Damn it. The seat was filled by someone waiting for cancellations…?!

  Even if a passenger reserved a seat in advance, if they didn’t show up after the boarding cutoff time, the seat would be treated as available and possibly given to another guest. That must have been how the spiky-haired Asian ended up in the seat that needed to be empty.

  He understood the situation.

  But he couldn’t come up with a way past it.

  What now…?

  People would get suspicious if he stood in the middle of the passage for much longer. He began to walk slowly down it, deciding for now to head for the staircase in the back. The large jumbo jet Skybus 365 had two stories. If he used the staircase, then moved to the opposite staircase on the other floor, there would be less risk of people noticing that they’d just seen him.

  He put the notebook in his inside pocket. As he walked down the passage and past the spiky-haired Asian, his mind raced at full speed.

  What now? If I can’t use that seat, I can’t put this plan into motion.

  5

  The in-flight meals were taking their sweet time.

  Even after the plane left the runway, soared into the skies, and stabilized its angle, the flight attendant wasn’t coming around…And could she even move mealtime up to begin with? Wouldn’t her colleagues and superiors get mad at her?

  “Hmm. I’m starting to worry. I’m going to go pay the flight attendant a little visit.”

  “But I’m worried about the beef-or-fish, too!!”

  “You’re just going to make things worse, so stay put.”

  Besides, if her coworkers were actually chewing the hot blond flight attendant out, he planned to say, I-I changed my mind—it’s fine, really!! and get them to stop. If Index came along with her starved appetite on full display and a raging torrent of her Beef-or-fish! Beef-or-fish!! slogan, the entire situation would definitely fall apart.

  So, from the window seat, he stepped over Index’s knees and eventually made it into the passageway. His destination was the walled area between economy and business class—the place where amenities like the onboard bathrooms, free drink station, in-flight meal area, and steep stairs to the other floor were all gathered in one place.

  Hmm. What will I do if she’s actually getting yelled at…?

  A little nervous, he went straight down the passage and entered the walled area. As always, it was more dimly lit than the passenger seating areas.

  He took a quick look around but couldn’t find the flight attendant.

  What? This isn’t where she is?

  He’d guessed—arbitrarily—that she’d be setting up for the in-flight meals, so he’d thought for sure she’d be in here. Apparently, he’d been wrong.

  He found a door to a small room that appeared to be where they got all the food together, but he didn’t quite know if passengers were allowed to open it without permission, so he gave up on that.

  Instead, he brought his ear close to the door. He didn’t hear any sounds of working from inside.

  I mean, I could look in a different area, but…It’s not like she’s inconveniencing us, so it’s probably not worth walking around all over the place to chase her.

  Just when he decided to go back to Index for now and turned around, it happened.

  “Ahhhh?!”

  Suddenly he heard a shrill yelp, then heard a thud. He must have accidentally pushed someone trying to get around him to the floor.

  He looked and saw it was the woman he’d been searching for.

  She seemed to have been carrying papers in both hands, but when she’d bumped into Kamijou, they’d gone flying all over. The A4-sized sheets had the small letters of a word processor printed on them, but the words were in a different language, so Kamijou couldn’t read any of them.

  Besides, this wasn’t the time to be reading sentences.

  “Yikes! I’m sorry. Are you all—?”

  A moment before he bowed in apology, the flight attendant moved swiftly. Still on the floor, she began collecting the scattered papers at an incredible speed.

  And then the hot blond flight attendant said this:

  “D-did you see…?”

  Touma Kamijou answered honestly. “I did not see up your skirt!!”

  “?”

  The tight-skirted hottie looked at him blankly. That didn’t seem to be what she was worried about.

  Then what does she think I saw…?

  Belatedly, his eyes went to the sheaf of papers the flight attendant was holding.

  But before he could examine any pages closely, she stood up in a hurry. “I-I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “The in-flight meals, well—we’ll bring them out momentarily!!”

  “Right, um…”

  Kamijou tried to say something, but the flight attendant said “I’m terribly sorry” a second time and went off somewhere.

  …What was that about…? Kamijou wondered, tilting his head.

  He didn’t have perfect recall like Index, so he couldn’t easily remember the contents of a piece of paper he’d only seen for a moment.

  But he had seen a series of English letters, and what he could faintly remember was…

  What was that? The plane’s flight number?

  And that was all.

  6

  Starting from the nose, the Skybus 365 was split into three classes: first, business, and economy.

  Of course, there was a fourth area even further up than first class:

  The cockpit.

  The small space was covered in tightly packed buttons and switches—in front, to the sides, and even on the ceiling. Four chairs were in it. The front two were for piloting, and the rear two were for standing by. Right now, a captain and two copilots were permanently stationed there, leaving one space empty.

  “Report output from Control is finished.”

  That was the blond flight attendant.

  She was speaking in Japanese.

  Normally, she would not have been allowed into the cockpit. It wasn’t a purely ethical issue; it was written in the company rules that she couldn’t go in. The reason she had set foot in the cockpit in spite of that was simple.

