The Twilight Marauder

  But when he thought about it, a Burst Linker’s real identity was too lethal; you couldn’t cancel that out no matter how many other cards you got ahold of. Even in this era, it was the same as Russia or America sending an armed nuclear submarine, drifting ghostlike through the deep sea. One lone ship was a significant deterrence. If, hypothetically, Haruyuki made public a photo of Nomi’s face, his real name and address, and the name of his duel avatar in the accelerated world, Nomi would be dead as a Burst Linker. He would be assaulted by the kind of extreme groups who didn’t shy away from attacks in the real, and once they got him in their grip, they would suck him dry of every last point. Haruyuki had been told that actual cases of things like this happening, while rare, did exist.

  So thanks to this hammer hanging over his head, the video that Nomi had set him up for was, in the final reckoning, a card that couldn’t be played. If that video were submitted to the school authorities, it would be a disastrous development for Haruyuki’s life at school, but Nomi had to know that if he did submit it, he risked having a desperate Haruyuki, with nothing left to lose, expose his own real identity.

  Put simply, the only card Nomi could really play without any hesitation to make Haruyuki his “point-earning dog” was the flying ability. But since a duel was the exclusive method of point transfer, if he could just beat Dusk Taker, even having had his wings stolen, he could resist and maybe even turn the situation around.

  Naturally, this course of action would mean saying good-bye to the silver wings that had shone so brilliantly on Silver Crow’s back until just the day before.

  But even that was okay, Haruyuki decided in his heart. It wasn’t because Sky Raker had given him a new way to fly. It was because he finally realized that his attachment to and dependence on these wings, an external object, had pushed him into a small box.

  I will defeat Dusk Taker, who now uses my own wings. And then one day, I will set aside my ability and any Enhanced Armament, and I will fly using the power of my will alone, Haruyuki declared to himself, clenching his fists tightly.

  The front door clattered open and Sugeno, their homeroom teacher, came in. The air now tense, the chattering class fell silent.

  As soon as they had finished the customary pre-lesson bow, Sugeno said loudly, “No one sit down!”

  Students who had started to sit jumped to their feet again with confused faces, and the young Japanese history teacher issued a further order, a blood vessel on his forehead popping up beneath his short hair. “All of you! Faces down, eyes closed!”

  The feel of the room grew even more questioning, but pressed by the menacing look on Sugeno’s face, the students quietly obeyed. Haruyuki also did as he was told, lips twisting.

  “Good. Stay like that and listen. I think you already all know this, but yesterday morning, it was discovered that a small camera had been set up in the girls’ shower room off the heated swimming pool. Fortunately, a student noticed it right away, so there was no specific damage, but even so, this is something that absolutely will not be tolerated. I’m very disappointed. And I’m furious. That a student who could do such a despicable thing could be here at Umesato!”

  Bang! The sound of the teacher’s podium being hit.

  “At the teachers’ meeting this morning, we decided to handle this within the school, since there were no victims. So listen…if the perpetrator is here in class C, raise your head now and look at your teacher. If you come forward on your own, your punishment will be reduced. So…are you here?”

  Is he serious?

  Still facing down, Haruyuki was stunned. Even if they did have their heads down and their eyes closed, any of them could easily have the image from their Neurolinker cameras displayed on the backs of their eyelids with one flick on their virtual desktops. He was sure some students were doing exactly that right now. You’d have to have nerves of steel to step forward after all his ranting about angry blah, despicable yada, punishment blah blah.

  Naturally, Haruyuki kept his head down, and it seemed the other students did the same. Sugeno stubbornly made them all stand for more than a minute, but finally he said in a low voice, “You’re sure? This is your last chance. I won’t be this nice next time.” He sounded almost convinced that the perpetrator was in this class.

  Haruyuki feared that Takumu might actually challenge Sugeno on this—Kuroyukihime definitely would have—but fortunately, he heard, “Fine. Sit down and open your eyes.” Forty chairs squealed, and once the noise had subsided, their teacher spoke again.

  “If you’re going to come forward, do it today. Before your punishment gets really serious.”

