A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 7 by Kazuma Kamachi Page A

hotel and preparing for battle would be surreal, and akin to camping out anyway.
    But if we’re going to be starting at eleven
…
Am I going to make it to school tomorrow? Ah! Wait a sec, isn’t the deadline for avoiding the summer homework penalty coming up?
    Panicked, he turned his thoughts back to Academy City, but there was nothing he could do about it.
    Due to various circumstances, he never finished his homework from summer break. Miss Komoe had given him a replacement assignment because of that (she had created handouts for him alone). The deadline, if he recalled correctly, was tomorrow…
    Ahhhhh!
    He blanched. He thought he’d have finished it for
sure
. The hard-working Touma Kamijou had been desperately racking his brains and desperately evading Index’s desire to play and the cat’sdesire for snacks all day. In all honesty, there was a part he would never have been able to do on his own. But after Mikoto Misaka taught him the trick to solving those problems yesterday (she stuck with him for hours for some reason, despite getting angry at him constantly), he had sped up his pace, and he had just begun to catch a glimpse of a ray of hope that he’d finish within the day.
    Crap, crap, she’ll be so mad! What do I do, ahh
…
Miss Komoe will definitely get mad that Mikoto helped me, no doubt. Ahh
…
I haven’t said this in a while. One, two—what rotten luck!
    He began to tremble a little. He quietly looked up at the night sky—and decided to believe the shining, transparent drops coming from his eyelids were sweat.
    His shoulders drooped. He trudged over to the camp in the corner and got himself some soup and bread that seemed Italian but he didn’t really know the names. As he munched on it, he took a quick look at his surroundings. There were a number of dome-shaped tents all over the Hakumeiza parking lot. The parking lot was definitely not big enough to cover everyone, but some could sleep inside the building. Besides, more than half of the Roman Orthodox people here were urgently making preparations and didn’t seem to have time to catch a nap anyway.
    It all made Kamijou hesitant to go to sleep by himself without a care in the world, but Stiyl had said bored people wandering around would be much more of a nuisance.
    No one’s gonna call the police on all these people camping out in an abandoned building, are they? Or did they do that magic to keep people away so that wouldn’t happen?
Kamijou thought as he entered a tent in the campground and wrapped himself up in a blanket.
    Stiyl was already lying down next to him, and Index was apparently in the next tent over. The sorcerer had wanted to be in the same tent so he could protect her, but that opinion didn’t seem to go over well.
If only Kanzaki were here—she’s a girl…,
he had muttered, grinding his teeth, while sticking rune cards all over the tent she was in. Kamijou looked at them. It seemed like Innocentius’s powerlevel varied based on how many cards Stiyl used, and the man had been lamenting how limited he was with such a small tent.
    Kamijou lay in the tent for a little while, but he just couldn’t seem to sleep. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel tired or that he was experiencing pre-battle excitement—he just felt awkward resting by himself when so many other people were working outside. And when he envisioned them in his mind’s eye, he couldn’t help but think of Orsola, dressed in the same habit.
    “…I’m going to go help with something.” Squirming, he crawled out from underneath his blanket.
    Stiyl seemed annoyed. “I won’t stop you, but please try not to break any of their Soul Arms with that strange right hand…And if you do, you’re on your own. The English Puritans will have nothing to do with it.”
    Spurred on by the extremely unpleasant advice, Kamijou left the tent.
    The night was sweltering. It was hot and humid outside, too. He saw a girl with a big bundle of silver candles in her hands, a sister