Chapter Text
Sunday, July 19
I stared at the mess in a mixture of awe and disbelief. Even after watching it happen I struggled to understand the mechanics of what just happened.
I looked at the spiky haired boy standing in the middle of it all. He was covered in the remains of the food I had made. Somehow despite standing next to him when it happened, I was completely untouched. He looked more resigned than anything else.
“Such misfortune…” we both said simultaneously. It was a phrase I had become all too familiar with recently.
“I know I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but even for you, Touma, this is excessive. Three boxes, all of which were duct taped shut, and you still somehow managed to spill all of them in less than ten seconds," I said, walking over to the cabinet to grab cleaning supplies.
“Honestly, I consider the two meals I had today to be a huge success,” he responded, “Before you came along most of the food I even managed to eat was takeout or made from the cheapest ingredients I could find. The past two months have been the best I’ve eaten in a long time.”
He wasn’t wrong. When I first met Touma I hadn’t truly understood just how atrocious his luck actually was. Maika had told me stories about him but I had thought she was exaggerating. No one could be that unlucky.
I was quickly proven incorrect. If anything she had understated his luck.
The first week I worked as his maid were some of the most exhausting days of my life. None of the training at school came even close to the difficulty of keeping this boy fed and healthy. Even putting everything I could into it, I had only been able to get him an average of 1.25 meals in a day. And somehow, that was an improvement to what he was used to.
It was definitely worth the effort though. After two months I had improved by leaps and bounds in basically every aspect. I used to be at the bottom of my class in most areas, cooking in particular was especially difficult for me. I was still adequate, but for a Ryouran maid adequate was unacceptable. We needed to be exceptional. The only area I had really excelled in before was hand to hand combat.
Now though? I was top ten in my class in nearly every area (though I was still lagging behind in etiquette).
As for cooking? I was now in the top five in the school. I had gained experience cooking in every set of adverse conditions possible. I could cook almost any recipe with my eyes closed. I could even cook minute rice in only fifty eight seconds.
Touma had been a huge help. Apparently he was actually a really good cook. Since his luck was so bad he had learned to cook with a severely limited budget, so he was able to help me learn a lot of recipes that were tasty and healthy while also being dirt cheap.
I had even leveled up my ability. I had been at Level 1 before I started here. Then, at the System Scan a couple days ago, my ability had increased to Level 2.
Two weeks ago I had managed a full week of two meals for the first time. It wasn’t like it was getting easier either, every improvement had to be built on top of the strategies and precautions I was already taking. If anything, whatever it was that caused Touma’s bad luck was trying harder than ever.
Today I had come closer than ever before to giving him a third meal. The food was prepared, edible, at his apartment, in my hands, and ready to serve. Then, like always, it all went wrong.
I knelt down, scooping the food into a garbage bag, “You can go get changed, I’ll finish cleaning up here. Do you want to try getting something from Benny's? I’m not too optimistic but it’s worth a shot.”
“Sure. Thanks Maki,” he said, grabbing a change of clothes and walking into the bathroom.
I glanced at the singular untouched bento that I had set aside for myself. I knew from experience that if I even thought about giving it to Touma it would swiftly meet the same fate as the others. I picked it up and put it in my bag, if we did manage to get food tonight I could always eat it tomorrow.
Benny’s was a standard chain restaurant, the food wasn’t great but it was cheap, close, and open 24/7, so we ended up coming here on days when Touma’s luck was exceptionally bad and he didn’t manage to get any food. Usually, on days like today I would just quit while I was ahead, but I had gotten so close, and I was too stubborn to admit defeat.
“I’m going to head to the bathroom. You go on ahead,” I said.
He nodded and went to go find a table, while I headed to the bathroom.
On the way I was stopped by a group of clearly drunk guys who were just coming out. They looked like they were going to try to talk to me, but they wisely backed off once they saw my uniform.
After I finished I looked around for Touma and—
I let out a sigh.
Touma was standing next to a girl arguing with the same group of guys from earlier.