  Haruyuki felt like Sugeno was staring straight at him as he spoke, and he knitted his eyebrows. And then he got it. The fact that Haruyuki had come to school the day before yesterday on Sunday was in the local net logs. Sugeno was probably suspicious of his reasons for coming to school on a holiday, when he didn’t belong to any clubs or teams. But he couldn’t call him to the office with that level of proof.

  Haruyuki shifted his gaze with a feigned ignorance, and his eyes met Chiyuri’s sidelong. He could see a deep panic and fear there, and now he held his breath. It had still only been a short time since Chiyuri became a Burst Linker. She didn’t know that with his real identity known, it was an enormous risk for Nomi to actually use that video.

  He wanted to tell her in a mail not to worry, but Sugeno kept staring at him, so instead, he shot Chiyuri a short but firm look. Sensing something, apparently, his childhood friend moved her mouth slightly before turning around again, but the paleness of her cheeks persisted.

  Haruyuki paid twice as much attention as usual in his morning classes and took lots of notes. If he relaxed his focus even a little, his thoughts were tottered in the direction of the revenge match with Nomi.

  But he still had no way to challenge Nomi, blocked as he was from the matching list through some unknown means. His chance for a rematch would probably be when Nomi came for his “tribute” of next week’s points. Somehow, he had to train with the extremely capricious Enhanced Armament he had gotten from Sky Raker. Taking that into consideration, one week was actually not enough time.

  Classes were strangely short when you paid attention, and before he knew it, the bell for lunch was ringing. He checked on Chiyuri and Takumu, thinking he might talk a little with one of them, but Chiyuri appeared to be eating her boxed lunch with several girls, and Takumu left the classroom without looking at Haruyuki.

  He sighed briefly and started to bring his butt out of his seat with the idea of chasing after Takumu when a small RECEIVED icon flashed in the center of his vision. It wasn’t mail or a voice call, but rather a dive call requesting a conversation in full-sensory mode.

  Who on earth— As soon as he saw the sender’s name, Haruyuki fell back into his chair with a crash. He forgot everything in an instant and, closing his eyes, murmured the command.

  “D-Di-Direct Link.”

  His Neurolinker received his hurried, slightly stammered order, and his senses were cut off from the real world. The classroom was painted with darkness, and a sensation of falling soon came over him. If he simply waited, he would land in the Umesato Junior High local net VR space, but before that could happen, Haruyuki stretched a hand out toward the access gate floating in front of him. His virtual body was sucked in, and he was spit out—

  In the middle of a white beach, spreading out somewhere under a fierce sun and an impossibly blue sky.

  He stood stock-still for a moment in his pink pig avatar, and then took a few staggering steps toward the water’s edge off in the distance, before he realized that this virtual space was not made of polygons. He had no sensation of walking in sand. Which meant it was an optical image of the real world, taken with a video camera, and flatly projected into Haruyuki’s vision. When he turned to both sides to confirm this, the scene did not follow but took on a strange, distorted perspective. It was completely dark behind him.

  The information transmitted shoul
d have been just visual and aural, but strangely, he could even feel the hot, dry wind of a southern country and he took a deep breath. Then.

  “Hey, it’s been a long time…Or I suppose it hasn’t. It’s been three days, hmm, Haruyuki?” A familiar and yet endlessly fascinating voice sounded, and a human figure slipped out from the right side of his field of vision.

  Large straw hat. Thin white hoodie. Sunlight shining over the jet-black hair that draped itself over those shoulders, casting it in sparkle.

  Bringing both hands behind her with a slightly bashful expression, Kuroyukihime continued hastily, “There’s no lag? I’m connecting to the local net there through the student council office server, so it might be a little slow.”

  “N-no, not at all, it’s fine. There’s no noise, either. Um…um, h-hi, Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki dipped his avatar’s head and again drank in the person before his eyes.

  Because it was an optical image, there was no sense of depth, but it wasn’t a polygon recreation; this was the real Kuroyukihime. She had gone to the trouble of setting up a camera to show him the scene in Okinawa, just like she promised.

