High-strung

Based solidly in canon, I assure you—by which I mean the last five minutes of Railgun, episode 19.

There were few times in life that Misaka Mikoto truly and completely regretted doing well at something.

Even before she'd become known as Railgun, Ace of Tokiwadai, etc., Mikoto had been near-obsessed with being the best at everything she could think of. Of course, back then, most of those thoughts had been centered on turning her fledgling sparks into the lightning bolts she'd been so scared of as a child. Mikoto had rarely regretted her successes then, save for the times she'd blown out the local power grid with a particularly zealous blast of lightning, or the time she'd turned the wall of her dorm into a smoldering mess after firing her Railgun for the first time.

(And honestly, Mikoto hadn't felt very sorry in either instance. How could she, when she was climbing a step closer to Academy City's elite with every new spark?)

Then, Mikoto had stumbled across the violin—or, more accurately, Tokiwadai and a battery of expectations befitting her role as an ojou-sama had shoved her into it.

Maybe she didn't quite appreciate how she'd been introduced to the thing, but Mikoto had still tried to work with it, practicing the scales, the songs, and even trying out some of her own. Besides, who didn't like music? There was nothing wrong with learning to master something completely outside the world of electrons, for once. She got pretty good, too—maybe not in a way that she'd show off, as she did her Railgun, but good enough to be satisfied with.

All that was fine! There was nothing to regret there…or so she'd thought, until Tokiwadai's Midsummer Festival had rolled around. At that point Mikoto had stopped looking at her violin as an instrument, and more as a ticket to some particularly expensive-looking hell.

"Ah, Misaka-san! Aren't you excited? We've decided to make you the student performer this year!"

Mikoto had nearly fainted when she'd heard the words from her violin teacher (though she'd restrained herself—there was no telling where she would wake up, not with Kuroko lurking nearby). In that instant, any satisfaction she held about her supposed "mastery" of the violin had morphed into a complete and profound regret that she had ever set eyes on the thing in the first place.

That regret hadn't faded, not even after her performance had ended and she'd received a collective pat on the back from everyone she knew. From then on Mikoto's violin classes felt more like tightrope walks—walks where she had to get across while making sure to wobble a bit more than was really necessary. She almost got better at not playing the violin than she did at playing it, sprinkling in false notes and missteps with all the care of a master chef. The last thing she needed was for the big brass at Tokiwadai to decide that they now had a violin prodigy to showcase on top of their resident Electromaster.

("And now, our Railgun will play Paganini's 24th—while powering a set of our latest servo motors to perform reconstructive brain surgery!")

For a month or two, it seemed as if her emergency tactics were working. Yes, her violin teacher was beginning to look a little frazzled after weeks of battling her sudden unteachability, but Mikoto was fairly certain he'd live (he was old, but not that old). What mattered was that her violin skills were now staying off the stage for the foreseeable future.

Summer ended, fall began, and slowly the worry faded from Mikoto's mind. There were bigger things for her to worry about, and the last few weeks of August presented the biggest of them all: a certain experiment involving a few Sisters of hers. By the time that nightmare had ended and September had finally rolled around, all thoughts of violin recitals and faceless audiences were gone.

So it was with a light heart that Mikoto returned to her dorm one night, having successfully forced a certain idiot to sit down in a nearby café, order something, and stay in his chair for an hour and a half. The victorious smile on her face refused to fade, not even when she rounded the corner to see a group of adults—what looked like her dorm supervisor, some Tokiwadai board member whose name she couldn't remember, and one of her teachers—clustered around the door to her room. Mikoto started forward…

Hold on.

She stopped in her tracks. The smile slipped off her face like a melting ice cube.

Her teacher—her violin teacher—turned, saw her, and gave a smile of his own. "Ah, Misaka-san! Good to see you looking so happy," he said. "I have some news that might excite you." Behind him, the dorm supervisor was looking straight at Mikoto with what looked suspiciously like a smirk.

