Early and Late

  Schmitt wrestled with temptation, but that temptation alone was essentially a betrayal of the guild and their leader. He was doing it to get into a better guild. Schmitt justified it to himself by saying that it would ultimately help the guild leader by making the end of the game come sooner. He followed the memo’s instructions.

  The next night, Schmitt learned that the leader had been killed. The day after that, he found a leather sack on his bed filled with the gold coins he’d been promised.

  “I was…I was scared! I thought that if I told the guild about that note, I’d be targeted next…S-so it’s true that I have no idea who wrote it! F-forgive me, Griselda, Grimlock! I r-really had no intention of aiding a murder. You must believe me, please!” he whined, scraping his forehead against the ground repeatedly.

  Another dark breeze rustled the branches. When it left, the woman’s voice took its place. But her eerie echo was completely gone, as though it had never been there.

  “We recorded all of that, Schmitt.”

  It was a familiar voice—one he’d just heard recently. Schmitt looked up and gaped in total disbelief.

  The black hood was pulled back now to reveal the very face of the person this grim reaper had supposedly killed just hours earlier. The wavy, dark blue hair swayed in the breeze.

  “…Yolko…?” he whispered.

  When the other robed figure did the same, Schmitt sounded as though he was going to faint.

  “…Kains.”

  10

  “Th-they’re alive…?!” Asuna gasped.

  I nodded slowly. “Yes, alive. Both Yolko and Kains.”

  “B-but…but…” she panted, then clutched her hands atop her lap and rasped, “But…we saw it last night. We saw Kains stuck with a black spear, hanging out of a window…We saw him die.”

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head, “what we saw was Kains’s avatar spray a bunch of polygons, give off a blue light, then vanish.”

  “B-but isn’t that how death happens here?”

  “Do you remember how Kains was staring off at a specific point in space when he was hanging out of that church window last night?” I asked, holding an index finger out in front of my face. Asuna nodded.

  “He was looking at his HP bar, right? At the effects of the piercing damage as it ticked down bit by bit…”

  “That’s what I thought, too. But that wasn’t it. He wasn’t actually looking at his HP bar but the durability level of the plate armor he was wearing.”

  “D-durability?”

  “Yes. Remember how I removed my glove when we did the test with the piercing damage outside of town this morning? Nothing you can do to a player in the safe haven will damage HP. But an object’s durability will drop…just like the sandwich earlier. Of course, armor durability doesn’t cause it to just vanish in the middle of town like food does, but that’s only if it’s not damaged. Remember, there was a spear piercing Kains’s armor. What the spear was damaging was not Kains’s HP but his armor durability.”

  At this point, Asuna went from a look of bafflement to sudden surprise.

  “Th-then…what we saw disintegrating and flying off wasn’t Kains’s body…”

  “Right. It was just the armor he was wearing. I always thought that was weird; why would you wear a huge set of armor if you’re just going out to eat dinner? It must have been to ensure the visual effect of the explosion was as attention grabbing as possible. And so Kains waited for the exact moment the armor would shatter, then…”

  “Used a teleport crystal,” Asuna muttered, closing her eyes to replay the scene in her mind. “And the result of that was the blue light, a shattering spray of polygons, and the disappearance of the player…Something extremely close to the death effect but totally different.”

  “Yes. I’m guessing that what Kains actually did was stab himself through the chest with the spear, armor and all, outside of town. Then he used a corridor crystal to teleport to that upstairs room in the church, placed a rope around his neck, then jumped out of the window right before his armor broke. At the exact moment it was about to break, he used a teleport crystal to zip away…Thus completing the effect.”

  “…I see…”

  Asuna nodded, eyes still closed. She let out a long breath. “In that case…Yolko’s disappearance tonight must have worked the same way. So…she’s still alive…”

  I could see her silently mouth the words, Thank goodness, then clamp her lips shut. “B-but, while she did seem to be wearing a lot, when did she hit herself with the throwing dagger? The Code would have stopped her. She shouldn’t be able to even touch it to her body.”

  “It was in there from the very start,” I said flatly. “Think back. From the moment that you, Schmitt, and I walked into the room, she was very careful not to show us her back. When she got the message that we were on our way, she must have run out of town, stuck in the dagger, put on a cloak or robe, then returned to her room. With how thick her hair is, it would be easy to hide the hilt of that tiny dagger as long as she sat tight to the sofa. She kept us talking while her clothes ran low on durability, then she timed it to walk backward to the window, then kicked the wall behind or something to make the right sound before turning around. To us, it just looked like the dagger hit her through the window at that very moment.”

  “And then she fell out of the window…to make sure we didn’t hear her giving the teleport command. Which means…the person in the black robe you were chasing…”

  “I’m almost positive it wasn’t Grimlock. It was Kains,” I stated.

  Asuna looked out into space and sighed. “So he wasn’t the culprit but the victim. Oh…but wait.” She sat up, looking puzzled. “Remember how we went down to Blackiron Palace last night to check the Monument of Life? Kains’s name was crossed out. It was right at the correct time, and even caused by piercing damage.”

  “Do you remember how the name was spelled?”

