Accel World - Volume 9 - Chapter 7

7

I never thought the day would come when I—me!—would be sitting with a girl on these benches. And past nine at night! Of course, we probably totally don’t look like boyfriend and girlfriend. At best, older sister and younger brother. At worst, the girl lost a dare…

As these thoughts raced through his mind, five slender fingers reached out from beside him to squeeze his left hand sitting on his knees. At the same time, a voice.

“This way we don’t look like we’re brother and sister. Shall we direct to make extra certain?”

It was almost as if she was reading 80 percent of his thoughts. “N-n-n-n-n-no,” Haruyuki squeaked. “Th-th-th-th-th-this is fine.” It was likely a wise decision not to add that there remained the possibility that she appeared to be there on a dare.

What was fairly scary was that Haruyuki’s current situation could be completely laid bare if Chiyuri were peeking straight down into the garden using night-vision binoculars from the Kurashima house on the twenty-first floor of B wing, which was soaring up above his head. But maybe he was seriously overthinking this. But he couldn’t underestimate her animal-like instincts. He couldn’t completely deny the possibility of her suddenly wanting some of the tofu banana au lait (with tapioca) that was only sold at a vending machine in this plaza and coming down to buy some…

“We’re not doing anything you’d feel particularly guilty about if Chiyuri or Takumu happened to see, are we? Or is it all right for you to have spontaneous sleepovers with them, but I don’t have the right to sit alongside you on a bench?”

“N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-no. Th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s not it at all.”

If he allowed any additional information to leak out of his brain in this exchange, things would get extremely not good. So Haruyuki cut off his evasive thoughts and finally turned his eyes toward the girl sitting next to him—the Legion Master of Nega Nebulus, Haruyuki’s parent, the Black King, Black Lotus aka Kuroyukihime.

To begin with, he timidly gave voice to the biggest question. “Um. I thought you were going to get a ride home from Raker? So then why are you…?”

“Mmm. Well, a simple reason. Fuko’s child—Rin Kusakabe, was it? She said her house is in the exact opposite direction as mine, in Egota in Nakano Ward. Uiui lives quite near Fuko, so that’s fine, but for her to take me home as well was simply too inefficient. I declined the offer and said I would take a taxi. Incidentally, I didn’t go so far as to say what time I would get that taxi, so I haven’t lied to Fuko and the others.”

“O-oh, right. Wait. Where is your house again?” Haruyuki asked nonchalantly.

Kuroyukihime’s eyebrows twitched, followed by a mischievous smile spreading across her face. “Now see here, you. Didn’t you look at my student diary?”

He felt like he had heard this line somewhere before, and after a moment of confusion, he hurriedly shook his head from side to side. “I—I—I didn’t look inside! And anyway, that was a long time ago!”

“Ha-ha-ha! Eight months ago, hmm? I remember it well.” Kuroyukihime laughed for a while, shoulders shaking, and then finally got a look on her face as though she had just remembered something.

“By the way, Haruyuki.” Her voice was quiet, and the hand she laid on Haruyuki’s squeezed tightly. “I assume you’re going out by yourself at this time of night to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field in a deserted area outside the twenty-three wards. My hypothesis is perfectly correct, yes?”

She cut to the heart of the matter so suddenly that Haruyuki unconsciously bobbed his head up and down.

“Oh! B-but it wasn’t to go and lose all my points by myself or anything,” he added hurriedly, but Kuroyukihime nodded, as if to say she had even seen through to that point as well, and swiftly piled on another question.

“So then you left some kind of excuse for your mother for going out in the middle of the night?”

“Y-yeah. I said we had group homework and I was staying at Taku’s.”

He thought for an instant she might reproach him for the crime of perjury, but to his surprise, Kuroyukihime nodded coolly again.

“Mmm. Good. Then we should go.” The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she was standing up, still holding Haruyuki’s hand.

Dragged along, he half stood, and she started walking jauntily. Toward the condo entrance—no, the main gate to the southeast.

“Huh? Um, what exactly…?” This was the path he had originally been on, but Haruyuki couldn’t quite grasp Kuroyukihime’s intentions and flapped his mouth in confusion.

But the black-clad vanguard said nothing in response as she cut through the front garden dotted with couples. Without even pausing, she stepped through the gate, off the condo grounds, and onto the sidewalk of the ring road known as Kannana Street.

Apparently, she had at some point made a request from her virtual desktop, and with impeccable timing, a single EV stopped in the lane before them, turn signal winking. It was a taxi, blue lines on the white vehicle, an old-style lamp on the roof. The rear door opened automatically, and without a word, Kuroyukihime pushed Haruyuki in before slipping in after him herself. She offered a simple “thank you” to the middle-aged male driver, who responded with an “of course” as he pulled out smoothly into traffic.

In this day and age, it was normal to send the destination alongside the taxi request, which was sent via Neurolinker to cars driving in the area, so Haruyuki had no idea where they were heading. Half-dumbfounded, half-excited, he peeked out through the windshield and watched as the taxi, which had started out north on Kannana, soon turned left onto Waseda and headed straight west.

