The first time I met her in the labyrinth on the bottom floor, I broke my personal rules and spoke to her because that very feeling was my first instinct. I wished to see more of that shining, shooting-star Linear and where it would go from here. That same sentiment was at the core of my current attempt to keep her from snapping at Lind.
Perhaps, rather than arguing about breaking up the team or joining guilds, I should just say that simple statement. But once again, my throat had sealed itself shut.
My bad habit of seizing up when it mattered most was nothing new. Ever since I left behind my very first friend, Klein, in the back alleys of the Town of Beginnings, thirty-nine days before…In fact, ever since I started living in my home in the city of Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, I’d missed my chance to say what truly mattered, over and over.
But now, now that I’d realized this…
I prayed and fought, but my throat refused to turn the air it accepted into words. Everything physical in this world was digital data, so it wasn’t my real throat that had seized shut. It was my brain itself, my mind, connected directly to the NerveGear. Over years of experience, I’d shut down my own mental pathways.
Just when the words I needed to say were about to evaporate in a sigh of resignation, I felt a faint voice speak into my ear.
Kirito.
If there’s something you want to say, now is the time for you to do it, while you can. Your ability to do so makes you very fortunate.
The quiet but beautiful whisper seemed to belong to the dark elf we’d left far behind in the depths of the forest. Perhaps I was remembering something she’d said at that tiny graveyard at the rear of the camp, late that night. Perhaps my mind was putting its thoughts into Kizmel’s voice all on its own.
But that phantom voice did prod me onward. The words I’d given up for lost made their way out of my mouth, bit by bit, into the virtual air.
“I don’t…want you…to die.”
For just an instant, Asuna’s eyes grew wider.
“So…please, just hold it in. It’s quite possible that Lind and his guild might save your life and mine someday. Please don’t think you’d rather die than be saved by him.”
At the very end, my voice shook pathetically, like a pouting child on the verge of tears. I looked down and finally let go of Asuna’s arm. Awkwardly pointing forward, I saw that most of the players had descended upon the stage, showing off their weapons and trading collected materials. Agil’s group of four were huddled tightly, conducting a meeting of their own.
Completely spent by the mere four sentences I’d just spoken, I waited for my erstwhile partner’s response.
After about five seconds, she said simply, “I’ll hold it in, then.”
At that, I let out the air that had built in my chest with a long, slow exhale. It couldn’t have been easy for Asuna to hold in the anger at having her strongest beliefs insulted. I wanted to respond to that, but there were no more words. I simply nodded.
After a bit, I heard the whisper in my ear again.
You did well, Kirito.
I had to grin at that. I really had to be losing it, if I was imagining Kizmel’s voice in order to encourage myself…
“…”
No.
Wait. Hang on. Unless.
A number of other phrases circled through my brain. I slowly reached up with my right hand, feeling the (supposedly) empty space near my ear.
My fingertips met a soft and squishy surface.
We said brief good-byes to Agil’s team, headed out the rear of the meeting area, and quickly strode down the main street and out of the town gate. Another hundred yards down the road, out of the hearing range of Zumfut’s bustle, I stepped just a bit off the path and into the darkening forest.
Asuna followed me without comment, though the skeptical look on her face demanded an explanation for the sudden move. Rather than elaborate, I turned to an otherwise empty spot and asked, “Are you there, Kizmel?”
Asuna’s eyes went wide with surprise, and she looked all around.
For a while, there was no response but the chirping of birds and rustling of leaves, but it was broken by the sound of rippling cloth. A laugh emerged from the opposite direction of where I was looking.
“So you noticed.”
I spun around just in time to catch sight of the dark elf whipping her long cape back. Even with her Hiding status removed, the knight’s tall form seemed to be melting into the dim shadows of the trees. Her onyx eyes glittered with mischief.
“How could I not notice?” I asked, choosing not to note that she was the one who spoke to me. Until I heard that whisper in my ear, I never would have imagined that Kizmel had not stayed back in the dark elf camp but used her cape’s hiding charm to make herself invisible so she could follow us the entire time.
I just stared at the grinning Kizmel; I didn’t even know what to ask first. Asuna filled the gap.
“Uh…Kizmel…? How long have you been there…?”
That was indeed a big issue. If Kizmel had trailed us ever since we left the base camp, she would have witnessed the scene where Lind’s team started on the “Jade Key” quest—and sided with the forest elf knight against the male dark elf.
Contrary to my fears, the slain dark elf wasn’t an identical replica of Kizmel, but it still must have been a difficult sight for her to process. If she had been present while we watched, how did she interpret that sight?
But Asuna did not share my apprehension. Like Kizmel, she tossed her hood back and pressed the elf further, her face reddening.
“…Were you also…in the room with us?”
That was another major issue. Even setting aside the simple fact that we did nap in the same room together, there was also the question of if we said anything embarrassing that we wouldn’t want overheard. I tried to remember what had happened eight hours before, but fortunately, Kizmel shook her head.
“No, I spotted you in the meeting place at the center of the town. It wasn’t until the late afternoon that I used the teleporting charm to come within range…”
That was right—she had mentioned such a power. I was partly relieved, but my suspicions had not been entirely undone.
