Translateed from Thai Book: Baka Tsukidesu
This for shared not for sale!!!!!!
"Eh?! Damn it! Damn it! Arghhh, such misfortune!!!"
Though he realised that his frantic shouts must have made him sound like a maniac, Kamijou Touma had no intention of stopping his headlong flight. While fleeing down a back alleyway late at night, he glanced back over his shoulder. Eight people.
Even after he had run nearly two kilometers, there were still eight people pursuing him. Of course, since he was neither a cook from an ex-foreign unit[1] nor a cyber-ninja surviving in the modern era, Kamijou Touma wouldn't stand a chance against their numbers if he chose to fight them. To begin with, any fight between high school students with numbers that exceeded 3-on-1 wasn't worth mentioning. Against those numbers, things like bravery and such were simply useless.
Kamijou kept running and kicked a slightly dirty polyethylene bucket, scaring a black cat away.
July 19.
Yeah, it’s because it was July 19.
Because he had been reveling in the fact that Summer break starts tomorrow! he picked up a manga at the bookstore that was obviously a dud. This fact was also why he went into a family restaurant thinking, Maybe I'll splurge a little on something to eat! even though he hadn't been hungry in the least. And so, when he saw a middle school girl surrounded by drunken thugs, he got this wacky idea in his head telling him, Hey, maybe I should help.
However, he couldn't have dreamt that all their buddies would start popping out of the bathroom together. He thought, Only girls are allowed to use the bathroom together, right?
"I had to run out of there before I could get the bitter melon and escargot hell-lasagna that I had finally decided on. Now I'm a dine-and-dasher without even getting to dine! Arghhh, what's with this misfortune?!"
"Gyuh!" yelled Kamijou as he grabbed his head and burst out from the alleyway onto the main street.
Couples were crowded everywhere underneath the moonlight that descended on Academy City, which was approximately one-third the size of Tokyo.
It's definitely July 19. This is all July 19's fault, the single Kamijou roared within.
The three-bladed wind-powered generators that stood here and there glittered like the tears shed by a certain bachelor that was basking in both the pale moonlight and the lights of the city's nightlife.
Kamijou cut through the couples in order to run swiftly through the night street. Whilst running, he glanced down at his right hand. Concealed within it was a power that's rather useless in these sorts of situations. It couldn't take out delinquents, raise his test scores, or even get him popular with the girls.
"Uwaaa! The misfortune!"
If he managed to completely shake off the group of delinquents, the ones who would lose sight of Kamijou could simply use their mobiles to call for reinforcements and possibly even transportation. For the sake of making them collapse from exhaustion, Kamijou Touma had no choice but to bait the struggling pursuers into following him in order to slowly but surely wear them out. It's similar to boxing, letting your opponent hit you recklessly in order to drain his physical strength.
Kamijou's motive to the end was assuredly an "act of mercy".
It was certainly useless to fight, so he would consider it a "victory" if his pursuers were shaken off and made to give up. At the very least, Kamijou was very confident in long-distance running. Plus, the pursuers were in poor health due to a lifetime of drinking and smoking and were wearing boots: footwear with zero functionality. Disregarding the pace and the need to fully sprint to keep up, basic long-distance running was, without doubt, not possible for them.
He dashed from one alleyway to the next as his pursuers kept growing in number until he could no longer recognise their individual shapes, all the while trying to think of a way to end this without anyone getting hurt.
"Sh-shit... Why must I put my youth on the line for this!?"
It was regrettable. Everywhere he looked, there were couples that were full of happiness and dreams; somewhere within Kamijou, being alone, was the feeling that he was a terrible loser. Even if the date were different, the summer holiday had already started; with neither love nor comedy, he was considered beyond a loser.
From behind, one of the delinquents' jeers came flying past.
"Orr!! Damn it, you damn brat! Stop, you runaway king!"
With such a violent love call, even Kamijou snapped.
"Shut up! You weren't knocked out, right? Just be grateful, you average monkeys (IQ 80)!"
Kamijou shouted a reply, aware that he was wasting his stamina doing so.
"...To be without any injury, you guys really ought to thank me."
Roughly two kilometres later, with a continuous flow of sweat and tears, he finally left the urban area, and a large river came into view. A large iron bridge spanned over the river, its length about 150 metres. There were no cars around. Directly ahead was the irreplaceable rustic iron bridge, painted out in the night sea's eerie darkness.
While crossing the iron bridge of the night, Kamijou looked over his shoulder- and stopped.
His pursuers had already disappeared.
"Damn... They've finally given up."
Desperately bearing the urge to sit, Kamijou made a *petan* sound on the spot, looked up at the night sky, and took a deep breath. After managing to solve the problem without anyone getting hurt, he just wanted to take a moment to praise himself for the accomplishment.
"Good grief. Who do you think you are? Pretending to be a humanitarian, protecting the delinquents... Are you a certain enthusiastic school teacher[2]?"
Startled, Kamijou's body froze.
