Sword Art Online - Volume 22 - Chapter 4.5

5 

“It’s almost your birthday, isn’t it?” said Dr. Kurahashi out of nowhere as he lowered the stethoscope. Yuuki looked down and to her right out of sheer reflex. 

But this was the real world, where there was no clock in her view. Nor was there any calendar on the clean room wall. So she looked up at the doctor and asked, “Um…what day of May is it?” 

Dr. Kurahashi smiled, though it was hard to see through the thick mask of his clean suit. “The sixteenth. You and Aiko were born on the twenty-third, right?” 

“Yes, that’s right,” said Yuuki, fastening the buttons on her dustproof examination gown. 

The doctor paused for a moment. With a wistful tone, he said, “You’re going to be fourteen already…You’ve grown so much.” 

“What…? Actually, I wish I would grow more.” 

“Ha-ha-ha. Don’t worry—you’ve still got plenty of room to grow,” he said kindly, patted her on the head, and stood up. “Well, see you next week.” 

“Good-bye, Doctor.” 

She watched him go back through the door of the sterilizing room, then lay down on the gel bed. 

She’d come to Yokohama Kohoku General Hospital just after her birthday the year before last. It had been almost two years. Over half of that time, Yuuki had spent here in this clean room. 

Until recently, she’d grappled with an urge during her weekly meetings with Dr. Kurahashi to rush after him and leap out the door, just so she could be sure the outside world still existed as it had before. But in the last few days, she suddenly felt much less confined by this off-white room. 

That was certainly because of her meeting with Merida four days ago and the interactions she’d had with all those players in their new world. It was just simple greetings, in towns and in wilderness, no more than a few words each time, but she felt the warmth coming from them nonetheless. Despite the SAO Incident, there were so many people in that place enjoying the VR world, going on new adventures every day, giving birth to countless personal stories. 

She shifted herself up on the bed to lay her head on the headrest. I’m going to get that upgrade to the higher class today, she told herself, closing her eyes and lowering the headgear. 

“Jarrruooooo!” 

The oni-type ogre, a good ten feet tall, rumbled toward them and swung a crude giant katana, howling eerily. The horns that split its rough, shaggy hair shone with a dark light that extended to cover the thick blade. 

“Yuu, here comes a skill!” Ran called. 

“I’ve got it, Sis!” Yuuki shouted back, holding her katana up high. 

The final boss of the class upgrade quest, Akuro-ou, was a fearsome foe who could employ five different kinds of wide-area skills with its oversize nodachi katana. Merely attempting to avoid the attack itself only helped so much; the splash damage that followed would hit you anyway and leave you unable to switch to counterattacking. 

So the role of the swordsman, as the party tank, was not to avoid the attack but to block it as best as possible. To do that as a weaker new character in her primary class, Yuuki couldn’t just block it with her weapon. She had to use a skill of her own to counteract and neutralize it. 

She had a window of less than a second to do this, between the start of Akuro-ou’s swing and when the force of its attack skill engaged. 

Yuuki opened her eyes wide, held her breath, and glared at the enemy’s sword. There was a high-pitched sound like ringing in her ears, and the enemy’s movements felt slower. This feeling often came over her lately when she was concentrating her hardest. The pause in the giant nodachi ended, and the blade began to move—now. 

There! 

Yuuki’s left foot stomped on the ground. 

Asuka Empire used a system called ground circles for its skills and spells. If you stomped on the ground with your weapon readied, your available skills or spells would appear arrayed in a circle at your feet. Stomping a second time on the icon you wanted would choose and activate it. 

At first, she would have to look down at the ground, see what she wanted, and then step again. But after practice, she was learning how to do it without looking. 

“Yaaaaah!” she roared, getting the hang of her battle cry, and pressed an icon with her right foot. She launched herself upward and activated the antiair skill Himukai, which turned her katana orange. 

“Ja-jaaaa!!” Akuro-ou bellowed again. But Yuuki’s antiair skill had already struck the middle of its nodachi. The flash of orange tore the blackish-blue effect in two and dispersed it. The nodachi jolted backward, pulling Akuro-ou’s giant body with it. 

“Sis, Merida, now!” she cried as she fell. A strip of white paper—Ran’s magic seal—flew up from the rear and stuck to Akuro-ou’s forehead. The seal shone and created a series of complex magic circles, then exploded in a huge fireball. 

The boss groaned and faltered, right as three silhouettes rushed toward its feet and sliced with countless shinobi blades. That was Merida’s special Body Double skill. Huge chunks fell from the boss’s LP bar, leaving just a few pixels left. 