  “I-it’s beautiful, really beautiful. The sand and…a-and you.” When he added the last part at an extremely low volume, Kuroyukihime broke into a smile, albeit half bitter, and turned toward the emerald green sea as well.

  “Henoko Beach. Earlier, there were military planes flying around here. I think you might have liked them.”

  “O-oh really? I wish I had seen them.” As he spoke, his eyes were glued to the bare white legs stretching out below the hem of her hoodie. Kuroyukihime turned around again, and he shot his eyes up at the sky and said stiffly, “I-I-I’m so glad the weather’s good! The sky’s so blue, huh? Almost like a desert stage!”

  She was looking at a camera lens over there, and so shouldn’t have even been able to begin to tell where Haruyuki’s eyes were focused, but, even so, Kuroyukihime had apparently realized something with her characteristic intuition, and, pursing her lips slightly, she yanked down the hem of her hoodie.

  At that instant.

  “C’mon, Hime! How long you planning to keep that thing on?”

  A new human shadow entered the frame from the left. The girl with fluffy hair was a student council member Haruyuki didn’t know. She was in a pink one-piece swimsuit, and Haruyuki felt his throat close up suddenly, but as she came up from behind Kuroyukihime, she suddenly did something huge.

  In some incredibly quick work, she tugged down the zipper on Kuroyukihime’s hoodie and yanked off the thin covering.

  “Ah! Hey! What are you doing!”

  “I believe someone was supposed to do some serious hanging out with me on the beach in her swimsuit this morning?” Giggling, the female student turned toward the camera and waved. “Take your time, Arita.”

  And then she dashed out of the frame on the right. All that was left was Kuroyukihime, face red under her straw hat, hands clenched tightly together in front of her body.

  The swimsuit that appeared from beneath the dismantled armor was, of course, black. And the fairly small two-piece revealed close to 90 percent of her snow-white skin. They were unassuming in size, but as soon as he saw the top of the two extremely lovely protrusions brilliantly reflecting the sunlight, Haruyuki felt his heart rate skyrocket. He forced himself to take several deep breaths, concerned that his Neurolinker might do an abnormal link out.

  Finally, Kuroyukihime looked at Haruyuki with upturned eyes and said, “W-well, that’s, what. I mean, it is Okinawa, after all.”

  “R-r-right! I-i-i-it is Okinawa after all.”

  He wanted so badly to hit the record button in the corner of his vision, but if he did that during a full dive, she would know. Left with no other choice, he focused every fiber of his being on carving the real-time image into his brain, and he worked hard to make his mouth move. “Umm, okay, huh, well…I-it! It l-looks really good on you.”

  “Th-thanks.” With a faint smile, Kuroyukihime brought her hands behind her back again, and Haruyuki stared desperately at her body. Very close to passing out, Haruyuki was pulled back this time by an incredibly faint scar cutting across the smooth porcelain skin on the lower right of her abdomen.

  “……!”

  Eyes widening briefly, Haruyuki bit down hard on his lip and when the too-gentle virtual pain generated was not enough, he bit harder.

  He was sure that scar was from six months earlier when she had been critically injured, on the verge of death, saving Haruyuki from a car running wild. In the present day, thanks to advances in regenerative medicine, the majority of the aftermath of medical treatment was erased, but this had its limits. Or perhaps her injuries had simply been that serious.

  Kuroyukihime seemed, keenly, to intuit the reason for his silence, and, blinking slowly once, she brought a smile to her lips that was colored with a different kind of gentleness. The fingers on her raised left hand traced the scar gently.

  “Normally, you can’t really see it at all. But with the sun so strong here, I suppose you can a little, hmm?”

  Haruyuki couldn’t reply to her quiet voice. Lifting her head, Kuroyukihime stared directly into the lens—into Haruyuki’s eyes—and said in a fairly strong tone, “You don’t need to worry about it. It’s my lone medal, after all. The pain, this scar came from protecting someone, rather than fighting, for the first time in my life. And now, this scar is a support for me.”

  “…Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki somehow managed to murmur that one word and clenched his avatar’s hands tightly.

  I will never, ever hurt you again.