Was this development even supposed to be possible? Were NPCs not registered with a party allowed to leave their designated areas of activity and chase down human players?
And when Kizmel whispered in my ear at the center of Zumfut, it was within the safe haven of town. Even if it were possible that a player being chased by monsters could run into town and actually have them follow him in, the frighteningly powerful guards at the gate would dispatch the creature at once.
Plus, Kizmel was a yellow-cursored NPC to us, as we were actively taking part in the dark elf side of the campaign, but she would be a red-cursored monster to any other player. It must be true to the guards of Zumfut as well, so if her Hiding effect had worn off for any reason, the results would have been disastrous. Of course, Kizmel was tremendously strong by herself, so she might have been able to hold off the guards long enough to flee into the forest.
I tried as best I could to corral all of these questions into one simple enough to ask.
“So, um, why did you come all the way to the human town…?”
Perhaps it was my mind playing tricks on me, but I thought I saw her face blush a bit out of shyness, but her expression was serious as she answered, “It was my duty.”
“D-duty?”
“Yes. The commander has given me a mission: to serve and protect you. You did not return for many hours after leaving this morning, so I simply left to see how you were doing.”
“Simply, huh? Is it really safe to go all the way into the middle of town like that? What if your hiding—er, deception charm wore off?”
Now her face seemed to take on a note of pride. She stroked the oddly gleaming cape.
“This Mistmoon Cloak is most effective at the evening and morning hours when sunlight and moonlight switch places. Its charm
will not break, even with a little physical contact.”
“Aha…I see,” I replied, looking at my fingertips and recalling the squishy sensation, while Asuna’s brow furrowed in slight consternation.
“…He touched you?”
“Yes. You might be surprised; Kirito is quite—”
“Quite the cloak, I must say!” I interjected hastily, trying to steer the conversation away from the brewing storm clouds. I broke out in a nervous sweat just thinking about what part of Kizmel I might have touched and how close I’d come to being automatically thrown into the game’s prison for harassment. But for now, the questions were over. I looked upward.
The sky—technically, the bottom of the floor above—peeking through the branches was almost entirely purple, with just a few traces of red remaining. I’d been planning to eat dinner in Zumfut after the meeting, but I didn’t want to wander back into town with Kizmel tagging along out of sight, and I also couldn’t force her to just wait out here in the forest, abandoned.
“Asuna, I’m thinking we should just go back to the camp. Is that okay with you?” I asked. She shot me a glance that said I’d still have to answer on the previous topic, but kept her face neutral as she replied.
“All right. Especially since Kizmel came all this way to see us.”
She shut her mouth but appeared to want to say more. I peered at her patiently, prompting her to continue. But Asuna looked down at the ground and prodded a bluish-purple mushroom with the toe of her boot.
“Um…I was thinking, maybe we should just stay around the elf camp all the way up to the boss battle.”
“Huh? W-well…I guess we can get all the info we need on the state of progress from Agil and Argo, and there are plenty of supplies at the camp…but I thought you really liked that hotel room in Zumfut.”
“I got to see the view once, and that was enough. Besides, I don’t want to be anywhere near those guild people right now.”
“…I see.”
Once you caught a case of Stay-Away Syndrome in an MMORPG, it could be extremely hard to break (as I knew from experience), but I understood how she felt, and I didn’t have any room to argue otherwise, so I took her comment in stride and turned to the elf.
“Kizmel, do you mind if we stay in the tent with you, starting tonight…and lasting for a week or so?”
“I do not mind,” she said simply. Her smile was more beautiful than any NPC’s expression—more beautiful than any player’s, in fact. “I would be delighted for you to call it home. Let us live together until our goals are met.”
“…Great, thanks.”
The phrase live together seemed to take on a new, fresh meaning coming from her. Asuna nodded in agreement but turned away just as quickly. In the dying rays of the sun, the contours of her rapier, breastplate, and fine cheek lines were a blazing red.
Sadly, the teleportation charm from the dark elf camp to the forest near the main town was a one-way ticket, so we had to retrace our steps from the morning, only now through the gloomy evening mists.
There was no avoiding the monsters, of course, but Asuna and I had recently earned significant upgrades, and we had the powerful elf knight as our travel companion. Both Kizmel and I were level 15, but as an elite unit within the game, her power was not dictated by level alone. We traveled with Asuna and Kizmel in the front and me in the rear. Any mobs who approached from the right were dispatched with a single attack and sword skill from Asuna’s Chivalric Rapier +5, and those from the left were met with the same by Kizmel’s long saber. I barely had to lift a finger. I still got the shared experience and col from being in the party, but it felt a bit disappointing to not take part, and my mind began to wander due to inactivity.
On the one hand, I thought about the DKB and ALS, who had effectively split the frontline player population between themselves, and our duo’s role in all of it.