So then she’s planning to go to Musashino with me? But that’s no good. In the fleeting moment Haruyuki had this thought, the car turned left again, not having gone even a kilometer. They went down the residential street, slipped past the elevated Chuo Line, and went further south. In a few minutes, they came out onto Oume Kaido, and this time turned right, and then another left soon after that.

Roughly speaking, from Haruyuki’s condo, they had sort of approached the direction of Umesato Junior High and then moved away from it again…or at least, that’s what he thought. But their destination remained a mystery. The scene outside the window turned into a residential area again, and the greenery gradually increased. A minute or two later, the taxi stopped, hazard lights flashing.

Payment was also taken care of by Kuroyukihime with her Neurolinker, so it was invisible to Haruyuki. The driver called out a hearty “Thank you!” at the same time as the door opened. Kuroyukihime thanked him back as she got out, and Haruyuki could do nothing but follow her.

On the other side of the quietly departing EV was a sight that seemed impossible in the whole country of Japan, much less in the middle of Suginami Ward.

Stylish white-walled town houses stood neatly and evenly spaced on excessively large plots, and the street was lined with plentiful lawns and trees. It was almost like the set of an American-made family drama, but the houses had a shared design and were by no standard large.

“Uh, um, where…exactly…?”

“Mmm. Right. You’ve only just started eighth grade. This comes up in Social Studies in the second term, I believe. This is a URB called Asagaya Jutaku, a condo-type housing complex with a nearly hundred-year history. It was redeveloped at the beginning of this century, but this division alone was basically left as it was.”

“Uh, uh-huh.” Now that she mentioned it, he did indeed get the sense of architectural cohesion in the look of the residential area, highlighted in the orange of the streetlamps. “So then, it’s like a cultural heritage site?”

“Mmm,” Kuroyukihime replied to the vague question. “Well, I suppose you could say that.” She took Haruyuki’s hand once more before starting to walk down the curving street.

Kuroyukihime, what are you trying to tell me by showing me this place? Something the me now needs—no, something important that I have to come to on my own?!

Digesting the place in his mind, Haruyuki walked alongside Kuroyukihime. The humid June air was merely depressing in the inorganic metropolitan areas, but in this place, it seemed almost refreshing, rich with the exhalation of the plants. They advanced a mere two meters or so along the two-lane road, black and wet, perhaps from a short rainfall not too long ago, and then Kuroyukihime stepped into a lane that broke off to the right.

The pavement—which made luxurious use of natural stone tiles—was just barely wide enough for them to walk side by side, and he wondered if it wasn’t a public road, but rather a private path attached to a building. But Kuroyukihime did not waver in her stride. However, if they were invading private property, the residents might call the police on them. If Kuroyukihime risked even that to try to tell him something, then…

Haruyuki racked his brain so hard that smoke threatened to come out of his ears, as Kuroyukihime came to a stop in front of one of the town houses. She then raised her right hand without the slightest hesitation and pushed open the black cast-iron gate.

“Huh? What?”

They couldn’t just go opening the gates to someone else’s house. He didn’t even have the time to finish the thought before he was given an even bigger shock, and his eyes and mouth opened as far as they would go.

Not so much as blinking, Kuroyukihime passed through the open gate and reached out toward the doorknob of the house standing neatly beyond it.

“Uh! Um! That’s!” Still standing in front of the gate, Haruyuki was startled into speaking. “Wh-what are you doing, Kuroyukihime?! Y-y-you’re gonna get yelled at!”

“Mm? Why? And who would yell?”

“Who? Obviously, the person who lives—”

“No need to worry about that.” Kuroyukihime shrugged lightly. “This is my house.”

“…Huh?” His jaw, already on the floor, dropped right through it as Haruyuki reeled.

“When you come in, close the gate,” a cool voice instructed. “It locks automatically.”

“…Okay.” Any other reaction was beyond him.

A bungalow with a loft, one bedroom, a living room, a dining room, and private garden. This was the dwelling of the beautiful girl in black and her many mysteries.

After Haruyuki took off his shoes and stepped into the house in a trance, Kuroyukihime led him to a spacious living/dining area of about twenty square meters.

“I’m going to go change. Make yourself comfortable.” Leaving with these words, she disappeared through a door in a wall on the west side.

Haruyuki staggered into movement once more and came to a stop in the middle of the living room, before attempting to at least gather some visual information despite the fact that his brain was at a standstill.

Given that it was a one-story house, the design was compact, but the floors and pillars were lavishly made from natural wood, and the south-facing windows were large, so there was a sense of openness. Unexpectedly, the room wasn’t decked in black. The wallpaper and the ceiling were a light gray, the area rug and curtains covered in brown stripes. Furniture was on the sparse side, with a small table and a beanbag chair, plus a ladder-type rack placed up against the western wall. In the adjacent kitchen on the other side of a counter, he could basically only see a small fridge, a multipurpose microwave, and a slim cabinet. He didn’t get the impression that any cooking took place in there.