Since there wasn't a single light on the iron bridge, Kamijou didn't notice the other presence. Roughly five metres ahead, in the direction Kamijou ran from, was a girl standing alone — a rather ordinary middle school girl wearing a gray pleated skirt, a short-sleeved blouse, and a summer sweater.
Looking up at the night sky, Kamijou, more than half serious, thought of just falling flat on his bottom in defeat.
How should he put it? The girl that was being messed with at the family restaurant was the one standing in front of him.
"...That’s the issue, I guess. The company from behind came afterward."
"Uhh, because they were troublesome, I fried them."
*Bachin*, the sound of a bluish-white spark reverberated.
This didn't mean that the girl was holding a stun gun. Every time her shoulder-length light-brown hair swayed, sparks flew from it like the crackling of an electrode.
The moment a convenience store bag, riding on the wind, flew close to her face, bluish-white sparks blasted it away like an automatic defense system.
"Whoa!" Kamijou said, worn out with a single word.
It was July 19. That was why he picked up the manga– a "landmine" from just a glance at the front cover- from the bookshop, entered a family restaurant despite not being hungry, and considered whether or not he should help when he saw a drunk delinquent obviously pestering a middle school girl.
However, Kamijou never mentioned that he was trying to help the girl.
Kamijou only tried to stop the young men from carelessly approaching her.
Kamijou sighed. That girl was always like this. Even though they've crossed each other's paths sporadically for nearly a month, neither remembered the name of the other; in other words, they definitely weren't friends.
Today, he'll be recklessly beaten like hell until he becomes living trash- and in the girl's proud mindset, that was the appropriate way to deal with Kamijou. Without exception, all their fights to date had been Kamijou’s complete victories.
A proper loss would clear up that girl's feelings, Kamijou thought, but his acting skills were poor; once before, when he had "collapsed" with a demon-like face, she chased him for an entire night.
"Hey, what did I ever do to you...?"
"I cannot allow people stronger than myself to exist; that alone is reason enough."
That was it?
He thinks, Not even fighting games have characters with such mindless agendas.
"But you're making fun of me, right? You know, despite the fact that I'm a Level 5, I'm considering going all-out on a powerless Level 0 opponent. I know how to handle the weak."
The "rear alleyway delinquents = the most violent" image didn't apply within the boundaries of this city. As dropouts from the ESP development curriculum, they were Level 0s without any abilities to speak of.
The truly strong ones in this city were people like her, Level 5s.
"Well, about that. I understand well that you are a 1-in-328,571 owner of talent, but you really need to stop looking down on a person who wants a long life, in a matter of speaking."
"Shut up! To have drugs injected directly into a blood vessel, to have the brain be pierced directly from behind the ear, to do such things like an oddball and still not be able to bend a single spoon... there's no other choice but to call the talentless you that."
"..."
Indeed, Academy City was this kind of place.
By tacking on words like “mnemonics” and “recitation”, the place incorporated "brain development" quietly into the curriculum- another of its sides.
To begin with, like protagonists of manga, all 2,300,000 "students" living in Academy City did not stop. In all, he has seen about 60% of the weak students, after fully exerting themselves to the point of tearing their brains' blood vessels, finally bend a spoon to some degree; as a matter of fact, it was only the Level 0s that were considered unusable. (?)
"If it's to bend a spoon, using pliers is good enough; if it's to make fire, buying a 100-yen lighter is good enough. If it's something like telepathy, mobile phones already exist, right? Isn't such ESP just pointless?"
These were the words of Kamijou, one who was classified as unusable by Academy City's body examination centers.
"The main point is that you’re all strange, being pleased with a byproduct like ESP?. Wasn't our original objective much greater?"
Hearing this, the "Level 5" girl, one of only seven such people in all of Academy City, slanted the edge of her lips.
"Huh? That objective. How did it go again? Oh, right, 'Mankind has no way of doing God's calculations, so they must first surpass the limits of mankind before they can receive God’s solution'?"
The girl laughed scornfully.
"Ha! You make me laugh. What the heck is 'God's mind'? Do you know? Rumor has it that my DNA blueprint is being analyzed to create clone sisters solely for military use. It seems like there is an even greater purpose than the main objective, isn't there?"
She said that much, and abruptly stopped herself.
There was a sensation of change in the quality of the soundless atmosphere.
"Well... really, the words of a strong person, right."
"Huh?"
"A strong person, a strong person, a strong person. To just possess talent from birth, obtain power, and not completely understand the pain of struggling... Your words are like those of a manga protagonist: harsh and self-righteous."
*Zazezezazezaza*, clear sounds of sea waves started coming from underneath the iron bridge.
There are only seven Level 5s in Academy City; in their struggle to reach that point, how much of their "humanity" did they cast aside...? A dark flame which hinted that flared from those words.
Kamijou denied them.
Because he said what he said. Because he believed that such things were worthless.
Also because… he had never lost to her before.
"Hey! Hey! Have you seen the yearly body examination results? My level is 0 and yours is 5. Just ask any random pedestrian, 'Who is superior?' It’s obvious!"
Academy City's ability development freely uses pharmaceutics, cerebral medical science and physiology, and the like — basically, all things "scientific". If the fixed curriculum handled it, those without abilities could reach the point of at least bending a spoon.
