but... yes, that would work on most decent people.”

"Brotto, she's a menace!" Garfiel added with genuine disbelief.

Frederica hid a small smile behind her hand. “Even though she dresses as a nun, she does not appear especially modest in strategy.”

Ram, naturally, went straight for the throat. “At last. Someone with more brains than Barusu.”

"Nee-sama!" Subaru and Rem exclaimed in protest.

He gave in and went to the kitchen. He threw together some "bachelor chow" from the remains of his pantry. While he cooked, he couldn't help but wonder: Where did she come from?

"Oh, he can cook! He’s a fellow chef," Subaru exclaimed, his pride as a former kitchen-dweller shining through. "I recognize that pattern of pan-tossing. That man knows his way around a stove."

Academy City was known as a “city of hundreds of schools,” but it was easier to think of it more like a “city-sized boarding school.” It sprawled across a third of Tokyo, but a Great Wall of China–like partition surrounded the whole thing at the moment. Anyone arousing suspicion who didn't match the Gate's records would activate Anti-Skills or Judgment...

Although... Yesterday, electro girl conjured up a bunch of storm clouds. Maybe that’s how she managed to evade their “eyes,” Kamijou thought.

Tivey leaned forward sharply. “What do you mean every person who enters the city is scanned?”

That triggered immediate interest from the rest of the room.

Yes, they had seen satellites.

Yes, they understood those were “eyes” in the heavens of some kind.

But how did something so far above the world identify every person passing through the city below?

Before the room could erupt into too many technical questions, the Warden cut in.

“Questions concerning the daily mechanics of Academy City’s infrastructure will be addressed in detail during a later break, if you still desire them. For now, remain with the flow of the scene.”

That restrained them, barely.

Julius, however, had already extracted the important part. “Then her arrival is profoundly irregular.”

“Yeah,” Subaru said at once. “Nobody just appears on your balcony from outside a city like that.”

Wilhelm’s gaze hardened. “Even though it is a city for children, its structure resembles a fortress.”

“Is that not obvious?” Priscilla said, mildly bored. “A city that creates monsters and miracles would naturally protect its assets.”

Felt frowned. “Yeah, but the way Touma talks about it...”

Reinhard nodded slowly. "They will probably want this place secured so anyone can’t steal what they have... or use them." The silence that followed was heavy.

“So,” Kamijou asked, splashing soy sauce into the pan, “why were you hanging on my balcony?”

“I fell. I was jumping between rooftops.”

“She was what?!” Subaru and Al said in unison.

"Is she crazy, nya?" Felix whispered, his cat-like instincts recoiling. He knew better than anyone what happened when a human body hit the ground from that height.

Emilia looked terrified. "Why would she do something like that? It's so dangerous!"

Ricardo let out a low whistle. "Only one thing comes to mind: she was trying to escape something."

Index answered simply, “I didn’t have any choice, though. There was nowhere else for me to run at the time. I was being chased.”

A wave of sympathy moved through the theater for the girl.

His hand stopped rocking the hot pan. “I was actually jumping between buildings just fine, but in the middle of one leap, I got shot in the back.” The Index girl looked like she was laughing. “Sorry. It looks like I got caught on your railing while I was falling.” There was no embarrassment or sarcasm in her voice. She smiled as if it were perfectly normal.

The room reacted like a slapped beehive.

“She was shot?!” Petra gasped.

Subaru’s eyes narrowed.

Emilia went rigid.

Touma looked at her with a grim, serious expression. "You got shot...?"

"Yes? Oh, don't worry, I'm not hurt. These clothes also have a defensive barrier on them."

Meili frowned. “A defensive barrier?”

Beatrice suddenly snapped her fingers. “So that was it, I suppose!”

All eyes turned toward her.

The little spirit straightened in Subaru’s lap with offended authority. “Betty felt magic from the cloth long before, but the structure was tangled enough that it delayed proper analysis. It is a defensive spell woven directly into the garment.”

oswaal leaned forward, his grin widening. "From the movement shown on the screen, I was able to sense the magical energy. It turns out it is a quite complex defensive spell—on par with my sensei’s work. It is capable of withstanding El-tier or even Al-tier spells."

The cast was shocked. Not just that it was a magic barrier, but that Roswaal compared it to Echidna spell, the master of magic in their world.

Crusch spoke first, piecing the logic together at once. “If a simple nun from that church is dressed in protection on the level of such advanced magic, then one of two things must be true.”

Rem followed smoothly. “Either that church is extraordinarily generous with its resources...”

Anastasia finished, “...or that girl is no ordinary nun.”

Foxidna flicked her tail once. “The pursuit itself already suggested that.”

On the screen, Touma still did not seem to grasp the full meaning of ‘defensive barrier,’ but as he watched the silver-haired girl eat with the nervous alertness of a starving stray, the reality sank in anyway. She had truly been hanging seven stories above the ground. She really could have died.

Anastasia glanced sideways at Mimi and muttered, “You should try eatin’ with half that concentration sometime.”

Mimi puffed her cheeks. “Mimi does not eat like a disaster!”

Ricardo laughed. “Kid, I’ve seen you inhale soup.”

Touma forced himself to smile while choking down the pathetic breakfast he had made. Across the table, Index nibbled on a biscuit like a wary squirrel, shoulders still slightly tense despite the food.

“So,” Touma asked, trying to sound casual, “you said someone was after you. Who?”

The question lingered between them. The boy on the screen barely knew her. He had no reason to step into her problems. No promise to make. No duty to uphold.

And yet the question still came because he could not stop himself from asking.

I’m such a hypocrite, Touma thought. I just want to feel like I tried. Deep down, I know I can’t solve whatever she’s running from.

Once again, the room turned toward Subaru.

He groaned without even waiting for the comments. “I know, okay? I know exactly how that sounds.”

Otto folded his arms. “Excellent. Then perhaps there is hope for you yet.”

"Yeah," she responded drily. "I wonder? Maybe Rozenkreuz or Stella Matitina... I think it's an organization like that, but I don't know its name, since they're not the kind of people who place much value in names."

"‘They’?" Kamijou asked.

"A sorcerers’ society."

"Magic? You’re insane."

"Magic is real," she insisted, her mouth lowering in a petulant frown.

"…I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t do this whole ‘magic’ business. I know about all sorts of abnormal abilities, like pyrokinesis and clairvoyance, but I can’t handle this ‘magic’ thing." However, a supernatural power resided in Kamijou’s right hand. It was called the Imagine Breaker, and no matter what nonsensical, preternatural force he was up against, his Imagine Breaker could dispel it. It could even negate miracles.

A few people in the theater groaned immediately.

Petra was the one who voiced the question aloud. “Why is he so reluctant to believe in magic? He literally has a hand that erases impossible things.”

The Warden answered.

“In that world, the churches have hidden the truth of magic from the general public for a very long time. Touma also lives in a city governed almost entirely by science. The framework of his world teaches him what is acceptable to believe.”

"Even though he claims that science can't explain his power," Felt said, sounding annoyed.

“People do that all the time,” Subaru said quietly, more serious now. “If accepting one truth means your whole world suddenly has to become bigger and scarier, a lot of people would rather pretend the exception doesn’t count.”

Crusch nodded. “And it raises another question. Why is an important member of the Magic Side being hunted by magicians inside a city ruled by science?”

“All will be answered in time,” the Warden said.

"…But magic is real." Index made her declaration again. Touma sighed.

"Well, whatever. But why are those people chasing y—"

"Magic is real."

"Magic is real!"

Al slumped in his seat. “Man, this is getting redundant.”

To his surprise, several others quietly agreed.

Even Emilia, who wanted very badly to be fair to the hungry nun, looked a little helpless.

“B-but what the heck is magic?!” he shouted. “Can you shoot fireballs from your hands? Can you do it without some esper curriculum? If you can, then show me! Maybe then I’d believe you!”

Index fidgeted, looking suddenly awkward. “I don’t have any magic power, so I can’t use it.”

The silence that followed was incredible.

Subaru blinked once.

Then twice.

Then turned very slowly toward the screen with the expression of a man who had just been ambushed by stupidity from a direction he had not prepared for.

Al rubbed the front of his helmet. “Wow.”

Felt folded her arms. “That is the worst possible answer she could’ve given.”

Otto sighed. “She is losing this argument catastrophically.”

Beatrice closed her eyes. “What an exhausting pair, I suppose.”

Kamijou let out a long, suffering sigh. “Okay. If magic does exist...”

“If?” Index repeated immediately, offended on instinct.

“If it exists,” Touma continued, bulldozing right over her interruption, “why are people chasing you around? Does it have something to do with those clothes or something?”

Anastasia snapped her fan shut with satisfaction. “Now he’s finally askin’ the real questions.”

Crusch gave a small nod from the front row. “At last, the conversation turns toward the actual threat.”

Subaru leaned back a little, relieved. “Yeah, Touma’s finally stopped arguing with the concept of magic long enough to notice the starving nun might be in actual danger.”

Rem smiled faintly. “It took him a while.”

“Like someone else I know,” Otto muttered.

Subaru pretended not to hear him.

Index folded her hands in her lap with the air of someone about to unveil a solemn truth. “...Because I’m Index, the archive of forbidden books.”

Touma blinked. “Huh?”

“I carry 103,000 grimoires. Those people are probably after them.”

The theater fell into startled silence.

Roswaal was the first to react, a low hum slipping from him as his mismatched eyes narrowed with greedy fascination. “Hmmmmmmm. So that is why she wears protection of such absurd complexity.”

Beatrice frowned deeply. “But how could a single girl carry that many grimoires, I suppose? Betty’s library does not hold so many volumes.”

Garfiel, never one to let abstraction pass without tackling it head-on, threw both hands up. “Then where the hell are the books?”

