At 5 PM, Accelerator left the air-conditioned apartment and placed his cane on the asphalt. He held a cell phone in his other hand.
He was heading out to find Last Order who had not returned home no matter how long they waited.
It seemed all of Academy City had only a half day of classes, but by this time of day it was indistinguishable from a normal weekday. The students walking around were wearing sailor uniforms or collared jackets in order to grow accustomed to their brand new winter uniforms. The only real difference from normal was the distinctive smell of new clothes floating in the air.
"What annoying weather…" muttered Accelerator as he glanced up into the sky.
He had not noticed from within the apartment, but the blue sky had at some point grown covered by gray…or rather, almost black clouds. The sky looked like it could begin raining at any moment. Since the Academy City supercomputer named Tree Diagram that had been used for managing the weather forecast had been destroyed, sudden changes in the weather such as evening showers could no longer be predicted accurately.
"Oh, dear. I hope we find her before it starts pouring," said Yomikawa over the phone while she was probably looking up at the sky as well.
Yoshikawa had been left alone in the apartment. It was possible Last Order would return while they were out looking, but she would be stuck standing in front of the main entrance as she did not have a key or the passcode.
Accelerator clicked his tongue.
He did not care if she just stood there, but that child had a habit of running off somewhere when she was bored, so he highly doubted she would actually stay put. They were afraid of her getting fed up of waiting and leaving which would only make their search harder.
Accelerator adjusted his grip on the cell phone and said, "I thought you were in your car?"
"I'll still get wet in the time it takes me to hold up the umbrella after opening the door."
Accelerator almost called her pathetic, but he held his tongue. He was the one whose body had grown white from avoiding the ultraviolet rays of sunlight.
"So do you have a general idea where that brat is?" he asked instead.
"I picked up on what sounded like the background music played in the underground mall near here."
"Ah? Did you use your analysis equipment just to look for a lost child?"
"Like I said before, finding a lost child is part of my job. Now then. I just had to analyze the music playing in the background of her phone call to determine her location."
"Hmph. Are you talking about that sound no one hears that plays all over the city?"
"Oh? So someone actually noticed. Technically, it's a wave with a frequency lower than the audible range for humans."
"You idiots," spat out Accelerator.
He was an esper with the power to observe, calculate, and control every type of vector. If he missed the vectors he could not see or hear, he would never be able to defend against things like radiation.
"You secretly mix that sound in with the store music and anything else coming from any speakers, don't you?"
"That's right," affirmed Yomikawa. "But just adding in a low frequency wave would be meaningless. It only becomes a proper sound once a special frequency Anti-Skill has is used alongside it. Each individual speaker is made so we detect a different sound from it, so we can get a general idea where a phone call was made. These days, devices that prevent a phone trace are so easy to get a hold of that we have to go to all this extra effort. Of course, this is just one method of searching. We usually gather information from a variety of sources using a few different methods."
"What a pain in the ass," sighed Accelerator.
Only Academy City could easily pull off such a rough setup. They could solve countless problems from the alterations to the systems to the deployment of the equipment by saying it was "for an experiment".
"So I just have to head to that underground mall, right?" asked Accelerator.
"For now. I doubt that quick little thing will stay in one place for long, so you might have to start asking around."
"…Me? Looking like this?"
"Just smile! C'mon, start practicing your smile."
"Idiot," said Accelerator with a click of his tongue.
At any rate, he was too well known and not in a good way. If that Level 5 approached someone with a smile, they might die of shock. He would completely understand if the person pulled out a gun and shot him because they assumed he was coming to murder them. Simply put, there would be nothing they could do if he was. And so they would choose to fight back in any way they could.
But if he was to search for Last Order, he needed to gather information.
"This is going to get annoying," muttered Accelerator.
And then Yomikawa suddenly spoke up.
"Hey, Accelerator."
"What?"
"Are you that afraid of showing good will to others?"
"…You really like these cheerful topics, don't you? It's perfect for an afterschool walk."
"Is it easy being a tyrant?"
Yomikawa was not listening.
Or rather, she was ignoring what he said.
"It may cause a lot of trouble with people, but I suppose it does have its perks," she said. "A tyrant will never be betrayed. He never has to worry about a friendship dying. He never has to fear that his good will could be rejected. After all, he is nothing but a target of fear and hatred."
