Shrine Maiden of the Sacred Fire

  I should say something, Haruyuki felt, and fumbled earnestly for the words. Now that he was thinking about it, he had a hard time believing that Niko would have brought herself all the way to Suginami just to apologize for what she had said during the meeting. Maybe right now, the look on her face under that red fringe was one she couldn’t show to her friends in the Red Legion, not even her closest aide, Pard.

  “……”

  He was completely unable to think of something appropriate to say, but even still, he had to say something, and so took a deep breath. But before he could get any words out, Niko popped her head up. Her entire face radiated with an unexpected smile. Her lips moved and her high-pitched voice came rushing out, her tone a complete one-eighty from what it had been until that point.

  “Sorry for suddenly talking about all this weird stuff, big brother!”

  “…Uh, n-no, it’s…” He simply darted his eyes about in confusion. Even knowing that Niko’s suspicious “Angel mode” was a trick to tease Haruyuki and throw up a smoke screen, for an only child, being called big brother with a big smile was a shot straight through the heart.

  “Just forget all that! Ah! I gotta get going! Thanks for the juice!” She launched the words in a voice so adorable, he could practically see a stardust effect at the end of each sentence, and then bounced off the sofa and trotted across the living room.

  Here, Haruyuki finally pushed through his surprise and stood up. “H-hold on, Niko!” he called after her slim back. “Didn’t you…Wasn’t there something else you wanted to talk about?”

  The small girl stopped dead in her tracks in front of the door. After a moment’s hesitation, she whirled around abruptly. He was wholly unprepared for the broad grin and the speech that accompanied it.

  “Look, big brother Haruyuki. If one of us—or maybe both of us—loses Brain Burst, we’ll probably forget it all, everything about each other, you know?”

  “Huh…?”

  Total erasure of related memories. The final rule of Brain Burst applied to those who lost the game, a rule Haruyuki had discovered a mere two months earlier. Even Kuroyukihime had only had rumor-level information about this rule before then; how long had Niko known?

  Haruyuki held his breath as Niko peered up at him and then suddenly thrust her right hand out, extending just her surprisingly slender little finger.

  “So let’s promise. That when we find a name we don’t know in the address book of our Neurolinkers, before we erase the data, we’ll send one mail. And then maybe, one more time…”

  “…rita. Arita! Hey! Are you listening to me?”

  A thick voice suddenly calling his last name dragged Haruyuki out of his memories of the previous day. He intently swallowed down the pain rising up in his chest and took several breaths, somehow managing to change gears in his brain.

  “Y-yes!” he responded hurriedly, reflexively half standing at the same time, and bumped his legs into the reinforced plastic desk, making both desk and chair clatter.

  Here, he finally remembered that this was not his own living room, but the classroom of grade eight’s class C. Nervously shifting his gaze, he saw his homeroom teacher Sugeno making a sour face at the podium, and the students around him snickering at his overreaction.

  He couldn’t hear the scornful echoes of seventh grade in that laughter, although there might have still been the tiniest undercurrent. But the Haruyuki of this class, despite still being at the bottom of the hierarchy, had somehow established himself as the harmless round guy. Naturally, he was not dissatisfied with this. He would almost say it was ideal, in fact.

  Which was why he had to make every effort to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to himself as he had just done with his silly mistake. He wouldn’t be able to handle it if, because of this, some secret punk in the class decided it would be a good idea to relieve some stress by sending a little light bullying Haruyuki’s way. Thus, he moved to sit back down with an embarrassed smile befitting someone who had gotten a bit too carried away and done something awkward.

  However, for some reason, he sensed in his classmates a certain expectation directed toward him, and he froze. They all looked like they were waiting eagerly for Haruyuki to say something.

  Wh-what’s going on? Am I supposed to do something now? Do they want me to make a joke? Did I accidentally activate the super-difficult mission of making them laugh? Mind racing, Haruyuki broke out into a cold sweat.

  “Oh, Arita. So you’re standing up. Can I take that to mean you’re announcing your candidacy?” Sugeno said unexpectedly.

