“Never thought buying you a meal would land me in a mess this big…”
In the cafeteria, amid the crowd’s faintly noisy whispering, Shirai Kuroko had gone all ashen and slumped face-down onto the table.
Across from her, Yurika was single-mindedly demolishing the Deluxe Tokiwadai Set Meal that Shirai Kuroko had so graciously provided.
The cost of one Deluxe Tokiwadai Set Meal was, to Shirai Kuroko, daughter of the Shirai family and a Level 4 esper, nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
Of course, the same would have been true for the old Yurika.
But to the Yurika of now, the price of one Deluxe Tokiwadai Set Meal could be called sky-high without exaggeration.
So there was no way Yurika would waste a single bit of that Deluxe Tokiwadai Set Meal.
“There there, don’t say that…”
Still, this Deluxe Tokiwadai Set Meal had, after all, been bought for her by Shirai Kuroko, and when it came down to it, Yurika bore no small share of the blame for what had happened.
So after she managed, with some difficulty, to swallow the food she’d crammed into her mouth, Yurika found a moment to console Shirai Kuroko a little.
“Shokuhou didn’t end up giving you any grief in the end, did she?”
“But that was entirely thanks to you!”
That only made it worse.
The moment it came up, Shirai Kuroko felt a bellyful of resentment.
Of course, she didn’t blame Yurika for it.
The one she mainly blamed was that Mental Out, Shokuhou Misaki, whom she simply couldn’t stand.
“And the look in that woman’s eyes when she left… there’s no way she’s just going to let me off the hook!”
Just as Shirai Kuroko said, the reason Shokuhou Misaki hadn’t blown the matter up at the cafeteria door after seeing Shirai Kuroko was thanks to Yurika stepping in and smoothing things over.
As a member of Judgment, Shirai Kuroko understood very well that the look was practically the look of someone about to commit a crime… being marked by a Level 5, just the thought of it made Shirai Kuroko’s skin crawl.
A flower like Yurika, raised in a greenhouse her whole life, naturally knew nothing of all these social complications, nor that Shirai Kuroko had already been killed a hundred times over, a hundred times!, in Shokuhou Misaki’s mind.
But seeing that Shirai Kuroko was in a bad mood, Yurika could only summon her patience and console her for quite a while.
“Hah, never mind. I’d originally wanted you to put in a word for me, but from the look of you, it seems you didn’t even catch what was going on…”
Consoled for a bit by Yurika’s clumsy words, Shirai Kuroko didn’t laugh because her predicament had been resolved.
Rather, she laughed at Yurika’s slightly airheaded attempts at comfort.
That under her expressionless face Yurika hid a genuine natural airhead did catch Shirai Kuroko a bit by surprise.
“My Onee-sama’s a Level 5 anyway… I’m not scared of her.”
“Ehehe…”
Pestered by those besotted girls for ages as she’d been, Yurika was, in the end, still utterly clueless about matters of romance.
Shirai Kuroko’s words landed in her ears as the equivalent of you’re not a Level 5, you can’t compete with Shokuhou Misaki, so all Yurika could do was give an awkward little smile in response.
“You’re hopeless…”
One look at Yurika’s expression and Shirai Kuroko knew this girl definitely hadn’t grasped her meaning at all, so in the end she could only let out a resigned sigh.
“Whew, stuffed and satisfied…”
Having finished the Deluxe Tokiwadai Set Meal, even Yurika’s long-frigid, almost stiff cheeks couldn’t help but reveal a hint of contentment.
But she quickly tucked that expression away, then looked with faint puzzlement at Shirai Kuroko, who’d walked out the cafeteria door alongside her.
“Kuroko, just now it looked like you only ate a little salad… is that okay?”
“…I’m on a diet.”
Seemingly thrown off by Yurika’s earlier expression, Shirai Kuroko blanked for a while before answering, and there was a deep grudge in her tone as she glanced rather glumly at Yurika’s waistline.
“Maybe it’s a constitution thing…”
Pinned by Shirai Kuroko’s resentment-filled stare, Yurika touched her waist a little uncomfortably, then answered somewhat sheepishly.
“You, honestly…”
Shirai Kuroko shook her head with a wry smile and was about to say something more, when all of a sudden she choked up like a chicken caught by the throat, her voice cutting off mid-word.
She even stopped dead in her tracks, not moving an inch.
“What’s wrong with you?”
A gesture this obvious from Shirai Kuroko, even an airhead like Yurika couldn’t fail to notice it.
Seeing Shirai Kuroko stop, Yurika stopped too, curiously turning her head to look at her and asking, puzzled,
“Why’d you suddenly stop?”
“O-Onee—”
But hearing Yurika’s question, a flash of panic-stricken alarm suddenly surfaced on Shirai Kuroko’s face.
Before Yurika could even react, Shirai Kuroko abruptly reached out, grabbed Yurika’s left hand, and, heedless of the fact that they were out on a public street, activated her ability, teleporting herself and Yurika away from the spot in an instant.
But clearly, Shirai Kuroko’s move didn’t have the effect she’d hoped for.
In the very instant she and Yurika vanished from the spot, the person Shirai Kuroko had wanted to dodge had already spotted the two of them.
“Was that just now… Kuroko?”
Across from the Tokiwadai cafeteria, Tokiwadai’s Level 5, the Electric Princess Misaka Mikoto, stared in some astonishment at the spot where Shirai Kuroko and Yurika had disappeared.
“She was with Tenshouin?”
Tenshouin Yurika and Misaka Mikoto had never had any point of intersection.
But starting today, it seemed that was about to change.