Flight Toward a Blue Sky

  However, neither of them had anticipated Nomi’s proposal. Takumu repeated once more in a tense thought, “It’s too risky, Haru. We don’t know what could happen in the Unlimited Neutral Field. Especially when our opponent is Nomi.”

  “So then we ax his proposal?”

  Here, Takumu fell silent. Finally, he started in a darker tone, “But like Nomi says, even supposing he does surrender, we have no guarantees…That still leaves the possibility of him setting up a new trap someday.”

  “Hey, Taku. Can you think of any way to set up an ambush in the Unlimited Neutral Field and get around the indefinite postponement of the specified time?”

  “Maybe a huge number of burst points,” Takumu replied slowly, after another few seconds of silence. “A huge amount of endurance. There shouldn’t be anything other than that. The problem is whether or not Nomi has any friends who would be willing to make such an enormous sacrifice.”

  This time, Haruyuki thought for a while before speaking. “Hmm. There’s a good chance he belongs to some kind of organization. The kind that’d make its members have a procedure to get a BIC implanted. That Rust Jigsaw I fought in Akihabara’s probably one of them. Neither of them have a tag on their avatar name, so I guess it’s not a Legion.”

  “So like a bunch of guys who efficiently earn burst points with the brain chip and then use them in the real world? Those ‘acceleration users’ Nomi talked about before, no doubt.”

  “Right. So would these guys basically be infinitely wasteful with their points and time to help Nomi out of this jam he’s in?” Biting his lip, Haruyuki soon continued. “No, I can’t believe they would be. That bit Nomi said about there being no such thing as freely given friendship is the truth for him. To put it the other way, if he did have friends like that, I’m sure Nomi…would be a better real Burst Linker.”

  These words of his were without any foundation, but Takumu replied quickly with an assenting thought. “Yeah. You’re right. That’s exactly it. This is a fight between you and me, Burst Linkers, and Nomi, acceleration user. That’s the ground on which our pride stands…Yeah, that’s right…”

  For a moment, the shared thought was a white light flowing through the voice call circuit.

  Haruyuki nodded sharply and sent a strong thought. “Okay, then. I’ll say yes. The first set time’ll be once you and Nomi are done with practice and have gotten back home. So let’s say…eight tonight. If we postpone this a minimum of even ten times, that’s more than an hour, which should take care of the possibility of an ambush.”

  “Roger.”

  His shoulders relaxed at the prompt response and Haruyuki added, “And to be honest, I’m kinda glad to get a one-off fight.”

  “Heh-heh. That’s ’cause you’re the overconcentrating type, Haru. I’m counting on you to finish him quickly for me.”

  “But that’d suck for you after you went to all the trouble of the Incarnate training.”

  They laughed together for a minute, and after a quick “See you after school” back and forth, Haruyuki ended the call.

  I’m so glad I have Taku with me. He felt it deep down, and he was thankful from the bottom of his heart that he hadn’t chosen to strike the final blow when he and Cyan Pile fought for the first time six months earlier.

  After school. Seven thirty PM.

  He finished cleaning up the living room and had just pulled his usual frozen pizza out of the freezer to heat up when the doorbell rang. He glanced at the holowindow that popped up, confirmed that it was Takumu’s face there, and raced to the entryway. He pressed the UNLOCK button and said to the opening door, “Hey! Right on—”

  Before he could finish with time, Haruyuki reeled back, mouth hanging open.

  Standing behind Takumu with a stern look was another familiar face.

  “Ch-Chiyu?!”

  Why now, here?

  Not even giving him the time to voice this question, Chiyuri, in her street clothes, murmured, “I’m coming in,” expressionlessly and stepped up into the hallway. She slid by Haruyuki and walked into the living room.

  He stared dumbfounded after her before turning back to Takumu. “Wh-why?”

  “I didn’t call her. She was just in the elevator with me,” Takumu muttered, also having a hard time understanding it. He exhaled a thin breath and closed the door before asking if he could come in with a tilt of his head.