Her words smoothly continued.
Accelerator merely listened.
"I am not saying that human relationships are made entirely out of good will and ill will. But it is true that you have pushed back everything that came before you with rejection and ill will. It was easier that way. But that will change. That is why I am asking. Are you that afraid to choose whether you will show good will or ill will?"
"What a load of shit. I-…"
"It's the truth," said Yomikawa, cutting off Accelerator's words. "You are willing to accept good will from Last Order, but you are afraid to show good will to her. Your relationship looks good at first glance, but it is actually in a very precarious situation. If that good will from Last Order ever runs out, there will be nothing left to hold it together."
Her tone was flat.
The fact that she saw no need to emphasis anything made it feel all the more true.
"Are you afraid, Accelerator? Afraid to do anything that would push her any further away from you because you do not know how to bring her closer. Afraid that your actions will backfire and push her so far away that you can never bring her back. But nothing will ever happen if you do nothing."
"Are you lecturing me?"
"I am well aware I'm not the best person for this, but I am a teacher. Although I doubt a lowly Anti-Skill member like me would ever have a chance to learn of your true darkness."
"True," said Accelerator, now understanding what she we getting at.
She had probably already searched the Bank for information on him.
She was now asking him directly because that had gotten her nowhere.
"You sure do things in a roundabout way," he commented.
"Just the name of the place you used to be was enough to tell me that."
"The Special Esper Institute?"
Accelerator easily spoke the name Yomikawa hesitated to voice.
That institute's name was recorded…or rather, sealed in an especially strict region of the Bank.
"Its official name is the Special Esper Dual Modification Technology Research Institute. I was forced to live in that school until I was 9. That hell was rumored to have a facility for disposing of corpses on the grounds."
It was only in Academy City that two mismatched ideas like that of a school and the disposing of corpses would be brought together like that. In that city, schools also functioned as research and testing institutions for psychic powers development. When rumors branched off, the schools could become known as murderous institutions that performed inhuman research.
"But the place was even worse than the rumors suggested. They didn't dispose of corpses there. It was the opposite. It was a garbage dump for the disposal of living human beings. I'm sure you've at least heard the stories."
"…Yes, I have."
The Special Esper Institute had focused on experiments and research into Dual Skills. Currently, it had been concluded that students could only use a single power each and that the appearance of two or more powers at once was impossible. Most of the data used to reach that conclusion had been gathered at that institute.
In other words, a long string of failures had led to the discovery of that law.
Psychic powers were developed by directly affecting the structure of the brain using suggestion and drugs. It was best not to imagine what sort of tragedies were created when that failed. Contemplating on that too much could lead you to realize the truth behind the seemingly ridiculous phrase of "a fate worse than death".
Yomikawa said, "It was my unit that raided and broke up that institution."
"Thanks, I guess."
"Towards the end, the Special Esper Institute had to have realized that an esper could only have a single power. Yet they still desired a completed Dual Skill for their own fame, so they sacrificed more and more children. They especially liked to use Child Errors."
A Child Error was one social phenomenon unique to Academy City.
As a general rule, every student in Academy City lived in a dormitory with a few exceptions that freeloaded in a bakery or something similar. However, in some rare cases, someone would use Academy City to abandon a child. They would pay the entry fee and then disappear once the child had entered the dorm. It was better than stuffing an infant in a coin locker, but it was the same basic idea.
Academy City had developed a system for caring for those children.
But some parasitic research teams would use that to their own advantage. Produce, the Dark May Project, and experiments in inducing runaway powers to analyze the laws behind them. Those types of experiments were not permitted by the leadership of Academy City, but they were carried out regardless using the Child Errors.
"…I saw it there. I saw what became of the children taken beyond those heavy doors," said Yomikawa in a heavy voice.
When he heard that, Accelerator laughed.
He laughed at that naïve thinking of a normal person that led her to believe that was as deep as the hell went.
Her lack of imagination was proof that Yomikawa Aiho was a resident of a wholesome world.
Unlike Accelerator, who laughed because he knew how deep it all went.
