Accel World - Volume 17 - Chapter 3

3

“Thank you, Master. Please have a safe drive home,” Haruyuki said to Fuko in the driver’s seat and then got out of the car. From the sidewalk, he bowed his head to Kuroyukihime in the passenger seat. “Thank you, too, Kuroyukihime. I’m sorry for not telling you about Metatron…”

“No, it’s fine. I understand that you felt it was difficult to explain. That, well…” Kuroyukihime smiled wryly, and Haruyuki returned a small smile of his own.

After her proclamation that Metatron was now a member of Nega Nebulus, the Archangel had made a big fuss—Why must I join a band of little warriors?!—before finally assenting with a number of conditions. And that had just been a meeting with Kuroyukihime and Fuko. He couldn’t even imagine what a huge commotion it would have turned into if all the Legion members had been present.

“But…it’s curious. When we were fighting the first form at Midtown Tower—No, even when we went up against the second form after that, I could only see it as a fearsome Enemy, and yet, now I think of her as basically the same as us…,” Kuroyukihime murmured.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down. “When she was about to disappear protecting me, Metatron said that we little warriors are essentially the same as Beings like her.”

“In which case, it will be hard to go Enemy hunting from now on,” Fuko said, across from Kuroyukihime, a slightly troubled smile on her lips.

Haruyuki had been thinking the same thing these past few days. “Yes, I believe it will. I’m going to ask Metatron what she thinks about that.”

“Oh-ho, that said, I expect you will not run about with her and do whatever you please while I’m not around. I absolutely do not accept her as your master or any such nonsense!” A hand stretched out from the window and smacked Haruyuki’s chest lightly.

“R-r-r-r-right!”

“And I want to check one more thing. Is Metatron always in that little icon form?”

“Y-yes. I guess she can’t appear in her true form until she recovers her strength.” Haruyuki nodded frantically, and the fingers finally were pulled back into the car.

“Well then, that’s fine. All right. Good work today, Haruyuki. I would like to tell you to have a good rest, but you have to study in preparation for the final exams on Wednesday.”

“All right, Corvus,” Fuko said. “See you. Good luck on your tests.”

“R-right…” Disappointed at being suddenly yanked back into the harshness of reality, Haruyuki listened as the car drove off down Kannana Street and disappeared to the south, leaving only the faint sound of the engine. He watched the vivid canary-yellow disappear in traffic before starting to walk to the pedestrian crossing.

He felt like he heard a familiar, shrill howl off in the distance suddenly, but looking back, there were only families and couples happily passing one another on the sidewalk. Of course, the massive form of an Enemy would not appear from behind a building there.

He passed through the large halls of the shopping center on the first floor with its many shoppers strolling beneath the Tanabata Festival decorations and jumped into the residents’ elevator before breathing a sigh of relief.

Haruyuki had been born the year his parents bought this condo in the large multiuse building that was just a five-minute walk from Koenji Station. Of course, his mother had known she was pregnant before that, and his parents had moved there with the intention of living together as a family.

But his parents had divorced when he was in second grade. He had been told it was because his father was cheating on his mother, but since the few memories he had of his parents as a couple were of all of them laughing together, he felt like they’d had a good relationship. But his father had left, essentially brushing off the weeping young Haruyuki clinging to him, and he hadn’t seen him once ever since. If the divorce had been amicable, then his father should have been given the right to see his child. The fact that he hadn’t meant that his mother had refused to let his father see him—or that his father had said he didn’t want to.

It was probably the latter, Haruyuki thought, staring absently at the elevator display as it changed one floor at a time.

One time not long before the divorce, his mother and father had argued in the living room late at night about who would get custody of him. Having woken suddenly, Haruyuki listened to the thorny exchange from the hallway. Were they each trying to get sole custody? Or were they trying to foist it on each other? This, too, was probably…

The elevator gently decelerated, waking Haruyuki from his ruminations. He was sure he’d been thinking so much about the past lately because of the student council presentation “Time” at the school festival the week before. But it didn’t feel as much like a sharp needle stabbing into his heart as it used to.

His mother was apparently not coming home today. Still, he no longer felt like she had abandoned him.

Ever since she was little, his mother had been a fighter and a bit of a sore loser—at least, according to his grandparents, who ran a cherry farm in Yamagata. Her grades had always been in the top of her class. So even after she grew up and got a job with a foreign capital investment bank, got married, and became a mother, she was still always fighting something. That was just how Saya Arita lived, and Haruyuki couldn’t say a thing about it.

As the display lit up with a large 23, the elevator doors opened, and he stepped out into the empty hall. He turned to the right and rounded the corner, and when the door of his apartment came into view, he was for some reason not particularly surprised to see a small doll in front of it. He had probably realized subconsciously that the sound he’d heard on Kannana Street before was not the howl of an Enemy but rather the roar of a large electric motorcycle.