Frederica tilted her head, thinking it through more calmly. “Perhaps she possesses the key to wherever they are stored. A hidden archive, or some sealed chamber.”

Felt crossed her arms. “Or maybe it’s like that Wrath freak’s pocket thing. Some weird space trick.”

Reinhard shook his head politely. “That would still require her to wield power directly, and she already claimed she cannot use magic.”

Subaru and Al exchanged a brief glance.

Both of them had the same thought.

In her head?

Then they both immediately dismissed it as too strange even for this story.

Touma stared at her, his expression slowly flattening as his brain began to overheat. “This conversation stopped making sense again.”

Mimi raised her hand at once. “Same!”

That got a ripple of laughter from the room.

Touma rubbed at his temple. “Umm, I’m trying to organize my thoughts here, but I don’t really understand what a grimoire is. It’s a book, right? Like a dictionary?”

“Yes,” Index replied readily. “The Book of Eibon. The Lesser Key of Solomon. Nameless Cultes des Goules. The Book of the Dead. The Necronomicon is especially famous too, though there are many imitations and forgeries of it.”

The mood in the theater shifted sharply.

Several of the names meant nothing to the Re:Zero cast.

One of them did.

The Book of the Dead.

The phrase alone was enough to cast a thin shadow over the seats. Memories of the Pleiades Watchtower returned at once: the stifling fear, the impossible records, the version of Subaru forced to read his own deaths until his mind nearly broke under the weight of what he learned.

Emilia’s fingers tightened around Subaru’s right arm.

Beatrice went very still in his lap.

Julius looked away for just a second, face tightening.

Subaru exhaled through his nose and forced himself not to drift.

Roswaal, meanwhile, looked fascinated by a different title entirely.

“The Necronomicon,” he murmured, savoring the sound of the name as though testing its shape.

Touma, somehow still clinging to practical logic, asked the obvious next question. “So, these one hundred and three thousand books... where are they? Does that mean you’ve got the key to some warehouse somewhere?”

“No.” Index shook her head from side to side. “I have all one hundred and three thousand right here with me. Not one less, okay?”

A full beat passed.

Then Garfiel leaned forward over the back of his seat and demanded, “Okay, so where the fuck are the books?”

“Garfiel. Language,” Frederica said, though even she sounded distracted now.

The question belonged to everyone.

Where were they?

No satchel. No wagon. No dimensional spell. No visible library. No tome stacked around her in holy glowing columns.

Subaru squinted at the screen suspiciously. “Now I’m with Touma again. That answer is not helping.”

Otto rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This is rapidly becoming a contest between impossible claims.”

Rem tilted her head. “Could they be hidden by magic?”

“Possible,” Julius said. “But if so, it is the sort of concealment one would only entrust to a very significant person.”

Anastasia nodded slowly. “Or a very valuable one.”

Touma stared at her. “Can stupid people just not see them or something?”

Index puffed her cheeks. “Even if you weren’t stupid, you wouldn’t be able to see them. What would be the point if anyone could just look at them whenever they wanted?”

This time the laughter was softer, more bewildered than amused.

Petra blinked. “She says strange things like they’re obvious.”

“Because to her, they probably are,” Reinhard said.

Subaru slumped a little deeper into his seat. “Touma’s doing a heroic job, but he is definitely drowning.”

Touma pressed a hand to his face. He had been listening more patiently than most people would have by now, but he was hitting his limit. If this whole ‘being chased’ thing was just some kind of delusion, then she had risked her life leaping between eight-story buildings for no reason at all. And if it wasn’t a delusion... then he was already involved with something way beyond him.

That line drew a low murmur through the theater.

Subaru, of course, understood that feeling perfectly.

The moment where absurdity stopped being funny and started becoming dangerous.

The moment you realized someone else’s crisis had already brushed against your life whether you liked it or not.

Index frowned at him. “It’s really weird that you believe in supernatural abilities but not magic. Are supernatural powers really that amazing? Just because someone has special power doesn’t mean they get to treat others like dirt, you know.”

Touma glanced down at his right hand.

He couldn’t create lightning. He couldn’t control fire. He couldn’t read minds or move objects. But his hand could erase abnormal things. It could tear through miracles and deny them.

“You’re right,” he admitted quietly. “It’s wrong to think power gives someone the right to lord it over others.”

That earned an immediate wave of approval.

Crusch nodded.

Wilhelm gave a small approving grunt.

Julius looked almost pleased.

Even Felt muttered, “Good. At least he’s got his head on straight.”

Emilia’s eyes softened. “She’s right.”

Subaru nodded. “Yeah. She is.”

There was an unspoken understanding in the theater then, one that did not need to be voiced aloud.

They had all seen what power did to people.

Authorities. Divine protections. magic. swords. titles. bloodlines.

None of it made cruelty righteous.

Touma exhaled. “For the people who live here, having an ability is part of their personality. It’s moral support. So it’d be nice if you could overlook that. In the end... I guess I’m one of those people too.”

Index sniffed. “That’s right, stupid. Hmph. Even if you didn’t mess with the inside of your head, you could still bend spoons with your hands.”

Touma stared at her.

“Would you mind if I taped that mouth shut?”

The theater laughed again, more freely this time.

Rem covered a small smile with her fingers.

Crusch actually let out a quiet laugh.

Even Beatrice’s lips twitched.

“I-I will not bow to intimidation!” Index declared, glowering at him like a particularly offended cat. “Besides, you keep saying supernatural powers, but what exactly can you do, mister?”

Touma paused, clearly irritated by the timing of the question.

“...Err, well, I can... Well, you see, my right hand...” He scratched his cheek. “And for the record, I didn’t get it from drugs or any curriculum. I was born with it. If something touches my hand—if it’s an abnormal power—then even if it’s a miracle, or a tactical Railgun, or something equally impossible, it gets canceled out.”

A hush passed through the room again.

They had already seen it happen.

But hearing it described so plainly made it no less strange.

No less terrifying.

Priscilla, however, was no longer amused. Her eyes had narrowed into something colder. “From birth, he says...”

That line had stuck with her.

A power that was not learned.

Not cultivated.

Not granted by science.

Not apparently part of the standard system at all.

A natural anomaly in a city built on unnatural advancement.

Index’s response was dry.“Huh?”

Touma’s face immediately darkened. “...Wait, what’s with that reaction?”

“Well, I mean,” Index said with a smug little smile, even sticking her pinky in her ear in a comically dismissive gesture, “I was just told that someone can dispel miracles even though that someone doesn’t even know God’s name.”

Rem smiled at once. “Cute.”

Crusch nodded, amused. “I agree. Their banter is fun to watch.”

In the back, Subaru and Al exchanged a look that contained the exact same terrible thought.

Waifu number one.

Subaru grinned.

Al gave the smallest nod in confirmation.

If the women around them noticed the silent exchange, they did not comment.

At least, not out loud.

Touma scowled. “Ugh. H-how annoying. I can’t believe I’m getting mocked by some fake magical girl who claims magic is real.”

“I-I’m not fake! Magic really does exist!”

“Then show me already. I’ll jam my right hand into it, and then you’ll believe my Imagine Breaker is real. How’s that, Fantasia?”

“Fantasia?” Otto repeated, baffled.

Subaru waved a hand. “Mocking nickname.”

Index, apparently reaching the end of her patience, shot to her feet. “I’ll show you! This! My outfit! This is the strongest holy shield there is, the Walking Church!”

Al stiffened instantly. “I do not like where this is going.”

Felix tilted his head... then his ears twitched upright. “Ohhh.”

The boys understood first.

Then the girls.

Then everyone else caught up at once and the entire theater had the exact same expression.

A mix of horror, disbelief, and the helpless realization that yes, this was absolutely going to happen.

Index marched into the kitchen, seized a knife without hesitation, and held it up before Touma like a lecturer displaying evidence. “This is a church in the form of clothing, with all the essential elements of a church packed inside it. The weaving of the fabric, the stitching, the decorative embroidery—every bit of it was calculated! A simple knife won’t hurt me at all, okay?”

Felix threw both hands up. “I’m saying it again! She is crazy, nya!”

Julius looked appalled, though still analytical. “While I understand the frustration of trying to make someone like him understand... this is a rather extreme method.”

He glanced sideways toward Subaru as he said it.

Subaru caught the look instantly. “Why did you say that while looking at me, you bastard?”

Emilia reached up and pinched his cheeks between her fingers. “Bad boy.”

Subaru made an indignant muffled noise.

Beatrice sighed. “Because you are like him, I suppose.”

Meanwhile, plenty of the others were actually curious now.

If the Walking Church truly was what Index claimed, then they were about to witness its defensive spell in action.

Touma gaped at the knife. “It won’t hurt you? Hey, on what planet would some idiot just say, ‘Sure, I’ll stab you’? That would be a remarkably new twist on juvenile delinquency.”

That got another burst of laughter.

Even Wilhelm looked faintly amused.

Index flushed with annoyance. “I’ve had enough of you making fun of me! This fabric is a perfect copy of the Shroud of Turin, worn by the saint who was pierced by the Lance of Longinus, so its strength is Papal class, okay? In your words... yes, I suppose it would be like a fallout shelter. It can repel any attack, physical or magical, and parry or completely absorb it! Before, I said I was shot in the back, fell, and got caught on your balcony, right? If I hadn’t been wearing the Walking Church, I’d have a bullet hole in me. Don’t you even understand that?”

The room absorbed that slowly.

Papal class, Shroud of Turin, Lance of Longinus.

None of those terms fully translated for most of them, but the sheer reverence in the way she said them made their weight obvious.

Crusch spoke first. “If that is true, then this is no ordinary defensive garment. It is sacred equipment.”

Roswaal’s voice had gone almost hushed with interest. “And if it truly repels both physical and magical assaults, then the spell anchored within it is even more remarkable than I first thought.”

