“It didn’t turn into anything big. I’ll explain everything after school. Sorry to make you worry,” he wrote briefly, hit SEND, and then started to reach for Chiyuri’s address. But on the verge of touching it, he yanked his hand back. He couldn’t erase Chiyuri’s fears with mere words anymore. The only way to get her back was to destroy Nomi, the source of all the problems.
A simple “Got it” soon came back from Takumu. He felt his friend’s concern in that brevity, and finally relaxing his shoulders, Haruyuki trotted back to the classroom so that he could be on time for his next class.
Lunch break.
The bell had no sooner rung than Haruyuki was headed for the cafeteria by himself.
The cafeteria, too, with the missing ninth graders, was naturally a fair bit emptier than usual. Not feeling much like eating some bread up on the roof, where he had so recently had such an unpleasant experience, he lined up at the self-service counter. From the menu displayed in his field of vision, he selected pork curry with a boiled okra topping and checked that the holotag was floating in front of him. The lunch lady dished out the curry at superhigh speed, set the okra on it, pushed it onto the counter, and the bill was settled with a ringing sound. He grabbed the tray with both hands and looked around for a place to sit.
His gaze naturally moved to the lounge at the eastern edge of the cafeteria. But he didn’t have the courage to charge into the space with its round white tables surrounded by plants and its obviously different atmosphere by himself, so instead he plopped himself down in a corner of one of the zillions of long tables. He picked up his spoon and glanced around. All the other students were enjoying their lunch, laughing and talking. No one was looking at Haruyuki. Or so he thought.
But he couldn’t help feeling like everyone in the place was talking to one another telepathically. The secret-video criminal is here. No, that was impossible. He tried to shake the feeling off, but the indescribable weirdness of the moment he entered eighth-grade class C that morning had soaked into his skin.
To at least forget it, he started jamming curry into his mouth, but the blockage in his throat didn’t seem to be going anywhere, even though just curry in his mouth was normally enough to make him unconditionally happy.
What if…
What if this thinking, this awareness of “Arita in class C’s the one who did the secret video” thing, took root among all the students, whether there was proof of it or not?
Wouldn’t it be hard for even Kuroyukihime, the student council vice president, to uproot it? In fact, she might be dragged down by Haruyuki and lose her current standing. Even if, hypothetically speaking, that did happen, she would never dream of abandoning him, but what if, because of him, they all gave Kuroyukihime the cold shoulder, too? What if she was alienated within the school like he had been last year, or in the worst case, she ended up the butt of jokes?
Haruyuki felt goose bumps shudder up onto his skin. He dropped his spoon onto his plate with a clank and grabbed his arms tightly with both hands. At that moment, he felt an abrupt presence and lifted his face.
A group of four or five people walking off in the distance greeted his eyes.
At the private Umesato Junior High School, there was a sports department scholarship system of sorts. The school wasn’t particularly famous for sports, so the system was more on the level of a slight reduction in tuition for players who did well enough to make it to the intercity tournament level or higher. Even so, there was no doubt that there was a clear category of “scholarship student elites.”
The group on which Haruyuki’s eyes had landed was made up of a few of these sports athletes. A starting player on the girls’ softball team, the hope of the boys’ swim team, and a small student chatting away in the middle of them—
No mistake, it was a seventh grader from the kendo team, Seiji Nomi.
The kendo team at Umesato was definitely strong, but Nomi had just joined it that month; he hadn’t been out to a real tournament yet. The earliest he’d be able to obtain scholarship student status would be in the latter half of that year, but they’d already welcomed him into their group, which meant that his win at the team tournament the previous week had made a real impact.
But you didn’t even win that tournament with your own power!
Haruyuki unconsciously bit his lip, hard. At that time, as if sensing his eyes glaring from the corner of the long table in the distance, Nomi turned his gaze toward him with a casual gesture.
