Toaru Majutsu no Index

Volume 1, Prologue: The Tale of the Illusion Killer Boy. The_Imagine-Breaker.

“Ahh! Shit! Shit! God damn it! This is just too much misfortune!!”

Even as he realized his cries sounded rather strange, Kamijou Touma showed no sign of stopping his tremendous flight.

As he ran through back alleys late at night, he glanced over his shoulder.

There were eight of them.

He ran frantically all over for almost 2 kilometers, but there were still eight of them. Of course, Kamijou Touma had no way to win in a fight against that many unless he happened to be a former foreign unit’s cook or a cyber ninja that had survived to the present day. In a fight between high school students, anything beyond 1-on-3 was out of the question. That could be called “impossible” even before taking any skill he might have had into account.

Kamijou kicked over a filthy plastic bucket and frightened off a black cat as he continued running.

It was July 19th.

The fault lay in that date. Because summer break would start the next day, he was in such high spirits that he grabbed a manga at the bookstore despite a glance at the cover telling him it was no good, entered a family restaurant to treat himself, for once, to a nice between-meals snack, found a middle school-aged girl surrounded by clearly drunk delinquents, and decided that some rescuing was in order.

But, he had not expected more of their comrades to come swarming out of the bathroom.

He had always thought that going to the bathroom in groups was something only girls did.

“I had to run out before the hellish goya and escargot lasagna I ordered even arrived. I didn’t even get to eat anything, but I’m being treated like a dine-and-dasher. What kind of misfortune is this!? Gyahh!!”

Kamijou scratched his head as he ran out from the back alley and into the moonlit street.

Even if Academy City were as large as a third of Tokyo, he could see nothing but couples no matter where he looked. That was also surely because it was July 19th. It's all July 19th’s fault!, Kamijou, who was single, shouted in his heart. The three blades of the wind turbines located here and there throughout the area glittered in the pale moonlight and the lights of the city nightscape, making them look like the tears of rich bachelors.

Kamijou tore through the couples as he ran through the city.

He ran and glanced down at his right hand. The power that resided there would be of no help in the current situation. It would not let him defeat even a single delinquent, it would not raise his scores on tests, and it would not make him popular with girls.

“Uuh…Such misfortune!”

If he escaped the group of delinquents, they possibly would have used their phones to call in reinforcements and bikes. In order to simply run down their stamina, Kamijou Touma had been letting them catch occasional glimpses of him as bait so that they would continue to run and wear themselves out. It was akin to letting boxers hit you to weaken them.

Kamijou’s goal was only to save any possible victims.

If he could lose them and have them give up without getting into a fistfight, he would win.

Incidentally, Kamijou had confidence in his long distance running. On the other hand, his opponents damaged their bodies with alcohol, cigarettes and were wearing boots with almost no real functionality. On top of that, running full speed for long distances without pacing one's self was impossible by its very nature.

As Kamijou alternated and weaved in and out through roads and back alleys while seemingly simply clumsily running about in a panic, he saw one and then another of the delinquents drop out of the chase, leaning forward with their hands on their knees. He felt his plan was the perfect way of resolving the situation without any injuries.

“D-damn it. Why do I have to waste my youth on this stuff!?”

Everywhere he looked, he saw nothing but couples full of dreams and happiness. Unable to stand it, Kamijou Touma felt as if he had somehow ended up on the short end of life. The date need only change and it would be summer break and yet he had neither love nor comedy to speak of. It made him feel like quite the loser.

He then heard one of the delinquents shouting from behind him.

“Hey!! You fucking brat! Stop, you master runner!!”

It only angered Kamijou more to receive such a violent love call.

“Shut up! You should be thanking me for not turning around and knocking you and your monkey-level IQ out cold!” Kamijou shouted back despite knowing it was just a waste of stamina.

He really should thank me for going this far out of my way to keep him from getting injured, he thought.

After another 2 kilometers of sweaty and teary running, he exited the urban area and came to a large river. A large metal bridge spanned the river, about 150 meters across and no cars could be seen on it. Not lit up, the plain metal bridge was wrapped in an eerie darkness much like a midnight sea.

Kamijou glanced back as he darted across the bridge.

He then stopped: at some point, he had escaped all of his pursuers.

“Sh-shit. Did I finally shake them?”

Kamijou desperately suppressed the urge to sit down right then and there and sighed as he stared up into the night sky.

He had actually managed to resolve everything without having to punch anyone. He wanted to praise himself for that.

“Really now, what are you doing? Do you think protecting those delinquents makes you a good person? Are you some overzealous teacher?”

In an instant, Kamijou’s body froze over.