Foxidna flicked her tail once. “Or more dangerous.”

Touma stared at her. Then, after a beat, said, “...Huh. So in other words, if your little skirt really is some kind of abnormal power, then it should get blown to smithereens the moment I touch it with my right hand, right?”

“If your power is actually real! Ha-ha-ha-ha!” Index laughed right back.

Subaru shot upright.

“I have a very bad feeling about this!” he shouted. Then, turning immediately toward the rest of the room, he added, “Everyone with children nearby, cover their eyes now!”

There was just enough urgency in his voice that people obeyed before they even thought about it.

Frederica covered Petra’s eyes.

Ricardo pulled the triplets in close.

Garfiel looked between the screen and Subaru with dawning horror. “Captain...”

Touma, clearly done with the entire argument, reached out and firmly grabbed Index by the shoulder.

Nothing happened.

What the hell, man? Don’t scare me like that, his thoughts screamed, though underneath that relief was something dangerously close to disappointment.

Index beamed triumphantly. “See? Look! Imagine Breaker? That’s nothing! Nothing happened, did it?” She placed her hands on her hips and puffed out her chest in victory.

Then the seams of her habit split. And in the next instant, the ornate white garment collapsed into a heap of ruined cloth at her feet.

Index stood frozen. Completely naked.

“I knew it!” Subaru shouted triumphantly.

And then immediately found both his eyes covered.

Rem’s hands moved first.

Emilia’s followed right after.

From the front row, Crusch half turned, face bright red but clearly considering whether she should join them too.

Subaru made a startled noise. “H-Hey! I can’t see!”

Rem’s breath brushed his ear as she leaned in close enough that only he, Emilia, and Crusch heard her.

“Subaru-kun,” she whispered, voice soft and dangerously sweet, “you are only allowed to see my body like that first.”

Subaru’s soul left his body.

Emilia’s entire face went scarlet. “R-Rem! You... you can’t just say things like that!” she stammered, steam practically rising from her head. Her imagination, tragically, had already run much farther than her words could.

Crusch, blushing just as hard, somehow decided the correct response was escalation.

Then, in a tone so flustered it nearly broke halfway through, she asked, “S-Subaru... which one would you... prefer to see fi-first?”

Subaru’s mind blue-screened.

His mouth opened.

No sound came out.

Beatrice, now perched half sideways on his lap, had resorted to using wind magic to cool his face before he spontaneously combusted.

Around them, the rest of the theater had split into two camps.

On one side: the men and several of the women suffering secondhand embarrassment so severe it bordered on spiritual damage.

On the other: Priscilla and Roswaal, who had completely ignored the romantic catastrophe and were still analyzing the actual mechanics of Touma’s power.

“So,” Roswaal murmured, eyes fixed on the screen, “there was a delay, but the result is clear. He did not merely weaken the spell. He removed it. No... better to say he deleted it from existence.”

Priscilla’s fan hid the lower half of her face, but not the sharpened interest in her eyes.

“Ow... you’ve bitten me all over,” Kamijou complained, rubbing at the marks on his hand and arm. “What are you, a summer camp mosquito?”

She didn’t answer. Index sat on the floor, naked as the day she was born except for the blanket clutched around her in desperate defense of her dignity. With an expression of pure and utter misery, she was trying to pin the shredded remains of her habit back together using a handful of safety pins. It was a doomed effort from the start. The once-grand garment now looked like a holy tragedy held together by stubbornness and cheap metal.

Meili tilted her head, surprisingly thoughtful. “I’m honestly shocked she didn’t kill him.”

A number of people gave her identical looks of horrified disapproval.

Subaru turned toward her at once. “Meili. What did I say about casually solving problems with murder?”

The little girl puffed her cheeks and gave him a sweet, perfectly innocent smile that fooled absolutely no one. “Jeez, Onii-san, you’re no fun.”

The theater collectively sighed.

Subaru, unfortunately for his own sanity, was not really watching the screen anymore so much as enduring it. Rem’s earlier whisper still echoed inside his skull like a curse disguised as affection, and the fact that Emilia and Crusch were both still visibly red whenever their eyes drifted toward him was not helping.

He wanted the scene to move on.

Very badly.

Kamijou, meanwhile, was trying to pretend he could still handle this situation like a rational human being. “Uh, princess?” he tried again, glancing toward the silver-haired girl huddled beneath the blanket.

“What?” she snapped without looking up.

“I was one hundred percent at fault here, right?”

“Correct,” said half the theater at once.

Even Reinhard gave a solemn nod.

Felt pointed at the screen. “This is not a debate. Yes, idiot, it was your fault.”

Emilia, though softer about it, nodded too. “He really should not have grabbed her shoulder so suddenly...”

Rem’s expression was gentle, but she did not disagree.

Priscilla only clicked her tongue as though Touma’s suffering was the natural consequence of ordinary stupidity.

Index’s response came not in words, but in projectiles. His alarm clock flew at his head first. Then a pillow. Then a game system. Then a small, relentless rain of cassette tapes and random objects, all hurled with the righteous fury of a wronged girl whose dignity had just been detonated.

“You’re just going to casually chat with me after all that?!” she shouted.

“Ah, no, I’m not!” Touma yelped, ducking wildly. “I was bewildered too, and, uh... how youthful of us?!”

“Stop making fun of me! Grrrrrr!!”

“I understand! Okay, okay, I apologize! That video is a rental, so stop biting it like it’s some kind of handkerchief, stupid!”

At last, he dropped to the floor in a comically dramatic dogeza, forehead pressed down in utter surrender.

The theater laughed again, though this time it was edged with secondhand embarrassment.

“Can we move on, please?” Felt asked, face still pink.

There were many fervent nods of agreement.

Even Priscilla looked bored now, her interest in the accidental undressing incident having ended the instant it stopped being analytically useful.

Subaru, whose eyes had at last been uncovered, looked immensely relieved the screen had chosen comedy over lingering awkwardness.

Then Emilia, still a little flushed, asked the question that had been bothering her.

“How is he speaking so normally after that happened?”

Before Subaru could answer, Rem did.

“Emilia-sama,” she said in a voice so sweet it should have been harmless, “once you experience it, you will understand.”

The temperature in Subaru’s body rose so quickly he almost died.

Emilia’s face turned red all over again. “R-Rem! You can’t just say things like that!” she stammered, hands flying to her cheeks.

Crusch looked away with dignified failure, equally scarlet.

Beatrice, entirely done with all of them, summoned a faint current of wind again and blew cool air straight into Subaru’s face.

“You are all exhausting, in fact.”

On the screen, Touma kept his forehead against the floor a little longer than necessary. Deep down, his heart was hammering hard enough to burst through his ribs. He was a gentleman. Or at least he wanted to think he was one. But no amount of mental discipline changed the fact that he had just seen a naked girl for the first time in his life and was now trying not to die from it.

Subaru, Otto, and Al all wore the exact same expression of profound sympathy.

Otto looked offended by this coincidence.

At length, Index sniffled and spread the salvaged remains of the habit across the floor. It was a ruin—white cloth shredded and stabbed together by dozens of gleaming pins, looking more like a religious torture device than proper clothing. “I’m done,” she muttered.

Touma stared. “Are you... are you really going to wear that iron maiden?”

“I’m a nun, after all!” she insisted.

Then, with a sharp cry of determination, she vanished beneath the blanket and began squirming around underneath it, trying to dress herself with all the frantic energy of someone who refused to admit defeat in front of an enemy. Her face, visible only in flashes, was bright red.

Touma blinked.

“Huh. This reminds me of my swimming lessons.”

“Why are you watching?! Turn away!”

“Oh, relax. It’s no big deal. Unlike before, you changing isn’t even sexy anymore.”

The entire theater recoiled.

Ricardo barked a laugh.

Julius pinched the bridge of his nose. “He truly has no self-preservation.”

Subaru pointed at the screen with raw conviction. “No, no, no. That was a critical failure. An absolute disaster line.”

Emilia shook her head, scandalized and amused at once. “Why would he say that?”

“Because,” Al said from the back, “he is an idiot.”

That, at least, the theater accepted as fact.

Eventually Touma checked his phone, finally remembering the practical ruin of his morning. “Hey, I have to go to school. What are you going to do? If you want to stay here, I can give you the key.”

This shifted the room immediately.

The humor quieted.

Because that line meant something important.

Touma had already abandoned the idea of throwing her out.

Despite everything—despite the absurdity, the threats, the chaos, the shredded clothing, the impossible story about grimoires and sorcerers—he had made his choice without even fully realizing it.

He believed enough.

Or perhaps more accurately, he cared enough even without belief.

Subaru smiled softly at that, and several people noticed.

Index, however, surprised him. “...That’s okay,” she said, springing to her feet with sudden resolve. “I’m leaving.”

Felix blinked. “She’s leaving? Like that?”

Petra frowned with worry. “But she said people were chasing her.”

Emilia looked torn. “If she’s really in danger, why would she go alone?”

Subaru answered quietly, already understanding. “Because if she stays near him, then he becomes part of the target.”

A few heads turned toward him.

He did not elaborate.

He didn’t need to.

They all knew what it meant to drag someone kind into hell by proximity alone.

Index moved toward the door like a ghost, quick and strangely weightless, completely forgetting her veil on the floor.

“Wait—” Touma started.

“If I stay here too long, they’ll come this way,” she interrupted, expression suddenly and uncharacteristically serious. “You don’t want your room blown up with you inside it, do you?”

Subaru nodded immediately. “That’s fair.”

Emilia looked distressed anyway. “Yeah, but still...”

Subaru squeezed her hand and gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Emilia-tan. Nothing bad’s going to happen.”

Otto and Al both slammed their hands against their foreheads at exactly the same moment.

The sound echoed.

Subaru blinked. “What?”

Neither of them answered.