The doll jumped up when she noticed Haruyuki silently approaching, the red hair tied up on either side of her head shaking. “What?” she prodded, grinning. “You’re not gonna say, ‘Wh-wh-wh-why are you here?!’”

“I can’t be surprised like that all the time, you know,” Haruyuki replied, smiling in return. “I kinda had a feeling you’d come, Niko.”

Yuniko Kozuki—the second Red King, Scarlet Rain—pursed her small lips as though slightly embarrassed. “Tch! So I guess you finally figured me out. I gotta work a little harder next time or somethin’…How about I smash the balcony window and come flyin’ in?”

“D-d-d-don’t! If you did that, I’d get yelled at until the day I die!” Haruyuki hurriedly shouted.

“Ha-ha-ha! Kidding! It’s just a joke!” Niko laughed, seemingly satisfied, and then tucked her hands behind her suddenly. “Why would I do something like that, Big Brother?”

The surprise switch to angel mode nearly shut down his brain. He managed just barely to brace himself and keep from staggering. “S-so then, what on earth do you…?”

An innocent smile playing on her lips, Niko shifted the large backpack on her back. “Obvious, isn’t it?! We haven’t had a sleepover in aaaaages!”

…I don’t care if you sleep over—you’re always welcome—but it would really help me out if you could at least e-mail me or something beforehand. And you say “ages,” but it was only eight days ago that you last stayed over…

Muttering and grumbling, Haruyuki showed Niko into the living room and then peered into the fridge. “Niko, do you want milk, grapefruit juice, oolong tea, mineral water, or milk?”

“Hey, c’mon!” the angry voice of normal mode roared instantly. “You said milk twice! You tryna be my mom or somethin’?! Like, telling me to be like Raker or what?!”

“I don’t think you could manage that, even if you did drink milk…”

“What’d you just say?! But since you’re asking, I’ll have the milk!”

“Nothing at all! And understood!” He pulled a chemically reinforced one-liter bottle out of the fridge and poured two glasses of milk. While he was at it, he washed a bunch of the cherries that had just arrived from Yamagata, set them in a glass bowl, and carried it out with two small plates.

The moment he set the tray down on the dining table, Niko’s puffed-up scowl transformed into a glowing smile. “Oh! Cherries! And they’re huge, too!”

“I didn’t tell you? My grandpa and grandma run a cherry farm in Yamagata. It’s cherry season now. They always send us a ton at this time every year.”

“A ton every year?! Huh. I shoulda come last year, too!”

“I wasn’t a Burst Linker in July last year…”

“Not important! So like…Can I have some?”

“Oh! Yeah, go ahead.” Haruyuki pushed the glass bowl into the center of the table.

Niko delightedly snatched one of the large Satonishiki cherries and shouted “Thanks for the grub!” before popping it into her mouth. She had no sooner bitten into it with a small splch than a smile of bliss found its way to her lips.

“I didn’t know you liked cherries so much, Niko,” Haruyuki remarked as he stuffed a cherry into his own mouth.

Niko spit the pit out onto the plate before replying. “I didn’t tell you I like them best after strawberries? Like, when I first met Cherry Rook over there, I was all ‘I’d rather have that, switch avatars with me.’ And he was all ‘Uhhh.’”

“Huh. Now that you mention it, you’re kinda like a cherry somehow, Niko.”

He looked her over where she sat across from him. She was wearing a dark-gray tank top layered over a red boat-neck T-shirt, and perfectly fitted cutoff jeans. Her slender build and brilliant-red hair were kinda like a cherry, he thought before finally noticing that the girl wasn’t just red on her head but all the way down to her face.

“O-o-okay, look! Don’t just go saying such embarrassing stuff all of a sudden!”

“Huh?! I—I didn’t mean anything weird.”

“’Course not! …But, like, if you say that, Haruyuki, then, like, let’s just leave it at that.” Her face still red, she turned away curtly and stuffed two cherries into her cheeks at once.

He didn’t know what was so “embarrassing” about what he’d said, but he was glad the cherries had come that day, and he took a drink of his milk.

Ding-dong! He heard the sound of chimes, and a small window announcing a visitor was displayed in his field of view. For some reason, the hand he raised reflexively stopped in midair. A shiver of premonition crawled up his back. If he was forced to say, it was like the sensation of floating, mixed with the anticipation and terror of the moment right before a roller coaster drops.

Fortunately, Niko was absorbed in the cherries and noticed nothing. He swallowed hard before he touched the respond button.

The feed from the camera at the first-floor entrance was shown in the window. And pictured there was the smiling face of Kuroyukihime, who had supposedly driven off down Kannana Street twenty minutes ago. Haruyuki twisted around ninety degrees in his chair and asked in a tight and tiny voice, his back rounded toward Niko, “K-K-K-K-K-Kuroyukihime?! Wh-wh-wh-what’s going on?!”