  Once again, he made the same vow to himself that he had repeated countless times already, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but be aware of the hint of guilt he felt. If at that moment, Haruyuki were to explain the crisis he currently faced, Kuroyukihime would get mad, ask why he hadn’t told her sooner, and probably be hurt again. And then, most likely, she’d come up with some reason to come back from Okinawa right away, push herself to the limits of her abilities, and even maybe rescue Haruyuki.

  But that was exactly why Haruyuki couldn’t tell her. He felt like he had to fight with his own two fists now, so that he could someday be the knight to protect her from everything.

  “…Kuroyukihime.” Haruyuki said her name again, and then spoke as clearly as he possibly could. “I…I’ll get strong, too. Right now, you’re just protecting me all the time, but…one day, I’ll definitely be strong enough to support you.”

  Her smile changed to something mischievous, and, taking a step forward, Kuroyukihime slid a gentle hand over the position of Haruyuki’s avatar. “It’s getting time for me to get back. I’ll call you again. And I’ll be back on Sunday, so you have to decide before then what you want as a souvenir.”

  As soon as she said this, “souvenir from the Okinawa trip” and “reward for the Territories” got mixed up in his head, and the words that came out of his mouth as a result—

  “Oh! Then th-thirty centimeters, d-di…”

  “Huh? What? Thirty centimeters in diameter…A sata andagi sweet bun? Now, now! I really don’t think they sell them that big…Well, I’ll keep an eye out.”

  At the tired look that said, Honestly, such a glutton, Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head. Sadly, however, she couldn’t see this motion.

  “No…um, uh…I mean, if they have one, sure. Please enjoy the rest of your trip.”

  “Mmm, thanks. Okay, see you,” Kuroyukihime said, and about to reach a hand out to the camera, muttered, “Oh!” and stopped.

  “Wh-what’s wrong?” Haruyuki asked, working hard to keep his eyes from boring holes into the thin, snow-white legs that leapt into his field of vision the instant he hung his head in dejection.

  “Now that I’m thinking about it, I got a strange mail from Takumu. About that seventh grader from the kendo team we suspected of being a Burst Linker…”

  “Huh?!” Swallowing hard, Haruyuki continued, flustered, “Wh-what did it say?”
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  “Mmm. Let’s see. He asked if I couldn’t look into…Nomi, was it? This seventh grader’s scores by subject on the entrance exam, so I sent him what I found in the student database. Has he said anything to you?”

  When he heard this whispered report, Haruyuki’s jaw dropped. “E-entrance exam? Why would he want that data now?…No, Takumu hasn’t said anything about it to me.”

  “He hasn’t?…Ah! I have to go. Okay, I’m hanging up now. ’Bye!”

  The flash of her right hand waving was the end, and the connection to Okinawa was cut off, leaving Haruyuki alone in a dark plane. The super-detailed images of Kuroyukihime in her swimsuit flew from his mind, and he tried to guess what Takumu was thinking, but he didn’t have the slightest idea.

  Maybe he wants to fill in the data from the outside in, but the only thing left now is for Nomi and me to duel, Haruyuki muttered to himself before giving the link-out command.

  When he returned to his real-world classroom, there were only ten minutes left in lunch. He stood, intent on hurrying over to the school store to get some bread, but glancing over at Takumu’s seat, he found it empty. His eyes then roamed over to Chiyuri to see that she was in the middle of a rare full dive. After staring for a minute at the Neurolinker on the thin, hunched neck, Haruyuki left the classroom.

  With the current state of things, nothing’s going to change in a week.

  That was what Haruyuki had anticipated. Given that Nomi had said he wouldn’t lay a hand on Kuroyukihime or Takumu, he thought there would be no movement.

  However, Haruyuki had underestimated the intelligence and ability to take action of his childhood friend, who had once stalked the Black King, Black Lotus. He was forced to this realization at the very end of gym class, right after he got the call from Kuroyukihime, fifth period on Tuesday.

  While the girls practiced their original dance routine in the gym, the boys were told to do a three-hundred-meter run, a command that left the feel of a certain disparity at work. But Haruyuki did his rounds along the school track, panting heavily.