The entire theater, however, had the exact same thought.

You said the line.

The cursed line.

The line that guaranteed something bad absolutely was going to happen.

Touma, now fully panicking, grabbed his wallet—containing a miserable total of three hundred and twenty yen—and scrambled after her. In his rush, his pinky toe slammed into the doorframe with catastrophic precision.

“Gah! Yaaahh!”

He collapsed instantly, writhing in agony on the floor. His phone slipped from his pocket and hit the ground with a terminal-sounding crack. “Ugh... what rotten luck!”

The theater’s sympathy lasted all of half a second before being swallowed by laughter.

Index, standing in the doorway, looked back at him.

“It’s not rotten luck,” she said with a giggle. “I think you’re just clumsy.”

Subaru grinned. “Valid.”

But then Index tilted her head and added something that wiped the grin right off his face.

“But if you really do have this Imagine Breaker, then I guess you can’t do much about it.”

Touma stared up at her from the floor.

“...What do you mean?”

Index smiled with infuriating innocence. “If the story about your right hand is true, then I think just by having it, you’re erasing the power of luck altogether.”

Silence. A hard, ringing, immediate silence.

Touma’s eyes widened.

“So the very fact that your right hand is touching the air is making you totally unlucky.”

“Gyaaahhh!! What rotten luck!!” Touma screamed, grabbing his own hand as if it had personally betrayed him.

Subaru went still.

Then slowly sat back.

“So that’s why he’s unlucky,” he said.

Al nodded, unusually serious. “Yeah, bro. Turns out it wasn’t just a running gag. It actually matters.”

Anastasia let out a breath through her nose. “So my theory was right.”

Foxidna’s tail flicked once. “That implies many unpleasant things for him, does it not?”

Subaru turned toward her, expression sharpening. “What do you mean?”

Reinhard answered first, voice low and careful. “If his hand has been like that since birth... and if that hand truly nullifies luck around him as she says...”

He stopped.

Priscilla finished the thought with cold clarity, snapping her fan open.

“Then that fool,” she said, pointing the fan toward the screen, “has been suffering this entire time. Since childhood. Perhaps since the moment he first reached for the world.”

Subaru’s breath caught.

Childhood.

That word hit differently.

A childhood shaped by constant misfortune was not the same as being unlucky now and then. A few accidents were one thing. But to be warped from the beginning by a power you never chose—by a hand that denied blessings and quietly poisoned every ordinary joy?

He knew too much about burdens assigned too early.

Beatrice noticed the change in his face immediately.

So did Emilia.

So did Rem and Crusch.

Beatrice’s little hand tightened against his chest. Emilia cupped his cheek. Rem squeezed his fingers. Crusch reached back from the front row just enough for Subaru to see the concern in her eyes.

Otto exhaled slowly. “This took a much darker turn than expected.”

No one disagreed.

On the screen, Touma fought his way back upright, still reeling. “N-no, wait! Where on earth do you plan on going? I don’t know what’s going on, but if there are sorcerers prowling around nearby, then shouldn’t you just hide in my room?”

Index shook her head. “No. Because if I’m here, then the enemy will come here too. You see, my Walking Church uses magical power. Well, the Church wants me to call it divine power, but it’s all the same mana anyway. To put it simply, enemies can track magical power.”

Roswaal’s eyes gleamed.

“So they can even track mana signatures,” Meili murmured, genuinely impressed.

Beatrice lifted her chin. “That is among the most basic magical applications, I suppose.”

Meili looked immediately embarrassed.

Crusch, however, focused on the tactical implications instead. “So the garment is both shield and beacon.”

Wilhelm nodded. “A liability and an asset.”

Anastasia completed the chain. “Which one it becomes depends entirely on the situation.”

Subaru groaned. “Can we move on from how amazing the nun’s magic dress is? The poor guy just detonated it by accident.”

Touma winced under her miserable gaze. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, so stop looking at me with tears in your eyes like that. But if my Imagine Breaker broke it, doesn’t that mean it isn’t transmitting anymore?”

“Even if it doesn’t,” Index replied, “they would still detect its destruction. Like I said before, the Walking Church’s defensive capability is Papal class. It’s a fortress. If I were the enemy and I got word that a fortress had been broken, I would head straight for it.”

Ricardo nodded immediately. “Yeah. At that point, runnin’ is the smart move.”

The knights and fighters in the room seemed to agree.

If the enemy had lost something that valuable, they would investigate the breach at once. That much was simple sense.

Touma, however, frowned and said, “Wait a second. Then that’s all the more reason I can’t leave you alone. I still don’t believe in the occult, but... how can I leave you when I know someone’s after you?”

The room softened.

There it was again.

That impossible, self-destructive kindness.

That refusal to turn away once the problem had become real enough to touch.

Petra clasped her hands together. “He’s such a kind person.”

Several others nodded.

Subaru just smiled faintly, though in the back of his head a darker thought had started to form. Why do I feel like something bad is going to happen?

The screen answered his unease with silence first. Then:

Index gave him a strange, blank look. Not cold. Not mocking. Just stunned. For one fleeting moment, she looked less like an archive of forbidden books or a runaway from the hidden world of magic, and more like an ordinary girl who had forgotten how to react when someone offered kindness without conditions.

Then she smiled.

And the theater fell quiet.

Because there was pain in that smile. A gentle, devastating pain.

“...All right, then,” she said softly. “Are you willing to follow me into the depths of hell?”

No one spoke.

They all understood those words.

Not literally.Emotionally.

A person clearly in danger, already half swallowed by some terrible fate, was asking whether he would walk into ruin with her. No, Not asking. Warning. She was warning him with kindness.

Telling him to stay away in the gentlest form she could manage.

Subaru pointed immediately at the screen. “Screw you, sister. We—” he stabbed a finger toward himself and then toward Touma, “—are into that kind of thing.”

Al barked a laugh.

Then the rest of the theater followed, the tension cracking under the sheer raw Subaru-ness of that declaration.

Even Priscilla smiled.

Emilia shook her head, though she was clearly amused. “Subaru, you shouldn’t say it like that.”

Crusch, red-eared and looking away, murmured so softly only the nearest few might have caught it, “What I would do with you Subaru... I am glad I fell for you.”

Subaru thankfully did not hear that one.

If he had, he might have died.

Index quickly reassured him. “I’ll be okay. I’m not alone. If I can flee to the Church, they’ll give me shelter.”

Touma blinked. “...Hmm. And where is this Church?”

“London.”

Subaru and Al shouted together so loudly several people jumped.

“How the hell did she get here then?!”

Anastasia raised a brow. “Is this London place far away?”

“Too far,” they both replied at once.

Even without grasping the exact geography, the room understood from tone alone that it was absurdly far.

Index seemed almost confused by their concern. “Oh, it’s all right. I think there are a handful of dioceses in this country.”

Touma muttered, “A church, huh... I think there might be one here in the city.”

“It’s all right,” Index repeated. “It will only be like this until I find a Church of England-style church.”

Touma looked at his right hand for a long moment. Then called after her.

“Hey!... If you’re ever in trouble, you can come back here.”

The room warmed all over again. It was such a small offer.

Such an ordinary one. And because it was ordinary, it felt enormous.

A room. A meal. A key. A place to return to.

Subaru knew exactly how much those things could matter.

Index turned, and for the first time her smile shone bright and uncomplicated, as warm and cheerful as a sunflower. “Okay. If I get hungry, I’ll come over again.”

Then the moment was destroyed.

A small drum-shaped cleaning robot rolled down the corridor past them. Index yelped and scrambled out of the way, only to trip and smack the back of her head against the wall with a dull thud.

“Wh-what is this weird thing?!” she shrieked.

“It’s a cleaning robot,” Touma groaned. “That’s normal technology in Academy City.”

Anastasia had started drooling again.

Subaru noticed immediately and raised both hands. “I know, I know. I’ll explain robots later. Please stop looking at it like you’re trying to marry industrial progress.”

Anastasia covered the lower half of her face with her scarf, which did absolutely nothing to hide the blush creeping up her ears.

Otto and Garfiel exchanged a look.

How does he do that? Otto thought.

No idea, Brotto Garfiel silently concluded.

Index stared at the robot in awe. “Japan truly is in the age of mechanized Agathions...”

“It’s just an appliance!” Touma cried. “Look, if you want a Church of England cathedral, you’d be better off leaving the city entirely. Everything here is science and psychology.”

Index nodded, then froze. “Ow! Wait... where did my veil go?”

“You dropped it in the room.”

“Ah! It must have been that electric Agathion!”

Completely convinced the innocent cleaning robot had stolen her hood, she dashed off around the corner to pursue it.

Subaru stared.

Then facepalmed.

“She really is just like that, huh?”

“Yes,” said half the room.

Kamijou Touma was left standing alone in the hallway. He looked back toward his trashed dorm room, then down the corridor where the silver-haired girl had vanished. Their parting had not been grand. No music had swelled. No vows had been exchanged. Yet as he stood there, one thought drifted through his head with quiet certainty.

She seems like the kind of girl who would survive the apocalypse.

The screen went black.

Subaru blinked at the darkness. Then he looked up and asked “So what now?”.

The Warden answered at once.

“Scene change.”

The screen lit up again, and this time it showed a classroom. Rows of desks. Open windows. Summer light pouring in. Students sprawled in varying states of boredom and exhaustion. The hum of a school day carried through the room like a familiar, universal kind of suffering.

Subaru’s face changed instantly.

The moment he saw the arrangement of the desks, the chalkboard, the windows, and the sleepy air of academic imprisonment, a deeply knowing grin spread across his face.

“So let me guess,” he said, folding his arms with exaggerated confidence. “Our protagonist sits by the window... Second row from the back.”

The screen cut exactly where he expected.

Kamijou Touma was, of course, sitting by the window, Second from the back.

