.hack//AI Buster - Volume 2 - Chapter 2.8

.: 8 :.

Though it was spring, the air still held the final chill of winter. As I fixed my scar£, I passed a little girl in a red coat, holding hands with her mother. I kept on walking.

I found Haruka Mizuhara waiting in the coffee shop, holding a caramel macchiato in one hand and a foreign paperback in the other. She looked up from her book and called out my avatar's name.

"Albireo!"

I was finally meeting the woman behind Hokuto. She was a translatot, slightly older than me. I realized she used software to make her vuice sound younger online. That sort of thing was common in The World.

We talked about the past for a while before she said, "You were the Long Arm with eyes like stars. You balanced the CC Corp.'s perspective as a system ad ministrator with the perspective of an adventurer in The World."

"But when I met Lycoris, the stars collided," I said, almost without thinking.

"Everything eventually falls out of balance. Even binary stars," Haruka said.

"Because I couldn't accept the conclusion of the Lycoris event, I was no longer able to properly role-play Albireo any more," I explained.

"Because the spear of your heart was broken."

"That's why Albireo died." I sipped the coffee. It tasted bitter.

"Death in The World is a passing of two souls."

I nodded. "I thought about the spider lilies coloring the path red. I think that's (he path Harald walked. He wanted to meet Emma Weilant, a woman he knew he could never again meet. So he weaved Emma Weilant's poem, Epitaph of the Twilight, inco an online game. That was how Harald reunited with Emma."

"Albireo's death also left a deep Impression on Hokuto," Haruka softly spoke.

"Really?" I asked, moved.

"Would we be meeting now, if he hadn't?"

"Of course not. It was against company regs." I looked through the window at the blossoming trees and sighed. "I gave a whole decade of my youth to the online world. As a creator, a system administrator, and a player, I did everything I could. I don't regret it."

"Good. You shouldn't."

"I accept the consequences of my breakdown. After all, it led me here. It led me to you."

She smiled shyly. "I think you should know, I'm a mediocre translator, and rather poor. I can't even cook."

"Huh?"

"I can't take care of you." Haruka laughed.

I blushed slightly. "Thanks, but you don't need to worry. CC Corp. paid well and I nevet had time to spend my paychecks, so I've saved most of it. It's a pretty hefty amount."

"Does that mean you don't need me?" she smiled shyly.

"We all need someone," I replied. "And you were the first person to decipher the meaning behind the stars in my eyes."

After a long hospitalization, I quit the CC Corp., claiming health reasons, but in real iey, upper management blamed me for triggering the Twilight Incident.

When Twilight occurred, the Cobalt Knights were powerless to prevent the birth of Aura, the ultimate AI.

Only one question still haunted me in the aftermath of my breakdown, and I had plenty of time to mull it over while I stared at the ceiling of my hospital room: Why did Wotan's Spear shaner? After all, it was a divine item, preordained from the beta version, designed to remove any threat to The World. I can only speculate, but I believe that I had done the unthinkable, I had pointed the spear at its very creator, I had tried to debug the one thing that couldn't be destroyed, Morgana, the God of The World.