Of course he would get involved. That was actually one of the things I admired about Touma. He was always willing to help others no matter the risk or inconvenience to himself. Unfortunately, it frequently ended up with him in the hospital.
As I got closer I realized the girl he was “protecting” was Misaka Mikoto.
The good news was that he probably wouldn’t end up in the hospital.
The bad news was there was zero chance of him getting anything more to eat today.
Misaka Mikoto, also known as Railgun, was the third most powerful esper in the city. She was also a bit of a delinquent. She could have easily handled the entire group and a hundred more.
For some reason she was also obsessed with fighting Touma. They met about a month ago in an almost identical situation. Ever since then Misaka would try to fight him every time they saw each other.
Before I was able to make it over and try to deescalate, Touma turned around and sprinted towards the exit. The guys started chasing after him, with Misaka not far behind.
I saw Misaka’s roommate sitting in a booth near where they had run off from. She had the same exhausted look of resignation that I felt on myself. I didn’t know her name, and I’d only seen her in passing a couple of times. But as we made eye contact I felt a sense of camaraderie with her.
Walking outside I found a group of groaning bodies lying on the ground on the sidewalk. Black scorch marks dotted the area around them.
I’d seen Misaka in action a few times before and it never failed to amaze me how powerful she was.
I saw Misaka’s roommate pull out a judgement armband and start talking into her phone so I decided to leave her to sort out everything here.
I didn’t see Touma or Misaka anywhere, so I used the windmill trick Touma had told me about. I saw a few wind turbines turning the wrong direction a ways off and started walking towards them.
I wasn’t too worried about either of them getting hurt. Every time they fought, Misaka would try zapping him, Touma would negate it with his weird hand, and repeat until Misaka got tired of yelling at him. Neither one of them ever got seriously hurt. It was honestly kind of entertaining to watch. It wasn’t often you got to watch a Level 5 esper fight someone that actually challenged them.
I hadn’t actually interacted with her much. She mostly focused on Touma. Last time they fought was actually the first time I had talked to her. We hadn’t said much. We introduced ourselves, I said something about needing to sleep, she called Touma an idiot, then we left. Both of us were too tired to say anything more.
After walking for a few minutes I heard shouting and the telltale biri biri that was Misaka’s ability.
I saw them on a bridge. Misaka was yelling at Touma, sparks of electricity flying off her. Touma was sitting on the ground, occasionally moving his hand to intercept one of Misaka’s sparks that would have hit him.
There was a perfectly straight line burned into the pavement running from where Misaka was standing along the bridge. It seemed she’d already used her railgun today, usually she waited a while before pulling that out.
“What do you mean Level 0! Nothing I do can land a hit on you! Lightning and Iron Sand are negated! Even my Railgun was cancelled!” Misaka shouted. “I’m not so weak that a Level 0 would be able to beat me. So STOP MOCKING ME!”
“Hello again, Misaka,” I said walking up to them.
“Oh, hello, Kobayashi,” Misaka responded, turning to look at me, “This idiot keeps trying to say he’s a Level 0. Who does he think he’s fooling?”
“He really is a Level 0,” I said in a calming tone, then added, “Technically.”
Misaka blinked, “What? How?”
“The System Scan isn’t a perfect measurement of the power of an ability. Some Level 0s are classified that way because there’s no way to directly measure their power. His power is particularly difficult to measure. The System Scan functions by measuring the effects of an esper power, even Level 0s without a usable power still create detectable phenomena through their AIM field. His hand though? It negates even his own AIM field, so there’s nothing to even measure.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say,” Touma complained. “I actually am a Level 0.”
At this Misaka started to calm down. Maybe we could get out of this without any violence.
Then Touma opened his mouth again, and I knew he was somehow going to dig himself into a hole.
“Let’s just drop this whole rivalry thing, Biri Biri. I mean it’s not like you’d ever be able to actually hit me with anything. I’ll just keep negating everything you throw at me and this will never end.”
I let out a sigh. God damnit. I swear, he has no filter between his brain and mouth. Maybe it’s from all the head trauma.
