Early and Late

  “Got it!” I shouted back, dashing for the spot beneath the helpless man.

  But just barely halfway to that spot, I noticed that the man’s eyes were trained on a single spot in the air. Instinctually, I knew what he was looking at.

  His own HP bar—specifically, the moment it went empty.

  Amid the screams and shouts of the square, I thought I heard him yell something.

  And with a sound like infinite glasses shattering, the night was lit with blue. I could do nothing but watch, dumbstruck, at the flying polygonal shards.

  Without its weight, the rope dangled limp against the church wall. A second later, the black spear—the murder weapon—struck the cobblestones with a heavy thud, sticking in place.

  The screams of the crowd drowned out the pleasant, peaceful BGM that played over the town. Even in my shock, I had enough presence of mind to look carefully over the entire crowd of the plaza centered around the church. I was looking for something—a feature that had to be present.

  The message announcing the winner of the duel.

  We were right in the middle of town, within the realm of the Anti-Criminal Code Zone. There was only one way that a player could suffer HP damage, especially all the way to death: to accept a “full-finish” duel, and lose.

  There was no other way.

  So the moment that he died, there had to be a large system window appearing, announcing the winner’s name and time of duel. If I could spot that, I would instantly know who had killed the plate-armored man with that short spear.

  And yet…

  “…Where is it?” I mumbled to myself.

  There was no system window. Not anywhere in the plaza. And it would only be displayed for thirty seconds.

  “Everybody, look for a duel winner notice!” I shouted, loud enough to be heard over the crowd. The other players caught my meaning instantly and began to peer in every direction.

  But no one called out with an answer. Fifteen seconds had passed.

  Could it be inside a building? Perhaps inside a room on the second floor of the church, where the man had been hung? If so, Asuna might see it.

  At just that moment, the white uniform of Asuna the Flash appeared through the very window in question.

  “Asuna! Did you see a winner notice?!” I demanded, an abnormally rude way to question her, given our relative unfamiliarity, but time was of the essence. Her face, as pale as her garb, only shook from side to side.

  “No! There’s no system windows in here, and no people!!”

  “…How…?” I mumbled, looking around helplessly.

  A few seconds later, someone else muttered, “It’s no good…That’s at least thirty seconds…”

  I passed the NPC nun parked permanently at the entrance of the church and raced up the staircase.

  The second floor contained four small rooms that looked like bedrooms, but unlike an inn’s, these did not lock. The first three rooms did not have any signs of players, either visually or through my Search skill, as I passed. I bit my lip and entered the doorway of the fourth.

  Asuna turned away from the window toward me, putting on a brave face, but I could tell that she was as shocked as I was. I couldn’t hide the consternation in my brows, either.

  “No one else is inside the church,” I reported.

  The KoB vice commander promptly asked, “Is it possible they were hidden with a cloaking cape?”

  “Even on the front line, there have been no drops powerful enough to override my Search skill. Just in case, I have people standing in a line outside the entrance to the church. Even if invisible, they’d be automatically revealed if they tried to go outside among that much attention. There’s no rear exit to this building, and the only window is this one.”

  “Hmm…all right. Look at this,” Asuna said, pointing to a corner of the room with her white glove. It was a simple wooden table, a “fixed-location object” that could not physically be moved.

  A thin but sturdy-looking rope was tied around one of the table legs. By “tied,” I don’t mean it was done by hand. Tapping the rope for a pop-up menu, hitting the TIE button, then clicking the target object would automatically tie the rope. Once tied, that rope could not be undone unless it held a weight over its durability rating or was sliced by a sharp blade.

  The dark, gleaming rope stretched about six feet through the room before dropping out of the south-facing window. Though I couldn’t see it from here, it eventually ended in a noose that immobilized the man in the plate armor.

  “Hmm…” I muttered, shaking my head. “What does this mean?”

  “Well, using common sense,” Asuna said, mimicking my action, “it seems likely that the victim’s dueling opponent tied the rope, stuck the spear in his chest, then looped the rope around his neck and pushed him out of the window…”

  “As a warning to others? Wait, more importantly…” I took a deep breath. “There was no winner announcement. There are dozens of people in the plaza down there, and no one saw it. If it were a duel, it would have to be displayed nearby.”

  “But…that’s impossible!” she shot back. “The only way to damage someone’s HP in a safe haven is for both sides to agree to a duel. You know that as well as I do!”

  “Yeah…that’s correct.”

  We fell into silence, staring at each other.

  Asuna was right: The impossible had just happened. And all we knew was that a player had died in a highly public place, with no answers or clues as to whom, why, or how.

  A stream of crowd noise washed constantly through the open window. They, too, recognized the abnormal nature of this incident.

