Sakashima Michibata

Sakashima Michibata (坂島 道端) is a small side character introduced in Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume SS2, he is a hairdresser who owns a hair salon in School Garden.

His debut introduces the difference between espers and Gemstones through his discussion with Shirai Kuroko.

Appearance
Michibata is a tall man with a thin build. His hair is brown and wavy as well as a goatee.

Personality
He seemed to enjoy chitchatting with costumers and for that purpose seems to be well versed in rumors across Academy City, he also seemed to be a slightly skeptical person, so he doesn't speak of rumors that are completely baseless. He also seems slightly playful and has been known to joke around a little with his costumers, especially with Shirai Kuroko who is often belligerent with him.

Background
Michibata is a hairdresser who operates a salon located in Academy City within School Garden his salon doesn't have many costumers but he pointed out that Tokiwadai needs to appoint stores and authorize them in order for the stores to offer services to their students, but thanks to that he gets a steady fee from Tokiwadai as long as he follows Tokiwadai's security norms regardless of how his business is actually succeeding.

He usually waits for costumers outside the hair salon playing handheld games. Shirai Kuroko describes him as a skilled hairdresser.

The Fourth Friday of April
Kuroko enters his salon and tells him to put down his handheld game or else she'll give him some trauma. Kuroko is concerned because Michibata seems unconcerned of getting customers for the salon. Even the staff members that have been only employed there for three months are more worried than Michibata. Regardless, Kuroko goes to a partition and sits down on a chair to get her hair down. Michibata who is unintimated goes to her and removes her hair ribbons to begin his work. Michibata suggests to Kuroko in using new irons he just acquired and asks if she wants a drill or croissant, saying she can be a very domineering. Kuroko doesn't want to, saying that her hair is naturally curly and as such she wants him to give her a straight perm. Michibata asks if it is an afro she wants, to which Kuroko reiterates, by yelling at him, that she wants a straight perm as he puts on the hair dryer helmet on her head.

Afterward as Michibata pulls out a thin pair of scissors, he tells Kuroko that she must have it tough as she is in a prestigious esper school like Tokiwadai and that she needs to get a teacher's permission for the salon she chooses to get her hair cut. He tells that though their school chose him as a designated shop and allowing him to get a lot of easy money, he says that it must be pretty constrained for her having those rules. Kuroko retorts that complaining won't do a thing, saying that it is because people like him can get a basic genetic sample from hair and blood, and as such the school doesn't want someone secretly collecting and mapping someone's DNA. As he continues with Kuroko's hair, he looks above his head the large number of cameras installed by Tokiwadai Middle School. Michibata then says that he has heard a rumor that there is a new subsidy for research on developing teleportation powers as dealing with 11th dimensional coordinates is difficult enough that it is unpopular with the scientists. Kuroko tells him it is not because scientist dislike 11th dimensional calculations, as they most often come up in the quantum theories related to Schrödinger, and says that the higher ups are just worried that there aren't many espers that can teleport. Kuroko says that there are just abilities that show up easily and some that don't. Michibata notes that is one of the mysteries regarding esper powers as he is sure students go through the same Power Curriculum Program but end up with different powers. As he continues to cut Kuroko's hair he wonders why Academy City is even developing powers in the first place, to which she says that he should not deny the very root of Academy City's reason to exist.

Michibata responds that he understands that esper powers are an attractive prospect but says that he thinks that there's some influential person behind it all who dreams of eternal life or world domination. He says to her that he wonders if the text book on esper powers for students like Kuroko even talk about the uproar during the Cold War, referencing the United States and the Soviet Union investing money in it. Kuroko then references the Stargate Project. Kuroko says that they have learned about the project in history class, saying that the scientist had no idea what they were doing and repeatedly kept doing their large-scale experiments despite their inconclusive findings. She concludes that the scientists were just fumbling around and wasting federal funding. Michibata wonders if the project was truly for developing esper powers for military use. He thinks that the project was more for selfish reasons such as being special than for military use. As he continues cutting hair, he then asks if the esper power development between the US and the USSR during the Cold War get their "esper samples". Kuroko says that maybe they were bluffing. Michibata responds that he doubts all of them are fakes, and says that at the very least he doesn't think anyone would wish to create something like an esper without seeing one. Kuroko uses Alchemy as an example, saying that royalty and nobility believed in alchemy because they thought that they had witnessed it with their own eyes, essentially implying that people don't need facts or evidence to believe in something.

Michibata then says that he doesn't believe in superstitious stuff like Alchemy, UFOs, or the New Jersey Devil. Hearing this, Kuroko asks if Michibata is implying that some information on Academy City technology got leaked to the US and the USSR during the Cold War, to which Michibata says that it would be impossible due to the high difference in technology between the outside and Academy City as it would not help them because they did not have the technology to break the advanced encryption. He continues by saying that an "outside" supercomputer in the past wouldn't have been powerful enough to run even the handheld game he is playing, much less crack the encryption and read any information they attained from Academy City. Kuroko then asks what he is implying, to which Michbata asks if she has heard of Gemstones. Kuroko is silent for a moment, and Michibata then asks if he has upsetted her. Kuroko says that he did, saying that her power was brought up by the stimulation of her brain through the Power Curriculum Program, and says that she would rather have him not bring up the term Gemstones. Michibata simply calls it a simple difference between an artificial diamond and a natural one. He says that if a certain phenomenon has been caused artificially, then as long as the same circumstances as in the experiment are recreated in the natural world due to some factor or another, the same phenomenon will occur with no help from humans—basically saying that if espers due to Academy City's curriculum can exist then so do espers in the outside through natural means that are similar to the curriculum. He then compares them as espers being a stun gun and Gemstones being a bolt of lightning. A bored Kuroko denies their existence, saying that Gemstones are just a hypothesis, stating that it is because she has never seen anything like a Gemstone and even if they did then the sample size would be extremely small, a mere error in the data and wouldn't even show up in the total results.

Hearing this, Michibata just smiles and once again challenges her in this debate by using her stun gun and lightning, asking if she thinks lightning strikes rather frequently, to which she says that they do, though extremely rare for it to strike a specific person.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun
Michibata greets Mikoto after she passes by with the new Tokiwadai Middle School student Kongou Mitsuko as she shows her around School Garden.

Design evolution
Michibita's design remains static throughout the series. Since he is male, Haimura had no problem in designing him uniquely.

Quotes

 * (To Shirai Kuroko, from Index SS2) “Bah. Sorry, but I’m not the kind of person that believes in alchemy, UFOs, or the New Jersey Devil.”