Emilia’s violet eyes widened. “Subaru! How did you know that?”

Subaru straightened at once, puffing out his chest with theatrical dignity. “Emilia-tan, that requires me to reveal one of the deepest secrets of my homeland. A truth passed down through generations of cul—”

“He is using anime logic, I suppose,” Beatrice cut in flatly from his lap.

Subaru clutched at his heart. “Beako, nooooo!”

Emilia tilted her head. “Anime... logic?”

Al sighed from the back row. “Bro, stop being a doofus. She doesn’t need to know every cursed trope in your brain.”

Subaru sniffed haughtily. “That’s where you’re wrong. Everyone needs to know.”

No one agreed.

“Okay! Teacher printed some things, so she’s going to pass them out first. We’ll be using these for this makeup class, okay?”

Kamijou had been in this class for a semester, and he still found the reality of it preposterous. Komoe Tsukuyomi, the homeroom teacher of Class 1-7, barely stood taller than the podium. At 135 centimeters, she was famous for being too short to meet the safety requirements for roller coasters. She looked like a twelve-year-old who should have been carrying a bright red backpack, not teaching high school chemistry. She was, effectively, one of the school’s seven mysteries.

The entire theater reacted in different ways at once.

Ricardo was the fastest.“Quick! Hide her!” he shouted, pointing dramatically at the screen. “She’s in danger from the Lolimancer!”

The theater exploded into laughter.

Subaru dropped his face into both hands. “I hate all of you.”

Beatrice puffed her cheeks. Meili did too.

Felt was laughing so hard she nearly doubled over. “Yeah, save her from big bro!”

For a single, horrifying moment, Reinhard seemed to decide that if everyone else was joking, perhaps he should try as well. With grave sincerity, he said, “Says the loli who has already tamed—”

Silence.

Total silence.

Felt slowly turned toward him with a look of pure betrayal and disbelief.

Reinhard, to his credit, immediately realized he had made a mistake.

Julius coughed delicately into his hand. “My friend... it was a valiant attempt.”

Anastasia hid her smile behind her fan. “My, my. Look how people change.”

"My, my," Anastasia mused, her eyes twinkling. "Look at how people change."

Foxidna whispered something into Anastasia's scarf, causing the merchant queen to turn a shade of pink that perfectly matched her scarf.

“Ahem,” the Warden’s voice cut through the noise. Everyone froze;

The Warden never interjected unless something was truly grave.

“Get ready, for you are all about to witness some of the worst things you have ever heard.”

The room went still. The air grew heavy with anticipation.

Komoe-sensei smiled brightly. “If you want to talk, Teacher won’t stop you, but you really should listen! Teacher worked hard on these quizzes, so if you do badly, you’ll have to play the see-through game as punishment!”

Kamijou groaned instantly. “Wait, Miss Komoe. Are you saying we have to play poker with our eyes closed? That’s for the clairvoyance curriculum! I’m worried we’ll be here all night trying to win ten times straight without even seeing our own hands!”

Subaru blinked.

Then laughed softly.

“Okay... that part really is nostalgic. Minus the weird Academy City punishment system.”

He said it more quietly than before, and the change in his tone did not go unnoticed.

Emilia looked at him for a long second, then smiled gently.

“You missed it, didn’t you?”

Subaru turned toward her.

Her silver hair glowed softly in the theater’s light, and when she spoke again, her voice carried none of the earlier teasing. It was just warm. Careful. Understanding.

“You wanted to watch this because you wanted to see your home again. One last time.”

Subaru did not answer immediately.

Then he smiled, smaller and more honest than before.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I did.”

Beatrice, still sitting in his lap with her arms crossed, sniffed and looked away just enough to hide the softness in her face.

“Then enjoy it properly, I suppose.”

That earned her immediate headpats.

“Of course,” Subaru said.

She huffed, but she didn’t stop him.

A boy sitting next to Kamijou leaned over. He had blue hair, an earring, and the air of someone who had never once considered shame necessary for survival. “...Hmg. It seems Komoe thinks Kami is cute as hell.”

Kamijou frowned. “She may look like she’s having a good time trying to reach up to the blackboard like that, but can’t you feel the pure evil flowing from her?”

Subaru narrowed his eyes.

“His accent feels fake.”

Al pointed immediately. “Thank you! I was waiting for someone to say it.”

The blue-haired boy continued without shame. “...What? If I got a bad grade and she started insultin’ me, I wouldn’t mind a bit. Hey, your EXP is really high, having verbal play with a little kid like that!”

Touma stared at him. “...So you don’t just have a Lolita complex, you’re also a masochist?”

The blue-haired boy replied with utter seriousness, “Aha-ha! I don’t only like little girls, I also like little girls!”

Touma almost shouted, “Are you an omnivore?!”

Subaru physically recoiled. “Yeah, no. What the actual hell?”

Al was already pointing at the screen in outrage. “Nah, bro. I am calling 911.”

Every female in the theater made some variation of the same expression.

Disgust.

Flat, immediate, overwhelming disgust.

Emilia recoiled visibly. “What?”

Rem’s face had gone politely blank, which was somehow more frightening.

Crusch simply closed her eyes for a second as if praying for patience.

Ram looked like she was deciding whether or not she could insult a person through a screen hard enough to cause real damage.

Petra made a noise of pure offended confusion.

Frederica smiled the sort of smile that servants wore just before politely ruining someone’s life.

Priscilla looked amused, but in the particular way one might look amused at an insect crawling into a fire.

Otto looked disturbed on a spiritual level. “Is this what the Warden warned us about?”

A collective thought passed silently through the theater.

This must have been it.

Komoe-sensei turned toward them with a terrifyingly sweet smile. “Hey, over there! If you say another word, you’re doing Columbus’s egg, okay?”

Felt frowned. “Whose egg?”

Subaru waved a hand vaguely. “Some famous guy.”

Felt nodded once, then innocently asked, “What would I do with his nuts?”

“My lady!” Reinhard shouted so fast that even the theater jumped.

The girls near Felt immediately flushed.

The younger ones only looked confused.

Mimi, being Mimi, tugged on Anastasia’s sleeve with absolute sincerity. “Boss? Nuts are the round things you can eat, right?”

Ricardo was sweating now.

Anastasia, without missing a beat, lied with the confidence of a seasoned merchant and occasional criminal. “Yes, Mimi. Just that.”

The men coughed suspiciously.

Subaru pointed accusingly at Felt. “Can you keep the curses down? There are children here! And you are one of the children here!”

Felt kicked the seat in front of her. “Shut up!”

Komoe-sensei’s smile did not waver. It somehow became even more terrifying. In Academy City, students looking down on teachers was not especially unusual. Students formed most of the city’s population, and power could carry as much social weight as grades. Some teachers were strong enough to physically dominate even high-level espers through sheer combat training. Komoe, however, was ‘just’ a chemistry teacher. And yet somehow, that smile made it painfully clear she was scarier than most armed adults.

Al leaned back with a grin. “Yeah, man. Cute little girls can be dangerous. Look at bro, for example.”

“Al. Stop.”

Beatrice lifted her chin. “He has a point, I suppose.”

Meili nodded with fake innocence. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious, Onii-san.”

Subaru sighed like a man drowning slowly in slander.

The blue-haired boy leaned over again. “...Yo, Kami.”

“What do you want?”

“Did ya get turned on when Miss Komoe told ya off, bro?”

Subaru made a face of deep, instinctive revulsion. “What is wrong with him? And why does he keep speaking with that fake accent?”

Touma answered with open disgust. “That was just you, moron! Shut up, idiot! I haven’t awakened any psychokinetic ability, so I don’t have time to play with a lowbie. And quit it with that fake Kansai accent already!”

Subaru sat up like a victorious prophet. “Thank you! Finally! Confirmation!”

Anastasia slowly turned toward him.

“Subaru,” she said sweetly. “Isn’t that the same accent I use?”

He froze.

“Yes,” he admitted carefully. “Ana... it is.”

Anastasia lowered her eyes just enough to look heartbreakingly sad. The scarf rose to hide half her face, but not the fake little tremble in her expression.

“Do ya think mine’s fake too?”

Subaru turned, giving her an angelic, tender smile that made Emilia, Rem, and Crusch stop breathing.

 “No, Ana. Your accent isn’t fake.” His voice softened. “Honestly... when you speak like that, you sound more beautiful.”

The theater went still.

Rem’s fingers tightened.

Emilia stopped breathing for half a second.

Crusch’s face heated up at once.

Anastasia’s entire body locked up. Then she yanked her scarf higher over her face and shut down completely.

Subaru blinked at her. “...Did I say something weird?”

Rem let out a small sigh. “I suppose we will have to make space for another one.”

Subaru twisted toward her in alarm. “Rem?! What are you talking about?”

“Subaru.”

He turned toward her. Emilia just smiled—a chill-inducing, "I'm watching you" smile that forced Subaru to immediately surrender and keep his mouth shut.

On the screen, the fake Kansai battle escalated.

“D-d-d-don’t call it fake! I’m really from Osaka, dude!”

“Shut up, you rice-farming country bumpkin. You’re ticking me off. Quit making dumb comments already!”

“W-we don’t farm rice! Ah, ah, aah! Takoyakis are so good!”

“Stop forcing it! Are you gonna eat rice with takoyaki for me? Just for your character?”

“What are you trying to say? Even people from Osaka don’t eat takoyaki all the time.”

Touma paused. “...They don’t, do they? I don’t think they do... Er, wait. Maybe... No, no way... But... huh? Which is it?”

Blue Hair smirked. “Your armor is cracking apart, you Kansai wannabe.”

Subaru leaned back, deeply satisfied. “Serves you right.”

At last Touma gave up and stared out the window with a long sigh. I should’ve stayed with Index.

That thought changed the room.