  “I think it was…K-a-i-n-s.”

  “That’s right. That was what Yolko told us, so we believed it, of course. But look at this.”

  I showed Asuna the piece of parchment that had started me on the path toward this understanding. It was the list of Golden Apple members that Schmitt had written down for us a few hours earlier.

  Asuna reached out and took it, examined the names, then exclaimed in disbelief.

  “Caynz?! Is that the real spelling for Kains’s name?!”

  “One letter off could just be a typo or misremembering, but Schmitt wouldn’t get three letters wrong on accident. In other words, Yolko intentionally fed us the wrong spelling of his name. She wanted us to see the K-Kains’s death report and believe that it was for the C-Kains.”

  “Th…then…” Asuna said, lowering her voice and looking tense. “At the very moment when we were witnessing Caynz’s faked death at the church, the other Kains was dying of piercing damage somewhere in Aincrad? That can’t be…a coincidence, can it? No way…”

  “No, no, no.” I grinned, waving a hand. “Yolko and her conspirators didn’t time it out to kill Kains at the same time. Remember how the death listings on the Monument of Life went? It said ‘22nd of the Month of Cherry Blossoms, 6:27 PM.’ That’s April in the Aincrad calendar—and yesterday was the second April 22nd we’ve had in the game.”

  “Ah…”

  Asuna gasped, paused for a moment, then returned that exhausted, powerless grin.

  “…Oh my God. I never even considered that. It was last year. On the same day, at the same time, Kains died in a way that was totally unrelated to any of this…”

  “Yes. I think that was the starting point for their entire plan.”

  I took a deep breath and put all of the pieces together once more in my mind.

  “At a very early stage, Yolko and Caynz must have noticed that someone named Kains, pronounced the exact same way as Caynz, had died last April. Maybe it just started off as a note of interest between them. But at some point, one of them came up with the idea to take adv
antage of that to fake Caynz’s death. And not just through normal monster-related death…but with the menace of a faked safe-haven PK.”

  “…Well, they certainly fooled me and you at first. The death of an unrelated player with the same name, destruction of equipment through piercing damage over time, and a simultaneous teleport crystal…These three elements combined to make what looked to all the world like a PK within the safe haven of town…And it was meant…” Asuna lowered her voice to a whisper. “To draw out the culprit of the ring incident. Yolko and Caynz used the fact that they would be suspected of the act to their advantage, faking their own murders and creating an illusory killer meting out vengeance. A horrific god of death that could pull off a PK in the safe haven of town, regardless of the Anti-Criminal Code…And the one who gave in to fear and took action was…”

  “Schmitt,” I said, rubbing my chin with a finger. “He probably must have been the first one they suspected…Schmitt left the, dare I say, mediocre Golden Apple guild and went straight to the Divine Dragon Alliance, the biggest guild on the front line. That’s basically unprecedented without some kind of extremely fast-paced leveling or a sudden influx of much better equipment…”

  “Yes, the DDA has very strict recruitment requirements. But does that mean he was the one responsible for the incident with the ring? Did he kill Griselda and steal the ring…?”

  Asuna had met Schmitt several times, given her role in organizing strategy meetings. She stared at me, her eyes tense.

  But with the image of the lancer in the back of my mind, I couldn’t exactly give a straight answer.

  “…I don’t know. There’s room to suspect him…but if you asked me whether or not he struck me as red…”

  Murderers in SAO, otherwise known as “red players,” tended to be unhinged in one way or another. That made sense, in a way. Killing other players here solved nothing but making beating the game more difficult. All red players, in some way, were essentially saying they didn’t care if they ever got out of SAO. Some of them probably wished that the death game would continue forever.

  Such dark desires always made their way to action at some point. But I didn’t sense that red madness from Schmitt. Not with the way he quaked in fear of the black-robed reaper and even asked us to escort him back to his guild building.

  “…I can’t be sure, but I’m fairly certain that we can say he had something to do with it,” I muttered. Asuna nodded in agreement. She leaned back against the chair pointed toward the window, all thought of watching the pub gone. Her gaze traveled over the town to the sky.

  “…In either case, Schmitt’s at the end of his wits now. He believes there’s someone out to get vengeance on him, and he finds no safety in town…even in his own guild room, I suspect. I wonder how he’ll react.”

  “If he had an accomplice, he’ll probably be making contact. Yolko and Caynz will be attempting the same thing. But if Schmitt doesn’t know where to find his old accomplice, then…Hmm. If it were me…”

  What would I do? If I had given in to temporary greed and killed a player, then regretted it later, what could I do?

  I hadn’t directly taken the life of another player before. But I’d known friends who had died because of me. I still bitterly regretted the loss of my old guildmates, who were all wiped out due to my stupid, ugly desire to stand out. I chose to make a small tree in the backyard of the inn we called our “home” into their grave marker. I went there from time to time to leave drinks and flowers, knowing it was no solace to them. So Schmitt, too, probably…

  “…If Griselda has a grave, he’ll probably go there to beg forgiveness.”