“You know what, you’re right,” she said, sparks starting to fly off of her again. “Let’s end this right now.”
Around us thunder clouds started forming in the sky.
“I’ve always held back because I didn't want to kill you. But you’ve always taken everything I could throw at you without so much as a scratch. So now I’m going to hit you with everything I have! And my name is MISAKA MIKOTO, NOT BIRI BIRI!”
Shooting a railgun at him was holding back!?
I started backing away. “I’m… I’m gonna go hide under the bridge. Misaka, please try not to kill him.”
Once I was clear I felt more than heard an extremely loud bang and saw a bright flash. Even under the bridge looking in the opposite direction I had to shield my eyes from the light.
After I was sure there was no danger I walked back over to where they had been standing.
“Oh good, you’re still alive,” I said once I made it over to them.
“Such misfortune,” He moaned.
Touma was sitting in the same place he had been when I left. He was completely unharmed, though his hair was even spikier than normal from all the static electricity.
“No, no, no. That was all on you. No ‘such misfortune’ this time.”
It looked like he was about to say something but stopped when the lights around us suddenly went out. Then the buildings around us went dark. The power outage spread until it looked like most of the city had lost power.
“Holy shit Misaka. What did you hit him with?”
She actually looked embarrassed at that, which was kind of adorable.
“I’m going to head back home now. Are you two good to get back to your dorms?” Touma asked as he stood up.
“Yeah I’m good, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
“Yeah, I also need to hurry back before curfew or I’ll be in serious trouble,” Misaka said.
“What time is your curfew?” I asked.
It was already pretty late.
She pulled out her phone. Her eyes widened and she winced when she saw what time it was, “Fifteen minutes ago…”
“Hey, why don’t you help me with fixing the power outage. That should excuse you for being late.”
Misaka blinked in confusion. “Huh, why would you fix the power outage? Shouldn’t the city handle that?”
“A lot of the city’s infrastructure is actually maintained by Ryouran maids. The scientists tend to be really hands-on while developing new technologies, but once they’re up and running they get bored and move on to the next project. We actually have access to almost every building in the city,” I explain, “I usually wouldn’t be involved. Most of that work is done by the middle school maids. But, since I have the cause of the outage here with me, I figure we could fix it before anyone starts asking too many questions.”
“Yeah, I can totally help. Thank you so much,” Misaka replied looking relieved.
As we walked to the District 22 power station, Misaka turned to me. “So, why are you always with that idiot? Are you his girlfriend or something?”
I laughed. “Oh god no. He’s way too much work for me to consider dating him. Instead of normal high school, Ryouran assigns us to other students as personal maids to gain work experience.”
“Oh, I think there’s someone at Tokiwadai like that. I think her name was Kirara?”
“Yeah, I don’t know her very well, but she’s doing the same thing.”
“What makes it so difficult? I mean he’s an idiot but he doesn’t seem like he’d be too demanding to work for.”
I groaned. “He’s not. It took forever for me to get him to let me do things for him. I can still barely ever get him to ask for anything. No, the problem is that he’s the embodiment of Murphy’s Law. He says he just has really bad luck. I think it’s more that he uses all his good luck staying alive when he does dumb shit, like antagonizing Level 5 electromasters.”
Misaka laughed at that. “I’ve honestly never really tried to kill him. He just pisses me off when he just stands there taking everything I can throw at him and then calling himself the weakest Level 0.”
“I know, I wish that fighting you was all he got up to. The guy ends up in the hospital almost weekly. All of the nurses know him by name. I’m pretty sure they’ve got a room reserved just for him. It’s almost always because he saw someone in trouble and rushed in to help them without thinking.”
As we walked I told her a few stories about Touma being an idiot then she told me a bit about what she had been up to. Apparently, she had been trying to get information about something called the “Level Upper” when Touma had interrupted.
“So, are you a weird Level 0 too or do you have an ability that actually makes sense?” She asked after a short silence.
“No, no, that's just him. I’m a Level 2,” I explained.