Haruyuki saw the cherubic smile on his feminine face instantly transform. Appearing from beneath the mask that peeled off was a cold, sadistically joyful grin, a thin razor sharpened to the extreme. Haruyuki felt as though he could hear his voice in the back of his mind.
What do you think, Arita? What’s it like to be covered in mud, slipping endlessly down this hill? Having all your precious things taken from you one by one and smashed?
Nomi faced forward again to turn his original innocent smile upon the upperclassmen as he entered the brilliantly lit lounge without the slightest hesitation.
Even after the plants blocked him from view and Haruyuki could no longer see him, he continued to glare at the place where Nomi had been for a long time.
There was no doubt about it now. Nomi was the one who had spread the story of Haruyuki being interviewed by his homeroom teacher so fast to the class. Not only that, but given the situation, it was probably him who had tipped the school authorities off about Haruyuki having come to school on Sunday.
Abruptly, an enormous rage and an even greater terror erupted from the depths of his body, and Haruyuki desperately suppressed the urge to flip the table. No. He couldn’t let his spirit be broken here. That would just be a return to his cowardly self of six months earlier. And not only that. If he lost heart now and sank to the bottomless depths of the bog that Nomi had created, he’d be dragging Takumu and Chiyuri—and Kuroyukihime—down with him.
It starts now, Haruyuki murmured in his heart as he robotically shoveled curry with his spoon. I’ve faced this level of adversity a hundred times. I’ll show him. I’ll crawl back up one more time. No, I’ll get up again a million times. I’m done looking at the ground.
He opened his mouth wide, stuffed his cheeks with the curry piled high on his spoon, and chewed forcefully. The freshman girl sitting diagonally across from him gaped and stared in shock at Haruyuki cleaning his plate with incredible speed.
4
For the two hours of the afternoon, he wouldn’t go so far as to say he was sitting on a bed of nails; the prickliness was more on the level of a cheese grater. The one thing that could be said to be lucky for him, if only just barely, was that now that Ishio from the basketball team had faced off with him, the classroom seemed to have put any further reaction on hold.
However, the girls’ eyes were about 30 percent colder than usual, and some of the boys were already in the middle of deliberations on which nickname to present to Haruyuki. Before they could decide between what were apparently the final candidates—“Camerita” and “Papayuki”—Haruyuki grabbed his bag and umbrella and left the classroom.
He cut through the schoolyard in a straight line, the concrete wet and black with the rain that began falling in the afternoon just as the forecast had said, and breathed a sigh of relief once he had passed through the gates. With a TAKE CARE ON YOUR WAY HOME, he was disconnected from the Umesato JH local net. Global net information popped up in his vision, and he felt soothed in his heart, somehow, at this sense of connection.
He leaned against a wall twenty meters or so from the school gate and stared attentively at the headline news, the sound of the rain against his umbrella as background music. Finally, he heard familiar footfalls approaching.
“Sorry to make you wait, Haru,” Takumu said, navy-blue umbrella hoisted in greeting.
Haruyuki returned his brief wave, and they fell in step with each other, walking east on the sidewalk.
A few minutes later, Haruyuki was the first to open his mo
uth. “Are you really sure it’s okay for you to miss practice two days in a row?”
“It’s fine; it’s totally fine. The captain and the coach are both totally obsessed with the genius rookie; a transfer player like me isn’t even on their radar.”
“That’s a mess, too, huh? But at least with everyone focusing on that jerk Nomi, you’re free to move a bit more easily.”
Bitter smiles crossed both of their faces, and they walked another minute in silence. When the intersection where Oume Kaido met Kannana Street came into view, Haruyuki finally broached the subject himself.
“Sugeno called me in today, about the hidden camera thing…Of course, I didn’t do it.”
“Obviously. Sugeno calling you in even though he has no proof of anything—” Takumu started indignantly, but Haruyuki stopped him.