The thing that drew the eye in this extremely restrained interior design was a large tank in the southeastern corner. Haruyuki moved as if drawn in by it, and peered into the aquarium lit by orange LEDs.

There were maybe twenty small tropical fish. He felt like that was too few for the size of the nearly meter-long tank; what occupied the water world instead were a great number of water plants. There were all kinds—one like a shaggy carpet, one with thin, elliptical leaves trailing, one that looked like a micro bamboo grove—but the plant that stood out had several thin, long stalks soaring from the center of the base up to the water’s surface.

Since the top of the tank was closed with a lid that had devices to maintain water quality and temperature, Haruyuki crouched down and peeked up at the water surface from below, feeling like a fish gazing up at the outside world from inside the water. The dozens of distinctive round leaves floated on the water at the ends of stalks, some even seemingly stretching their heads up into the air.

He had seen the shape of these dark green leaves somewhere before. But, I mean, I’ve never been interested in water plants or anything. He cocked his head to one side and then suddenly remembered.

In the fourteen or so years of his life, there had been just one time. He had spent several days gathering information online, and then struggled for over an hour once he was actually at the shop, where he bought a marine plant that cost all the allowance he had saved up. The plant with the long stalks and round leaves he had chosen, put into a vase, and taken to a certain hospital was a tropical water lily.

“The water lily you gave me, I looked it up. It’s a Lindsey Woods,” a voice suddenly murmured in his ear.

Haruyuki jumped and whirled around.

Kuroyukihime had changed from her Umesato uniform into a sleeveless housedress that hung straight down, and was bending down to peer into the tank. It might have been housewear, but the dress was all black, so it had the air of a party dress somehow. Here, finally, Haruyuki’s brain was jerked out of its idling, almost-stalled state and regained about 80 percent of its output, forced into an acceptance of the situation.

At this time of night, when it’s coming up on ten o’clock, I am at Kuroyukihime’s house for the first time, and it’s just the two of us, and on top of that, I left a message at home saying I wouldn’t be back today. So, like, what?! What is even happening?!

The thought flashed through his mind, but since he felt it was extremely dangerous to consider what might lie ahead, Haruyuki earnestly jumped on the information before him.

“I-it is? I—I—I—I picked it just for the color,” he replied, turning back around and peering into the tank once more.

Kuroyukihime laughed. “I didn’t know the name of even one ornamental lily at the time, either. I only learned about them after you gave me those flowers.”

After she sustained serious injuries last fall, Haruyuki had brought a bouquet of tropical water lilies when he went to visit her on the day she was moved from the ICU to a general ward room. Of course, the selection had been connected with Kuroyukihime’s duel avatar, Black Lotus, but four or five leaves other than the lily flowers had been added to the bouquet the shop clerk make for him. Because he remembered the round shape of the slender stalks, even without seeing the flower, he could guess that those were water lilies growing in the tank before him.

“S-so then, are these lilies the same as those flowers?”

Kuroyukihime shook her head, a playful—or perhaps innocent—smile slipped across her face, almost like a young child boasting. “They are indeed the same genus, but that’s not all. The plants I’m cultivating here are the very flowers you gave me eight months ago. Well, more accurately, the ‘children’ of those flowers.”

“What?!” Haruyuki was stunned, and he stared hard at Kuroyukihime’s profile, illuminated by the tank lights. “B-but the ones I bought were cut flowers! I thought they wouldn’t grow roots even if you put them in soil.”

“Mmm. That’s exactly right. But I learned after doing some research that some lilies, including the Lindsey Woods you gave me, are called ‘propagule species.’ They grow new leaves and roots from a propagule you can cultivate from the base of a leaf; in other words, a bud.”

“Huh? F-from the leaves?”

“Exactly. After I learned this, I took a good look at the five leaves that were in that bouquet, and there was just one that had developed a bud. I got it to sprout in a pot of water, and then after I got out of the hospital, I moved it to this tank. It was actually quite some work to get them to grow to this size these last eight months. Unfortunately, it will apparently take another month or so to get them to bloom.”

Surprise at the vitality of plants and a deep emotion at the trouble Kuroyukihime had gone to, her connection to the life of the flower he had bought, filled his heart, and Haruyuki focused his gaze on the stalks swaying in the water. Like this, they passed a few seconds, or perhaps a few minutes, in a strangely peaceful silence.

Eventually, however, Kuroyukihime leaned forward and gently touched Haruyuki’s back. “Come and see them again when the flowers bloom,” she said. “Now, shall we sit already?”

The beanbag chair on the rug laid out by the living room window was fairly large, and Kuroyukihime sank down into one side of it. When Haruyuki remained frozen in place, she pulled on his arm and mercilessly made him sit next to her.

The fine powder beads changed shape to smoothly hold his weight. Inevitably, his body turned toward the center of the cushion, and he slid down the tiniest bit toward Kuroyukihime, to his right. Their arms touched, and Haruyuki’s consciousness once again threatened to fly off beyond the stratosphere. But Kuroyukihime lifted her right hand in a relaxed gesture and quickly flicked at her virtual desktop.