“Oh, I was actually on my way home, but then I got this uneasy feeling. So I figured I’d come help you study and check out this feeling at the same time.”

The Black King’s super-senses are to be feared! A chill ran through his heart, but he managed to somehow produce a smile. “W-w-w-w-w-w-well, that’s great. Thanks. Um. Wh-what about Master?”

“Unfortunately, Fuko had a thing. She said, ‘Hello to Corvus and whomever.’”

Master’s super-senses are also to be feared. Shivering once again, Haruyuki mustered up his courage and pressed the entry button. “P-please come on up then.”

“Thanks. Be there in a minute.”

When the window disappeared, Haruyuki slowly turned back around.

Naturally, Niko had noticed him talking and was sending a hard stare his way as she twirled the stem of a cherry between her fingertips. “So that was Lotus—I mean, Kuroyuki?”

“Y-yeah. Good guess.”

“It’s written all over yer face. Honestly. Are you freaked out or happy?” Niko snorted indignantly before leaning back in her chair. “Welp, guess I’ll leave the rest of these cherries for her then.”

Exactly one minute later, Kuroyukihime rang the bell to his door, and no sooner had she come face-to-face with Niko in the living room than a dangerous grin was popping up on her lips. “I knew it. I suspected something like this.”

It was Sunday, so Kuroyukihime was also in street clothes: a layered tunic of black fabric with a white floral design and leggings that ended just below the knee. Her sleeveless shoulders were dazzling, but he didn’t have the mental leeway to appreciate them as he urged her to a chair.

“Please, sit down. I’ll get you something to drink. Um, what did you want?”

“Milk, of course,” Niko said, grinning.

Kuroyukihime arched an eyebrow. “While I don’t dislike milk, why the ‘of course’?”

“’Cause you still got room to grow, y’know?”

“Wh-what are you looking at when you say that?! I am not dissatisfied with the status of my own growth!”

“Oh-ho. So you’re deliberately going for lightweight, then.”

“Y-you are certainly not one to talk!”

“I’m gonna grow plenty from here on out.”

“Hmph, it will be too late to panic three years from now, after all.”

“So you are panicking, then.”

“I am not!”

Listening anxiously to this exchange, Haruyuki managed to fight for an opening and interjected, “So, K-Kuroyukihime, what did you want?”

“I’ll have milk,” Kuroyukihime said, glaring at him.

“R-roger.” He retreated meekly into the kitchen and let out the breath he’d been holding.

This wasn’t the first time Niko and Kuroyukihime had run into each other at the Arita house—he remembered quite well a similar development when Niko had slipped into his house six months earlier, pretending to be his cousin. He’d have to be on his toes for the time being, at least.

He poured milk into a third glass and carried it out with a new small plate. He set these in front of Kuroyukihime, who was sitting beside Niko for some reason, and gestured toward the cherries on the table.

“Please have some, if you’d like. They’re cherries my grandfather grew.”

“Oh! They’re quite large. Thank you.” It seemed Kuroyukihime didn’t dislike cherries, either, and she happily reached out for one. She popped one into her mouth and grinned. “They’re very good. What cultivar are they?”

“The old Satonishiki. There are a lot of new genetically modified types these days, like to make them sweeter or super-big. But they’ve basically always grown these at my grandparents’ farm.”

“I see…I’d like to visit your grandparents’ cherry farm sometime.”

“You can. Like, during summer vacation or something,” he replied. And then hurried to add, “Oh! B-but it’s by Higashine in Yamagata, so a day trip isn’t really an option.”

“Mm. That’s fine with me. As long as it’s no trouble for your grandparents, I could stay the night, or two nights, or three.”

“I-it wouldn’t be any trouble at all. In fact, I think my grandma and grandpa would be super-happy.”

“Well then, perhaps I’ll take you up on the offer.”

“Please do! Cherries taste best when you pick them right from the tree!” The instant Haruyuki said this, there was a loud bang.

Niko leaned forward in her chair. “I’m going, too.”

“What?”

“I wanna go, toooo! I wanna eat fresh! Picked! Cherries!” Niko cried in a voice that was hard to tell if she was in angel mode or normal mode.

“Niko, you’re not a little kid anymore, right?” Kuroyukihime patted her head with one hand. “So what do you say at a time like this, hmm?”

“S-stupid Kuroyuki. It’s not even your grandpa…” Gritting her teeth in vexation, Niko turned back to Haruyuki and bowed deeply, Kuroyukihime’s hand still on her head. “Haruyuki, c’mon…I’m beggin’ ya! You gotta take me, too. Please!”

“Y-you don’t have to beg. Of course it’s okay. My grandparents’ house is big, so it can accommodate a bunch of people. The building’s pretty old, though.”