Akuro-ou recovered from the delay caused by canceling its attack skill just as Yuuki’s cooldown ended. She held her katana at her left side and stepped on the floor again. As soon as she sensed the ground circle had appeared again, she stomped on the icon directly in front of her. 

“Haaaaah!” 

The quick-draw skill Suminagi had a tremendous reach, enough to hit the horns on the boss’s forehead—its weak point. It sliced them off, and the boss’s LP gauge was empty at last. Akuro-ou’s giant body turned into eerie blue flames and fell apart. 

The battle had taken over twenty minutes to finish. A victory fanfare played in their ears as they cheered and shouted. 

After turning in their quest to the NPC in Kiyomihara, Yuuki and Ran were promoted to the advanced classes of samurai and miko. Once they were outside the building, they spent some time examining their new looks. 

These weren’t anything like the simple clothes from Serene Garden; instead, they were fancy and flashy RPG outfits. They felt both excited and bashful about them, and they giggled together. Suddenly, a familiar voice called out from above their heads. 

“Yuuki, Ran, congrats on the promotion!” 

They looked up and saw Merida sitting on the edge of the building’s extended roof, waving at them. She hopped down, flipping in the air, and landed just in front of where they were standing. 

“You did really well. Getting to the advanced classes in just four days is remarkable!” 

“Only because you spent hours each day helping us out, Merida. Thanks,” replied Ran with a big smile. Yuuki added a “Thanks!” of her own. Merida giggled and shook her head. 

“Well, it was my idea to invite you to Asuka, so it’s my responsibility to help you out…Besides, it was fun for me, too. I don’t usually play with parties.” 

There had been lots to learn in the last four days of Asuka Empire, so they were aware now that ninjas like Merida were considered the best advanced class to use if you were a solo player. Yuuki could imagine why she’d chosen it. 

Befriending people you met when partying up, and joining guilds after that, meant increasing the likelihood of talking about life outside the game. If other people asked them about their real lives, Yuuki, Ran, and Merida would have some very painful choices to make. Do you tell them about your terrible disease and that VR games are just a means of making the time left more enjoyable? Or do you lie? Telling the truth might make things very awkward for the other person, and lying was just as painful. 

Yuuki prayed she could have the courage to be honest with others, the way Merida was with her. But that wasn’t easy. Merida had to be fighting with her own walls even now, walls her heart had built to protect herself. 

Ran patted her sister on the back to cheer her up. “Come on, Yuu. Merida wants to celebrate our promotion.” 

“Huh? Oh…right! I want to go back to that place again!” 

“Okay! There are plenty more things for you to try out there!” their friend said, grinning, and took the lead down the path. 

At the sweets shop, Yuuki ordered a sweet anmitsu bowl with cream, Ran got the kuzumochi, and Merida wanted a matcha parfait. They took turns tasting one another’s items until they were done and washed down the sweetness with hot mugs of tea. 

“Ahhh, this is bliss…Traditional sweets and green tea really are the perfect combination,” said Ran, closing her eyes. Yuuki and Merida nodded without comment. Coffee, black tea, or milk all went well with crepes, but none of them felt like the superb complementary pairing of sweet red beans and green tea. 

“Speaking of perfect combinations, I can absolutely believe you two are sisters. Your teamwork in battle is impeccable. I can’t believe you’re newcomers to VRMMOs,” Merida said out of the blue. 

Yuuki and her sister shared a look, then shrugged. 

“I-I’m just swinging my katana around. Sis is the one who times everything to match me…,” Yuuki said—right at the same moment Ran claimed, “I’m just casting spells from the back, so I have a good view of Yuu…” 

The combination caused Merida to spit up and nearly choke. 

“You see? You’re perfectly in sync! But that’s not the only remarkable thing about you. You’re able to use your skills without looking at your feet, right? It took me a month to be comfortable with doing that!” 

“Well…that’s because Asuka Empire is our first VRMMO experience. You played other games before this, Merida, so it was probably harder to learn how to do things differently, right? Or do all VRMMOs have the same fighting system?” Ran asked. 

Merida chuckled and started to nod, but then changed her mind and shook her head. “Well, maybe there’s a little bit of that…The battle system was completely different.” 

She glanced around the sweets shop to make sure there were no other players around, then continued in hushed tones. 

“Like the name suggests, Sword Art Online only has weapon battles, no magic. You execute sword skills just by holding your weapon the right way. And unlike in Asuka, they’re not all single-use attacks.” 