The lighting in the living room dimmed until it was just barely on, and the curtains automatically opened about a meter, while the transparency of the variable privacy glass increased. On the other side of the window, the broad-leaved trees and the lawn of the garden rose up in the restrained illumination of the street lamps, and then off in the far distance, the lights of the redeveloped high-rise housing complex glittered, almost cutting into the night sky.

It was like he was peeking into metropolitan Tokyo of the current 2047 from some long-past century. Haruyuki realized all over again that Kuroyukihime probably—no, definitely lived all by herself in this small town house in one corner of Asagaya Jutaku. “How long have you lived here?” he asked slowly, unconsciously.

Her reply came after a delay of five seconds or so. “I moved out of the house I originally lived in and started living here right before I started at Umesato. To put it more accurately…that would have been six months after I took the head of the first Red King with this hand.”

Haruyuki swallowed his breath and thought about the meaning of her words. Actually, it was obvious without thinking about it: Kuroyukihime was telling him that she had not left home for the reason of attending junior high school in the real world, but rather because of the murder of the Red King, an incident in the Accelerated World.

But what exactly was that supposed to mean? Haruyuki understood that she had forced Red Rider into total point loss through the level-nine sudden-death rule because she was resisting the mutual nonaggression treaty the Seven Kings were attempting to conclude among themselves at the time. In other words, both cause and effect started and finished in the Accelerated World alone, so how did that connect with why she had to leave home?

“I’ve actually…never told anyone that before. Not even Fuko and Utai and the others…” Abruptly, Kuroyukihime leaned her head on Haruyuki’s shoulder. “Red Rider wasn’t the only king I hunted. I also tried to subjugate another king with these hands. And not through an ordinary duel. A physical threat in the real world. In other words, through a real attack, with violence.”

“What?!” He inhaled sharply again. Kuroyukihime wouldn’t even allow the use of the acceleration command during a test, and yet she had attempted the loathsome real attack—i.e., a PK. The fact that that had even been possible meant—

“K-Kuroyukihime, do you know the real of another…king?”

After a long silence, she murmured briefly, simply, “I’m sorry.”

She then turned to the left and touched Haruyuki’s right side with not just her head, but her entire body. Once more, his consciousness threatened to fly off at the softness and warmth communicated to his five senses, but he just barely held on again. Because this gesture of hers reminded him somehow of a young child clinging to someone and seeking protection.

“Someday…when the time comes that I can talk about it, I’ll definitely tell you.” Her voice was at a volume that he could almost hear, almost not hear.

Haruyuki nodded slightly. “Okay.”

That was all he could manage, but Kuroyukihime clutched the hem of his T-shirt and murmured, “Thank you.”

Several minutes of peaceful silence passed. Since there was nothing by way of clocks around the room, he could only check the time by looking at the corner of his virtual desktop. However, from Haruyuki’s perspective, the small digital numbers were displayed on top of Kuroyukihime’s chest. And apparently, these creatures known as girls had a super sense for detecting the rude gazes of boys.

Haruyuki had suffered Chiyuri’s harsh verbal attacks more than a few times—“What are you staring at, Haru, you perv?!” He would have liked to have argued that it wasn’t intentional eye movement, but rather a command issued by the most primal regions of his brain, but in the current situation at least, something precious would have been ruined if Kuroyukihime were to misunderstand him in any way. Thus, Haruyuki had no choice but to tackle the high-level technique of sliding his entire virtual desktop to the left, while looking down to the righ—

“That reminds me. I still haven’t gotten an explanation of what you were doing.”

At the sudden voice, his gaze froze with a start. “What I’m doing? N-nothing. I mean, tr-tr-trying to look at the clock.”

“You can look at your clock all you want. That’s not what I mean.” Kuroyukihime lifted her face, pursed her lips together somewhat poutingly, and continued. “I’m talking about what exactly you were doing in Fuko’s car with that Rin Kusakabe.”

The attack came from such an unexpected angle with such unexpected force that Haruyuki froze again. Now that he was thinking about it, Kuroyukihime had clearly witnessed Haruyuki and Rin glued together in the backseat of the EV, directing with each other.

“Uh, um, that, well, it, Rin— I just was talking with Kusakabe in the duel field, and there was absolutely nada else to it.”

“Hmmmm. Still, I feel the look on her face was incredibly emotional. Is that really all?”

Under the hard stare of her slitted eyes, Haruyuki was forced to remember, whether he liked it or not. In fact, it was hard to definitively say that was all. Rin had come straight out and bluntly told him she liked him. And there was no other way to interpret the simplicity and strength of the way she said it.

“Uh, um, uh. Oh! Really, nothing happened with Ash! I was trying to run off to the ends of the Unlimited Neutral Field, and he said he’d give me a ride, but that was about it, uh-huh.”