Subaru’s expression softened at once.

The theater quieted.

He still didn’t know whether he believed her. Magic, 103,000 grimoires, sorcerers’ societies... all of it sounded absurd. Impossible. Yet even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had let something important slip away....I let a big one get away, huh?

Subaru winced.

He knew that feeling too well.

The one that came after someone vanished from your reach and left behind a silence larger than it had any right to be.

The classroom suddenly felt even hotter. He was trapped at his desk, sweating in a room without air conditioning, while somewhere outside that room was a runaway girl in white carrying danger and mystery on her shoulders. Maybe he should have taken the swords-and-magic route after all. It even came with a cute heroine.

Subaru cringed so hard it became physical.

Priscilla smirked. “Different worlds, same lowly thoughts.”

Subaru scowled. “I wasn’t like that.”

Every woman near him gave him a look.

He amended immediately, “Okay, I was exactly like that.”

When he thought back to it honestly, what bothered him most wasn’t logic. It was the connection. He had wanted to keep one. He had wanted a thread tying him to that strange girl in white, if only so she might one day return for the thing she had forgotten. He was afraid that if he let her go completely, the memory of her would disappear like an illusion.

What the hell?

...I actually wanted to see her again.

That thought hit Subaru like a physical blow. It was a core part of his own past—the fear of forgetting, and the desperate, painful struggle to hold onto connections that were fading away.

The theater watched in somber silence as they realized the boy on the screen was wrestling with the same existential dread that Subaru had faced during the loops of Sanctuary and the Watchtower.

The Warden, mercifully, let the scene move before the silence grew too sharp.

Touma clicked his tongue and forced himself back into the present. And then another thought hit him. If she was carrying 103,000 grimoires... and not a single book was visible... then where were they?

Otto sat forward. “Finally. He’s asking the correct question again.”

Julius nodded. “A delayed reaction, but a valid one.”

Garfiel grunted. “Yeah, seriously, where the hell are they?”

No one had an answer. Not yet.

“Hey, Teach?” Blue Hair suddenly called out, turning the entire class’s attention with malicious delight. “Mr. Kamijou’s ogling the girls’ tennis team outside instead of listening to your lecture.”

Touma’s thoughts snapped back into the room so fast it was almost audible. “Huh?”

Felt groaned. “Can that bastard just shut up?”

Anastasia grimaced openly. “He is remarkably annoyin’.”

A surprising number of women in the theater nodded in firm agreement.

Komoe-sensei slowly turned toward Touma. Her expression was that of a tiny child who had just discovered that Santa Claus was a lie and that the lie had personally offended her. The rest of the class followed her gaze, and their murderous stares informed Touma that he had not merely annoyed the teacher. He had shattered a sacred illusion. Touma was, unsurprisingly, held in detention until nightfall.

The screen showed him slumped over his desk in the golden-orange light of late evening, all dreams of freedom and magic thoroughly dead.

“What rotten luck,” Kamijou muttered.

Subaru sighed in sympathy.

“Yeah,” he said. “That tracks.”

The black screen brightened into the warm orange glow of evening. Academy City stretched outward beneath a sky on the verge of sunset, all glass, steel, glowing signs, and impossible cleanliness. Long roads cut between tall buildings that caught the last light of day like polished mirrors. High above them, massive blimps drifted lazily through the sky, their illuminated surfaces carrying streams of news and advertisements as they floated over the city like gentle mechanical whales. The scene shifted again, and Kamijou Touma appeared walking alone with his school bag slung over one shoulder, heading back toward his dorm.

The theater took in the city all over again with renewed awe.

Even after satellites, orbit explanations, railguns, dormitories, and cleaning robots, Academy City still managed to feel unreal. Everything looked too bright. Too smooth. Too large. Too ordered. It was a city that made Lugunica’s capital look ancient without ever once saying so aloud.

Mimi pointed upward at the floating shapes in the sky. “What’s that flyin’ tatoe thing?!”

Tivey pushed up his monocle and narrowed his eyes. “It seems to be some kind of airborne news metia.”

Subaru laughed. “Mimi, that is not something you can eat. But yeah, Tivey’s basically right. Those are blimps. Flying vehicles, mostly used for spreading information, advertisements, and public announcements.”

Mimi looked slightly disappointed that the sky-potato was not edible.

Ricardo scratched behind one ear and grinned. “Yer world sure does love makin’ weird things fly.”

“True,” Al muttered. “And half the time it’s just to sell you stuff.”

In the background, a female voice echoed over the district through hidden speakers, reminding students to return to their dormitories before the city’s evening restrictions took full effect. Touma let out a weary sigh. Guess I missed the last bus...

He glanced up at the giant three-bladed wind turbines turning in the evening light as he passed through a shopping district. Academy City’s curfew meant buses and trains stopped running not long after school hours ended. Anyone late enough to miss them had no choice but to walk.

 An oil drum-shaped police robot rolled past him. Those things used to look like robot dogs, he recalled. But kids kept crowding around them instead of letting them patrol, so Academy City replaced them with these boring barrel-shaped machines.

So they have curfews too, huh?” Subaru said.

Emilia looked at him. “What exactly is a curfew?”

Al answered before Subaru could. “It’s when the adults decide kids have stayed out long enough and tell them to go back home, or in this case back to their dorm, before they get into trouble.”

Petra frowned thoughtfully. “But aren’t some of them almost adults?”

Otto nodded. “They may be, but by Natsuki-san’s world’s standards most of the students here are probably still considered minors. The age at which one is treated as a full adult differs by country.”

Garfiel snorted. “If they tell me I can’t go runnin’ around all day, I ain’t goin’ to that school.”

Felt immediately pointed at him. “Same.”

Subaru just smiled at them with the deep, patient amusement of someone who already knew neither of them would survive a week of structured urban schooling.

Anastasia, however, had focused on a different line entirely. “He missed the bus?”

The Warden answered plainly. “Public transport. Think of it as a structured system for moving large numbers of people through the city efficiently, not unlike hiring shared ground dragons to carry many passengers along fixed routes.”

“Ahhh,” Anastasia murmured, already calculating profits.

Julius, meanwhile, had focused on the other machines. He frowned slightly. “Those things... are they similar to knights?”

Al shook his head. “Not really. More like... guards. Patrol units. Big dumb city watchdogs.”

Touma was walking but his mind was still thinking about Index.

I wonder where Index ended up after she finished chasing around that cleaning robot.

Subaru saw it first. Or rather, Subaru and Al saw it at the exact same moment. Both of them straightened and pointed.

“Oh, look who it is!”

The rest of the theater followed their gaze.

Mimi bounced in her seat. “Hey, it’s Short Hair!”

Ricardo barked out a laugh. “That nickname’s stickin’, ain’t it?”

Wilhelm’s expression softened into something almost nostalgic. “So she returned for another battle. Persistent.”

Ram, seated farther back, muttered under her breath with sour precision, “And deeply irritating.”

 “Oh, there you are. Hey, yo, you! Hang on a min— Hey! You, I’m talking to you! Stop already!” She said loudly.

He finally turned. What does she want?

“…Oh, it’s the biri biri middle schooler again,” said Kamijou, referring to the sound of the electrical crackling she emitted.

“Don’t call me Biri Biri! I have a name, you know: Mikoto Misaka! Remember it already! You’ve been calling me Biri Biri ever since we first met!” Misaka exclaimed.

The theater broke into fresh laughter.

Ricardo wheezed so hard he had to thump his own chest.

Even Emilia, who clearly thought the nickname was rude, couldn’t quite stop herself from giggling.

Subaru lifted one hand grandly. “And there we have it. Another officially named recurring side character.”

Ram, however, had gone strangely still. Rem noticed immediately. There was a line of tension in her sister’s shoulders that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

Al, oblivious to subtler emotional currents, leaned back and grinned. “Looks like we’re about to get the flashback for how these two first met.”

The screen obliged.

Since we first met? Kamijou thought back. Ah Right. The first time I saw her, I thought a bunch of delinquents were trying to rob a middle school girl. I stepped in, thinking maybe I'd earn myself some gratitude... maybe even a lucky break. Instead, she yelled at me for interfering... then tried to electrocute me. Of course, Imagine Breaker erased every bolt she threw. She just stood there staring at her hand, completely dumbfounded.

"Huh? Why didn't that work? Then what about this?!"

...And somehow, that ridiculous first meeting turned into this. Ever since then, She has been chasing me around, determined to beat me just once.

Subaru deadpanned instantly. “So instead of thanking the guy who thought she was in trouble, she got mad that he didn’t get flattened with the punks.”

Al nodded with the exact same deadpan energy. “Yeah, bro. She’s got chase-meet-the-wall-and-keep-running energy.”

Felt threw up her hands. “So let me get this straight. She met him once, didn’t understand how he blocked her attack, and instead of just asking him about it, she’s been picking fights ever since? And losing? Repeatedly? That girl’s a lost cause!”

Wilhelm stroked his beard and chose his words more carefully than the draft version’s sentiment. “Excessive pride often drives the strong into foolish habits. When a person builds their identity around superiority, being denied even once can become intolerable.”

Priscilla immediately pounced on the comparison. “She does rather resemble you, gutter rat.”

Felt whipped around. “The hell did you say?”

Subaru, Al, and Reinhard all sighed at once.

Al pointed lazily at the screen. “Seriously, though, why doesn’t she just meet up with him and ask? Like a normal person?”

Subaru made a face as though Al had just confessed to a complete lack of genre awareness. “You don’t get it. At this point, asking him to meet and talk would basically count as a date.”

Al stared. “Bro, that is just conversation.”

“Why the heck are you spacing out like that…?” Mikoto asked.

He looked at for a second then….