“But I’m in a position where I could very easily be turned into the bad guy,” he continued, almost groaning. “The whole thing was a trap Seiji Nomi set up for me. And I walked right into it…”
It took a lot longer than he had expected to explain the whole of Nomi’s trap.
By the time they got on the electric-engine bus and settled down next to each other in the back, Haruyuki had finally finished giving Takumu an overview of the situation he had gotten dragged into. He left out only two things: the infection route for the visual masking program Nomi used on him and the fact that he had run into Chiyuri totally naked in the shower room.
However, the computational power of Takumu’s brain was in perfect working order at a time like this, and he appeared to have immediately understood the program route. As soon as Haruyuki clamped his mouth shut, his good friend took off his blue glasses and pressed his hand firmly against his forehead.
“…Right.” His voice was broken with a powerful sense of self-reproach. “It was that picture, huh? The kendo team photo with the new members that I sent you. So it was infected with a virus. Sorry, Haru. I totally forgot to check it—”
“N-no, it’s not your fault!” Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head several times. “That virus was probably set to self-destruct the moment the photo was read in a system with a kendo team register tag. If anyone should have been more careful, it was me, the target. He’s been gunning for me, not you, right from the start.”
“But I should’ve noticed something was up when I saw the file was a little too big. Instead, I go and charge into your house, when you’re having to deal with something like this. I said all those things to you…I even hit you on top of that!” Takumu shoved his glasses back on, grabbed Haruyuki’s right hand with both hands, and yanked it up.
“Whoa! Hey! What—”
“Haru, hit me. You have to hit me or I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
“I said it’s fine! It’s fine!”
Flustered, Haruyuki sent his eyes racing back and forth between Takumu’s face and the front of the bus. The housewives and students on the bus with them were staring with wide eyes or giggling. If they couldn’t hear their conversation, how on earth were they interpreting this situation: tall, handsome Takumu grabbing the hand of small, round Haruyuki and leaning into him?
But Takumu didn’t seem to even notice the eyes around them. He gradually brought his face even closer, so Haruyuki was forced to whisper, “Wait, hold up, Taku! Uh, I…You have to hit me, too.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” Takumu furrowed his brow doubtfully.
Haruyuki returned his look and apologized—Chiyu! Sorry!—in his mind. She had told him that he was under no circumstances to talk about this, but with Takumu at least, Haruyuki was no longer interested in simply keeping quiet and letting things happen while he hung his head and stared at the ground.
“The thing is…When I was tricked by the visual masker and I went into the girls’ shower room…Chiyu kind of showed up.”
It took another two minutes to explain this incident.
Dropping heavily back into his own seat, Takumu pressed his fingertips between his eyebrows and sighed. “Is that it? So that’s how Chi’s involved in all this…”
“…It is…”
A totally different expression on his face, Takumu gave Haruyuki a sidelong glance and raised a single finger. “Anyway, let’s leave this for now. I don’t need to hear the specific details of what you saw, Haru. For Chi’s sake, too.”
“Right…You really are a gentleman, Taku.”
“Thanks. Anyway, if that’s the case, then I guess we can assume this is the basis of Nomi’s threat. The secret video of you would definitely be an effective card against Chi, too…That has to be it.”
“Yeah. If he’s managed to see through Chiyuri like this to threaten her, Nomi is a serious genius at attacking other people’s weak points.”
Takumu let out a long breath and patted Haruyuki’s knee lightly. “But that’s also his own weak point,” Takumu said in a slightly sharper voice.
“Huh?”
“I mean, it is, right? Taking, threatening, making people do what he says—that’s not friendship in the real sense of the word. Even if he is making Chi, Lime Bell, obey him now, Nomi, Dusk Taker, is essentially alone. How can we lose to a guy like that?”
“…Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
This time, it was Haruyuki grabbing Takumu’s hand, which was still resting on his knees. The cool, bony touch gave him more hope than he could say, and he was grateful from the bottom of his heart that Takumu/Cyan Pile was right there next to him.
They crossed Shinoume Kaido and got off the bus just as they were about to enter Nerima Ward.