"But unfortunately, I didn't get to see your heroic actions. As I said before, I was only in the Special Esper Institute until I was 9. I was moved elsewhere then. Do you know why?" The corners of Accelerator's mouth twisted up. "Because they couldn't handle me. Even that hell found my power to be too much. Even those demons in lab coats were afraid of me. That's just the kind of monster I am." The white student spoke into his cell phone. "And it was no different afterwards. It was all such nonsense. Imaginary Number Institute, the Wisdom Institute, a Kirigaoka affiliate… Well, tragedies are surprisingly soft. That is how I managed to slip through. And when I slipped through, I just sank further. Deeper and deeper."
Accelerator tapped his cane against the ground.
The bottom clacked against the asphalt as if he had spit on the ground.
"I never stayed in the same place for 2 months straight. And during the course of it all, I was reminded just how much of a monster I am. They were demons themselves, so what did that make me when they were all afraid of me?"
And as that monster bounced from place to place with no one able to handle him, he had eventually reached the Level 6 research institution Yoshikawa had belonged to. He had been received exceptionally well there and thus stayed for more than 2 months. But that had only been another face of their fear of Accelerator. The looks on their faces plainly said they were trying not to anger him. The only exception had been that naïve Yoshikawa.
And even after ultimately slaughtering over 10,000 people, the researchers had still treated him the same.
The sense of distance between them had seemed as if it would never melt away.
Fear.
A whiteness that was rejected by the darkness.
In the end, that had been what Accelerator was.
"It's impossible for me to show anyone good will. It's futile. What good is it to pay back a single yen on a one hundred million yen debt? I have no intention of paying out any good will if it will just be crushed under nothing but the interest. It's ridiculous to even think about a joyous day when I've finished paying back it all. It gives me chills."
His words were pathetic.
Accelerator cursed to himself that he should not be boasting about how much debt he had.
Yomikawa remained silent for a while.
But then she spoke.
"This may be simplifying things a bit, but you hate that you have completely forgotten about paying it back, don't you? If you had a way to pay back that hundred million debt, you would jump at it. Am I wrong?"
"…Hmph."
Accelerator did not give a proper reply.
Yomikawa's tone of voice did not change. She remained serious.
"For example, I do not aim a weapon at children. Even if I am up against an esper, I will never aim a weapon at them. That is my own personal rule that I hold myself to."
"What?"
"Why do you think I hold myself to that rule?"
"…"
"Do you know why I would hesitate to aim a weapon at a child?"
"You…" muttered Accelerator under his breath.
The scent of dark feelings leaking from her voice brought the image of a back alley to his mind.
"That's right. The amount of my debt may be trivial compared to yours, but it is still the same sort of debt. And that means we must do the same sort of thing even if you must do it on a larger scale, right?" Yomikawa's voice stabbed into Accelerator. "No matter how pathetic it may seem, we can only pay it back one yen, or even less than a yen, at a time. As it accumulates, it will surely open the path before you. And you have powers I do not have. There may be plenty of ways for you to pay it all back at once."
"What a laughable idea. It's brings such a smile to my face, I think it's going to distort it into something horrible."
"The easiest method might be to join Judgment. Just having your name in their ranks could be enough to make Academy City 30% more peaceful than it is now. I could prepare the paperwork if you want."
"That isn't happening," said Accelerator in rejection.
His was not that sort of power. His power was the type that would gain him nothing more than the splattered blood of his enemies. His power was worse than nuclear power. It was a wholly negative power that had no possible way to be used peacefully. He could try all he wanted, but it would never lead to success. His actions would produce nothing but destruction.
But…
He may have wondered "what if" at times.
What if he had used his power to stop that experiment?
What if he had used his power to stop those Sisters from heading down the path of death?
And…
What if it was still not too late?
How many of the deaths scattered before him and that would be scattered before him in the future could be prevented?
But that was all nothing more than empty theories that could not be realized.
There was no way he could do it.
He knew there was no way he could do it.
No one had needed to tell him that. As the one who had been using his powers for so long, he knew it better than anyone.
And yet…
"That's all bullshit."
"But if you gather enough of that 'bullshit', you can pay back your debt," said Yomikawa Aiho.
She spoke with the voice of one who stood in the sunlight.