That was true. Between the Burst Linker Ash Roller and Haruyuki, there was nothing other than the friendship that had grown out of their rivalry. Because the one moving that century-end rider in the Accelerated World was not Rin Kusakabe, but either her actual older brother Rinta Kusakabe or a simulation of his personality.

At this explanation, which was just barely not a lie, Kuroyukihime pursed her lips suspiciously once more. She, Chiyuri, Takumu, and Utai didn’t yet know about Rin Kusakabe’s special circumstances. They thought the extremely teary-eyed, weak girl had a personality flip and was doing some ha-ha-ha-vroooom role-playing in the Accelerated World. But Haruyuki couldn’t be the one to tell anyone the truth. It should be Rin herself, or at least her parent, Fuko Kurasaki, telling that story.

Fortunately, Kuroyukihime’s expression softened abruptly after a few seconds, and she pinched Haruyuki’s round cheek. “Well, I suppose I should say that adding one to our numbers makes no great difference in the battle situation at this point.”

“Wh-what?” She put some force into her fingertips, and Haruyuki hurried to shake his head back and forth. “Nho, hit’s hine, hit’s hine.”

“Honestly.” Again with the faintest hint of a smile slipping out, Kuroyukihime released his cheek and smoothly turned herself on the beanbag chair to stare up at the ceiling as she continued. “Even still, I was honestly surprised. To think that inside your very first duel opponent, that biker, is a girl younger than I am. Until this very day, I never doubted that he was that sort of boy in the real as well.”

“Yeah, me, either.”

“Well, I can accept it somewhat with Fuko being the contact point. She told us a little of the story when we were walking down to the parking area. Apparently, they met at a family hospital. It seems they just clicked at first sight. The same as when I found you.”

“Uh, uh-huh. I wonder just how they clicked…”

“Mmm. Then shall I quote everything Fuko said? ‘If the strength of a certain button being pushed inside me was a hundred points with Corvus, it was two hundred with Uiui, but it was a thousand with Rin. The instant I saw her, I knew I had to train her.’”

“She. Said that?” Haruyuki replied, in a hoarse voice. If she would shove him off the top of the old Tokyo Tower when he had a hundred of whatever points, then what kind of training exactly would she inflict on Rin with a thousand? Simply imagining it was frightening.

However, Kuroyukihime then added something unthinkable with a wry smile. “Incidentally, according to Fuko, I was a hundred thousand points at the time we met. I suppose I should be glad that I am not her child but her friend instead.”

“Sh-she. Said that?”

Kuroyukihime and Fuko had been friends since they were both low level, so he guessed that they had probably been in elementary or junior high school when they met. He could even imagine, from looking at the current Kuroyukihime, what kind of child she had been.

“I—I wish I could have met you ages ago, too. We could’ve done so much together as members of the old Nega Nebulus,” Haruyuki muttered to himself, and Kuroyukihime popped her head up.

Centimeters away from his face, she peered into his eyes. “What are you talking about? At that time, there would have been no points of contact between you and me in the real, so the possibility’s stronger that far from Legion members, we would have first encountered each other as enemies.”

“Oh! R-right. I guess so.” Haruyuki began to hang his head despondently, but slender fingers held his cheeks back.

“Well, in that case, I likely would have done whatever it took to recruit you into the same army. If it really had been like that—in other words, if I had invited you to transfer when you belonged to the Legion of a different king, what would you have done?”

The question sounded like a joke, but at the same time, there was something serious hiding deep within it, causing Haruyuki to falter momentarily. However, he soon returned Kuroyukihime’s gaze from a slight diagonal. “I think I would have moved to the Black King’s Legion, no matter how hard I had to work,” he replied. “I’m not just saying that, either. I guess Taku—Cyan Pile—got into some seriously real trouble when he was transferring from the Blue Legion, Leonids, to Nega Nebulus last fall. I keep asking him, but he won’t actually tell me the details. I’m sure I’d do that, too, though. I mean, even if you weren’t my parent or my Legion Master, Kuroyukihime—Black King, Black Lotus, you’re my…”

He was speaking in earnest, but here he came upon the limits of his linguistic powers. If he had been typing with the text editor in his Neurolinker, the predictive engine would have displayed a list of appropriate words for him, but right now, he had to find them himself. After opening and closing his mouth several times, Haruyuki finally declared, “You’re my hope.”

It was how he truly felt, completely and honestly. Kuroyukihime let her gaze wander for a bit as if she was thinking, and then a smile that was half-happy, half-complicated rose up on her face.

“Hope, hmm? Welcome words. But that is the very thing I would say to you. Actually, I believe I’ve said it to you any number of times since we met. Haruyuki, I’ve told you you’re the fastest Burst Linker in the Accelerated World and that someday you’ll surpass even the kings and reach the source of that world. Yes. And I believe I also said this.”

Here, the tiniest bit of color bled into the snow-white features of the black-clad beauty as she turned her body for the third time and wound both arms around Haruyuki’s neck, pulling their bodies together.