  Nodding repeatedly, Haruyuki went back down the hallway with Takumu.

  Chiyuri, standing in the kitchen rather than the living room, lifted up the frozen pizza box he had left in the sink. “As usual, eating stuff like this,” she said with a small smile. She returned the box to the freezer and held up a bag she had brought with her. “I got Mom to make lasagna again. For the three of us.” She paused for a moment. “Don’t worry. It’s not poisoned or anything.”

  The instant the joke reached his ears, a sharp pain pierced his chest squarely in the center and he twisted his face up. Why do things have to be like this between us? The thought spun around in the back of his mind. When he averted his gaze, he saw Takumu’s eyes also stiffen under his glasses.

  Looking away, Chiyuri quickly pulled a heat-resistant container out of the bag and split its contents over three plates. With one plate in her left hand and two adroitly balanced in her right, she headed into the living room. “C’mon, sit down.” Smiling, she placed the plate with the slightly larger piece in front of Haruyuki and a plate with a piece about the same size as her own in front of Takumu. She took forks from the cutlery basket in the middle of the dining table and handed them to the two boys.

  Compared with last week’s Chiyuri, each of these movements was dull, as if her arms were bound by some unseen rope, and Haruyuki couldn’t bear to watch anymore.

  He accepted the fork and fixed his gaze on his plate. “Thanks,” he said in a small voice. “So let’s eat.”

  “Yeah, let’s eat,” Takumu agreed.

  At Chiyuri’s “Go ahead,” the two began to eat her mother’s special lasagna. It was delicious. It was even a cut above the one they had been treated to the previous week. However, the deliciousness just made the pain in Haruyuki’s heart all the starker. He felt like he would start crying if he stopped chewing, so Haruyuki moved fork to mouth intently, almost cradling his plate.

  Within ten minutes, all three plates were empty. Chiyuri went to do the dishes and then sat back down at the table. She finally opened her mouth to break the silence at 7:50 PM. “Nomi told me to come. To the place of the final battle.”

  “Wh—”

  “Huh?!”

  Haruyuki and Takumu spoke at the same time.

  After a momentary blank space, his thoughts started spinning at high speed. “H-he did? Right, you’re already level four now. So you can go to the Unlimited Neutral Field, too.” Foolishly, Haruyuki hadn’t even considered the possibility that Chiyuri might show up, too. But he knew Nomi wouldn’t hesitate to use Lime Bell to ambush them.

  “B-but…how was Nomi planning to tell you the right time?” Takumu’s question was totally natural. Haruyuki and Takumu could change the specified time at will and shake off any Burst Linkers lying in wait. Chiyuri was no exception.

  Chiyuri dropped her head, as if trying to escape the two sets of eyes pointed her way. “Nomi told me,” she muttered. “He told me to meet you guys directly and say I was betraying him. To make you trust me like this and dive at the same time as you guys. He told me to heal him once the duel started.”

  “…What are you…” Haruyuki clenched his teeth abruptly.

  How far will that coward go?! Rage shot through his brain, while an even greater confusion bubbled up in him—what was Chiyuri’s intention in confessing all this?

  As if sensing his doubt, Chiyuri continued thinly, “But I guess that’s too much, huh? After everything that’s happened, I’m not especially persuasive. So I…To tell the truth, I wanted to ask you both a favor.”

  “Ask us…?”

  She looked at Haru
yuki and Takumu in turn, large eyes veiled with tears. “Please take me with you,” she said, enunciating each word. “I have to go. If you say no…Although if that’s what you say, there’s nothing I can do about it. In that case, I’ll just dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field right here and now and wait on the other side until you come. I’ll wait however many months, years it takes.”

  “…Chiyu, you…” He squeezed the words from his choked throat. Naturally, this declaration hit him hard, but hearing the words “Unlimited Neutral Field” come so smoothly from her mouth was even more of a shock. She should still have been a total beginner; a mere week earlier, she hadn’t know the first thing about Brain Burst. The question welled up in his heart for the hundredth, thousandth time since this whole thing started.