“R-really?! Yessss!!” Niko yanked herself back up like she was going to fly off her chair and knocked Kuroyukihime’s hand off her head. “Sweet! Summer vacation! It’s already set in the schedule in my heart, so no take-backs!”

“I-I’ll have to ask them about when we can come…”

“Yeah, yeah. But the sooner the better! Oh! But. Hmm.” Niko abruptly started mumbling, so Haruyuki blinked hard. And then the smile on Niko’s lips turned into something a little bitter. “Oh, it’s just that I was thinking…At any rate, before we eat fresh-picked cherries, we oughtta finish those guys off.”

“I suppose so. I would very much like to.” Kuroyukihime also nodded deeply.

“Those guys” were, of course, the Acceleration Research Society—the White Legion, Oscillatory Universe. They had adopted the Seven Legion joint-attack policy proposed by Niko at the meeting of the Seven Kings that day. But there would be no attack until they could prove where the Society’s headquarters were.

“Um.” One of the few remaining cherries dangling from his fingers, Haruyuki switched gears and told the two kings, “The Blue King said if anyone brought information about the headquarters, he would send a scouting team and check the matching list in the area, but just that’s not enough to prove that the Eternal Girls’ Academy’s Minato Area Number Three is the Society’s home base.”

“You’re exactly right.” Kuroyukihime reached out for her glass of milk, drops of water condensed on the sides. “All those Society people are likely Oscillatory members, and at the same time, all of Minato Ward is Oscillatory territory. With the privileges of the controlling Legion, their names wouldn’t normally be on the matching list.”

“So then…how are we supposed to get proof?” Haruyuki bit his lip lightly.

“You gotta let me apologize for one thing first,” Niko said, a serious edge to her voice, as she sat up straighter in her chair.

“Huh…?”

“Like, that’s actually the reason I came over. Haruyuki…and Kuroyuki, I’m sorry for racing ahead like that at the meeting today without talking to you first.” Her pigtails bobbing up and down, Niko bowed her head deeply.

Even Haruyuki, who was generally a little thick, understood what Niko was talking about. Her proposal for a joint concentrated attack on the Acceleration Research Society in the middle of the meeting. And indeed, he had felt it was a little sudden. But as a result, they had likely succeeded in putting a degree of pressure on Ivory Tower and the White Legion, so it seemed to him that there was no need to apologize now.

Kuroyukihime apparently felt the same way, and she patted Niko’s shoulder as a faint, wry smile crossed her face. “No need to humble yourself like this. If you hadn’t said it, Niko, I would have made a similar proposal…Although, well, if you’d given me word in advance, I think we may have been able to coordinate better.”

“That’s just it.” Niko lifted her face and glanced out the window with a stern look. “I’ll be blunt. The reason I couldn’t talk to you earlier about the meeting today is that the opinion’s still split with my gang.”

“Split?” Haruyuki parroted, and Niko looked back at him with eyes that did indeed house the force of a king.

“Yeah. Put simply, some members—well, some of the executives—insist we shouldn’t put any more into our relationship with Nega Nebulus. I managed to persuade them to agree with the joint attack, at least, right before the meeting.”

“The executives…So, like, Pard-rank?”

“Yeah. The other two at Pard’s rank, the Triplex. Lemme just say, both of ’em care super-loads about Promi and me. Which is exactly why maybe…They think just the indefinite cease-fire agreement with Negabu puts Promi in danger. And you know, you guys are squaring off against the other Legions and fighting, so. They feel like maybe they’re gonna come after Promi sooner or later, and as the LM, I can’t say I don’t get that.”

“I see. Their concerns are quite valid. The situation is such that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Radio and his ilk were to take note of our cease-fire and demand you withdraw from the Six Legion mutual nonaggression pact.”

“Cool as a cucumber when you say that, but…” Niko smiled bitterly and shifted to sit cross-legged on her chair, placing her hands on her slender ankles. She sat in silence like that for a moment, but then suddenly said in a tone that was somehow brusque, “…In fact, I’m basically of the mind that Negabu and we have already thrown our lots in together.”

“Huh…?” Haruyuki’s eyes grew wide.

Niko glanced at him and then turned to the side for some reason before standing up and speaking even faster. “I mean, we have, though. We hold Nakano One, and if the five Legions decided to launch an all-out attack on Negabu, that territory would be in the way. So they tell me to hand it over, and if I just say ‘Sure, no probs,’ then there’s not even any point in setting up shop as a Legion. In the end, our only choice’d be to form a genuine alliance with you and fight together.”

Haruyuki wondered in his heart if that would be the case, but Kuroyukihime actually said it out loud.

“No, you have one other option. Form an alliance with the five Legions and attack us. In that case, there would be no need to hand over control of Nakano One.”

“…Nah, I can’t do that.”