"O-oh, really?" The more Mikoto thought about the possibilities, the faster her heart sunk. The last time she'd encountered this particular crowd in one place…

Still, it was too early to give up hope. Who knew, maybe they'd decided to gift her with a new violin. Or what the heck—maybe even a new violin teacher. Yeah! She was just overreacting. It wasn't like there was a festival or holiday coming up, like there had been last time.

Right?

Her teacher was still smiling obliviously. "As I'm sure you're aware," he said, "Respect for the Aged Day is fast approaching."

Respect for the Aged—?

A word ran through Mikoto's mind that would've earned her a week of pool cleaning from the Supervisor.

"Misaka-san. Is something the matter?"

Just what kind of expression had appeared on her face? Her teacher had almost sounded shocked. Mikoto tried her best to recapture the easy smile that had seemed glued to her face only moments before. "Oh, it's nothing," she said. "I'm just a little tired, and I'm looking forward to a nice shower and a good night's sleep." She summoned the biggest yawn she could muster. "So if you'll excuse me…"

As expected, her teacher bought the act completely. "Of course, of course! It's been a long day, and here I am, babbling like a silly old duffer. I'll cut to the chase." He straightened and cleared his throat. "Furui-sama here, and his colleagues"—he gestured to the board member beside him—"have decided that Tokiwadai will be commemorating the day with a ceremony of our own. We plan to invite quite a few of our respected elders, and to begin our celebration…"

The board member placed a hand on her teacher's shoulder. "Allow me." The man stepped forward and looked down at Mikoto. "We've decided that you would be the perfect centerpiece for the event," he said, smiling thinly. "You…and your violin."

Silence. The adults, as one, watched her expectantly.

"U-uh…"

"Now, Misaka-san," her teacher said. "I understand that you might be feeling a little nervous. However, I do feel that a performance would present a new way to…further your skills." His smile was a bit strained. Mikoto had a feeling he was thinking of their lesson last week, when she had managed to insert four new flats into a C scale.

At that point, she gave up trying to control the expression on her face. She was too busy attempting to keep her heart from plummeting into her stomach. What was she supposed to say? It was doubtful that she could pull off an "I'm honored" without sounding sarcastic, and she didn't think that this was the right time to express her enthusiasm—not that that was something she could manage, anyway.

Eventually, she managed to find a response. "W-when is this happening?"

Miraculously, Mikoto actually got the "good night's sleep" she'd been looking forward to that night. Not even the news of her brand-new recital was enough to cancel out what had happened during the rest of the day (definitely not, actually, from what little she remembered of her dreams). The next day, however, she woke with a fully undiluted appreciation of the answer that she'd gotten.

September 18th.

Her teacher, at least, was looking somewhat relieved—if not amazed—at the sudden improvement in her skills. "It seems that this performance really has given you some benefit," he said, after one particularly successful session. "Maybe I should suggest this for some of my other students!"

Mikoto didn't bother to contradict him.

…September 18th.

It was easy enough to act the careless, confident Electromaster in front of the other girls at Tokiwadai. It was much harder to do so once the day ended and Mikoto was back in her room with Kuroko, who had seemed determined to sniff out every trace of unhappiness ever since the end of August.

Well, actually, it wasn't just hard…

"Onee-sama!"

…it was impossible.

"Don't think you can hide anything from me! I've been keeping my eyes on you since that time in August, and you're showing some very suspicious signs! Come—tell me what ails you, and we shall weather the coming storm together! Perhaps, at the end of our ordeal, we could even share in a comforting embrace—"

"Quiet!" Mikoto stared at the music in front of her. "I need to figure out the tempo for this section."

Kuroko was silent for a moment. Finally, she spoke, her voice shuddering with dread. "Onee-sama."

"Hm?" Mikoto flicked a quick glance at Kuroko, then looked back down. "Let's see, it goes back to common time here…"

"Don't tell me you're trying to write a love song for that ape!"