  It was an emergency.

  “The full text of the threat to the airline company has been received?”

  This was spoken by a tall man in a mainly white, military-like uniform.

  He was the pilot, the captain of the plane.

  He had short-cropped black hair and a tinge of color to his skin.

  As the words he spoke would imply, he was Japanese.

  And he hadn’t been talking to the flight attendant.

  He was talking to the flight control center at the international airport in Academy City, Japan, through a headset.

  “Awful, isn’t it?”

  The captain gave a low groan at someone who was presumably an air security officer. “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “Nobody in their right mind would accept these demands.”

  “And if we don’t, it may put your plane at risk of attack,” continued the security officer bitterly.

  “We must be up against a French anti-British organization…”

  “Historically speaking, Britain and France switch between enemies and allies a lot, but this will only concentrate the negative feelings from that.”

  He wasn’t sure what route the officer had used to get the information, but anything from an Academy City air security officer tended to be right awfully frequently.

  “They’re saying things about the Eurotunnel explosion, too: that the whole thing was a British conspiracy, and since France was clearly the victim, Britain should have to pay equal reparations.”

  “Reparations as in aggressively shutting down British air routes? Idiotic,” growled the captain.

  For France, the Eurotunnel was one of many important land routes, but for Britain, it was the only one connected to another country. There shouldn’t be any reason for Britain to manufacture the explosion, but…

  “The individual who sent the threat has been arrested by French authorities, but the one who will actually do the job is apparently elsewhere. Unfortunately, said individual has been keeping quiet, and normal methods to get the information don’t seem promising.”

  “If they’re buying time, we’ll have a problem,” the captain said quietly, gripping the flight yoke. “It’ll take us forty minutes to an hour to get from Paris to Edinburgh.”

  “If this terrorist is for real, it’s highly probable they’ll make a move in that time.”

  “But is it true?” asked the captain, unable to resist. “Their allies are on a plane they want to crash?”

  “Their primary objective is probably what they stated in the threat. It’s safer to expect that the terrorists are prepared to lose their own lives if we don’t accept their demands.”

  “…”

  “Whether we accept their demands and stay safe or don’t and the Skybus 365 falls, the terrorists will have done the damage they wanted to. Which means no matter which way this goes, they’ll treat it as a success.”

  “…This is awful. I’d almost rather turn around and go back to Paris right now.”

  “If you suddenly start circling with the plane, the terrorist or terrorists might become suspicious. We’d run the risk of them making a move immediately. And you don’t have the fuel to turn around slowly enough for them not to notice—airline companies are subject to gas prices, after all. I’m sure you understand all that.”

  “Then all we can do is root out the infiltrator before they make a move.”

  The captain swore. The Skybus 365 was a rare world-class passenger plane, equipped with two stories of seating. They had over five hundred passengers. Going through and checking them one by one would take far longer than their one-hour limit. And even the police would have a very difficult time locating a criminal simply by observing individuals from a distance without interviewing them.

  “…None of us are trained for this.”

  “You’ll have to do it anyway. It would be one thing if you could use an Academy City teleport esper, but right now, you probably can’t get anyone from a police agency onto the plane.”

  The air security officer wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. In fact, it was precisely because the Academy City man could suggest teleportation as a viable method that the words came out with such bitterness.

  “Other than that…Right. I’m sure you know this, but do your best not to let the passengers know about this problem. Chaos and violence aboard a plane with no escape will turn it into hell on earth.”

  “I know that. The fate of this plane and my passengers’ lives are in my hands. I’m not rotten enough to cling to them and use them as shields.”

  Just when the captain said that, something happened.

  A different channel than air control cut in over the headset.

  It was from inside the plane.

  “Emergency. We have movement. Likely the terrorist in question!!”

  “?!” The captain’s body tensed at the crew member’s words.

  The report continued. “One injured but conscious. He was apparently attacked from behind and didn’t get a good look at the person. What do we do, Captain?!”

  7

  Index’s starvation had reached its limit.

  “In-flight food, in-flight food! Beef-or-fish…”

  “…I feel such a strong presence next to me. Like a lion with a noble face is sitting one seat over. What is poor Kamijou to do?”

  “Not only is the beef-or-fish not coming out no matter how long we wait; the bourgeoisie right nearby is munching on those crackers, and it’s making my stomach boil and growl.”

  Kamijou scratched his head. He couldn’t exactly do anything, considering Tsuchimikado had stolen his wallet and the only currency in their luggage was in pounds…And then he stopped abruptly.

  Index gave him a questioning look.

  “…Wait,” he murmured. “If this airplane is going from Academy City to Britain, can’t we use British money here?”

  “???!!!”

  “No!! I completely understand your anger, Miss Index, but if you bite my skull open, you’ll never, ever get those crackers!!”