  Asuna stared into my eyes and said, “We can’t just let this go. If someone’s found a new way to PK others in a safe haven, we have to figure out how and announce a way to stop it—or this will lead to disaster.”

  “…It’s rare for me to say this, but I am in complete and total agreement with you,” I said with a pained grin. The Flash thrust out her right hand.

  “Then I guess you’ll be working with me until we solve this. And no time for naps, just so you know.”

  “I think that would be more your concern than mine,” I mumbled under my breath, and held out my own hand.

  And so a partnership of makeshift detective and assistant—though which was which remained a mystery—was formed with a handshake of black and white gloves.

  2

  Asuna and I retrieved the rope as evidence in the case and left the room, returning to the entrance of the church. I’d already placed the black short spear in my inventory before going into the building.

  I thanked two familiar players who’d stood guard at the door, and they confirmed that no people had emerged since I went inside. I walked into the plaza and raised a hand to the crowd of onlookers, calling out, “Pardon me, but whoever first spotted what happened, please come and speak to us!”

  A few seconds later, a female player reluctantly emerged from the crowd. I didn’t recognize her. She had a normal NPC-made longsword—probably a tourist from the middle floors.

  Unfortunately, she looked a little frightened of me, so Asuna took the lead and gently inquired, “Sorry, I know this has been scary. What’s your name?”

  “Uh…uh, my name is Yolko.”

  Something in her frail voice was familiar to me. I interjected, “Were you the one who screamed first?”

  “Y-yes.”

  The woman named Yolko nodded, her wavy, dark blue hair bobbing. Based on the appearance of her avatar, I judged her to be seventeen or eighteen years old.

  Her large, innocent eyes, as blue as her hair, suddenly filled with tears.

  “I…I am…I was…friends with the person who was just killed. We just had dinner together, and then we separated in the square…and…and then…”

  She covered her mouth with both hands, unable to continue. Asuna put an arm around her slender shoulders and guided her into the church. They made their way to one of the long pew benches and sat dow
n together.

  I kept a bit of distance and waited for the girl to calm down. If she did see her friend PKed in such a cruel manner right before her eyes, the shock would be unbelievable.

  Asuna rubbed Yolko’s back until she stopped crying, and the girl apologized in a weak, tiny voice.

  “No, it’s fine,” Asuna assured her. “I’ll wait as long as it takes. You just tell me more when you’re ready, okay?”

  “Okay. I…I think I’m fine now.”

  Yolko moved away from Asuna’s hand and nodded, showing herself to be tougher than she appeared.

  “His name is…was Kains. We were once in the same guild together…We still party up and eat together sometimes…So today, we came here to have dinner…”

  She shut her eyes, then continued, her voice still trembling. “But there were so many people…I lost sight of him in the plaza. I was looking around for him when suddenly, a person—Kains—fell out of the church window, hung on that rope…with the spear in his chest…”

  “Did you see anyone else?” Asuna asked. Yolko paused.

  Then she slowly but surely nodded. “Yes…For just a moment, I felt like I saw someone standing…behind Kains…”

  Unconsciously, I clenched my fists. The killer had been in that room. Which meant that right after pushing the victim out of the window, the killer had just waltzed right into public to escape.

  That would have to mean they used some kind of Hiding-enabling gear, but such items were less effective when the user was moving. Perhaps they had an ultra-high personal Hiding skill that would be enough to make up the difference.

  The term assassin flickered ominously through my mind.

  Could there be a category of weapon skills in SAO that even Asuna and I didn’t know about yet? What if it were capable of nullifying the Anti-Criminal Code…?

  Asuna’s back trembled for a moment—she had arrived at the same conclusion. But she looked up at once and asked Yolko, “Did you recognize the person?”

  “…”

  Yolko pursed her lips in deep thought, then shook her head.

  This time it was my turn to ask gently, “I’m sorry if this is unpleasant, but…can you think of any reason why Kains might have been targeted…?”

  As I was afraid, Yolko instantly tensed up. It was understandable—she had just witnessed the murder of her friend, and I was asking if he’d done something to deserve it. It was a hurtful question, I knew, but it had to be done. If someone out there held a grudge against Kains, that would be our best clue.

  But this time, Yolko only shook her head. Disappointed, I said, “I see. Sorry to ask that.”

  Of course, it was possible that Yolko just wasn’t aware of such a thing. But whoever killed Kains was both an actual murderer and a PKer in the traditional MMO sense. Player-killing was an act that some players engaged in for that reason alone. The red players lurking in the darkness of Aincrad at this very moment were tried-and-true examples of that archetype.