“I’m grateful that you would say that, but, Niko, we have no intention of simply sitting back and accepting charity. In the end, if we aren’t an alliance on equal footing, then setting up shop as a Legion—”

“It’s not charity!” Making her chair clatter against the floor again, Niko stood up. In the light of the sun coming in through the window behind her, her red hair shone like flames as she looked at Kuroyukihime. “It’d be trouble for me if Suginami ended up Leonids’ or GW territory!”

“Why?” Though curt, Kuroyukihime somehow had the air of an older sister comforting a younger one as she looked up at Niko.

“Th-that’s…That’s—it’s…”

But the instant Kuroyukihime heard what Niko had to say next, her placid look turned to surprise. And because it was enough to surprise the Black King, Haruyuki got such a shock that he nearly flipped over and fell off his chair.

“That’s ’cause I’m starting at Umesato next year, maybe!” Niko shouted, as if pulling the words from her entire body, her hands clenching into fists.

“What…Whaaaat?!” Haruyuki shouted.

Niko glared at him before sitting back down. She drained her glass of the milk left in it in one gulp and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

It was true that the boarding school where Niko lived now in Nerima Ward was not so far from Umesato Junior High in Suginami. It was probably about twenty minutes by bus one way. But Niko’s school also had a junior high. If she was going to advance to a different junior high, wouldn’t she have to leave the dorms?

And to begin with, why Umesato? It was an academic school at any rate, but there were schools of the same level in Nerima, too. If it was because she wanted to go to the same school as Haruyuki, Chiyuri, and Takumu, then he was just plain happy. But at the same time, he felt like Niko—the proud Red King—would not decide on her future based on such emotion alone.

Haruyuki hesitated about whether it was okay for him to ask about this and the several other questions on his mind.

But as if she could read his mind, Niko glared at Haruyuki and let out a sigh before she started to speak. “This’ll be a loooong story. So the place I go now, the abandoned-child general-welfare facility and school, has this thing kinda like a scholarship system. Like, they give a few students with top grades a chance to go to a junior high outside the system.”

“Top grades?!” said Kuroyukihime.

“A few students?!” cried Haruyuki.

For a moment, Niko started to bristle, pigtails swinging, but then she simply snorted, and her expression returned to normal. “Yup. And I’ll tell ya now, I’m not cheating or nothing with acceleration. So, well, I’m in that box or whatever this year. And it’s about time I decide what I’m gonna do. Give up on an outside school and go to our junior high or go to an outside school. I can’t decide just like that, so I talked to Pard, y’know? And, like, she thought about it for a second before she said I should go to Umesato.”

“P-Pard suggested it?” he asked.

“Yeah. I guess she’s been thinking about all kinds of stuff since we went to your festival last week. Said, like, there aren’t too many places where they leave students so much independence in junior high.”

“Student independence…Umesato…?” Haruyuki cocked his head deeply to one side.

Naturally, he’d never compared it to other schools, but Umesato didn’t give the impression of a particularly lenient school tradition. They gave loads of homework, and if students did anything bad, the administration was on them in a hot second. Like when Dusk Taker, aka Seiji Nomi, hid a small camera in the girls’ shower room and tried to get Haruyuki to take the fall, there was an emergency notice that entry into the gym itself was prohibited, which caused a huge commotion.

But opposite the confused Haruyuki, Kuroyukihime nodded, her expression unchanged. “Well, that is our school’s greatest advantage, its fundamental charm. It seems that Haruyuki doesn’t feel the reality of this, but there aren’t that many schools where you can freely use Neurolinkers and the net like you can at Umesato. There are plenty of schools that forbid full dives on school grounds.”

“Totally forbidden at our junior high, too,” Niko added. “Pard’s struggled a lot ’cause of that.”

Haruyuki looked at her and nodded. “So if your school forbids full dives, that means all kinds of hassle as a Burst Linker?”

“Nah!” Niko shouted loudly, before seeming to blush a bit. “Well, that’s one reason, but it’s a super-small one! It’s like, I dunno, I’ve never felt this before, either, but the atmosphere at Umesato’s loose somehow. And I mean that as praise, okay? I mean, look. I’m gonna be real with ya for a sec, Haruyuki; I went and looked at all these junior highs in Suginami. And I felt like all the private academic schools were so tense inside the school everywhere, but there wasn’t so much of that at Umesato.”

“The reason for that is no doubt because there is a place the students can escape to if need be,” Kuroyukihime remarked, and Haruyuki’s eyes flew open.

For once, he could understand what she meant right away. When he was in seventh grade, he had fled there at every school break, after all. “The in-school local net…right? But I mean, other schools have a local net, at least?”

“They may, but few schools have a VR space on it for student use. Umesato’s parent company is a private corporation, and it seems they’re collecting data for a model scenario of education using Neurolinkers. Well, regardless of that kind of behind-the-scenes information, they were not mistaken in the idea that this space where you can chat and play games using whatever avatar you’d like would be a place for relaxation for students.”