“The girl glaring at poor, exhausted Kamijou is the Railgun girl from yesterday. She seems terribly disappointed at having lost a fight, and ever since, she’s been tracking him down day after day, trying to get back at him.” Touma deadpan says while looking at far away distant.

“…Who the heck are you narrating to?” Misaka asked.

Touma looks at the camera for just a second then looks away and continues “She’s stubborn and hates to lose, but deep down, she gets lonely easily and is a member of the animal club at her school.”

“Stop making up a weird backstory for me!!” shouted Mikoto Misaka, flinging her arms out to the side.

The reaction in the theater was immediate and delighted.

“He looked at us,” Petra whispered in disbelief.

“He did,” Otto confirmed, equally amused.

Reinhard, with the calm air of someone recalling a long-ago embarrassment, said, “Subaru did something rather similar at the beginning of his own story.”

All eyes turned toward Subaru. He immediately pointed at the screen. “No! No, this is completely different! Touma’s doing it on purpose. I was naturally charismatic.”

Beatrice looked up at him with all the patience of an immortal spirit forced to endure nonsense. “You were a disaster, in fact.”

“Anyway, I’m gonna jolt you so hard today that you’ll twitch like a frog hooked up to a car battery, so get your last will and testament ready, you jerk!” Misaka proclaimed.

Touma deadpan “I don’t wanna.”

“Why not?!” Misaka shouts.

Touma reply deadpan “Because I’m not a member of the animal club.”

“Grr…Why you little…!!” Misaka says while greeting her teeth then she stomps the ground. Every nearby phone dies. Screens flicker. A police robot sputters with smoke as static dances through Mikoto's hair.

"So her power can damage others involuntarily if she's not in a good mood? A great person to hang out with," Subaru said sarcastically.

Julius added, "The way you say it is a little rude to the young lady, but..."

"If her power output is related to her emotions," Felix paused, "then it is not good at all, nya."

“Hmph. How about—mmph!” Mikoto started to say, only to be cut off as Touma lunged forward and clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Shh! Keep your mouth shut!” he hissed, frantically looking around. “You just fried everybody’s cell phones and broadcast equipment—if they find us, they’ll literally murder us for the damages!”

That image alone—ordinary, powerless Kamijou Touma physically trying to hush a Level Five capable of flattening city blocks—sent another round of laughter through the theater.

Subaru doubled over. “He really just grabbed a nation-level disaster by the face and told her to pipe down.”

Al snorted. “Confidence born from trauma.”

Touma looked around desperately. For one heartbeat, it seemed no one had noticed. Thank God, he thought in relief, still delicately suffocating Mikoto with his palm.

“I know it’s funny,” Al said, sitting up abruptly, “but with his luck—”

He never got to finish.

“Message. Message. Error number one-zero-zero-two-three-one-Y-F. Electromagnetic field in violation of the Radio Law detected. System abnormality confirmed. To protect yourself against cyberterrorism, please refrain from using any electronic devices.”

Imagine Breaker and Railgun both turned in panic. The oil-drum police robot from earlier was rolling wildly down the road, venting smoke and spewing its garbled warning. A moment later, it emitted a shrill siren loud enough to alert half the district.

Naturally, they ran.

The theater laughed despite themselves.

Even those who didn’t fully understand what the robot had said understood enough: Mikoto had broken something, Touma had gotten caught in the blast radius because of his proximity, and now both of them were fleeing consequences.

“Ugh…” He sobbed. “Wh-what rotten luck…Just because I’m even remotely associated with someone like this.”

“What do you mean ‘someone like this’?! I have a name, and it’s Mikoto Misaka!” She said.

The two of them finally came to a stop in a back-back-back-back alley.

Al squinted at the screen. “This place is absolutely designed for battles.”

Felt threw her hands up. “Oh come on, this again?”

Shut up, Biri Biri! You were the one who called down the ridiculous lightning yesterday and killed all my electronics! You still got something to say?!” Touma said frustrated .

“It’s your fault, because you’re annoying!” Misaka reply.

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Touma said while doing a comical expression.

“Yeah, it does not!” Felt and Ram shouted together.

The entire theater turned.

Rem blinked. Petra blinked. Garfiel blinked. Even Roswaal looked delighted by the synchronization.

It took Ram about half a second to realize what had happened.

That only made her look more annoyed.

Roswaal leaned his head on one hand, openly entertained now. “Wooooow. It is quite rare to see you this invested, Raaam.”

Ram responded with a controlled bow. “My apologies for the rude behavior.”

That apology, more than the outburst, made people stare. They still were not fully used to how much the theater had changed everyone. How much watching Subaru’s suffering had sanded down edges or at least redirected them.

After that the Screen showed a montage of Kamijou using his right hand to block every attack Mikoto threw at him. It wasn’t just her Railgun. She used a whip sword made of magnetized iron shavings, powerful electromagnetic waves intended to disrupt his internal organs, and she even brought down an actual lightning bolt from the heavens as her finishing move. But none of them can withstand Touma Kamijou.

The theater went quieter during the montage, taking in each technique with more seriousness than laughter now.

They were already cataloging them.

Each attack meant something. Each defense meant something. Touma’s right hand wasn’t just strong. It was absolute within its narrow domain.

Touma sighed. “...Okay, jeez, fine. You win, Biri Biri. Beating you up isn’t gonna fix my air conditioner anyway.”

“Gah...! W-wait a second! Take this a little more seriously!!”

Al chuckled. “He’s really not going to take you seriously, little miss.”

A fair number of people agreed.

Finally, Kamijou sighed and turned away, his posture shifting into a menacing, calculated calm. "So, you want me to get serious?"

Mikoto froze.

Every single person in the theater froze. They had never seen him serious—only complaining, caring, or shouting.

"Finally, something worth watching for these goddess's eyes," Priscilla murmured, leaning forward.

She was unable to retreat a step. The reality was that she didn’t have a clue as to the true nature of his power. To her, he was an unknown threat who kept all his trump cards neatly tucked away behind his poker face.

It was only natural for her to get skittish. He’d deflected her every attack for more than two hours now and didn’t have a scratch on him. She had to consider: If he actually got serious here, what would happen to me? But he simply sighed and turned away.

Al jumped up half from his seat. “See?! I told ever—” He never finished.

Priscilla, furious that the tension had been interrupted before it paid off, kicked him directly in the helmet. The metallic thunk rang through the theater.

Al slumped back down groaning.

Meili pouted. “Onii-san is so boring.” Petra pinched her immediately.

Subaru, meanwhile, sighed knowingly. “I already knew. He’s not the type to fight without a really good reason.”

Rem nodded softly. “He only uses that tone when someone is in danger.”

Wilhelm’s expression softened. “He is calm. And reasonable.”

“This is pretty rotten luck,” he muttered instead. “The appliances in my dorm are fried, this morning I had to deal with some fake sorcerer, and now this electro-esper...”

Mikoto blinked in confusion. “A-a sorcerer? What’s that?”

That line did not hit the room with shock.

It landed with confirmation.

Otto spoke first, low and thoughtful. “So even the famous Level Fives don’t know about magic.”

Crusch nodded once. “The separation between these two systems is absolute enough that even the highest of the Science Side remain ignorant.”

Anastasia, Roswaal, Priscilla, and Foxidna had all reached the same conclusion already. This was not a world where science and magic simply coexisted openly.

They overlapped. But they did not mingle. And that was dangerous.

He didn't notice her cowering like a frightened puppy. His mind was elsewhere, drifting back to the nun in white and the mystical world he’d tried to leave behind. He had cut those ties, yet the white hood left in his room remained, a persistent ache in a heart. He honestly didn’t understand why he felt this way. Despite being the man who could kill even God.

Subaru inhaled sharply.

“That,” he said quietly, “is some very loaded wording.”

“It is,” Crusch agreed.

Emilia frowned. “Why ‘kill’?”

Anastasia answered before Subaru could. “Because he can. But probably won’t.”

Foxidna’s tail curled slightly. “Those who spend their lives dreaming of that kind of power are rarely the ones given it.”

Roswaal, smiling without humor, finished the thought. “And those who never desired it are so often cursed with exactly that.”

A number of people in the room were slower to understand.

But once the meaning landed, it settled like a weight.

Kamijou Touma, the boy with rotten luck, the endless complaints, the ordinary face and extraordinary right hand, was not just someone who could stop miracles.

He was someone who, if the wording was to be believed, possessed a power even gods would have to fear.

And yet all he seemed to want was his air conditioner fixed, his classes over, and one more chance to see the strange girl in white.

The scene changed again. The glowing city streets vanished, replaced by the familiar exterior of the dormitory building where Touma lived. Yet this time, something was wrong immediately. Nothing on the screen had moved in any obviously threatening way, and yet the entire shot felt wrong. The sunset light had dimmed into a bruised orange. The corridors looked too quiet. The air itself seemed to carry the sort of unnatural stillness that came right before something terrible revealed itself.

Subaru sat up sharply.

“I don’t like this,” he said at once, the words leaving him almost reflexively.

A cold ripple went through the theater.

They had all watched enough of Subaru’s own life by now to recognize that feeling. The pause before disaster. The breath before the blade. The eerie, too-still calm that screamed danger louder than open violence ever could.

Emilia’s hand found Subaru’s immediately.

Rem’s fingers closed around his other one.

Crusch, seated directly ahead of him, glanced back with concern in her amber eyes.

“It does feel strange,” Julius admitted quietly.

Wilhelm’s expression had gone hard.

Otto frowned, every instinct in him rising in alarm. “There’s no one visible, but the scene is composed like an ambush.”

Roswaal and Beatrice noticed it first for what it truly was.

“There is strange magical energy present, I suppose,” Beatrice said, tiny brows drawn together.

Subaru jerked toward her. “Really?”

Emilia clapped her hands once, a little too quickly, eager hope surfacing before caution could stop it. “Then maybe Index-chan came back!”