Her cool touch, sweet, refreshing scent, and supple elasticity sent an overload signal racing through his sensory system. And then she struck the final blow.

“Haruyuki…I like you.”

He was seriously on the verge of passing out at the shock, so great he could even believe some of the circuits in his brain actually burned out, but at the last minute, he managed to avoid a system outage.

“I like Silver Crow of the Accelerated World and Haruyuki Arita of the real world the same amount,” Kuroyukihime continued, her words flowing into his right ear with a light sigh. “With these feelings as a guidepost, I was able to stand up once again as a Burst Linker and come this far. That itself is indeed…a true miracle, going far beyond the Incarnate System or anything like it. It seems I could do anything if it was for you, and I now believe I can go anywhere if you are holding my hand.”

“…Kuro. Yukihime.” It was all Haruyuki could do to murmur her name in reply. He wasn’t worth anyone telling him they liked him—he was now finally able to brush aside this extremely negative self-definition, but even so, it wasn’t as though that instantly made him capable of calmly accepting such a declaration.

And—although thinking about another girl in this situation was an absolutely unforgivable sin—two and a half hours earlier on that very day, when he had been glued to Ash Roller’s real-world self Rin Kusakabe, that girl had also told him in the most straightforward way that she liked him. The experience of having two girls confess their feelings of affection to him one after another on the same day was nearly impossible for Haruyuki’s brain to even process, much less accept.

His mind on the verge of complete burnout, he wondered exactly to what extent the law of cause and effect would have to be twisted to allow for this to happen. And then, abruptly, he understood.

It was all because Haruyuki had tried to disappear, of course, in front of his Legion comrades. In full view of his war buddies. From the Accelerated World itself. To extend a hand and hold him back, his most frequently fought rival, Rin Kusakabe, and the person he had spent the most time with, the swordmaster Kuroyukihime, were turning feelings, priceless like gems, into words and letting Haruyuki hear them.

I am a fortunate person. Is there any other Burst Linker—no, junior high kid—as fortunate as me? he whispered in a corner of his heart. The thought was, for Haruyuki, as revelatory as being reborn into this world.

All this time, he had hated himself. He had loathed himself. He had been glad of the smiles and feelings his friends—Kuroyukihime, his Legion comrades, Niko, Pard, Ash Roller—turned toward him, but he had come along thinking he didn’t have the right to really respond without changing how he looked and how he was inside.

But, in that moment, for the first time, Haruyuki thought, Maybe I’m okay the way I am. He still didn’t have enough mental energy to say so definitively, but someday…someday, the time would come when he could honestly be positive about himself…

“Kuroyukihime…I— Me, too,” he murmured hoarsely, and moved to gently place his hand on her slender shoulder. But he couldn’t do it. And his mouth, too, stopped before it could get any other words out.

Because someday might never come for Haruyuki. If they couldn’t purify Silver Crow—no, Haruyuki himself, more than half-fused with the Armor of Catastrophe, he would no longer be a Burst Linker whether he went and lost all his points alone at the end of the world or he was done in by assassins of the Six Kings. And at that time, he would probably lose a large part of his memories and feelings related to Kuroyukihime, including even the sad ache filling his heart at that moment.

But even if my memories are erased, the truth can’t be erased. The fact that Kuroyukihime said she likes me. The fact that I was able to think of myself as fortunate. So even after everything is all over, these facts will encourage me and guide me. Like a gem in the palm of my hand, even if I don’t know why I have it.

At this thought, two of the tears he had been trying so desperately to hold back spilled out of his eyes. They fell from the corners of his eyes onto the cheek of Kuroyukihime, pressing her head against his chest.

And then the slender arms wrapped around his neck doubled the strength of their grip. At the same time, a voice that was almost soundless said, “Haruyuki. You belong to me. I will not give up. I cannot tolerate losing you. Absolutely not.”

She announced it as if carving each word into both of their hearts and slowly lifted her face. On those pale cheeks, a trail separate from the tears Haruyuki had shed glittered silver, slipping out from her own eyes. The two of them were so close, they were on the verge of touching, and her lips trembled.

“Even with Utai-class purification—with the most powerful purifying ability in the Accelerated World—it’s a big gamble as to whether or not the Armor can be cut free now that it’s fused with you. I crossed swords with that berserker more than once, and even I couldn’t see the bottom of the darkness it contained.”

Haruyuki held his breath and let the words pour into him. Kuroyukihime stared into his eyes and continued in a voice that had regained a little of its tension.

“But there is possibly one way to increase the chances of success for the purification. In a certain situation, the activation of the negative will of the former Disasters always decreased. And that was…immediately after a fierce battle with a powerful enemy. And not simply a fight to the death where hatred slams up against hatred, but a fight that could be called a true duel, an exchange of high-level techniques and Incarnate on both sides. Do you remember? When you and I and the little red girl challenged the fifth Disaster, immediately after that close-range battle we fought body and soul? He was unable to dodge Rain’s main armament and was seriously injured. Normally, the Disaster would have repelled that attack with just his aura.”

