Chapter 3: The Grimoire Peacefully Smiles. Part 1

He did not understand. He did not understand what she was saying.

While Kamijou lay collapsed and bloody on the road, looking up at Kanzaki, he thought he had imagined what he had heard because of the surprise. After all, it made no sense. Index was trying to escape to the Anglican Church while being chased by magicians. How could those magicians be from that very same Anglican Church?

"Have you ever heard of a perfect memory?" asked Kanzaki Kaori. Her voice was weak and she looked pained. At that moment, it was hard to believe she was one of the top 10 magicians in London. She looked like nothing more than an exhausted girl.

"Yes, that's the true identity of her 103,000 grimoires, right?" Kamijou moved his split lips. "They're all in her head. I find it hard to believe she can remember every single thing she sees even once, though. I mean, she's an idiot. She just doesn't look like that kind of genius."

"...What does she look like to you?"

"Just a girl."

Kanzaki looked more exhausted than surprised and said, "Do you think she could have escaped our pursuit for an entire year if she were 'just a girl?'"

"..."

"Stiyl has his flames and I have my Nanasen and Yuisen. She is up against magicians who name their magic names, but she cannot rely on a supernatural power like you or magic like me. She can only run away." Kanzaki gave a self-derisive smile. "And Stiyl and I are only two opponents. Not even I would last a month against the entire organization of Necessarius."

That was true.

Kamijou finally learned the truth about Index. He was unable to escape for four days even with his Imagine Breaker that could smash the systems of God in a single strike. And yet, she...

"She is, without a doubt, a genius," declared Kanzaki. "To the extent that using her ability in the wrong way could cause a disaster.[1] The reason why the higher ups in the church do not treat her normally is clear. They are afraid of her. Everyone is."

"That may be." Kamijou bit his bloody lip. "But she's still human. She's not a tool. I can't... let you call her that...!"

"Yes." Kanzaki nodded. "But her current traits are not that different from normal people like us."

"...?"

"Over 85 percent of Index's brain is filled with the 103,000 grimoires. The remaining 15 percent is just barely managing to function enough for her to be the same as us."

That was amazing and all, but there was something Kamijou wanted to know first.

"...So what? What are you people doing? You're part of the same church as Index, right? That Necessarius thing. Why are you chasing her around? Why was Index saying you were evil magicians from a magic cabal?" Kamijou silently clenched his back teeth. "Or are you trying to say Index was the one tricking me?"

He could not believe that. If she were simply trying to use Kamijou, he saw no reason why she would have risked her life and gotten her back sliced open to save him. And, even without the logical reasoning, he simply did not want to believe it.

"...She was not lying," replied Kanzaki Kaori after slight hesitation.

She sounded like she was holding her breath while her heart was being crushed. "She remembers nothing. She remembers neither our Necessarius affiliation nor the reason for her being chased. Because she does not remember, she has to use her knowledge to fill in the gaps. It is only natural to assume magicians chasing the Index Librorum Prohibitorum are from a magic cabal after her 103,000 grimoires."

Kamijou recalled something: Index had lost her memories from before about a year ago.

"But, wait. Wait a second. That doesn't make sense. Index has a perfect memory, right? So why did she forget? What made her lose her memories?"

"She did not lose them." Kanzaki stopped even breathing. "Technically, I erased them."

Kamijou had no need to even ask how.

Please do not make me give it, boy.

I do not want to give it ever again.

"...Why?" He asked instead. "Why!? I thought you were Index's comrade! And that wasn't just something Index thought, I can tell from your face! You saw Index as a precious comrade, didn't you!? So why!?"

Kamijou recalled the smile Index had given him.

It was the other side of the loneliness that had led to him to be the only person in the world that she knew.

"...We had to do it."

"Why!?" he shouted as if he were howling at the moon above his head.

"Because, otherwise, Index would have died."

His breathing stopped. For no discernible reason, the heat of the midsummer night that he felt on his skin departed. All five of his senses grew thin like they were trying to escape reality.

It felt as if... It felt as if he were a corpse.

"Like I said, 85 percent of her brain is taken up by the memories of the 103,000 grimoires." Kanzaki's shoulders trembled slightly. "She only has the remaining 15 percent for normal use. If she continues to amass memories like a normal person, her brain will quickly burst."

"No way..."

Denial. Rather than use logic or reason, Kamijou's brain simply denied it.

"I mean... I mean... how could that be? You said she was the same as us with that 15 percent..."

"Yes, but she is different than us in one way. She has a perfect memory." All feeling slowly left Kanzaki's voice.

"Think back to what a perfect memory really is."

"...It's the ability to never forget anything you see even once, right?"

"And is the ability to forget really all that bad a thing?"

"..."