  Why, why? Chiyu, why are you doing all this?! Why are you so stuck on Brain Burst when you were pushing against it so hard before? What do you keep earning points for?!

  And yes, Haruyuki couldn’t stop himself from even this thought: What if this is a trap? What if she’s betraying us a second time, and this is a strategy to get herself into the final battle and steal our points?

  He honestly didn’t know if he could win this fight against Dusk Taker, even one-on-one, but adding in Lime Bell’s healing ability against him, his chances of victory essentially disappeared. Just like in the fight on Tuesday.

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t manage to get a handle on what Chiyuri was actually up to.

  Breaking the heavy silence was Takumu’s quiet voice. “Okay, Chi. Come with us.”

  “T-Taku…”

  Takumu turned toward Haruyuki and smiled gently. “Haru. Six months ago, you saved me in that first fight in the hospital. I’m sure you had your doubts. There was a very real possibility that I was just saying whatever to stay alive, and once the fight was over, I’d immediately try to hunt Black Lotus, still in her coma. But…you forgave me. No, you trusted me. I’ll never, ever forget that…which is why…” He took a deep breath, throat trembling, and declared resolutely, “I trust Chi. I hate it that no matter how much I think about it, I can’t figure out her real motives…but whatever happens because of what she does, I’ll accept it.”

  In the once-again-silent room, Haruyuki watched Chiyuri’s lips move soundlessly. It was just the slight movement of a tremor, but words did in fact reach his ears.

  Thank you, Taku.

  Haruyuki squeezed his eyes shut tightly. On the screen of his eyelids, the tears she had shown him in her room the day before came back to life.

  I move of my own free will.

  That’s what she had said as tears poured down her face. In which case, the little stuff didn’t matter. It was just like Takumu said: Either he trusted her or he didn’t. That was the only issue. And the answer was obvious. He had already decided that years before, back when Chiyuri and Haruyuki didn’t really talk for real.

  “Got it.” Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down. “We go. The three of us.”

  As the clock struck eight, Haruyuki sent the first text mail to Nomi. Dive time 8:05 PM. The place: in front of Koenji Station in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

  Of course, both of these would be successively changed going forward. He would send the new instructions mere seconds before the specified time, so even supposing Nomi did have someone lying in wait, it would be impossible for him to communicate the change. The sole risk was that Nomi had his ambush personnel with him in the real, like Haruyuki and his friends, so that they could dive at the same time, but he couldn’t believe that Nomi had any friends he trusted that much. To remove this possibility as well, they had considered meeting Nomi on this side as well and then diving, but this proposal was abandoned with the reasoning that leaving their unconscious bodies alone in front of Nomi was even riskier.

  Haruyuki kept sending mail after mail, changing the time and place at irregular intervals. The tension he felt while on standby was uncomfortable, like being left for an extensive period in the dentist’s waiting room. However, it was probably nothing compared to the irritation Nomi must have been feeling, so he endured it. Nomi couldn’t know exactly how many minutes, how many times they planned to drag this thing out.

  9:12 PM.

  After postponing the fight a full fifteen times or more, Haruyuki finally said, “Okay. We dive in one minute.”

  “Roger,” Takumu replied, and Chiyuri nodded.

  A single fight with their cumulative points on the line. No matter how drawn out it got, it wouldn’t take more than an hour. In other words, in real time, everything would be over in a mere 3.6 seconds.

  Kuroyukihime. Haruyuki’s heart called out to her in distant Okinawa. If I lose, you’ll probably be super angry and pretty sad, too. But I know you’ll understand in the end. It’s exactly because I’m trying to be your knight that I have to do this.

  Five seconds before 9:13.

  Haruyuki hit the SEND button on the final mail.

  The text: “Place: Umesato Junior High School grounds. Time: Now.”

  “Here we go!!” Haruyuki shouted, and then the three of them called out the command with one voice.

  “Unlimited Burst!!”

  10

  Night.

