Accel World - Volume 11 - Chapter 1

1

Monday, June 24, 2047, 6:30 PM.

In the living room of the Arita household—on the twenty-third floor of B wing, in the mixed-use high-rise condo in northern Koenji, Suginami Ward—the full lineup of friends more important to Haruyuki than anyone else was present: the members of Nega Nebulus.

At the end of the six-person dining table was their master, Kuroyukihime. Sitting alongside each other, on the two chairs closest to the kitchen, were staff officer Takumu Mayuzumi and mood maker Chiyuri Kurashima. On the balcony side were Legion conscience and mascot Utai Shinomiya, as well as its (unintentional) troublemaker, Haruyuki. And directly opposite Kuroyukihime was Legion deputy Fuko Kurasaki.

Since they had met Utai, their sixth member, on the Monday exactly a week earlier, this had somehow become the standard seating plan. However, this day, they had set up extra chairs next to Kuroyukihime and Fuko. There were eight round plates on the table, rather than six.

The sweet smell of freshly cooked rice wafted up from the rice cooker, which had dropped into warming mode earlier, and an almost violently spicy scent drifted over from the large pot on the cooktop. Tortured looks rose up not just on Haruyuki’s face, but on those of the other five as well, and the conversation had stopped at some point.

“…I…can’t…anymore…,” he muttered, shaking his head.

Next to him, Utai weakly moved all ten fingers. UI> IT’S ABOUT PATIENCE, C. THIS IS ALSO PRACTICE TO TRAIN OUR MENTAL POWR. Her expression was resolute, but the extremely rare typo showed that she too was reaching her limit.

In front of him, Chiyuri was glaring at the white plate, and Takumu was intently wiping the lenses of his glasses. The terror level of the faint smile on Fuko’s mouth was steadily increasing, while Kuroyukihime was very master-like, sitting motionless with her eyes closed.

“…They’re late!!” she shouted without provocation, banging lightly on the table. “They are three minutes and thirty seconds late! In the Accelerated World, that’s fifty-eight hours!”

“More precisely, that’s fifty-seven hours and twenty minutes,” Fuko added, grinning.

Haruyuki could almost see the flames rising up behind them, and he jumped in with his usual inertia. “W-well, you know, Kuroyukihime, Master, I—I mean, they say curry gets more delicious the longer you let it sit, right?”

“Oh? Then perhaps we’ll leave yours to sit for a good while…Three days or so?”

“We did go to all this trouble. Let’s go for the limit and let it rest for a whole week.”

“N-no! That’s going beyond a different limit!” Haruyuki frantically waved his hands.

In that moment, the sound they’d all been waiting for echoed in their ears. Ding-dong! Before the doorbell had even stopped ringing, Haruyuki’s right hand flashed like lightning to press the UNLOCK button in the window that displayed his guests.

“W-welcome! I’ll come meet you at the elevators, so please—come up to the twenty-third floor!” He almost fell out of his seat in his mad dash toward the door, as the other five stood up behind him.

Kuroyukihime waved her right hand and shot off a rapid series of instructions. “Chiyuri, dish out the rice! Takumu and Fuko, get the salad from the fridge! Uiui, you reheat the curry! Leave the barley tea to me!”

The first thing his visitor said, as Haruyuki guided her into the living room, was, “Ooh! It smells good! I’m starving!”

She turned an innocent smile up at Haruyuki, who could barely move for how he and his guest were being showered in the unified murderous glare of the entirety of Nega Nebulus.

“Where should I sit, Big Brother?” she asked.

Haruyuki hurriedly pushed her red-T-shirted shoulders and led his guest to the chair beside Kuroyukihime. This arrangement made him slightly nervous, but given that the dining table’s center seat was seen as the position of honor, they couldn’t exactly seat her anywhere else, because the little girl with the red pigtails jumping up onto the chair was of exactly the same rank as Kuroyukihime. She was the Red King, leader of the Legion Prominence—the Immobile Fortress, Scarlet Rain, aka Yuniko Kozuki, in the flesh.

Niko sat neatly beside Kuroyukihime without a fuss, and Haruyuki breathed a momentary sigh of relief. But then their second guest of the evening appeared in the doorway of the living room, without a sound. She had been a few seconds behind Niko because she had to take off her sturdy motorcycle boots in the entryway. She still had long black leather gloves on her hands, which strangely complemented her short-sleeved, sailor-style school uniform. She brushed back the braid hanging over her shoulder.

“Sorry. Kannana accident traffic jam dodge,” she explained in a fairly husky voice. It was, of course, the deputy of Prominence, Blood Leopard—“Pard” for short—giving voice to this barest minimum of information.

Haruyuki went to lead her to her seat, but before he could walk over, Fuko, who was closest, stood up.

“Well, that was very nice work. It would have been such a bother if you got caught up in that, Leopard,” she said in a gentle tone as she moved to stand in front of Pard.

“Accident traffic jam dodge” happened when a vehicle’s control AI applied the emergency brakes because it seemed like the automobile was about to have an accident, and it simultaneously sent out a warning signal to the vehicles around it. When the road was crowded, the warning propagated in a chain reaction to avoid a series of connected collisions, and cars were stopped over a fairly wide range or else forced into slow-driving mode.

And just like that, even in the setting of the Arita living room, invisible sparks shot outward, emitted by the two girls facing each other, bringing Haruyuki to an immediate stop. He swallowed hard as he belatedly connected the dots.

Until the fall of the first Nega Nebulus, Pard, also known as Bloody Kitty, and “Strong Arm” Sky Raker, aka Fuko Kurasaki, had each recognized the other as their greatest rival. He had heard all that before, but apparently the fact that Pard was still sitting at level six, despite being a fairly old veteran, had some deep connection to Raker’s semiretirement.

“…Hi, Raker.” From the brief greeting Pard offered as she pulled off her gloves, he couldn’t tell if the two of them had met before in the real, or if this was actually their first time.

At the very least, they had been reunited in the final stages of the Hermes’ Cord race three weeks earlier, and they had to have spoken then as well. But when he thought about it, that had been a multi-team event, so they still hadn’t had a direct duel since Raker’s return.

…Wh-what if they suddenly start a duel here? Unconsciously, Haruyuki clenched sweaty hands.

But Niko, behind him, cut cleanly through the tension in a voice with angel mode disengaged. “Enough with the standoff. Let’s eat already! I can’t wait any longer!”

“…You were the ones who kept us waiting, Red King,” Kuroyukihime responded.

Fuko took this opportunity to step back and urge Pard to take a seat at the table. The two rivals sat down together, and when Haruyuki had hurried back over to his own seat, Kuroyukihime opened her mouth once more.

“Now then, let’s eat. We’ll talk after that.”

“Let’s eat!” the other seven chorused in unison, picking up their spoons and digging into their respective plates of curry at once.

Why had the six members of Nega Nebulus made curry and invited the top two members of Prominence to dine with them? The reason went back to the meeting of the Seven Kings held the previous day, Sunday, June 23.

Chewing on a potato wedge he had selected and peeled, Haruyuki scrolled back twelve hours in his memory, to the moment of judgment when a single wrong move could have ended up with him being given the death penalty by the Kings of Pure Color…