"The specifications of the human brain are surprisingly limited. The only reason a human brain can keep functioning for 100 years is because unneeded memories are disposed of by the process of forgetting. For example, you don't remember what you ate for dinner a week ago, do you? Everyone's brain undergoes this maintenance without them even realizing it. Otherwise, people would be unable to live. But," Kanzaki said with an icy voice, "She cannot do this."

"..."

"She cannot forget anything: be it the number of leaves on the trees lining the road, the faces of each and every person during a rush hour, or the shape of each and every raindrop falling from the sky. All of those pointless garbage memories fill up her mind in no time." Kanzaki's voice froze over. "Having only 15 percent of her brain leftover is a fatal tragedy for her. Since she cannot forget on her own, her only way to live is to get another to force her to forget."

Kamijou's mind shattered to pieces.

What... what kind of story is this? I thought this was the story of an uninteresting guy saving an unfortunate girl being chased by evil magicians, getting to know the girl, and finally feeling a slight twinge in his chest as he watches the girl leave in the end.

He continued to analyzed the disparities.

So I came to shelter her before anyone who would use them came to take her away.

I would like to take her into our care without having to give my magic name.

"...How long?" Kamijou asked.

Inquiring instead of denying, he seemingly accepted it somewhere deep down.

"How long until her brain bursts?"

"Her memories are erased at precise one year intervals." Kanzaki sounded exhausted. "The limit is three days from now. It cannot be done too soon or too late. If not done at that exact time, her memories cannot be erased. ...I hope she has yet to experience the powerful headaches that precede it."

Kamijou was shocked. It was true Index had said she had lost her memories from over about a year ago.

...And the headaches. Kamijou had assumed Index had collapsed due to the recovery magic. After all, Index knew the most about magic out of any of them and had said as much.

But, what if Index were mistaken? Kamijou considered.

What if she were moving around in a state where her mind could be destroyed at any moment?

"Now do you understand?" Kanzaki Kaori asked. She had no tears, as if refusing to allow herself to display such cheap expressions. "We wish her no harm. In fact, there is no way to save her without us. So, will you hand her over before I must give my magic name?"

"..."

As Index's face appeared in Kamijou's mind's eye, he gritted his teeth and clenched his eyes shut.

"Also, if we erase her memories she will not remember you. You saw how she viewed us, did you not? No matter how she feels about you now, once she opens her eyes, you will be seen as nothing more than a natural enemy after her 103,000 grimoires."

"..."

At that instant, Kamijou felt something was strange.

"Saving her will gain you nothing."

"...What do you mean by that?" The feeling exploded out in an instant like gasoline thrown on fire. "To hell with that! What does remembering me have to do with it!? You don't seem to get it, so let me tell you something. I'm Index's comrade. I decided to stay on her side no matter what happens! Even if it isn't written in your precious bible, this will never change!!"

"..."

"I thought something was off. If she only forgot, couldn't you just get rid of the misunderstandings by explaining it all to her? Why did you leave it at the status quo? Why did you chase her around like her enemy!? Why the hell did you just decide to abandon her!? Do you have any idea how she fee-..."

"Shut up! You know nothing!!"

Kamijou's anger was crushed by Kanzaki's yell, assaulting him from above. What seemed to squeeze at Kamijou's heart were, rather than the words she spoke, the raw feelings that were stripped bare.

"Don't act like you understand!! How do you think we've felt erasing her feelings all this time!? How could you possibly understand!? You spoke like Stiyl was some kind of sadistic murderer, but do you know how he felt seeing her with you!? Do you know how he suffered!? Do you know how hard it was for him to name himself her enemy!? What do you understand about Stiyl's feelings as he continued to sully himself for the sake of his precious comrade!?"

"Wha-...?"

Before he could raise his voice in shock at her sudden change of behavior, Kanzaki kicked his side like a soccer ball. The unrestrained strike sent Kamijou's body into the air. After landing, he rolled two or three meters further.

The taste of blood overflowed from his stomach up into his mouth.

However, Kanzaki jumped straight up, the moon at her back, before Kamijou could even writhe about in intense pain.

Like some kind of joke, she jumped three meters up into the air with just the strength of her legs.

"...!?"

He heard a dull noise. The flat tip of Shichiten Shichitou's scabbard had crushed Kamijou's arm like high heels.

But, he failed to even cry out in pain. The expression on Kanzaki's face made it seem like she would shed tears of blood.

Kamijou feared.

He was not afraid of Nanasen or Yuisen or of the power of one the top 10 magicians in London. He feared the raw human emotions that assaulted him.

"We tried too! We tried everything we could! We spent spring trying, we spent summer trying, we spent fall trying, and we spent winter trying! We promised to make memories that she would never forget and we made journals and photo albums!"