“Right. It’s true; on the local net, everyone, like, stretches their wings. It looks like they’re having fun, although I haven’t actually been in a while.”

“Isn’t that because you found a place even better than the local net?” Kuroyukihime noted with a faint smile. “A place called the Accelerated World?”

He nodded that this was indeed the case. If he hadn’t become a Burst Linker, and even if he was no longer being bullied by Araya and his gang, Haruyuki would no doubt still be fleeing to the local net during lunch even now. “So in that sense, is the Accelerated World a shelter for me to escape from the real world?”

“It’s not just you,” Niko replied. “It’s the same for Kuroyuki and me and all the other Burst Linkers. But it’s not just that. I mean, we can find the courage we need to move forward there without running away. And it’s not given to us from outside; it’s in us. So even if you lose all yer points an’ Brain Burst an’ the power of acceleration, even when you don’t even remember you used to be a Burst Linker, something from that place stays in your heart. Absolutely. That’s what I think.”

“…Niko.” All Haruyuki could do was say the name of his younger friend, as her words surprised him and impacted his heart. There was plenty he wanted to say, but he couldn’t easily put any of it into words, and he was stuck just chewing on his lip.

Niko grinned, a smile that made her seem younger than her years. “I said the same thing at the school festival, but, like…I’ve been terrified of total point loss. I’m no Originator, no Pure Color, so, like, I was sure someone’d come hunt me one of these days…But Kuroyuki gave me that message from my prede—from Red Rider, right? I had this thought—wait, no, I knew. Like, I was super-small, y’know?”

He suddenly noticed it was already past five in the afternoon, and the color of the sunlight pouring in through the south windows had grown quite saturated. The water droplets on the surface of the cherries still left in the bowl glittered in the sunlight.

“I…I was only about me.” The droplets shivered a little at Niko’s voice dipping. “Like, I gotta be tough, or they’ll take my territory. Or my Legion members’ll leave. I’ve only been thinking about stuff like that, hiding my own weakness and fear. But, like, what that all really boils down to is that I don’t actually trust my comrades…My predecessor, like, he said he’d leave the rest to me, yeah? The way he could trust someone else entirely, get me to take over this thing he’s been building up—that’s gotta be real strength…”

“…Niko…” Haruyuki took a deep breath. “There’s nothing that says a Legion Master can’t show weakness. You need to rely on your comrades when stuff gets hard or painful. Before master or king or whatever, we’re all Burst Linkers, after all. I mean, I’ve even witnessed Kuroyukihime cry—”

Thmp.

The merciless pressure of a foot under the table rendered Haruyuki silent, and Kuroyukihime started to speak in his place.

“Everyone’s afraid of total point loss. And I was so afraid of a concentrated attack by the kings that I didn’t connect globally for two years. My Legion was disbanded, and I even gave up on reaching level ten; I had nothing left to protect…And yet I clung to the fact that I was a Burst Linker in an ugly way. When I think about it now, I can’t even remember what made me do that…Ohhh…right…”

Apparently realizing something, Kuroyukihime released a faint smile.

“And perhaps that was thanks to the Umesato local net, as well. I felt that as long as I had that small virtual world, someone would certainly appear one day and lift me out of the deep darkness. And my premonition was correct.”

Her right foot still pressing on him lightly, she turned her black eyes directly on Haruyuki, and he pulled into himself, suddenly self-conscious. But unable to escape from the swordmaster’s gaze, he silently accepted it.

“Look, missy, I was here first today!” Niko shouted with a hint of exasperation. “Fine. While you two are makin’ googly eyes at each other, I’m gonna eat the rest of the cherries!” She drew the glass bowl toward herself.

“Hey!” Instantly, Kuroyukihime released Haruyuki mentally and physically and reached out her own hand. “You can’t have them all!”

The few remaining cherries were gone in a flash, and the glasses of milk were also emptied.

Letting out a sigh, Niko leaned back all the way against the dining room chair and said with satisfaction, “Thanks for the grub. I wish Pard coulda had some…She’s looking for some good cherries to put on top of the limited-time-only fresh cherry tart.”

“She is?” Haruyuki replied. “Then take some for her when you go home tomorrow.”

“Really?! Hey, thanks.” She bowed her head before continuing with a placid look. “So like, about the reason Pard suggested going to your school. Of course, the local net’s got plenty of functionality, and the school festival was super-fun—there’s all that, but…It’s like, I feel like she’s looking further ahead, y’know? Like, what do I want the me in the real world and the me in the Accelerated World to be from now on? Like, maybe she’s thinking it’d be good for me to go to Umesato so I can really think about that for the next three years. Well, that’s just what I’m picturing, so.”

What Niko was saying was too abstract, and Haruyuki couldn’t immediately grasp it.