Even so, Kamijou Touma couldn't do even that.
Academy City's measurement machines evaluated him as one with absolutely "zero" ability.
"'Zero', eh?"
The girl repeated just that word, rolling it off her tongue.
Her hand went into her skirt pocket, and took out a coin- one from an amusement parlor game.
"Hey, have you ever heard the term 'railgun' before?"
"Huh?"
"The theory of launching a metal shell via an ultra-powerful electromagnet is the same as that of a linear motorcar- except for the fact that it's a warship weapon."
*Ping!*, the girl flipped the coin into the air with her thumb.
*Hyun hyun*, the rotating coin returned on top of her thumb.
"Right, something like this?"
And with those words...
Almost instantly and without a sound, an orange spear of light horizontally pierced through an area near Kamijou's head; calling that spear a laser would be more accurate. Seeing a single trail of that light's afterimage stretching from the girl's thumb, he deduced the origin of the beam to be there.
Like a strike of lightning, a thunderous roar reverberated a moment later. A shockwave, tearing through the atmosphere, occurred near Kamijou's ears, throwing off his sense of balance. The staggering Kamijou glanced behind him.
The instant the orange light crashed into the iron bridge's road surface, it was as if an aeroplane made an emergency landing and blew the asphalt off. The orange afterglow, which spanned thirty metres straight to the opposite side and wreaked all sorts of destruction, still scorched the atmosphere with its afterimage long after it had stopped moving.
"Even a coin like this can fly at three times the speed of sound if a reasonable amount of power is provided, right? Then again, it melts after about fifty metres due to friction with the atmosphere."
The bridge of iron and concrete rocks back and forth like an unreliable suspension bridge. *Gagi!* *Bishi!* The sound of metal bolts popping out and flying here and there reverberated.
"..."
Kamijou felt a chill, as if dry ice was being driven into every blood vessel of his body.
*Zogun*. Moisture from my whole body becoming sweat and evaporating is a strange sensation, he thought.
"You… Don't tell me you used that on those pursuers, did you?!"
"You idiot. I choose the opponent to use it on. I don't want to become some reckless murderer."
While saying those words, sparks fly from the girl's brown hair like the crackling of an electrode.
"This was sufficient to drive away those Level 0s!"
At that moment, bluish-white sparks shot out from her forelock like horns,
And like a spear, the lightning raced towards Kamijou.
A thing like "evasion" was impossible; his opponent was a bluish-white spear of lightning fired from the hair of a Level 5. It's the same as seeing a thunderbolt falling at light-speed and trying to avoid it, so to speak.
*Thud!* An explosion erupted, a moment later.
To protect his face, he reflexively held out his right hand, which clashed with the lightning spear and made his insides struggle. The attack scattered in every direction as mere sparks, which in turn slammed into the steel frames that formed the iron bridge.
...So it seems.
"So, I wonder: why don't you have a single injury?"
Her words were very easygoing, but she was glaring at Kamijou and baring her canine-like teeth.
The high-voltage current that scattered itself throughout the surroundings had the power to burn the steel frames of the bridge; in spite of that, Kamijou's right hand, which received a direct hit, wasn’t blown off. It didn't even bear a single burn mark.
Kamijou's right hand had completely deflected the lightning strike that carried hundreds of millions of volts.
"Really, what's with that? Such a power doesn't even appear in Academy City's databank. If I am a 1-in-328,571 prodigy, then aren't you, the only one in Academy City, a 1-in-2,300,000 disaster?"
The girl muttered bitterly. Kamijou didn't reply.
"With such an exceptional opponent to fight with, there's no choice but to raise my level this way, right?"
"...Even so, you still always lose."
The response, which originated from her forehead like the "lightning spear attack", came attacking at a speed slightly exceeding that of sound.
However, that also scattered into multiple directions the moment it slammed into Kamijou's right hand. It was like knocking aside a water balloon.
"Imagine Breaker".
The public television program's laughingstock- and this was despite the numerous ESP formulas established within Academy City. If that attack came from the power of "strange talents", then this strange ability, even if it met God's system, would negate it without a problem.
If that girl's ESP "Railgun" came from the power of "strange talents", then it was no exception.
However, Kamijou's Imagine Breaker only worked on the power of strange talents. To put it simply, it can protect him from an esper's fireball, but not from the ash and smoke the fireball created. Its effectiveness was also limited to "from the right wrist onward"; if any other place were to be hit by that fireball, it would definitely be consumed by flames.
Going to die! Really going to die! Really going to die! he thinks. Kyaaaa!!
Kamijou Touma was getting *bikibiki* stiff, but managed to maintain a calm and composed face. Although he had held out his right hand and completely negated the light-speed "lightning attack spear", it was complete chance that the attack collided with his right hand.
His heart racing, Kamijou tried desperately to smooth everything over with the smile of an adult.
"What to say... misfortunate, right?"
That was how Kamijou brought an end to this day, this one day, July 19.
With one sentence, it really was like he's grieving the whole world.
"For you, that's just about true, right?"
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