The end of the scabbard rained down again and again like a sewing machine.

His legs, his arms, his gut, his chest, his face. The blunt blows crushed his body again and again.

"...But none of them worked."

Kamijou heard the sound of her gritting teeth. Her hand stopped.

"Even when we showed her the journals and the photo albums, she just apologized. No matter what we did and no matter how many times we tried, even if we remade the memories from scratch, nothing worked. Everything returned to zero whether you were family, her friend, or her lover." She trembled so much that it seemed she could not take another step. "We... could stand it no longer. We could not bear to see that smile of hers any longer."

With Index's personality, having to say farewell must have been as painful as dying. Having to experience such a thing over and over again would be like living in hell.

Immediately after experiencing the misfortune that was the farewell, she would forget it all and tragically begin a run toward that same determined misfortune once more.

That was why Kanzaki and Stiyl had chosen to lessen the misfortune as much as possible rather than give her the cruel fortune of knowing them. If Index never had the precious memories she had to lose, then the shock of losing her memories would lessen. That was why they abandoned their good friend and played the part of an enemy.

They would blot out her memories to make that final hell as easy as possible for her.

"..."

Somehow or other, Kamijou understood.

They were expert magicians. They made the impossible possible. The entire time Index repeatedly lost her memories, they had to have searched for a way to keep her from losing her memories.

They never succeeded.

Even then, Index had certainly never blamed Stiyl or Kanzaki.

She had surely given them that same smile like usual.

Being forced to connect with her anew each time had led Kanzaki and Stiyl to blame themselves and see giving up as the only option.

But that was...

"To hell with that!" Kamijou gritted his teeth. "That reasoning only takes you into account. You didn't give even a single thought about Index! Don't blame your cowardice on her!!"

For the past year, Index had continued to flee on her own without relying on anyone. Kamijou refused to accept that that was the best option. He would not let himself accept it. He did not want to.

"Then... what else are we supposed to do!?"

Kanzaki grabbed Shichiten Shichitou's scabbard and swung it down forcefully at Kamijou's face.

Kamijou moved his battered right hand and grabbed the scabbard just before it struck his face.

No longer did he feel fear or nervousness because of the magician.

His body moved. It moved!

"If you were a little stronger..." Kamijou gritted his teeth. "If you had used fox words powerful enough to become reality...! If she were afraid of losing her memories of that year, you just have to give her even better memories the next year! If happiness, great enough to erase her fears of memory loss, awaited her, she wouldn't have to keep running! That's all it would have taken!!"

He forcibly moved his left arm, now with a broken shoulder, and grabbed the scabbard with that hand too. He forced his battered body into a standing position. Blood flowed from various parts of his body.

"Are you seriously thinking of fighting in that state?"

"...Shut... up."

"What will you gain by fighting?" Kanzaki seemed legitimately confused. "Even if you did defeat me, Necessarius awaits behind me. I may have said I was one of the top 10 magicians in London, but there are those stronger than me. ...From the church's point of view, I am nothing more than a subordinate sent out to this Far East island nation."

It was likely true.

If they were truly Index's comrades, they would have opposed the church's way of treating her like a tool. The fact that they did not meant that there was a gap of power preventing it.

"I said... shut up!!"

It did not matter. He forced his body to move despite the fact it trembled as if he were about to die and glared at Kanzaki standing before him.

It was a simple gaze that held little power but was enough to make one of the top 10 magicians in London take a step back.

"That doesn't matter! Do you resign yourself to protecting people because you happen have strength!?" Kamijou took a step forward with his battered legs. "No, you don't, do you!? Don't lie! You worked to gain power because there was something you wanted to protect!"

He grabbed Kanzaki's collar with his battered left hand.

"Why did you acquire power?"

He made a bloody fist with his battered right hand.

"Who did you want to protect!?"

Using that weak fist, he struck Kanzaki's face. There lacked anything remotely resembling force behind the punch and the fist itself actually spurted blood like a tomato.

Even so, Kanzaki stumbled back as if truly punched. She released Shichiten Shichitou which spiraled as it fell to the ground.

"Then what the hell are you doing here!?" He looked down on Kanzaki, who had collapsed to the ground. "If you have so much strength... if you have so much almighty power, then why are you so powerless?"

The ground shook, or so it seemed, under Kamijou. The next instant, he collapsed to the ground like the electricity powering his body had switched off.

Get... up... The counterattack... is coming... He reprimanded himself.

His vision was dyed in darkness.

Kamijou, forcibly moving his body, had lost too much blood to see or recover. He moved in an attempt to defend against Kanzaki's counterattack but the best he could manage was move one fingertip like a caterpillar.

However, no counterattack came.

Nothing.