“In the real world…from now on”— Did she mean what school to go to? Haruyuki was in eighth grade right now, but to be honest, he had only thought about his future education once. And that was when a slightly impractical, slightly dependent hope rose up in his heart: the idea of going to the same high school as Kuroyukihime.

In the Accelerated World, he had a clearer objective. Defeat the Acceleration Research Society and the White Legion, attack the Castle and the Shrine of the Eight Divines, and challenge the Blue, Green, Yellow, and Purple Kings to a decisive battle. But this, too, when he thought about it, was really just chasing after Kuroyukihime and her fight to reach level ten.

But that’s fine. I already decided I’d follow her anywhere.

Now it was Haruyuki who turned his gaze on Kuroyukihime, and she returned the look, her jet-black pupils shining with a bright light that seemed to illuminate everything. Just as they were on the verge of reactivating googly-eyed mode, Niko purposely cleared her throat and poured cold water on the mood.

“Anyway! It’s not like it’s all settled yet, so just be ready for the possibility, yeah? If I decide on Umesato in the end, we’ll need to upgrade the treaty, so I’ll meet with the executives again then.”

When she said it all so smoothly like that, Haruyuki wondered if it was really worth all this fuss, but he simply nodded. Kuroyukihime, as always, did not immediately reply but made a show of thinking for a minute before turning back toward the Red King.

“Niko. Before, you touched on the responsibility of a Legion Master. In other words…may I assume that the option of coming to Umesato is not unrelated to that?”

This time, for sure, the question was completely incomprehensible to Haruyuki.

And at the meeting, too, Kuroyukihime had a mysterious conversation with the Green King, huh…?

In the brief instant that Haruyuki started to think about this, Niko nodded forcefully.

“Yeah, I don’t care if you take it like that.”

“Understood. Well then, I shall do just that. As to who will do what, let us talk about it again someday.” Nodding in return, Kuroyukihime looked at Haruyuki with a faint smile. “Haruyuki, apologies, but we’ve talked a great deal, and now my throat is dry. I’d love it if you could make some tea.”

“Big Brother, I want milk tea! Not too bitter, ’kay?” Niko suddenly switched to angel mode, and he had the feeling that he was failing to ask something important of that innocent smile as he got to his feet.

“Is black tea all right for you, too, Kuroyukihime?”

“Mm. The same as Niko will be fine. Oh! But no sugar.”

“…Me neither!”

“You’re still in elementary. No need to force yourself.”

“A-and I’m telling ya, I don’t need sugar!”

Listening to the two girls argue, Haruyuki set the three empty glasses and glass bowl on the tray. He then went to collect the small plates and their piles of cherry pits and stems.

“Oh, right,” Niko began. “Hey, Haruyuki? If you buried these seeds in a pot, would they grow?”

Haruyuki nodded his head at a slight angle. “Yeah, I wanted to do that, too, way back when, so I did some research—tried all kinds of stuff. Long story short, it’s not impossible, but it’s pretty hard.”

“Oh? So then how do they grow the cherry trees at your grandfather’s farm?” Kuroyukihime asked with honest interest.

“Please hang on a second. I’ll go put on the tea first,” Haruyuki replied, returning to the kitchen at a trot.

He pulled some mineral water from the fridge and poured some into the kettle before placing it on the induction cooktop burner and setting it to high-speed boil mode. He was in a hurry, so rather than tea leaves, he put tea bags—albeit expensive ones that his mother loved—into a teapot and washed the bowl and glasses while the water was boiling. The dishes were processed with nanotechnological super-water-repellent treatment, and the water droplets would fly off with just a light shake, so he returned them to the cupboard.

He carefully poured the boiling water into the teapot and then quickly laid out cups, saucers, and spoons for three, a jug full of milk, and a sugar pot—just in case—before returning to the table.

“Sorry for the wait,” he said as he began setting the table.

“You’ve gotten much more adept at household chores, too, haven’t you, Haruyuki?” Kuroyukihime commented with a smile.

“Huh? H-have I? Lately, I’ve been doing what I can by myself, but I still can’t make a proper meal, not even close.”

Now it was Niko’s turn to laugh. “But that curry you guys made me before was pretty tasty. And Pard seemed to like it, too.”

“All I did was peel the potatoes. The main part of the cooking was basically done by Chiyuri and Shinomiya…”

“Huh. So then I wonder what ’Ro did.”

“I—I cut the peppers, I’ll have you know! Chopped up this red one like a certain long-distance type!”

Haruyuki finished laying out the tea set and cleared his throat to get their attention. “Um, so then, about the cherry seeds…”

“Oh, that, right. How d’they do it on the farm?” Niko asked.

“With production agriculture, they buy seedlings and do grafting, too. The germination rate for edible cherries is pretty low…But I guess it’s not like it’s totally impossible.”

“Oh? Is there a trick to it, perhaps?”