Now that she mentioned it, he did have the feeling that the fifth, aka Cherry Rook, seemed different at the turning point of the ferocious sword fight with the Black King. And without a reason like that, he wouldn’t have tried to run away from Haruyuki, when he had only just made it to level four and didn’t even know how to use Incarnate.

There was no need to even go back to the fifth. The current status of Haruyuki, the sixth, indeed supported this hypothesis. He took a deep breath before nodding twice, then three times, and opening his mouth. “Kuroyukihime, maybe that’s the reason that I can be here like this as my regular self.”

“Oh?”

“Um, before, I didn’t really tell you all the details at the house, but I said I got into a fight with members of another Legion at Roppongi Hills in the Unlimited Neutral Field, right?” He closed his mouth for a minute and swallowed hard before announcing the rest. “My opponent was, um, a senior member of Great Wall. I guess they’re called the Six Armors? Um, this level seven named Iron Pound—”

“What? ‘Fists’ Pound from GW?!”

“Oh! Y-you know him?” he asked.

“Do I know him?!” Kuroyukihime moved her arms while his head was still turned and yanked on his ears with both hands. “He’s an old enemy of ‘Strong Arm’ Raker. One of the legends of the Accelerated World is how Pound knuckled under and got a flying tool just to shoot Fuko out of the air.”

“Oh, that rocket punch was for that…”

It made sense. He nodded and quickly thought back: He had been told ages ago about the relationship between Sky Raker and the Prominence deputy Blood Leopard, fierce enemies on the surface and friends below it, but apparently, Raker had also dangled the Leonids’ deputies Cobalt Blade and Manganese Blade from the top of the government building in Shinjuku. And on top of that, she had also clashed loudly with the Aurora Oval deputy Aster Vine. Just how many old enemies did she actually have…?

A chill ran up his spine, and Haruyuki brought his straying thoughts back on track. When he met Kuroyukihime’s eyes, a faint, wry smile crossed her face.

“So once again you happen to meet something incredible. I see,” she murmured. “You fought Fists, then, did you?”

“Oh! Um, it wasn’t just Pound…”

“What? Other members of the Six Armors were there, too? It couldn’t have been someone higher up than Fists?”

“I guess you could call him higher-up.” With Kuroyukihime still clutching his ears gently, Haruyuki ever-so-nervously gave voice to the name. “Th-the Green King, Green Grandé, was also there. And I don’t know, things just happened…”

Kuroyukihime yanked hard to stretch out Haruyuki’s earlobes. “Whoa,” she commanded, in a fairly strained voice. “You can’t mean…? D-did you fight? That shield man as well?”

“Sort of. Really, we just smashed sword and shield together once.”

The swordmaster let out a long, thin breath as she released Haruyuki’s auricles, which bounced back like rubber. Winding her arms around his neck once more, she stroked the back of his head. “I had intended to not be surprised at your recklessness at this late stage, but…So if you brought your sword down on it, then you got hit with the extra effect of that great shield Strife, yes? Incredible you made it out all right.”

“E-extra effect? What kind of power is that?”

“The shield takes in any attack and counters with double the power. In other words, the only way to break the defensive barrier of that shield is to get rid of it in a single super, superpowerful blow, or to create gaps through endless, successive attacks and aim for the main body of the avatar. Although I have no memory of seeing either of these succeed.”

“C-counter? Maybe. It did. Probably.” That moment where he fought sword against shield, Incarnate against Incarnate, with the Green King as his opponent felt like the long-distant past, but even so, a chill ran through him. “But that force probably all went into the air around us. We sent half of Mori Tower flying.”

“Mm-hmm. So that was that explosion, then? We saw it from the southern bridge of the Castle.”

Haruyuki thought for a minute and then shook his head in tiny increments. “No. I think that was probably something else. After the battles with Pound and the Green King, another big thing happened…but I’ll tell you about that after. I want to go back a bit. Before, you said that if the Armor of Catastrophe fights an intense battle with a strong enemy, its activity drops for a while, right? That’s exactly where I am right now, I think. The Beast that lives in the Armor’s asleep. It’s drowsy because it fought both members of GW so ferociously and squeezed out the last drop of Incarnate. Which is why I could talk with R—Ash normally and why I can be here like this with you now. But at some point—no, definitely tomorrow—it’s going to wake up. And then it’ll try to get me to go hunting for fights. Whether or not I can resist that and stay myself…to be honest, I…have my doubts…”

For Haruyuki, being able to conclude such a long speech without stammering—and while he was holding and being held by the person he adored most in the world—was a fairly difficult task. But he was unaware of this as he finished speaking, and Kuroyukihime, who had simply listened quietly, smiled faintly, for some reason.

“Mmm. That’s a wonderful theoretical analysis. I believe that’s true myself. In which case, in order to succeed in the purification tomorrow, there is just one action we should take now.”

“Huh? A-a-a-a-a-a-action…Wh-wh-wh-what do you mean?” Haruyuki stammered and spat with a force strong enough to cancel out his earlier long speech.