The resulting electric shock brought their dorm supervisor running, the books off the shelves, and a half hour's delay while Mikoto tried to get the blush off her cheeks and back to work.

"G-good to k-know I was wrong…"

September 18th…

From the start, she'd only had two weeks to prepare—and the first week had gone by far too quickly.

Now, at the start of the second week, Mikoto was beginning to suspect things would be rushing by even more suddenly.

And it seemed she wasn't the only one that thought so.

"I really have to commend you, you know."

Mikoto stared at her teacher. "What?" Slowly, she set down her violin; they'd just practiced a new section of the piece, which she had managed to butcher in spectacular fashion. What exactly had been commendable about that?

"I'll be honest." The teacher looked around, then leaned in slightly. "While I have no issues with you performing this piece," he said quietly, "I do think the timing could have been…better. A November performance would have been perfect—something for Labor Thanksgiving, perhaps. But September? I'm very impressed by what you've accomplished so far, in a timeframe like that."

"T-Thanks, I guess."

Still, it didn't mean much to have "impressed" her teacher. That could have meant any number of things, and Mikoto was pretty sure it was that her teacher hadn't been expecting much to begin with.

Her teacher's laugh broke into her thoughts. "I'm sure you're thinking that I'm just trying to make you feel more confident, eh?" He smiled, and for a moment Mikoto could almost see him as an actual person. "While that may be true to some extent...it's only because I truly feel your playing is something to be confident about."

Then the smile faded, and he became the strict violin teacher again. "Still, that could be subject to change, if you don't master this section," he said, tapping his pencil on her sheet music. "Now—ten more iterations!"

Mikoto suppressed a groan and picked up her violin.

September…18th…

The night before, she wasn't even lucky enough to have a dream—not even a nightmare—to fill some of the hours in between. She simply closed her eyes and opened them seven hours later, with the sun streaming in through the windows, a snoring Kuroko to her left, and the calendar reading…

September 18.

"…and we are, of course, honored that all you could join us in celebrating your experiences and achievements…"

Okay. This had to be a joke—or, more accurately, some kind of crazy plan to torture her.

Mikoto had been so busy preparing for her recital that she hadn't bothered to ask for the schedule of the event itself. Evidently the organizers hadn't thought it was very important for her to know, either, as she'd been handed a copy just before the ceremony started and told to study it quickly.

At first, she'd seen more or less what she expected: a commencement by the principal of Tokiwadai, a slideshow containing touching moments from some of the attendees' lives, some speeches from the honored guests about their experiences…and her performance. Fine. She'd probably get a little antsy waiting for her part, but she could handle it.

Then Mikoto had taken a closer look.

Commencement—1:00 PM. Slideshow, 1:30. Storytime, 2:00. And violin recital…

3:00 PM?

She'd be waiting backstage for two hours? "A little antsy" wouldn't even begin to cover how she would be feeling by then! There was already some sweat beading on the back of her neck, and she could feel her knees threatening to start knocking together.

Mikoto managed to stay in her chair for another five seconds before she gave up. This wasn't going to work.

She stood up and headed for the attendant standing at the door. "If anyone asks," she said, "could you tell them I went to the bathroom?"

"But you're not supposed to be—"

She held up the program. "I'm on at three."

The attendant's eyes widened with understanding...and, hopefully, a bit of sympathy. "I see." He stepped aside and nodded at the door. "Try not to be late, then. We're all looking forward to your performance."

"Thanks." Mikoto stepped past the attendant and started down the hall, trying to walk as quickly as possible without breaking into an outright run. The dress she was wearing helped a bit—it seemed even stiffer than the one she'd been made to wear last time, if that was possible. Eventually, she settled for some dignified speed-walking.

What was she supposed to do now? She'd avoided going completely stir-crazy, at least, but she could still feel the nerves bubbling in her stomach. Backstage was definitely not the place to wait, but where else could she go?