  Sensing the change in my tone of voice, Asuna turned to look straight at me and smiled gently. “Yes. That’s what I would do, too. At the KoB headquarters, we have a grave for all of those who were lost in boss fights…In fact, I’m certain that both Yolko and Caynz are there, too…At Griselda’s grave. Waiting for Schmitt to arrive…”

  She fell silent, her expression darkening.

  “…What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing…I just thought of something. What if Griselda’s grave is outside of town? If Schmitt goes there to apologize…would Yolko and Caynz just forgive him? I don’t want to imagine it, but what if that’s where they want to have their revenge…?”

  This chilling thought took me by surprise, crawling up my backbone.

  I couldn’t rule it out. Yolko and Caynz hated whomever orchestrated the ring incident enough to put on this complex, ingenious safe-haven “murder.” They had already used two teleport crystals and possibly a corridor crystal. That was a huge expense, given their level. After all the trouble they’d gone to, would they be satisfied with a simple apology…?

  “Uh…but…I see…”

  But then something occurred to me, and I shook my head from side to side.

  “No, they wouldn’t. They’re not going to kill Schmitt.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “You’re still registered friends with Yolko, right? And you haven’t seen any notice that she’s dissolved the friendship?”

  “Oh…now that you mention it, that’s right. I just assumed that it’d automatically been undone after she died, but if she’s alive, we should still be registered.”

  Asuna waved her left hand to bring up the menu, then hit a few buttons.

  “Yes, we’re still registered friends. If I’d realized this sooner, we could have gotten to the bottom of the trick sooner…But that makes me wonder, why did Yolko accept a friend request from me in the first place? Didn’t she realize it could have ruined her whole plan?”

  “I’m guessing…” I started, closing my eyes and imagining the woman with the dark blue hair, “it was a gesture of apology for lying to us, and also because she trusted us. She trusted that if we noticed the friend registration was still active, we might figure out their true plan, and wouldn’t get in their way with Schmitt. Try to check on her location right now, Asuna,” I said, opening my eyes.

  Asuna nodded and hit a few more buttons. “She’s out in the field on the nineteenth floor right now. On a small hill near the main town. So this must be…”

  “The grave of Griselda, leader of Golden Apple. And Schmitt and Caynz must be there, too. If Schmitt dies there, then we’ll know that they killed him. So I doubt they’d do that.”

  “So…what about the reverse? What if Schmitt decides to kill them, to prevent them from telling anyone they know he was involved with the ring incident? Can we be sure that won’t happen?”

  I gave Asuna’s troubled questions some thought, then shook my head again. “No. We’d find out about that, and he wouldn’t be able to stand losing face among the front-liners for being an orange or red player. So I don’t think there’s any concern about either one killing the other. Let’s just let them handle it. Our role in this case is over now. Sure, we played the patsy for Yolko and Caynz, just as they hoped…but it doesn’t really bother me.”

  Asuna considered this for a moment, then smiled.

  But at the time, neither of us was seeing even half of the truth of the matter.

  The case was still ongoing.

  11

  Again, a story I heard afterward.

  Schmitt stared back and forth at the faces of the two players who emerged from the black robes, forgetting to breathe in his shock.

  The reapers he’d assumed were Griselda and Grimlock turned out to be Yolko and Caynz. But that didn’t change the fact that his two assailants were dead. He had only heard the story of Caynz’s death, but he’d just seen Yolko perish before his eyes only hours earlier. She was pierced by a black dagger flying through the window, then fell down into the street and burst into pieces.

  For an instant, he was about to faint in the presence of a ghost, but it was what she had said before revealing herself that saved Schmitt’s consciousness from fleeing him altogether.

  “R…recor…ded…?” he rasped from a dry throat. Yolko pulled her hands out
of the robe and showed them to him. She was holding an octagonal crystal, glowing light green—a sound-recording crystal.

  A ghost would not use an item to record a conversation.

  Meaning that Caynz’s and Yolko’s deaths were faked. He couldn’t begin to guess how, but they had produced their own deaths in order to create a fictional agent of vengeance to terrify a third party who was deserving of that vengeance. Now they had a recording of that third man, admitting his crime and begging for mercy. All in order to reveal the truth of a murder that had taken place in the distant past.

  “…Oh…I see…” Schmitt muttered in a voiceless sigh, finally understanding the truth. He flopped forward helplessly. He’d been totally fooled, and there was even proof of that, but he was not angry. He was simply numb at Yolko’s and Caynz’s tenacity—and their reverence for Griselda.

  “You…you did all of this…for the leader…?” he mumbled.

  Caynz quietly nodded. “Didn’t you, too?”

  “Huh…?”

  “You didn’t do it because you hated her, did you? You were fixated on the ring, but you never bore her any ill will. Isn’t that true?”

  “Of…of course. It’s true, please believe me,” Schmitt said, bowing his head repeatedly, face twisted with desperation.

  He was probably stronger than the two of them combined. But the thought of drawing his weapon and using it to silence them forever never even occurred to him. As a red player, he couldn’t remain in the guild or the front-line group as a whole, but even more importantly, if he killed Yolko and Caynz, he knew he would never regain his sanity.