A Certain Magical Index [Male Reader Insert]

Chapter Three: The Sorcerer Lands in the Town

3rd Person's PoV

These days, 320 yen couldn't even buy a large serving of beef bowl.

".........................................................................................................Medium..."

Girls that nibble at their tiny bento boxes wouldn't understand, but for growing, sweaty boys, medium-size beef bowls were really just snacks.

After chasing away the spark-plug girl, Mikoto Misaka, he enjoyed his snack at the beef bowl place. With thirty yen (after tax) remaining in his wallet, he walked back to the student dormitory, now covered in shadow.

No one was around.

It was the first day of summer vacation, so everyone was probably out having tons of fun in the city.

At a glance, the building looked like any old studio apartment complex. There was a line of tightly packed doors on the straight path along the wall of the square building, guarded by a portcullis-like metal railing. Since this was a boys-only dormitory, there were no "miniskirt-peeping prevention" plastic sheets on them.

The student dorm buildings stretched away from the road. He could see the building entrances on the sides and the individual balconies lining the gaps between the buildings.

The entrances had automatic locks on them these days, but the distance between adjacent buildings was only two meters. It would be easy to infiltrate another building if you jumped across the roofs.

He disengaged the lock, slipped past the closet that they called the administrative office, and got on the elevator. The elevator had a unique charm to it. It was even more cramped and dirtier than elevators used at construction sites, and the R button indicating the roof was blocked by a small metal plate in order to prevent roof-hopping Romeos.

The elevator made a microwave-like ding and stopped on the seventh floor.

The door opened with a groan. Kotarou helped push it aside, then exited onto the walkway. It was seven floors up, but it didn't feel like a very tall building. It seemed needlessly hot and humid, maybe because of the oppressiveness of the building next door.

"Hm?"

It was then that Kamijou noticed. On the other end of the straight path, in front of the door to his own room, were three cleaning robots. Three was an unusual sight. There were only five cleaning robots assigned to this building in the first place. They were each moving back and forth with short, quick motions, so he thought there must be a pretty nasty mess there.

...For some reason, an extreme foreboding of misfortune settled over him.

Those oil-drum droids had enough destructive force to tear off pieces of gum stuck to the ground on main roads. Just what on earth needed three of them to tackle it? He shuddered—

"Just what on earth...?"

People have a rather peculiar compulsion to witness disaster. Taking another step or two forward, he finally saw the source.

There was a girl collapsed on the floor out of hunger. I looked ahead and saw Touma also running towards her.

".........................................................................................................Ah—"

He couldn't see her whole body behind the robots, but the downward-facing white habit pockmarked with shiny safety pins made it clear she'd collapsed there.

She didn't flinch, even though the three oil-drum robots were ramming her with a rhythmic clunk-clunk. The scene had an air of tragedy, as if city crows were pecking at her corpse. But cleaning robots were programmed to avoid humans and other obstacles. Not even robots treated her as if she was human? What was that all about?