She supposed she could go and find a store somewhere, try out one of those fabled pills that were supposed to "block" nervousness, but she wasn't sure how much she trusted Academy City's science.

Actually, now that she thought about it that way...definitely no pills for her. Even an Academy City stress ball would be too suspect.

Where else, then? If she went too far, Mikoto wouldn't just have the recital to worry about. She'd also have to worry about showing up fifteen minutes late.

Come to think of it...

There was one place she'd always gone when she was tense. What was more, it wasn't too far away, she knew exactly how to get there, and—more importantly—she knew exactly how long it would take to get back.

Mikoto smiled to herself.

Who needed a stress ball when you had a vending machine?

She got a few strange looks as she struggled down the street in her fancy white dress, but eventually Mikoto made it out of the School Garden, across the streets of District 7, and over to the little park and its battered red vending machine.

Halfway through her trek, she'd realized that she couldn't really pull off the high kick she was used to—her dress would end up looking very different if she tried.

Still, that wasn't important. The location itself was calming enough: as usual, there were nearly no people around, and a kick wasn't really necessary in case she actually wanted something to drink. Mikoto would just relax here, wait for her heart to stop pounding, and then go back.

As usual, the row of benches nearby was empty. Mikoto sat, took out her phone, and checked the display—1:25 PM. Plenty of time to pull herself together. She leaned back, let out a slow breath, and closed her eyes.

It only took five minutes for Mikoto to realize that maybe the time she had wasn't as plentiful as she'd thought.

Her heart was still pounding just as hard as it had before, and now her knees weren't just threatening to knock together—they really were, shaking like she'd dunked her feet into a bucket of ice. If anything, she actually felt more nervous than she'd been during the Festival.

So maybe the calming presence of nature wasn't going to be of help today. Fine. She still had time to figure something else out.

Would it help for her to practice the song? No, she'd left her violin back at the recital hall. Mikoto suppressed a pang of regret—the thing would only have slowed her down, and she didn't even want to think about what would've happened if she'd lost it somewhere. God, if she'd lost it… She could already imagine the expression on her violin teacher's face, not to mention the dorm supervisor—

No! Don't think about that, idiot!

Maybe it would help to actually get something from the vending machine for once. But then—no—the last thing she wanted was to be playing on stage with a terrible need for a bathroom break.

Had she been this nervous last time? How the hell had she dealt with it?

Oh, forget it.

Mikoto got up and strode towards the vending machine, the stiffness of her dress forgotten. If she was going to be going down, she'd at least get a few good punches in before she did. She swung her arms a little, stared hard at the button for strawberry oden—

"Uh, miss?"

—and froze.

No…it couldn't be. Of all the people, of all the times...if she turned around and saw who she thought she'd see...that would be weapons-grade misfortune right there, almost on par with the aura surrounding…

Mikoto turned. She saw.

This idiot.

"I think I should warn you," Kamijou Touma told her. That idiotically earnest expression she knew so well was plastered all over his face. "This vending machine really likes to take your..." His voice trailed off.

He looked at her. She looked at him.

"Don't just stare at me like that!" Mikoto yelled, after he'd just stood and stared at her for at least ten seconds' worth of silence.

Kamijou gave a jerk, as if someone had poured cold water on his head. He groaned. "Of course this happens to me. I see a high-class girl about to get swindled by an evil machine, try to do my one act of good for the day, and of course she turns out to be y—"

"Don't finish that!" Mikoto knew her face was red, but there was no looking away, not after a remark like that. "How did you not know it was me? You can't just show up here and then act like you've got no idea what's happening!"

"I really didn't! I still don't!" Kamijou said, throwing his hands up. "I just didn't recognize you in that dress!"

"Oh, really!" Mikoto's heart started pounding in a way completely different from before. "Is that why you came here? To make fun of my dress?"

"Oh, give me a break! You said the exact same thing the last time something like this happened! I didn't make fun of you then, did I?"

"What do you mean, the last time this happened? There never was a last..."