  Candidacy? For what?

  He had let his homeroom teacher’s words flow right past him, so he had no idea how what connected to what. Stiffening at the surprising turn things had taken, Haruyuki focused his eyes to the rear of his teacher. But there was nothing written on the virtual blackboard.

  Don’t panic. Think. So the kind of jobs you recruit for in homeroom…Right, someone to read out the announcement texts from the school. Nine times out of ten, that’s what it is. Haruyuki turned his gaze back to his virtual desktop and noticed that at some point a document file had arrived in his new message area.

  He definitely wasn’t good at reading out loud. But he had to do it sometimes in language arts or English class, and it was way better than having to state his own thoughts on anything. In this situation, the less messy choice was to own his carelessness and take the role of reader instead of sitting down with a no and making the whole thing worse.

  Having arrived at a decision on how to act, Haruyuki raised his head and met Sugeno’s eyes. “Y-yes, I’ll do it!” he replied in a clear voice.

  An impressed “Ohh!” abruptly rose up from the entire class, followed by applause like heavy thunder.

  “…Sorry?”

  Th-this reaction. Why would anyone applaud just because I said I’d be the reader? Freezing once more, Haruyuki watched Sugeno nod.

  “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I knew you were the type to step up when push comes to shove, Arita! I’m honestly delighted someone’s come forward in class C. Classes A and B will no doubt end up drawing names.”

  What? A very ominous feeling settling over him, Haruyuki clicked on the newly arrived file. The document that opened with a crisp sound effect was:

  NOTICE OF ESTABLISHMENT OF ANIMAL CARE CLUB: A TOTAL OF THREE MEMBERS, ONE FROM EACH GRADE EIGHT CLASS, ARE TO BE ELECTED.

  —In a rather cold font.

  “A-Animal Care Club?!” Haruyuki’s shriek was drowned out in the ongoing applause.

  Animal Care Club. So then, looking after animals?

  Belatedly coming to the obvious conclusion, he looked around the class and saw Chiyuri shaking her head in exasperation and Takumu grinning wryly with a you’ve done it now look.

  “Look, Haru. Even if you are always daydreaming…” In the short period after school before team practices started, his childhood friend Chiyuri Kurashima appeared before Haruyuki, who was still limp with exhaustion at his own desk. She turned a hard gaze on him as she continued. “If you don’t know what’s going on, then at least open the handout! Why would you just charge in on a gut feeling like that?!”

  “Come on, Chi. It’s not like this is the first time Haru’s let his thoughts just run wild,” Takumu Mayuzumi said, standing next to Chiyuri.

  You don’t have to rub my nose in it, he thought, although he couldn’t actually deny the truth of what they were saying. He slowly slid down on his chair and said lifelessly, “It’s fine. Whatever. I’ll just do it. The animal caretaker thing, anything.”

  “If someone had, like, forced you, we could maybe have said something. But, I mean, you stood up and proudly declared your candidacy. There was nothing we could do.” Chiyuri let out a sigh, and then the expression on her face changed abruptly. A serious light shone in her catlike eyes, and she brought her head in close, large barrette glittering. “But, actually, you do have the time for some kind of club, right? I mean, within the next week, you’ll—”

&
nbsp; “You have to ‘purify’ that parasite, whatever it takes,” Takumu interjected to finish the thought in a low voice.

  Exactly.

  That week—Monday, June 17, to Sunday, June 23—was the “stay of execution” Haruyuki/Silver Crow had been given.

  Two resolutions had in the end been adopted at the meeting of the Seven Kings the previous day. First, they would continue to gather information on the attack by the mysterious Acceleration Research Society. In his heart, Haruyuki was indignant at this too-lukewarm proposal, but it was true that a counterattack was impossible, given that they had absolutely no real details about the nature of the group; there was really nothing else they could do.

