Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament
Volume 4, Sub.22

Volume 4, Sub.22

Kihara Kagun.

He was originally researching the illusions that appear to people when they were about to die. During this process, he managed to research how to stop a heart safely and how to restart a heart that was stopped safely. In terms of the outcome, he had the ability to revive people. But he was a man who was legendary even among the Kiharas because of his ability to control the number of times he could stop a person’s heart.

No one could read into his personality from the outside.

Unlike most of the Kiharas, he never showed his real personality. Maybe that could be somewhat of a relief to this world. Those intoxicating thoughts of his were a form of curse. If such a thing was shown on the surface, it was likely that there would be a drastic change in the whole Academy City.

He was that kind of Kihara.

Everything of his, from his thoughts, to his evil deeds, to his accomplishments, were undoubtedly the best.

Kihara Kagun had erased the record of becoming evil as part of a Kihara in his teens, but he suddenly stopped his research on near-death experience before he was twenty. The reasons were unknown (and speaking of which, even if it could be described, this man, who was outstanding even among the Kiharas, may not have his thoughts understood). Once he was asked whether there were other reasons, he only responded with a short sentence.

"Even when I get the results, the price I had to pay doesn’t match."

What results? What price? They weren’t clear about what he said. But because of those words, many other researchers of near-death experience were negatively impacted. But even when ignoring that, other people managed to come up with some ordinary hypotheses.

In other words, did Kihara Kagun realize the value and weight of the lives he was manipulating?

Through countless experiments, the answer he sought became simpler. Or rather, in the simple process, the Kihara was worn out and malfunctioned.

One of the reasons supporting this baseless hypothesis was that Kihara Kagun, who abandoned his role as a researcher, chose a very boring and bland path of being a teacher.

If one flipped through the records, there would be evidence that Kihara Kagun had once taken part in the Student Keeper activity.

The Student Keeper was one of the safety measures of Academy City. The main aim was to send teachers to the dormitories of students to teach them and counsel them to prevent them from being unable to return to school life because they kept skipping class.

In fact, there were a total of 32 students, both male and female, who went back to school because of this activity.

Most of the Student Keepers couldn’t touch what was deep inside the students’ hearts, yet a teacher alone broke the record.

It seemed that the way Kihara Kagun broke the wall in the hearts of the students became an urban legend. Amidst all sorts of conjectures, there was a saying that they gave a metaphorical warning for students to get away from the Kiharas, the dangerous darkness in Academy City.

As for Kihara Kagun, the moment that changed his fate was during spring three years ago.

He met a killer wielding a knife.

All they knew was that it was a boy, seventeen or eighteen years old, who was erased from the records.

At that time, the lesson time for ordinary students overlapped each other, and there were a lot of students gathered outside the school. However, the Anti-Skill members who were in charge of safety couldn’t take care of all the students in such a large place. The killer started to take action without hesitation, and Kihara Kagun was at a position closest to him.

And then, the teacher who was secretly respected released the Kihara to protect the students.

He used both hands to grab onto the shovel in the flowerbed nearby and ran at the killer without hesitation. He used a slight shock to the jaw to impair the killer’s consciousness, and gave him a hypnotizing-like effect. Using that moment, he attacked the killer who was completely defenseless.

Continuous hits of metal could be heard.

Through the pathologist’s analysis, the killer’s head had five areas that were dug in. As for the perfect cause of death that didn’t give any pain, the pathologist questioned if Kihara Kagun was reading a human’s anatomy textbook as he killed.

Kihara Kagun’s hands were stained in blood as the Anti-Skill members accosted him to court. But the judge’s verdict was that he was defending himself appropriately, so he was acquitted. He wasn’t sued by the prosecutors, and his license as a teacher wasn’t revoked.

However, Kihara Kagun never retook his position.

On the day the judge deemed him innocent, Kihara Kagun sent an email to the school about his resignation. His colleagues went to his apartment, only to replace the place completely empty.

At that time, the students in the school all felt that Kihara Kagun was a hero who ignored his own position to protect the students. At that time, the teachers, his ex-colleagues, felt that it was a decision he made to avoid being a target of admiration for having a way to kill.

From then on, Kihara Kagun vanished without a trace.

Nobody even knew whether he remained in Academy City.