Mikoto stopped midsentence.

No, now that she thought about it, this idiot had been at the Midsummer's Festival too. He'd shown up with the same sort of timing too, asking her for directions while she was trying to calm herself down. And after that had happened… Mikoto's eyes widened.

She'd asked herself how she had managed to calm down, back then. Now, she remembered. And, best of all, Mikoto was in the perfect position to use her method again—right this instant.

"Okay," she said slowly. "I hate to say it, but maybe you're right."

Kamijou gave a sigh that sounded a little too relieved, even for her liking. "Finally, a conversation without a single bolt of lightning," he said. "Now what's going on? Actually, wait. Let me guess." "Is this another violin recital?"

Now it was Mikoto's turn to sigh. She gave a slight nod.

"But...wait." Kamijou looked around quickly, before turning back to Mikoto. "I definitely don't see any crowds or stage around here. If this is like last time, and your recital's back at Tokiwadai, then why are you out here beating up this vending machine on your big day? Don't tell me they don't even give you ojou-samas drinks there."

"If there were any, I didn't see them," Mikoto said. "And I was the only 'ojou-sama' they had to worry about anyway. But even if they'd actually put a cart of champagne there…I probably would've come out here anyway."

Kamijou raised an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

"I…" Mikoto gave the ground a light kick, and stared at the paving tiles. "I just needed some fresh air."

"Nervous, huh?"

"What?" She looked up quickly. "Do you have any idea how terrible the air quality is backstage? Don't just go and assume things!"

Kamijou gave an understanding mm-hm. "So you came out here to calm down. I see, I see…"

"Fine! Maybe I needed to calm down...a little." Mikoto felt her hands clenching into fists, but she was past caring at this point. Besides—it was time to execute her plan. "But guess what?"

He was still standing there, blissfully unaware of what was about to come. "What?"

"I just figured out the perfect solution." Mikoto didn't even try to hide the wicked smile spreading across her face.

"Uh…" Now, Kamijou finally seemed to be recognizing that something was amiss. He backed away slowly. "That's great, then," he said, chuckling weakly. "In the meantime, I think I'll be off—"

"Oh, not so fast!" With a speed that surprised even Mikoto herself (hey, that dress was as stiff as ever), she managed to dart behind him, cutting off his escape from the park. "You're not leaving until—huh?"

It was doubtful Kamijou heard her...considering he was so busy running in the opposite direction. He yelled something as he ran, something that sounded suspiciously like "Such misfortune!"

Mikoto decided to break out the lightning. There was no way she would be catching up with him on foot, not in what she was wearing. She stretched out her hand, closed one eye, focused on the electric potential between its tip and Kamijou, fired—

And watched as he whirled, negated her attack, and ran straight towards her.

"You know what? There's no point in running away!" he yelled. "It'll just mean that I won't be able to see you trying to shoot me in the back!"

"Hey!" Pointedly, Mikoto fired another shot at his feet. "I might want to beat you, but I'm going to do it fair and square!"

Kamijou crouched, swatted away the bolt, and continued barreling in her direction. "What did I even do? One second we're just talking about calming down, and the next"—he blocked another strike with a grunt—"you're trying to turn me into a human lightning rod! Again!"

He was getting a little too close for comfort now. Mikoto gave up on the lightning (which she hadn't expected to work, anyway) and decided to take another approach.

As Kamijou approached, right hand still outstretched, she focused on the buckle of his belt and grabbed it magnetically. Then, as he took another step, she jerked it backwards, in the exact opposite of the way he was running.

The result was almost as if Kamijou had stepped on a particularly transparent banana peel. With a crash, he landed on the ground face-first, arms and legs splayed out like some spiky-haired spider.

Mikoto grinned to herself—mission accomplished—and walked over to his prone form. "Okay," she said. "You can get up now."

No answer.

"Hey, did you hear me? I said, you can get up now!"

If it was possible, the guy's body seemed even more motionless than it had before.