I crouched down and picked up a small rock. “My ability lets me teleport something from one hand”—I focused and the rock vanished from my right hand and appeared in my left—“to the other. I can also teleport it around in one hand. Not very strong compared to what you must be used to at Tokiwadai, but it has its uses.”
“You know, my roommate, Kuroko, is a Level 4 teleporter. If you want I can see if she would be interested in giving you some tips.”
“Really? That would be great, thank you so much.”
I brought out my phone and we exchanged numbers.
Arriving at the power station, it didn’t take us long to find the issue. Apparently, the superconducting transmission line that connected District 22 and District 10 to the rest of the city had been damaged a few days ago. Due to the rarity of the materials, repairs were expected to take at least a week.
It was the backup transmission lines that had been damaged by Misaka. Those used standard conductors and hadn’t been able to handle the sudden surge from the lightning strike. Given that their capacity was measured in the hundreds of gigawatts and megavolts, it really showed how powerful Misaka was.
I grabbed some excavation robots and an automated utility vehicle and had them follow us outside.
Misaka used her ability to sense where the failures had occurred, then the robots dug up the cable and we began the repair. Misaka actually had a lot of electrical engineering knowledge and was really helpful, even beyond her ability.
It took about an hour to get everything functional again. There were still some areas without power. Notably most of District 10, the nuclear reactors there would take a while to get fully back online. I also noted with some amusement that the area around Touma’s dorm was also still offline. Because of course it was.
“Thanks again for the help, Misaka. Feel free to call me if you ever need an excuse to miss curfew again.” I said as we started to leave.
“No problem, it was fun getting to work with this kind of stuff,” she said, waving as we parted ways.
Monday, July 20
The next morning I felt cautiously optimistic about the coming day.
Today was the first day of summer vacation. While I didn’t get any time off, Touma was off school for just over a month. Hopefully that would give us some breathing room to deal with his misfortune.
As I set about getting ready for the day, something in the back of my mind was bothering me, but I set it aside to start preparing for whatever Touma’s bad luck would throw at me.
I had already written off anything that was stored at his place. Because of the power outage I knew that anything he had there had almost certainly spoiled already.
I decided to make simple bacon, egg and cheese breakfast tacos today. I had long since grown used to making excessive amounts of food as reserves so twelve tacos barely registered to me.
Once they were finished I wrapped them all in foil and put them in a plastic bag. I put the bag in my backpack and triple checked that I had zipped it closed.
Leaving my dorm I took care going down the stairs not to slip and went outside.
Keeping my eyes peeled I started the walk to Touma’s dorm
By the time I was halfway there the feeling had turned into alarm bells and my cautious optimism had turned into extreme paranoia.
Nothing had gone wrong today.
The water hadn’t been contaminated by some experiment in the neighboring labs. My stove hadn't exploded due to a gas leak. There were no wandering gangs of skill outs specifically looking to steal food cooked by a maid. There was no esper with the power to make people ravenously hungry. I didn’t even have random bouts of incoordination.
That had never happened before.
Breakfast was usually the easiest meal of the day. It was rare for him to not eat anything at all in a day. But even then it was never easy. There was always at least some token resistance to keep me on my feet.
But today? Nothing.
Was Touma dead? Did Misaka’s lightning have some sort of delayed effect? I tried texting him. The likelihood of his phone working was nearly non-existent, but maybe he was also experiencing this relief from his misfortune.
I didn’t know what caused Touma’s extreme bad luck to take a break but I wasn’t going to waste it. I hurried the rest of the way, watching carefully for anything that could interrupt me.
When I finally made it to Touma’s dorm I hadn’t gotten a message back from him, though I hadn’t really expected one. I used my ID to unlock the door, pulled it open, then froze.
Sitting right inside the door was a girl with silver hair who seemed to be 14 or 15 years old. She was wearing what looked like a white and yellow nun’s habit. For some reason I felt a sense of impending doom at the sight of her.
As soon as she saw me, she got up and grabbed my hands.
“Hi, I’m Index. Touma said you had food?”