  And then, as if to counterbalance that tepidity, a harsh decision was made about Silver Crow’s transformation into Chrome Disaster: If he didn’t completely remove the parasite that was the Armor of Catastrophe within that seven-day period, the five kings would place a large bounty on his head. And that enticing sum of burst points would be distributed according to the number of times a Linker defeated Silver Crow. Once that happened, the instant he took even one step outside of Suginami Area, he would be assaulted by waves of Burst Linkers, including high-level ones, and Haruyuki’s points would run dry in a flash. They did have, after all, the just cause of the destruction of the armor on their side. No one needed to hesitate about pitting a large group against one person.

  Naturally, if he copied Kuroyukihime, who had a similar bounty on her head, and shut himself up in Suginami, he could refuse duels even while connected to the global net, but if he did that, he would no longer be able to earn points. He would stop leveling up, which was the very definition of a slow death for a Burst Linker.

  All of which meant an erasure ordered by a king, as long as it was lawful, was essentially the same thing as a death sentence. Kuroyukihime had managed to live for two whole years due, of course, to her iron will and her steadfast refusal to connect her Neurolinker globally, but the fact that she was already level nine played a big part. Haruyuki obviously lacked the latter and most likely the former as well.

  “…One week…” Haruyuki looked down at his hands on his desk. Unconsciously, he overlaid on them the gleaming, smooth silver of his armor. Silver Crow was his other self; becoming his avatar was entirely natural. The idea that he would no longer be able to be that person, no longer able to be a Burst Linker, felt unreal.

  Wait. Maybe I just feel like that because that’s the real world now? Real for me is maybe in that world now? So then, if I lose Brain Burst, where the hell will I go…? The instant this thought came into his mind, Haruyuki was overtaken by something like a chill, and a shiver ran up his spine. Deep in his ears, he heard again her clear, high voice.

  So let’s promise. That when we find a name we don’t know in the address book of our Neurolinkers, before we erase the data, we’ll send one mail…

  Haruyuki didn’t know just how serious Niko had been, since she’d said it in Angel mode, which was supposed to be a performance. She had forced Haruyuki to pinkie shake and then left, practically running out the door.

  But how could he forget? They could erase his memories of the Accelerated World, but there was no way he’d forget the people he had built bonds with in the real world. He tried to feel this confidence, despite the sharp unease in his heart. What if at some point he had lost sight of the reality of the real world? What if the memories tagged with reality had become empty without him noticing it?

  Clenching both hands tightly at the fear suddenly rising up in him, Haruyuki’s head started to sag even lower, but a small hand entering his field of view was faster than his head, wrapping itself around Haruyuki’s left fist.

  “It’ll be okay, Haru.”

  Lifting his face again, he found Chiyuri’s usual smile there.

  “Right. I’m sure we’ll be able to work it all out,” Takumu said crisply, standing next to her, and stretched out a hand blistered from his wooden kendo sword to rap Haruyuki’s right fist. His two childhood friends exchanged brief glances and nodded as if confirming something before looking back at Haruyuki.

  “And, okay, Haru? We talked about it, and we made a decision. If the week does go by and that bounty gets put on you, Taku and I will share our points with you, so you can keep leveling up at the same pace. So you don’t have anything to worry about.” Haruyuki stared hard at Chiyuri’s face as she spoke.

  He quickly rose up out of his chair and shook his head fiercely. “Y-you can’t!” he half said, half shouted, keeping his voice at minimum volume. “If you guys do that, you might end up with bounties, too! They’re just waiting for an excuse to turn all of us into targets!”

  “Hey, whoa, Haru. I’ve been in this longer than you, okay? I know a dozen ways to transfer points in secret.” Takumu grinned as he touched the bridge of his glasses and quickly ran his gaze over to the lower right, moving his body as if to close off any objections from Haruyuki. “Yikes! I gotta be getting to practice. Haru, let me know if the animal thing takes too much of your time. I’ll switch off with you whenever I can. At any rate, this week, your priority should be the purification plan Master came up with.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Taku.” Haruyuki swallowed a bunch of different words and lowered his head.