I told Asuna I didn’t want her to die, as a means to prevent her from throwing herself at Lind. That wasn’t just an excuse I made up on the spot—it was how I really felt. But as a result, I’d extended the terms of our temporary partnership. The logical part of my brain deduced that her odds of survival rose if she was part of a big guild, but I just couldn’t tell her we needed to break up the team. I still didn’t know why the words caught in my throat.
At any rate, I had to take responsibility for my statement. I had to make her more powerful, to dedicate myself even harder to that task. I had to teach her more, not just about her movement in battle, but her stats, the types of gear, and other knowledge of the game.
That day marked a week since we teamed up on the second floor, and during that time, I’d held to a simple stance: If she asked, I answered. Over and over, she demanded to know why I hadn’t said something or other earlier. Perhaps it was my resignation to the role of beater. But now was the time to snap myself out of that passive attitude…
But on the other hand, the subconscious parts of my mind grappled with something else entirely: the mysterious actions of Kizmel, the NPC knight.
What was she, anyway?
It was beyond obvious that she was not an ordinary NPC. Her natural conversation style and ample emotional range were on a clearly higher level than the shopkeepers, guards, and hotel clerks in Zumfut, and even the other dark elves in the camp with her. It was as though Kizmel thought, felt, and expressed herself, unbound by the normal constraints of NPC algorithms. Otherwise, she would never have boldly followed Asuna and me into the human town far from her home base.
If she wasn’t a normal NPC, there were two possibilities.
One: For some unknown reason, Kizmel was granted a high-functioning AI, rather than the simple chat bots that only responded to a set of keywords.
Two: Also for some unknown reason, Kizmel was actually a player. Or to be more precise, a human role-player who was acting out the character of a dark elf.
Both were hard to believe. I wanted to think that the latter could not be the case. If that were true, the person behind Kizmel wasn’t a fellow prisoner of SAO but someone aligned with those who had plotted to turn it into its current trap…one of the administrators.
There was no way Kizmel could be Akihiko Kayaba, but even if it was an accomplice of his, I couldn’t see them earnestly helping us advance in the game. Perhaps I ought to consider the possibility that she was plotting to lead us into some kind of trap ahead…
“…!”
I shook my head vigorously to dispel that dark notion. I didn’t want to be suspicious of Kizmel. The last thing I wanted to do was imagine that the earnest sadness as she mourned at the grave of her sister Tilnel was nothing but a cynical act.
I looked up and fixed my gaze on the back of the fencer ahead and to my right. I had to protect Asuna, to make her stronger. Strong enough that if I died, she would be able to survive this perilous world on her own. That was my responsibility now that I’d chosen not to break us apart.
But what if Kizmel really was leading us into a trap? If there was even a slight chance of that being true…
“Kirito,” came a voice from my left. I looked up in surprise and locked eyes with the dark elf. The consternation and concern in her face were so natural that I felt shame for my suspicion, and my desire to learn the truth about her grew even more.
“You have been silent for quite some time. Is something the matter?”
“Er, it’s nothing. Just thinking…”
“Ahh. Sometimes it is best to speak your worries aloud and free yourself from their weight.”
Asuna turned back and added, “That’s right. I’ve noticed recently that you’re the type of person who gets depressed on his own because you overthink everything. Just speak up before you get any stupid ideas.”
“Well, that’s…true, I suppose…”
I glanced around under their withering stares, but there was no escape. Yet I couldn’t say the things I’d just been thinking. Instead, I put on an awkward smile and thought up a lame excuse.
??
?J-just thinking, you’re both so strong and handy to have around…”
“What in the world would make you think so hard about that?”
“Uh, just, erm, thinking, uh…which one of you I’d want to have as a wife…”
Wait. Scratch that. Reload from save point.
My eyes darted around, looking for the LOAD button. Asuna gaped at me in total disbelief, then sucked in a deep breath and bellowed, “Are you really that stupid?!”
Meanwhile, Kizmel grunted in understanding without batting an eye.
“I’m sorry, Kirito. That will require Her Majesty’s permission,” she said, utterly straight-faced.
“N-no, that’s perfectly all right,” I reassured her, shaking my head and hands. My mind immediately went down an escapist tunnel—instead of MMOs, maybe I should have played those games with all the romantic choices to make instead. A teenager who loved dating sims wouldn’t have gotten himself trapped in this situation. Maybe there really was a market for full-dive romance games with deadly stakes. But what would you have to do to die in such a game…?
Asuna snapped me out of that ugly spiral with a chilly “We’re here.”
I nearly asked her where that was, until I remembered that our little journey had a destination after all.
Ahead, the thick forest opened up, and triangular flags could be seen rippling in the trailing mist. It was the familiar sight of the dark elf base.
Biting back a rueful sigh at my own relief, I decided to forget the shameful display I’d put on just a minute ago and picked up my pace to catch up to the women.
In the end, I left both the fighting and the navigation to the other two. It was hard not to feel like my stock had fallen during the trip from Zumfut to the camp, but if there was one thing I learned, it was that nothing good came from moping on my own.
Whether Kizmel was AI or human, it didn’t change the fact that we helped her and she helped us. I wanted to be around Kizmel for as long as possible—and I was sure Asuna agreed on that point. That was all I needed for now.