They opened their umbrellas and watched the stream of cars flowing before them for a while. On the other side of the vehicles driving along, motors and hydrogen engines purring, was the territory controlled by the Red Legion, Prominence. Even though they had a truce with the Black Legion Nega Nebulus, that was only for the weekend Territory Battles. If they crossed the street now with their Neurolinkers still connected to the global net, there was no doubt that they’d be challenged to a duel in less than five minutes.
After meeting Takumu’s eyes and nodding, Haruyuki took a deep breath and spoke the command. “Command: voice call. Number: zero five.”
As he listened to the sound of the call being made, sweat oozed from his hands. He told himself to calm down, but he couldn’t curb his nervousness. After all, the person he was calling was none other than the level-niner controlling the strongest long-distance duel avatar in the Accelerated World, the Immobile Fortress who struck fear in the hearts of those around her, the Red King Scarlet Rain.
“I haven’t talked to you in ages, big brother Haruyuuuki!”
The high-pitched voice filled his brain, and Haruyuki’s knees started to buckle. Somehow managing to stay on his feet, he replied out loud rather than with neurospeak for the benefit of Takumu next to him. “Oh, s-sorry I haven’t kept in touch. Yuniko—”
“Ugh, Niko’s fine, okay? So what’s up, calling me out of the blue like this?” The Red King Niko was in angel mode, which was nothing more than a whim when she was in a good mood. But it did make things easier for him, so he spoke quickly to keep this chance from getting away.
“Uh, um, there’s something I want to talk—or, I guess, get your advice on. If you can, it’d be great if we could meet now in the real. Uh, of course we’d come to Nerima.”
“Hmm. It’s raining, you know? Oh, but I was feeling kinda like having some cake. One with tons of strawberries!”
“M-my treat, my treat. You can eat as many pieces as you want.”
“All right! In that case, meet me here.”
A map whooshed up in his field of vision as she spoke. The flashing dot was in the neighborhood of Sakuradai Station on the Seibu Line, not far from where they were.
“O-okay. We can probably make it there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Okay! See you soon!”
And then the call was disconnected. But they had pushed past the first barrier at least. He sighed h
eavily as he lifted his face.
“I have money,” Takumu said with a slightly meek look.
“Nah, we’ll split it.”
“But we’re getting her to meet us today because of me, so…”
While they were having this little back and forth, the next bus came, so they cut it short and jumped on. The moment they sat down, they disconnected their Neurolinkers from the global net. The bus raced along, large motor roaring, and crossed Shinoume Kaido to plunge into Nerima, the area reigned over by the Red Legion.
The shop they had been directed to was a cute little cake place tucked neatly among a row of shops on a small commercial street. Inside, half the room was taken up by chairs and tables, which he assumed meant that you could also eat in.
They had just closed their umbrellas and shaken the water off when they heard energetic splashing—feet jumping in puddles, approaching from behind. Haruyuki started to turn, only to find a small fist dug into his round stomach before he even had the chance to attempt a dodge.
“Hng!”
The grin looking up at the groaning Haruyuki from under a red umbrella belonged to a sweet-looking girl with large, greenish eyes, glittering in a small face full of freckles. Soft red hair was tied up in thin bundles on each side of her head, and she carried an elementary school backpack on her navy-uniformed back. The Neurolinker peeking out on her neck was the transparent red of a gem.
The girl took a step back. “Long time no see, big brother,” she said, twirling her umbrella. “You’re round as always, huh!” She turned her face to the left. “And you, Professor. You’re gloomy as always!”
Stiff smiles rose up on their faces, and they bowed briefly in greeting.
“It has been a while. Sorry for calling you out like this, Niko—”
“Totes fine! Let’s just get to the cake already!” The girl—ruler of the Nerima area, the Red King Yuniko Kozuki—shoved her umbrella into the umbrella stand and dashed into the store. The two hurried after her.