  The Armor of Catastrophe purification plan. After the handling of Silver Crow had been decided at the meeting of the Seven Kings, Kuroyukihime had come up with a mission to eliminate the element of Chrome Disaster parasitizing him, fuming all the while. Her plan apparently had three stages, but she still hadn’t told Haruyuki and his friends the whole of it. “I don’t know the details, but…,” he said half to himself, lifting his face. “Anyway, I’ll just do everything I can.”

  “Yeah. And we’ll do everything we can to help. Okay, see you guys later.” Takumu patted Haruyuki’s elbow lightly, turned, and trotted off to the kendo area.

  Watching him go, Chiyuri said quickly, “I have practice, too, but tell me if you need anything. Don’t be shy about it. We…um…We’re not friends…or kindred souls…ummm…”

  Family. Right.

  Almost as if she could hear Haruyuki’s thoughts, Chiyuri stopped talking and offered him a big smile before raising her right hand briefly and racing out of the room.

  Left alone, Haruyuki murmured in his heart as he shouldered his bag, It’s not such a basic problem as real or virtual or whatever. Me and Taku, me and Chiyu, me and Kuroyukihime and Raker. And Niko and Pard, and so many other people. What ties us all together is always here, inside my heart.

  I want to protect that. I don’t want to lose it. As Haruyuki Arita. And as Silver Crow.

  Glancing at the clock, he saw that he only had five minutes until the meeting time noted in the file. Even as he hurried to the exit on the first floor, Haruyuki was steadying his resolve anew.

  This week of grace was precious time Kuroyukihime and Niko had won for him by fighting the Yellow and Purple Kings, who both had insisted on immediate execution. He absolutely could not waste it. He had accidentally nominated himself for the unexpected job of caring for some animals, but there had to be a hint for him somewhere, even in that. Right now, he had to simply focus his everything on his problem.

  “Right!” he shouted softly, and went outside to find that at some point, the rain had stopped.

  4

  The private Umesato Junior High School was on the east side of Tokyo’s Suginami Ward, quite close to the corner of the streets of Oume Kaido and Itsukaichi Kaido. Although the school was small in scale with three classes per grade, the campus was reasonably large. On the north side of the grounds, which featured a three-hundred-meter track, the three-story first classroom wing stretched out east–west, connecting in the center with the north–south sports wing. On the opposite side stood the second wing, also in the east–west direction. In other words, the entire school was in the shape of a sideways H.

  The classrooms and the student cafeteria were concentrated in the newer first wing. The fairly old
er second building held the principal’s, teachers’, and guidance counselor’s offices on the first floor, while the second floor was made up of storerooms and the now barely used special classrooms. Thus, students almost never ventured into this building. Which was why Haruyuki had used the boys’ washroom on the third floor of this wing as his “shelter” when he was in seventh grade.

  However, there was one place students went to even less frequently, a place they weren’t even aware of. A long, narrow space enclosed by concrete walls and a high fence even farther north than the second wing. The place Haruyuki had been called as a new member of the Animal Care Club was past this damp gap, a corner in the northwest, the deepest of recesses at Umesato.

  “I didn’t even know this place existed…,” Haruyuki murmured, staring at the building.

  It was really too small to be called a building. The floor was at best four meters each way, and the ceiling maybe two and a half meters up. The side and interior walls were presently boards of unfinished wood, and the roof was probably straight shingles. The front was entirely made up of chicken wire with a three-centimeter mesh. A cage, in other words. Naturally, it was not used to lock up students who had done bad things; it was a hutch for keeping animals.

  However, no matter how close he brought his face to the chicken wire or how he strained his eyes, he could see no animals inside it. There was just a thick pile of leaves that had come in through a hole in the mesh. He had no doubt that plenty of microscopic creatures lived under it, but they couldn’t possibly be the animals he was meant to care for.

  “You can have an Animal Care Club and a hutch, but the animals are really the key,” he said to himself, cocking his head to one side. If they were going to be brought in later, he couldn’t understand why the club was being formed now.