  An enormous pale disc glittered and glimmered in the black sky. The surface of the earth, the buildings, everything was white as though the color had been drained out. The world wasn’t colorless, but more like the shade of dried bone. Square houses cast neat shadows on the broad road. In the distance, the Shinjuku center, transformed into chalk towers carving out spirals, pierced the night sky and soared upward.

  “A Moonlight stage?” Takumu—Cyan Pile murmured after looking around at the virtual world of western Tokyo.

  Haruyuki quickly listed the characteristics from his memory. “It’s bright, but you basically can’t see anything in the shadows. Noise carries from far away. Few Enemies. There are no trap-type terrain effects.”

  “Surprise attacks from a hiding place in open spaces are basically impossible. We were right to choose the school.” After nodding at one another, they glanced behind them.

  In the empty white space that had originally been the Arita living room stood a quiet Lime Bell, shining a vivid emerald green in the light of the moon. She didn’t look any different from when he’d seen her on Tuesday. But in a mere two days, she had been in an incredible number of duels and won all of them, meaning that she had already reached level four, just like Haruyuki and Takumu. They had been at level four for a while, though, so there was probably still a fair gap in the total number of points they had earned, given that Haruyuki and Takumu were on the verge of reaching level five and Chiyuri had barely leveled up to four, but at the very least, their potential should have been the same.

  During the short period of this dizzying climb, Chiyuri, as Nomi’s healer/bait, had no doubt been exposed to all kinds of attacks from countless Burst Linkers. Haruyuki keenly understood just how difficult and painful that experience must have been.

  But she came to stand in front of them in a movement that revealed no exhaustion whatsoever. “Let’s go,” she said briefly. And then without hesitation, she tossed herself from the terrace, which was the equivalent of the twenty-third floor of the former condo. She fluttered down to the ground using the terraces below and the decorative objects as footholds, all without a trace of a newbie’s awkwardness.

  Haruyuki and Takumu looked at each other again, and after unconsciously grinning wryly, they flew down the same way. The three avoided the route they usually took to school and trotted down a back road. As they kept an eye out, the two boys smashed objects as they went along to build up their special-attack gauges.

  They didn’t enter the school from the front but first came out on the roof of the family restaurant on the other side of Oume Kaido and checked out the location of the final battle from the shadows.

  Umesato Junior High School had been transformed into something like a medieval European palace. In what was perhaps a gothic style, e
normous columns were lined up along the front, and several sculptures of angels and demons jutted out from the walls.

  Those can’t all be duel avatars, can they? He rubbed his eyes and, after checking that they were all, in fact, stone, he turned to the school once again.

  The expansive grounds had become a garden covered by thin tiles in complex patterns. There was not a single object on the field, just the long, thin shadows cast by the lance-like towers—formerly the main pillars of the baseball fence.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s hiding here,” Haruyuki murmured, and Takumu nodded.

  “Yeah. But Nomi’s not here, either…Maybe he was a half second behind us on the dive.”

  “If he doesn’t come in five minutes, we’ll port out for a bit through Koenji Station…Wait, hold up a sec.” The faint sound of the wind reached Haruyuki’s ears. The stage was completely windless, so something was moving in the sky. A flying Enemy—or a flying duel avatar. Whirling his head up toward the southwestern sky, Haruyuki froze solid the instant he saw it.

  A shadow approached within the night sky aglitter with tiny stars, and then shined white in the moonlight. Slim body. Claws on both hands. And stretching out from his back: devil wings.

  Dusk Taker.

  “No…mi…,” he groaned unconsciously, and, as if drawn by that voice, the avatar began its descent.

  Arms crossed, drawing an elegant spiral in the air, he came down in the center of the schoolyard, an almost-silent landing. Just seeing this, Haruyuki knew that Nomi had already completely mastered the flight ability.

  The avatar with the marauding attribute slowly folded his wings and stopped moving. Once again, the world was filled with silence.

  Haruyuki’s senses couldn’t pick up any changes. There were no movements of secret approach, no footfalls crawling up from his blind spot, nothing.