“Not all single-use…?” Yuuki repeated, not grasping what that meant. 

Using the long parfait spoon, Merida swung it up, down, then to the side. 

“Yes. Meaning combination attacks. In Asuka, you can keep swinging afterward with regular attacks, but the power of the skills in SAO was completely different. When you take the right pose and activate the sword skill, your body just moves all on its own. So your sword will go sli-sli-slice! and hit three or four times in a row superfast. In Asuka, you ready your katana, stomp on the ground to make the circle, stomp again to select the icon, and then it makes a single-attack skill. When I started, it felt sooo sloooow. I think half the reason I chose to be a ninja was so that I could move faster,” Merida explained with a smirk. Yuuki and Ran chose to laugh with her, rather than ask the other half of her reasoning. 

“Ah-ha-ha-ha. Yes, you really do zip around,” said Ran. “One second you’re over here, and the next you’re coming from the other direction.” 

Merida joked, “It’s the fundamental style of any ninja!” But her smile did not last long. She blinked slowly, reflecting on the boss battle earlier, and said, “Actually…what I think is amazing is your ability to ascertain. Like today…Yuuki, you totally saw Akuro-ou’s last area attack before it happened, didn’t you? Even among the best players, you don’t see many people who can stop the boss’s big attack over ten times in a row. I guess it wasn’t a coincidence that you managed to catch that royal triton stag beetle in Serene Garden.” 

Yuuki’s mouth fell open; she wasn’t expecting to hear that. 

In situations like these, it was always her sister who received the praise. Test scores, art skill, even running speed—Ran was always better. It should have been the same way in the virtual world. If Merida saw Yuuki as being superior to Ran, there could only be one reasonable explanation: The specs were higher on the Medicuboid compared with Ran’s NerveGear. 

“N…no, Merida, it’s not like that,” she protested, shaking her head. “It’s just because I’m not using an AmuSphere. I’m on a—” 

She gasped and caught herself there. Dr. Kurahashi said she could play Asuka Empire only so long as she didn’t tell anyone about the Medicuboid. 

Merida waited for the rest, looking stunned, but Yuuki just fell silent without finishing her statement. It was Ran who came to her rescue. 

“Listen, Merida,” she said softly, “we have something to tell you, and we hope you’ll forgive us for not saying it before. Yuu was about to say that we’re not using regular AmuSpheres. They’re augmented NerveGear the hospital staff gave us.” 

Yuuki understood that she had no choice but to say it. But even that was half a lie. Whatever you might say about Test Unit One, there was no denying that Test Unit Two was a far cry from the adapted NerveGear. 

She regretted that her slip of the tongue forced her sister to tell a lie. She clenched her fists in her lap until Ran’s fingers gently brushed her hands. It’s all right, she was saying. 

Merida didn’t seem to notice what the sisters were doing under the table. She was wide-eyed, and her voice escaped barely louder than a whisper. “Nerve…Gear…” 

She blinked a few times, then continued, “When you say augmented, do you mean…made safe?” 

“Yes…that’s what they tell us. The battery capacity is smaller, and there are limits on its functions so that it can’t transmit dangerous EM waves. The hospital recommended that we make proactive use of VR for palliative care, and they arranged for the headgear for us.” 

“Oh…I see…,” said Merida, nodding a few times as the shock wore off. “You know…when I first tried on an AmuSphere, I noticed that the response was a bit slower than the NerveGear, and the sensory information wasn’t as clean. But you can’t fight that well just from having higher specs. You two are special.” 

She beamed at them. At this point, they couldn’t keep arguing against it. Instead, the sisters fell into an awkward silence, prompting Merida to smile even wider. 

“At any rate, congrats on the class change! If you have more time, we should go to the imperial palace to take pictures. You look great in your new gear!” 

“Yeah, good idea. Let’s go,” said Ran the miko enthusiastically. At last, Yuuki felt like smiling again. 

Before they said good-bye for the day, the three girls went to the glamorous palace where the emperor lived in order to take screenshots—not that there was any “screen” in a VR game per se. 

The three girls continued to enjoy Asuka Empire after this day. Sometimes they’d go back to Serene Garden to see how the stag beetle was coming along or to eat crepes at that special little café. Once or twice, Merida had bouts of that dizziness again, but she was always cheerful and smiling regardless. 

Time passed in a blink when it was so fulfilling. Soon it was May 21st, just two days before Yuuki and Ran’s fourteenth birthday. 

That was when Merida popped a very unexpected suggestion on them.