Because the bridge had no lights, Kamijou had not noticed the girl standing about 5 meters ahead in the direction he had been running, a completely normal middle school girl wearing a gray pleated skirt, a short-sleeved blouse, and a summer sweater. Kamijou stared up into the sky and seriously considered collapsing onto his back. The girl before him was the same one from the family restaurant.

“Wait, so that's why they stopped chasing me?”

“Yeah. They annoyed me, so I roasted them.”

The zapping sound of bluish-white sparks echoed. Rather than a stun gun, as her shoulder-length brown hair swayed, sparks flew from it like an electrode.

The moment a convenience store bag in the wind passed by her head, it was blown away by bluish-white sparks reminiscent of an interception device.

“Ugh,” sighed Kamijou wearily.

July 19th. That was why he had grabbed a manga at the bookstore despite a glance at the cover telling him it was no good, entered a family restaurant to treat himself, for once, to a nice between-meals snack, found a middle school-aged girl surrounded by clearly drunk delinquents, and decided that some rescuing was in order. However, Kamijou had not a single thought about rescuing the girl. Instead, had tried to rescue the boys who had carelessly approached her.

Once again he sighed. The girl was always like that. He had seen her here and there sporadically for almost a month, but they had yet to learn each other’s names. In other words, they were by no means friends.

This time, the girl would arrogantly arrogantly attack in an attempt to beat her opponent into a pulp and Kamijou would be the one to put up with it. Without a single exception, it went that way and he won every time.

If he actually lost, the girl would likely be satisfied, but Kamijou was a terrible actor. He once tried to fake his defeat and she chased him like a demon for the rest of the night.

“…What did I even do?”

“I cannot allow anyone to be more powerful than me. That is enough of a reason.”

That was how it was with her. He felt that even a character in a fighting game would have a more detailed incentive.

“But you’re treating me like an idiot, too. I’m a Level 5. Do you really think I would go all out against a powerless Level 0? I do know how to handle the weak.”

In that city, the usual standard of a back alley delinquent being the strongest in a fight did not hold up. Those delinquents who could not keep up with the psychic powers development Curriculum were the Level 0s, the powerless.

The truly strong in that city, the top-tier students, were espers.

“Yeah, about that, I do understand that you possess a talent that only 1 in 328,571 have. I really do. But if you want to live a long life, you should stop speaking to people so condescendingly.”

“Shut up. If you couldn’t bend a single spoon after having various crazy things done to you like have drugs injected directly into your blood vessels or have electrodes stabbed in through your ears and into the brain, what could it be but lack of talent?”

“…”

That was indeed the kind of place Academy City was.

The other side of Academy City could be seen in how means of developing the brain had been calmly added into the Curriculum under the name of “documentation methods” or “memorization methods”.

However, not all of the 2.3 million students living in Academy City had ceased to be human and became something like a manga protagonist.

Just under 60% of the whole population were utterly useless Level 0s who could only bend a spoon after focusing their brain to the point of blood vessel bursts.

“If I need to bend a spoon, I can just use pliers, and if I need fire, I can just buy a cheap lighter. Also, what do I need telepathy for when I have a cell phone? Are psychic powers really that great?”

Those were the words of Kamijou who had been branded as useless by Academy City’s physical examination sensors.

“And everyone’s priorities are all messed up. They’re all rejoicing over the byproduct we call psychic powers, but isn’t our real objective something beyond that?”

In response, the girl who was one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s twisted the edges of her lips.

“Hahh? …Oh, that. What was it again? Something like, ‘Humans cannot calculate god, so we need to acquire a body that exceeds humanity before we can arrive at god's answer’, right?” The girl gave a haughty laugh. “Hah. Don’t make me laugh. What is all this about the ‘brain of god’? Have you heard about the supposed military Sisters created based on an analysis of my DNA map? It seems to me these lucrative side effects are more important than that objective.”

After saying that, the girl suddenly stopped.

In the silence, it felt as if the quality of the air was changing.

“…For God's sake, those are the words of the strong.”

“Hah?”

“The strong. The strong. The strong. Those are the fearless and cruel words of a manga protagonist who was born with his abilities and does not understand the pain of arriving there on his own.”

The river below the bridge began to make an unsettling amount of noise.

A dark flame could be felt on the grit of her words that hinted at just how much of her humanity she had abandoned to arrive at the position of one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s.

Kamijou denied all of it with just a few words. Not even once did he turn around.

He did this by never losing.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait! Take a look at the results of the annual physical examination. I’m a Level 0 and you’re a Level 5. Ask anyone you find out on the streets, and they’ll tell you who’s stronger!”