The grin slipped off Mikoto's face. "Hey. Hey! If you don't get up now, I really am going to send a lightning bolt into your back!"

Still no movement.

"W-well, maybe not a lightning bolt. But at least a good kick, you hear me? Or…or I'll paint your hair bright red! Come on!"

Nothing from Kamijou.

Mikoto fought back the urge to nudge him in the side with a foot, and knelt as far down as she could in her dress. She hadn't done that much, had she? Come on! She'd only thrown a few bolts here and there, tripped him at the end...

Slowly, she extended a hand towards Kamijou's shoulder. She wasn't even sure what the point of the motion was. All she wanted was to be sure that the guy was okay—

At which point said guy rolled over, took one look at her face, and burst out laughing.

"I'm not even mad at you for trying to kill me anymore!" He started chuckling even harder. "That look on your face…" He took another look at her face and started laughing all over again.

Mikoto was still frozen in a kneel, one hand still partially outstretched.

Kamijou sighed and got up slowly, still chuckling now and then. "Man, I should've taken a picture of that. Something to save for a rainy day…"

"Hey, you."

He stopped talking and looked at her. With some satisfaction, Mikoto watched the smile on his face disappear completely.

Kamijou blinked.

"Oh," he said. "Shi—"

Five minutes later, the park was back to being the quiet, domestic place it was most days, complete with a relaxed boy-girl couple sitting on one of the benches. Closer inspection would reveal, however, that the boy's shirt seemed lightly fried and that he was sprawled on the bench as if he'd just outrun a massive boulder, while the girl was looking away from him, arms crossed.

Perhaps not so relaxed, after all.

"Honestly," Mikoto said, scowling into the distance. "I can't believe I was ever worried about hitting you."

Kamijou groaned and slid up to a sitting position, massaging his temples with a hand. "I feel sorry for anyone stuck around you on April Fool's Day."

"Don't even talk about that." Mikoto had very vivid memories of that particular occasion, which had included Kuroko, a shower, and a rain of rose petals. She shuddered. "Please don't talk about that."

"Honestly, the way your face looks right now, I don't want to talk about it either," Kamijou said. "So fine—just answer my original question." He paused for a moment and took a deep breath, then turned to look at her. "What the heck just happened? Because this"—he gestured at a burnt patch on his shirt—"wasn't something I was planning on getting today!"

Mikoto took a critical look at the patch. She scoffed. "Oh, come on," she said. "It's not that bad. I bet you have a million more shirts lying around anyway. And something tells me half of them are in much worse shape than this one."

"That's not the point! Why did I, Kamijou Touma, have to be repaid for my attempt at kindness with a barrage of thunder and lightning?"

"Actually…" Mikoto supposed it would be fair to let the guy know about the role he'd played—especially since he'd played it so well. "It wasn't just an attempt."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You said it before, right?" She could feel the blush forming on her cheeks, but she didn't stop talking. "I came out here to calm down. Well..." Mikoto finally looked away, fiddled with her fingers. "I'm calm. Thanks."

It really was true. Somehow, just having him here made the massive audience and complicated score she would have to face a little less threatening. And, no—she wasn't going to think about what a statement like that would mean to someone else—Saten-san, for example.

Kamijou just stared at her in silence. "You're kidding, right?" he said finally.

"Look, last time you saw me in this dress...I was just as nervous. Maybe even more, honestly," Mikoto said. She kept her gaze focused on her hands. "But then you showed up."

"And you tried to brain me with a chair."

"Well...yeah." Mikoto closed her eyes. Now that she was able to think about things clearly again, she was feeling uncomfortably similar to a stressed-out boxer using a punching bag for relief. "But after you ran away, I noticed that things weren't as bad as they were a second before. So when you showed up here today..."

Kamijou sighed. "I get it, I get it. You decided to try and take the 'Kamijou effect' up another notch. Fine, fine..."

"Shut up, idiot!"