Roswaal answered before anyone else could lean into the relief.

“No, Emilia-sama.” For once, his voice lacked its clownish lilt almost entirely. It was flat. Focused. Uneasy. “Remember the girl’s magical signature. The Walking Church was destroyed. What lingers here is different. Passive... and yet aggressive.”

Anastasia’s eyes narrowed. “Then maybe it’s the ones chasin’ her.”

That possibility settled over the room like a weight.

The hope Emilia had voiced did not vanish entirely, but it became fragile. Fear sharpened around it.

Subaru’s jaw tightened.

The others waited, tense, fixed on the screen.

The elevator gave a microwave-like ding and stopped on the seventh floor. The doors opened with a mechanical groan. Kamijou braced a hand against them and pushed his way out onto the narrow walkway outside the dorm rooms. It was then that he noticed.

Several people in the theater physically gulped.

They were too conditioned now.

Too practiced in reading the shape of incoming misery.

Subaru leaned forward, his voice barely above a whisper, like a prayer he already knew would fail.

“Please don’t be what I think it is. Please.”

His room door was surrounded by three industrial cleaning robots. They were rhythmically bumping against something on the floor with blind, mechanical insistence, as if they had found debris and were trying to clean it up. Kamijou’s pace quickened. His stomach dropped.

The theater held its breath.

It was Index.

The mysterious silver-haired girl had collapsed on the floor outside his room. “Ah...” Touma let out a soft, helpless laugh-sigh, as though some part of him had expected exactly this kind of ridiculous reunion.

For one tiny, cruel second, that almost eased the tension.

Almost.

But not enough.

Subaru had not relaxed.

Not even close.

He was already panting, one hand clutched over his chest so tightly his knuckles had gone white. Emilia and Rem moved at once, one on each side of him, while Crusch twisted in her seat and reached back without thinking, her fingers brushing his wrist.

“Subaru, relax,” Emilia said quickly, even though her own voice trembled. “She probably came back because she was hungry again, right? That’s all. Maybe... maybe she just fainted.”

Even as she said it, she did not sound convinced.

Rem leaned closer. “Yes, Subaru-kun. Remember how she was earlier... she may simply have exhausted herself.”

But the scene continued before comfort could take hold.

Kamijou stared at her. He muttered something about rotten luck under his breath. But if he had seen his own face in a mirror, he would have been startled. He was smiling. Something in him had stayed caught on her. Even if he didn’t fully believe in sorcerers or grimoires, even if the whole situation could be interpreted as some suspicious cult chasing a lone girl, the fact that she had returned at all made him... happy. Setting all that aside, he was simply glad they had met again for some reason he couldn’t explain.

Al grimaced.

“Man,” he muttered, “his stars are lookin’ real bad.”

Subaru swallowed hard.

Of course Touma was smiling.

Of course he was relieved.

Of course the second meeting, the one he had secretly wanted, would come wrapped in dread.

“Hey! What are you doing over there?” he called, hurrying toward her.

Index didn’t move. She gave no sign of hearing him at all. Touma almost smiled at what seemed like a very Index-like response. It was only when he drew closer—only when the evening light hit the floor properly—that his brain caught up with reality. Index had collapsed in a pool of blood.

The theater broke.

“Shit! No, why?!” Subaru shouted, voice cracking. He was half-risen from his seat, tears already burning in his eyes. “What did he do to deserve this, huh?!”

He was not speaking only about Touma.

He was speaking at the universe itself.

At fate.

At stories.

At the pattern of kind boys being given suffering because apparently that made for good entertainment.

Petra made a small, broken sound and threw herself against Frederica’s side.

Meili, usually so smug, looked genuinely shaken and leaned into Petra without protest. The two girls ended up clinging to each other in mutual misery.

Rem tightened her grip on Subaru’s arm.

Emilia’s face had gone pale.

Crusch’s lips parted, but no words came.

No one really knew what to say.

“S-stop, stop! Shit...!”

Touma’s eyes finally adjusted. He lunged toward the three janitorial droids crowding the motionless girl, trying to rip them away from her. He knew immediately that a single one of those machines was too heavy and too strong for him to simply toss aside. When he focused on dragging one back, the other two rolled in toward the ‘mess’ with mindless persistence. He couldn’t even budge these stupid mechanical toys.

Despite being the man who could kill even God.

Priscilla clicked her tongue sharply.

“How pathetic,” she said, disgust plain in her voice. “Possessing a hand that can kill a god, and yet unable to throw aside mere metal boxes when it matters.”

“Shut up, you bitch!” Felt snapped before anyone else could.

For once, Reinhard did not stop her.

He was staring at the screen with frightening concentration, blue eyes narrowed. The Sword Saint’s instincts were screaming. He had already noticed something else. Something hidden. A presence not yet fully revealed.

On the screen, Touma was unraveling.

“Damn it, damn it!!” Kamijou shouted, voice raw with helpless fury. “What the hell? What the hell is this?! Who the hell did this to you, damn it?!”

Then a voice answered him from behind.

“Hm? Oh, that would be us sorcerers.”

Touma turns around.

Emerging from the stairwell was a tall young man in black priestly vestments. He was too tall, too lean, too composed. Sickly sweet perfume seemed to cling to him. His hair burned sunset-red. Silver rings glinted on every finger. A barcode was tattooed beneath one eye. A cigarette hung lazily from his lips as he leaned against the wall and surveyed the scene with the kind of indifferent calm that made the entire thing worse.

And then the screen cut to black.

To Be Continued.

The theater exploded.

“Huh?! That’s it?!” Subaru shouted, twisting toward the dark screen like he might physically force it to resume through rage alone.

Otto threw up both hands. “That was a terrible place to end!”

Felt was already on her feet. “Yeah, Warden! Why would you stop it there?!”

Al groaned dramatically. “Bro, it’s not even One Piece. Why are we getting ‘to be continued’ right when the creepy priest guy shows up?”

The comment did its job.

It didn’t calm Subaru completely, but it stopped his panic from fully spiraling. Barely.

Garfiel punched his fist into his palm. “Don’t worry, Cap! My amazin’ self is gonna beat the living shit outta that bastard when he shows up again.”

“Mimi would too! Mimi would too!” Mimi declared at once, leaping up so fast that Ricardo and Julius both had to move after her before she accidentally hurled herself into battle against a fictional man from another world.

Anastasia pressed a hand to her forehead. “I am still not over these cliffhangers.”

Beatrice, Emilia, and Rem were the ones who actually managed to calm Subaru down.

Beatrice tugged sharply at his sleeve until he looked at her.

Emilia cupped his face and forced him to focus on her voice.

Rem’s hand never left his.

Bit by bit, his breathing steadied.

Roswaal, meanwhile, had not taken his eyes off the last image of the man in black even after it vanished.

“That man,” he said slowly, “has an interesting mana flow...”

Beatrice was already staring at the black screen too, still analyzing what little she had sensed in the final seconds.

“That man’s appearance is strange, I suppose.”

Subaru blinked. “Appearance, Beako?”

“Yes,” she replied, expression serious. “But more than that... the mana around him feels fundamentally different. Yet there is a part of it very similar to...”

Foxidna finished the sentence beside Anastasia with equal focus.

“Yang and fire, isn’t it?”

Beatrice nodded. “Yes, I suppose.”

That pulled a raised brow from Priscilla.

Crusch sat back, already processing the implications. “Then he is likely a very skilled fire mage.”

Wilhelm gave a small, thoughtful hum. “But I suppose it does not matter as much as you are making it sound.”

Several people turned toward him.

The old swordsman’s face eased into the first small smile he had worn in some time.

“Have we all forgotten Touma-dono’s power?”

That landed instantly.

Subaru stared. Then his eyes widened.

Then, slowly, hope returned to his expression like sunrise crawling over a battlefield.

“Oh,” he breathed. “How could I forget? Even if I can’t punch him...” He pointed dramatically at the dead screen. “Our protagonist can.”

Felt grinned so wide it looked wolfish. “I am so excited to see that bastard get beaten up.”

“Hells yeah!” Garfiel barked.

“Mimi too!” she shouted, growling alongside him in ridiculous, adorable solidarity.

The energy in the theater shifted fast. The dread remained, of course. Index lying in blood was not something anyone had forgotten. But now the cast had a target. A villain-shaped object for their fury. More importantly, they had renewed faith in the boy at the center of the story.

Touma was powerless in the ordinary sense.

But he was still the man who had erased lightning, railguns, and miracles with one hand.

And that mattered.

The room’s mood rose so quickly that several people actually started talking over one another, speculating about what would happen next.

Would Touma charge him?

Would the priest use fire magic?

Would Index survive?

Was this man alone?

Was he one of the ones who had been chasing her across rooftops? Did the cigarette mean he was evil?

Felix, somehow, had become convinced that the cigarette absolutely meant he was evil.

Then the Warden spoke. “I am glad,” he said, voice echoing through the theater with the slow patience of a jailor watching inmates rediscover hope, “that you wish to continue the story.”

He paused. The entire room froze at once. Because that “but” had already been heard, even before he said it.

“But...”

A collective groan rose from every seat.

“We have to take a short break,” the Warden finished.

“Whyyyyyyyy?!” the theater shouted back as one.

The Warden, however, sounded almost amused.

“I suppose,” he said, “the author requires time to breathe after writing this behemoth of a chapter.”

For one suspended second, the cast simply stared upward in bafflement.

Subaru was the first one to recover enough to point accusingly at the darkness. “Okay, no. I don’t know who this ‘author’ is, but tell them to write faster.”

Al, despite everything, barked a laugh.

And just like that, with tension still wound tight and dread still lingering around the edges of their thoughts, the theater slipped into intermission—every one of them already impatient for the moment the screen would light up again and Kamijou Touma would finally get his turn to punch back.