Academy City’s powers development heavily used things such as pharmaceutics, neuroscience, and cerebral physiology. It was a purely scientific endeavor. After undergoing the Curriculum to a certain extent, one could bend a spoon even without talent.

And yet Kamijou Touma could do nothing.

According to Academy City’s instruments, he was truly powerless.

“Zero, you say,” repeated the girl as if she was turning it over in her mouth. She stuck a hand in her skirt pocket and pulled out an arcade coin. “Have you ever heard the term Railgun?”

“Ahn?”

“The idea behind it is the same as a linear motor train. It is a ship-borne weapon that uses powerful electromagnets to fire a metal projectile.”

The girl flicked the coin up into the air with her thumb. The coin rotated a few times before landing back onto her thumb.

“It refers to something like this.”

Just as she spoke, an orange spear of light suddenly and silently shot past Kamijou’s head. It was more like a laser than a spear. He could only tell it had originated from the girl’s thumb because the afterimage of light stretched back to it.

Almost like thunder, the noise rumbled in with a slight delay. As a shockwave tore through the air around his ears, Kamijou’s sense of balance was partially destroyed. He staggered and glanced over his shoulder.

The instant the orange light struck the road surface on the bridge, the asphalt was blown away like an airplane making an emergency landing on the ocean. Even after travelling a 30 meter path of utter destruction and stopping, the orange afterglow was still burning the air like an afterimage.

“Even a coin like this can be quite powerful when it's fired at three times the speed of sound. Of course, the coin melts after 50 meters because of air friction.”

That bridge made of steel and concrete swayed like an unreliable suspension bridge. Failing metal bolts could be heard occasionally.

“…!!”

Kamijou felt chilled like dry ice was stuffed into his blood vessels.

He felt like all the moisture in his body had been turned to sweat and evaporated.

“Damn you. Don’t tell me you used that to drive them away!!”

“Don’t be stupid. I match my methods to my opponent. I don’t want to accidentally become a murderer.” As she spoke, sparks flew from the girl’s brown hair like an electrode. “This was enough for those Level 0s!”

Bluish-white sparks flew from the girl’s bangs like a horn and a spear-like line of lightning flew towards Kamijou.

There was no way to evade. After all, he was against a bluish-white lightning spear shot from a Level 5’s hair. It was an experience like watching a thundercloud fire a bolt at light speed and then try to dodge it.

An explosive noise followed after a slight delay.

Kamijou immediately held up his right hand to protect his face and the lightning spear struck it. It rampaged through Kamijou’s body and sparks scattered in every direction and into the bridge's steel framework.

…Or so it had seemed.

“So, why are you completely unhurt?”

Her words seemed lighthearted enough, but the girl baring her canines was glaring at Kamijou.

The high voltage current that had scattered into the surroundings had been powerful enough to burn the steel framework of the bridge, yet,

Kamijou’s right hand had not been blown off by the direct hit. …In fact, it lacked even a single burn.

Kamijou’s right hand had erased the girl’s electrical strike that numbered a few hundred million volts.

“Honestly, what's with you? That power of yours isn’t listed in Academy City’s Bank. If I’m a one in 328,571 genius, then you’re a one in 2,300,000 disaster,” the girl muttered in annoyance but Kamijou neglected to give even a single word in response. “If I pick a fight with an exception like that, I might be able to raise my level, don’t you think?" 1

“…But you always lose.”

He received a response in the form of more lightning that shot from her forehead, well over mach one at that.

However, it scattered in every direction the instant it met Kamijou’s right hand.

It was very much like a water balloon bursting.

Imagine Breaker.

Psychic powers ranged from the ones mocked on TV to the ones established with numerical formulas in Academy City. Anything using that kind of supernatural power, even if it were part of god’s system, would be negated without question by that supernatural power of his.

As it was supernatural in origin, even that girl’s Railgun ability was no exception.

However, Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker only worked on the supernatural power itself. Simply, he could negate an esper’s fireball, but he was still vulnerable to the concrete shards broken by the fireball. Also, the effective range was only his right hand and wrist. If the fireball hit him anywhere else, he would be burned.

And yet…

I really, really thought I was going to die there! Kyaahhh!! He thought frantically.

Kamijou Touma’s calm and composed expression stiffened awkwardly. Even with a right hand that could completely negate those light-speed lightning spears, it was sheer coincidence that they struck his right hand.

His heart was pounding in his chest as he desperately tried to force a mature smile onto his face.

“I guess you could say that was either some misfortune or you’re just unlucky.”

That was how Kamijou brought that day, July 19th, to an end.

With just one comment, he seemed to be lamenting to everything in the world.

“You just really aren’t lucky at all.”

1. Note: Genius and disaster are both pronounced “tensai” in Japanese.