  The beast’s maw gaped wide open, its very breath a roar, as Kamijou desperately tried to ward off the imminent crisis. Then, after barely managing to preserve his life, he rose from his seat and headed for the free drink station.

  …You know, I’ve been up and about for a while now. Wonder if anyone thinks I’m suspicious.

  He needn’t have worried; looking around as he walked down the passage, he saw a fair number of others, who were tired from the extended sitting, doing light stretches in the passage. The seats functioned as massage chairs, but this was still the cheapest class: economy. They didn’t seem efficient enough to work out all the knots in your whole body.

  In the walled area dividing economy and business class was the free drink area. Next to the crackers was a clear box stuffed with bills from various countries. A small blackboard listed exchange rates. Apparently, he could use Britain’s money.

  Let’s see…I can get ten crackers for three pounds. Wait, how much is that in yen?

  It was foreign money, so he couldn’t really grasp the relative values. Unable to decide if it was expensive or cheap, he inserted the money.

  After putting the money inside, he grabbed a pack of ten crackers wrapped in a clear film package.

  Then…

  “…Huh?”

  When Kamijou turned around to go back to Index, he stopped abruptly.

  The free drink station wasn’t the only facility in the walled section. Several others were here, like the onboard bathrooms, space for cleaning appliances, and small rooms that could preserve the in-flight meals and warm them up.

  Among them was a half-opened door.

  The one that had been closed a little earlier—the door to the small room for in-flight meal service prep.

  …Are they supposed to leave the doors open on a plane like this?

  Passenger planes were heavily slanted during takeoff and landing, and other things like turbulence could cause shaking. During a time like that, if a door was left half-open, it could cause trouble, like suddenly swinging closed and slamming fingers or breaking the door’s fittings. At least, that’s what he’d seen on a documentary once.

  “Should I close it…?” muttered Kamijou casually, walking near it. Nobody would get mad at him if he merely closed it. Right before he grabbed the knob, though, his eyebrows twitched.

  He saw something.

  He saw what was on the other side of the half-opened door.

  The room itself was narrow. The space was apparently for warming a lot of the in-flight meals at once, with a row of microwaves bolted onto a metal shelf rack.

  That wasn’t the problem.

  Something dark red and goopy was stuck to those microwaves stationed along the wall. It was about fifteen centimeters across and fifty tall. After thinking for a moment, Kamijou decided someone had put a dirty hand on the wall to try to stand up.

  What could the dark red stuff have been?

  The room was for heating up in-flight meals, so maybe some kind of sauce or stew had spilled…

  “You saw, didn’t you?”

  Suddenly, he heard a voice from behind him.

  It belonged to a woman.

  When Kamijou turned around, the hot blond flight attendant was standing there.

  With an apologetic face, she repeated, “You saw the bloodstain, didn’t you?”

  The flight attendant even told him something he didn’t know.

  “This is—,” began Kamijou, but the next words didn’t come out.

  He heard a bang!!

  It took him several seconds to realize that not only had she twisted his arm, but she’d also taken him down to the floor.

  Practically straddling him now as he lay facedown, the flight attendant brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered an apology.

  “(…I’m sorry. Since we can’t bring weapons on board, all crew members have been trained in this sort of hand-to-hand combat in order to deal with a variety of trouble. Only through training exercises, though.)”

  “Wh-what is this…?” stammered Kamijou, bewildered.

  With the hand that wasn’t currently twisting his arm, the flight attendant clicked a switch that was probably for a radio.

  “Captain, this is urgent,” she said in Japanese, her tone nothing if not extremely cold and businesslike. “One of the passengers saw the bloodstain before I could clean it. I believe he’s now caught on to the situation aboard the plane. How should I proceed?”

  8

  The babealicious flight attendant who had Kamijou pinned down seemed to be waiting for someone to come.

  The idle time continued.

  Eventually, the flight attendant spoke.

  “A terrorist…”

  “You’re a what?!”

  “N-not me!!” denied the hot blonde hastily. “Airport control informed us that one has apparently infiltrated the plane. If we don’t accept certain demands, they’ll create a mechanical failure on the Skybus 365 and cause it to fail during landing—in other words, they’ll bring it down in flames.”

  “…Seriously?”

  “The bloodstain you saw was from a tour guide, a colleague of mine. He was attacked from behind suddenly, and we believe it was the terrorist’s doing.”

  “You don’t think I’m the criminal, do you…?” said Kamijou, a bad feeling coming over him.

  The flight attendant shook her head. Though of course, he was lying on his stomach and couldn’t see her face.

  “No, not at all…,” she said. “But we don’t want this information disseminating to the other passengers. This is already a dangerous situation, and if word spread, there would be a huge panic inside the plane with nowhere for anyone to run. A lot of blood could be shed, and if worse comes to worst and the panic makes the criminal anxious…”

  Her tone suggested she was at a complete loss. Maybe she told him all this because she felt indebted to him. Despite having him completely pinned with a self-defense technique, she seemed to be in the inferior position.

 

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