For the record: Mikoto totally didn't see the small smile that appeared on his face, and she definitely didn't stare at it for far too long. Nope.

They stayed on the bench for a few minutes more. Mikoto was in the middle of feeling the most relaxed she had in weeks, when Kamijou suddenly sat up and said, "Hey, Misaka. About your recital."

"Hm?" Mikoto murmured. She tried to ignore the thrill that ran through her when he said her name. Honestly, it had almost been a month since he'd stopped with "Biri-biri"—why was she still getting excited?

"What time was it supposed to be?"

"Three." She took out her phone, checked the time—

(2:50 PM)

—and bolted up from her seat with a despairing cry. "We're going to be late! Come on, come on!"

"You'd better hurry or you're not going to make it—wait, what do you mean, we?"

When the last speech had been given and the last of the senior citizens had been escorted back to their seats, everyone in the auditorium quieted and waited for the curtains to part.

"And now, Tokiwadai's very own…Misaka Mikoto!"

There was a wave of applause as the Railgun walked onto the stage in her brilliant white dress. She bowed, put her music on the waiting stand, and then seemed to motion to someone offstage. A boy with hair so unkempt that it was almost spiky walked onto the stage...dressed in an uninspiring white shirt and jeans. He took up a position next to the music stand.

Still, most of the audience didn't really let up on their applause. Most of them would've been fine with both performers walking onstage in their pajamas; this was a violin performance, after all, not a fashion show. It was the principal of Tokiwadai and its head supervisor who seemed most bothered by the boy's appearance, as they shot up from their seats—those closest to them would later wonder if they'd actually heard them say, "What's a boy doing up there?" To some, as a matter of fact, it almost seemed as if the pair would rush up to the stage—

And then Misaka Mikoto smiled, closed her eyes, and began playing.

They sat down very quickly.

By itself, the music was already good. Maybe it stumbled slightly at a few points, but it was already enough to make the seniors listen with contented smiles on their faces. The music had life to it, care and skill put into every note. But what really made those smiles widen, and what made the seniors burst into uproarious applause when the Railgun's performance had ended, was what they saw onstage.

The boy, it turned out, was just there to turn the pages—but that didn't make his role in the performance any less significant.

With every note that the girl in front of him played, his face grew more and more awestruck. Even those in the audience who knew that they'd heard better were able to appreciate her performance a bit more through the boy's obvious appreciation of it.

Such a situation might have been a little unsettling on its own—who had ever heard of a page turner staring at the performer instead of the pages? To some, it even seemed as if the boy was barely looking at—or turning—the pages of the sheet music at all.

The way the Railgun was playing, however, dispelled any potential doubts as to the boy's presence onstage.

She wanted him there; that much was obvious to anyone who watched for more than a few seconds. The girl had been the one to wave him onstage, after all. But it went beyond that. As she'd played more of the song, her body had relaxed more and more, and she had started smiling happily—which was normal. Most performers did that when a song was going well, and this one most certainly was. What wasn't quite normal was to open your eyes and smile at your page turner more often than you did your pages, or even the strings of your violin.

And that, of course, wasn't even counting the number of times the spiky-haired boy's eyes dropped every time such a thing happened.

The couples in the audience smiled to each other. They'd seen this enough times to know what was happening onstage…even if, after the performance, the girl bowed hurriedly and then practically shoved the boy offstage, cheeks aflame and with the expression of a person handling garbage. They weren't worried. She was Misaka Mikoto, after all: Tokiwadai's star student and the most powerful Electromaster the world had ever seen.

She'd figure it out.

Later, Kamijou tried to apologize to Misaka for how terribly he'd turned the pages, especially since she'd apparently needed someone to turn them so much.

(Mikoto never told him that she hadn't needed the pages anyway.)

Fin

I say this at the end of all my stories, but only because it's so true - if you enjoyed my stories, please leave a review or a favorite! Both make my day and really keep motivating me to write!

Thanks for getting this far,

PythianPickles