Kuroyukihime smiled again before manipulating her virtual desktop with quick movements.

Next to them, something gradually rose up with a whine from the natural wood flooring where there had previously been nothing. The cylindrical device, about fifteen centimeters in diameter and fifty centimeters high, was probably an integrated terminal connected to the house’s home server. Normally, this device was used to control household appliances without a Neurolinker, but Kuroyukihime apparently used it in a different way. She pulled a wind-up XSB cable from the middle of the small tower and inserted the end into her Neurolinker.

“Haruyuki, you burst out because of the forced disconnection on the roof of Roppongi Hills, yes?”

At the abrupt and unexpected question, all he could do was nod dumbly.

“Mmm. Then five—no, three seconds. After I accelerate and three seconds pass, pull the cable out.”

“Huh? Um. What exactly—?”

“I’ll explain later. Understand? I’m counting on you. Unlimited Burst.” The command was uttered nonchalantly, and then Kuroyukihime’s body slumped down, lifeless.

Haru didn’t know what was what anymore, but at any rate, all he could do was follow her instruction. The instant the digital digits in the lower right of his field of view increased by three, he yanked the plug from the piano-black Neurolinker.

Kuroyukihime’s eyes flew open before him. “I’m back, Haruyuki,” she said with a serious face.

“Um, Kuroyukihime, I have no idea what is even—”

“What do you mean? Isn’t it obvious? I moved from Suginami to Roppongi Hills in the Unlimited Neutral Field.”

“H-huh?!” Unconsciously, he cried out wildly. The command he’d heard earlier was indeed definitely the one to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. But even if it was a world where the mind was accelerated by a thousand, three seconds of real time was still a mere fifty minutes on that side. In a world where taxis and the like didn’t exist, you’d have to run from Asagaya to Roppongi, and really kill yourself running as hard as you—

No, no. That’s not what he should have been thinking about. The real question was why Kuroyukihime did it. And the answer was self-evident, wasn’t it? To rendezvous with Haruyuki on the other side.

“Y-you can’t, Kuroyukihime! Once I dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field, the Beast could wake up at any—”

“That’s why,” she asserted, deadly serious. “That’s why we’re going.” She pulled a second cable out from the integrated terminal. As she brought it to Haruyuki’s neck, their faces also grew closer. When he could feel her sweet breath, a voice clearer than neurospeak came at him.

“Haruyuki. While you and I are parent and child, we are also master and student. In which case, at some point, the time definitely comes. And that time is now. You needn’t this development or the results. All you have to do is stand in front of me, just as you are now.”

“Kuroyukihime.” As he said her name in a voice that was not quite a voice, Haruyuki earnestly tried to move his frozen head from side to side.

What she was saying was perfectly clear.

Fight. They would fight. If the Beast living in the Armor of Catastrophe used up some kind of energy through intense fighting, then the Black King herself would be his duel opponent and guide the Beast into a certain slumber until the purification mission the next evening. However…however…

“I— Around the time I became a Burst Linker, I made a decision. That I would never fight you, no matter what happened. That if it came to that, then I would uninstall Brain Burst of my own will,” Haruyuki argued fiercely, sounding like a child on the verge of tears.

Kuroyukihime smiled gently, wryly, and patted his head admonishingly. “Although it is indeed a fight, it’s different from a conflict fueled by hatred. It’s a duel. The sole and greatest reason Brain Burst exists. Or…” Puffing out her cheeks slightly, she added, “…are you saying you can duel Ash Roller—I mean, Rin Kusakabe—but you can’t duel me?”

“N-no, it’s not like tha—”

“Listen. There is indeed something in the Accelerated World that has to be communicated not in words, but with fists and swords and bullets. And now that I’m thinking about it, didn’t you yourself seek out a duel with me the night before the Hermes’ Cord race? You told me many, many precious things then, not in words, but with both fists. Now, it’s my turn to tell you what I have to say. As your parent.”

“…Kuro…yukihime…” All kinds of feelings welled up in his heart, and all Haruyuki could do was groan.

Kuroyukihime nodded with a kind smile before gently inserting into Haruyuki’s Neurolinker the plug of the second XSB cable she pulled out of the integrated terminal. “Now, me, too,” she urged.

Haruyuki finally realized he was still clutching the first XSB cable. Even though his heart was in chaos, his fingers moved on autopilot, and the plug clumsily approached Kuroyukihime’s Neurolinker.

She accepted the connection with eyelids closed, and the wired connection warning had no sooner disappeared than she was murmuring in a low voice, smile still on her lips, “We go on the count of five. If we both make it back safely…” Her lips kept moving, but he couldn’t catch the words they made.

After a pause, a louder voice began to neatly carve out the time. “Now then, starting the countdown. Five, four, three, two, one.”

If he shouted the command now, he might not be able to come back as himself again. Full of resolve and indecision in equal measure, Haruyuki braced himself and quietly said with Kuroyukihime:

“Unlimited Burst.”