“Right…” Haruyuki picked up one of the yellowish-brown seeds from a small plate he’d left on the table. “What I tried before was after I washed the seeds really well, I kept them in the fridge for a while so they wouldn’t dry out and then planted the ones that grew a root in soil. That was basically it, but only a few got roots, and even after I planted them, they didn’t get all the way to germinating. Maybe the soil didn’t agree with them.”

“Hmm. But you managed to get as far as a root,” Niko said, slamming a fist into her open hand. “Awright! Let’s do it now!”

“Huh?”

“Mm.” Kuroyukihime nodded. “Prompt decisions and immediate action is the Nega Nebulus motto, after all.”

“N-no, I can keep them in the fridge, but…where would you plant them after that?” Haruyuki asked.

“Now you’re thinking too far ahead, hmm? First, we wash them, yes? I’m just going to borrow your kitchen.” Displaying an impatience on par with Pard, Kuroyukihime moved to stand up with the small plate.

“Oh!” Haruyuki hurriedly pushed her back down. “You won’t be able to get the slimy part totally off just by washing by hand…Let’s do it after we have our tea.”

“I see. Well then, let’s.” Kuroyukihime poured milk into a teacup of ruby tea with a careful hand and then slowly mixed it in.

In contrast, Niko poured the milk from the jug with gusto and swirled her spoon around just once before bringing the cup to her lips.

Haruyuki also put sugar in his tea and took a sip before asking, “Anyway, why are you both suddenly so interested in growing cherries?”

“Isn’t it obvious?!” Niko cried. “Once the tree’s grown, we can eat all the freshly picked cherries we want!”

“Uh, um,” Haruyuki stammered. “Even if it does sprout, it’s still hard to make it grow into a seedling, and then even if you manage to do that, it takes, like, five years before flowers bloom and turn into fruit, you know!”

“We can wait, can’t we? Five years, at least,” Kuroyukihime responded smoothly, and Haruyuki looked at her, dumbfounded. “We—no, everyone in the Legion—can take care of it. All the while looking forward to when it bears fruit. Right. Perhaps we could plant it next to Hoo’s hutch. It’s the rear courtyard, but the area gets good light.”

“……”

For a moment, Haruyuki struggled with what to say. Five years. For the Haruyuki of now, that seemed like an extraordinarily long time. Five years from now, Niko would be seventeen, Haruyuki would be nineteen…and Kuroyukihime twenty.

Would they still be Burst Linkers then? Would their hearts burn in the same way for duels in the Accelerated World? He wanted it to be like that, but he wasn’t 100 percent confident it would all stay this way. It might be that once the game of Brain Burst itself was cleared, all Burst Linkers would lose their memories of the Accelerated World.

Abruptly, what Niko said earlier popped back into his head. Even if their memories of Brain Burst and anything connected to it were taken, it wasn’t like the things they gained in the real world would all disappear.

The fact that Kuroyukihime saved me from that bully quagmire. That Niko pretended to be family and snuck into my house. Chiyu and Taku, Master Fuko and Shinomiya, Pard, Curren, Rin…That we’ve gone all kinds of special places together and shared so many laughs. These memories will stay forever in the deepest part of my heart. Just like the young cherry tree taking root in the soil and spreading its leaves to take in the light of the sun.

“Right. If it’s next to Hoo’s house, I’ll be able to look after it every day.” Haruyuki nodded at Kuroyukihime before shifting his gaze. “Niko, come to Umesato next year and join the Animal Care Club. Then you can take care of Hoo and the cherry tree, too.”

Even though Niko was the one who had brought it up, her eyes opened wide in surprise. She quickly turned away and blinked her long eyelashes several times before replying in her usual tone, but with the tiniest tremor in her voice, “Now, look, I’m tellin’ ya, I haven’t decided anything yet. And I gotta help out at Pard’s place after school. If I do end up going to yer school, I could join your club, but I can’t stay for too long each day—got it?!”

Kuroyukihime smiled and patted Niko on the back. “Well, if there’s the possibility of you coming to our school, we’ll have to prepare earlier rather than later. So…today is a superhard-mode study group! Starting now!”

“Wh-whaaaat?!” Haruyuki cried.

Niko looked back and groaned in her usual way. “Whoa, hang on there a sec, Kuroyuki. I came to have a retro-game tournament.”

“That’s right, Kuroyukihime,” Haruyuki joined in. “A game I just got last week where you can only use dive kicks—”

“Listen here, Haruyuki. You, of all people, are not in a position to be saying such things! Final exams are in three days!”

“O-oh, right.” Haruyuki hung his head.

Kuroyukihime clapped her hands together loudly and said, “Now then, how about we first wash these cherry pits? A sponge or something would be handy if you have one!”

“O-okay, I’ll go get one…” Haruyuki stood up and plodded to the kitchen in search of a sponge.