  That meant the potential suspects were every orange or red player, of which there were hundreds, as well as anyone who might be subconsciously harboring that desire within them. There was no way to know how to narrow down that list.

  Once again arriving at the same conclusion simultaneously, Asuna let out a powerless sigh.

  * * *

  Yolko was afraid to return to the lower floors alone, so we sent her to the nearest inn and came back to the teleport square.

  Thirty minutes had passed since the incident, and the crowd was thinning out by now. Still, there were a good twenty players, mostly front-line fighters, who were waiting to hear an update from us.

  Asuna and I told them that the deceased was named Kains, and that we had no clues yet on how the murder was achieved. And most importantly, that there might be some kind of undiscovered method of safe-haven PKing at work.

  “…So can you send a warning far and wide that for the moment, it’s not entirely safe even in town?” I finished. The group accepted the task with grim faces.

  “All right. I’ll ask an info broker to include this in the next newspaper,” said a player in one of the major guilds, speaking for the group. They trickled away after that. I checked the time in the corner of my view and was surprised to see that it was still just after seven o’clock.

  “So…what now?” I asked Asuna.

  She instantly replied. “Let’s examine the information we currently have, particularly the rope and spear. If we can tell where they came from, we might be able to track down the killer.”

  “I see…So if there’s no motive, we have to go on evidence. We’ll need the Appraisal skill for that. Hey, you…I don’t suppose you’ve been working on that.”

  “Neither have you. In fact,” Asuna added, fixing me with a sudden look, “would you mind not calling me just ‘hey, you’?”

  “Huh? Uh…oh, right…So, um…My Lady? Vice Commander? …Our Lady Flash?”

  The last one was a special term used by the members of her fan club in their periodical. Sure enough, she blasted me to shreds with her eye lasers before turning away in a huff. “Just ‘Asuna’ is fine. You called me that earlier.”

  “G-gotcha,” I said, trembling. It was time to change the topic. “So, the Appraisal skill. Got any friends who are handy with that…?”

  “Hmm.” She thought briefly, then shook her head. “I have a friend who runs an armory, but this is her busiest period, and I doubt she’ll be able to help right away…”

  True enough, this was the time of day that the most adventurers would be performing equipment maintenance and purchases—the end of their day’s travels.

  “Good point. Well, I could ask a general store ax wielder I know, though I don’t think his skill with it is the best.”

  “Are you talking about that…big fellow? Agil, right?” she asked as I opened my window and started to type a message. “But if he runs a shop, he’ll be just as busy right now.”

  “Don’t care,” I said, mercilessly striking the SEND button.

  Asuna and I emerged from the teleport gate into Algade, the city on the fiftieth floor, and the usual hustle and bustle it featured.

  It hadn’t been long since this city was activated for the benefit of the player population, but the market district was already crammed with countless player-run shops—primarily because the base cost for establishing a shop here was far cheaper than in the cities on lower floors.

  Naturally, that also lowered the average space and appearance of the shops, but the cramped, uniquely Asian chaos—or that of a particular electronics district in Tokyo—was a favorite of many players. I happened to like it, too, and was making plans to buy a home here so I could move in.

  Amid the exotic BGM, raucous hawking of wares, and scent of cheap stall food wafting through the air, I guided Asuna quickly through the market. Her pristine miniskirt and bared legs were just a bit too notable in this place.

  “C’mon, let’s hurry,” I said, then noticed that the sound of her heels was growing distant, so I turned around and shouted, “Hey, what are you doing buying cart food?!”

  The Flash was purchasing a dubious skewer of meat from an equally dubious cart. She took a bite and boldly pronounced, “Well, we only started poking at our salads when we left dinner…Hey, this is pretty good.”

  As she chewed, she held out her other hand toward me, holding another skewer.

  “Huh? For me?”

  “That was the agreement, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh…right…”

  I automatically ducked my head as I accepted the meat, then realized that my free full-course meal had just been downgraded to a free skewer of meat. And the cost from that restaurant was automatically deducted from both of our accounts the moment we left the building.

  As I chewed on mysterious, exotically spiced meat, I swore to myself that one day, I would get her to cook me a homemade meal.

  We had just cleaned off the two skewers when we reached our destination. The skewer itself va
nished into thin air as I wiped my perfectly clean hand on my leather coat and called out to draw the shopkeeper’s attention.

  “Heya. I’m here.”

  “I don’t give the usual welcoming routine to noncustomers,” Agil grunted, the sulky voice out of place on the shopkeeper-slash-ax-warrior’s massive, brawny figure. He motioned to another customer and said, “Sorry, closed for the day.”

  He bowed politely and apologized as the customer complained, and once they were alone, he opened the shop-management window to set the business to closed status.

  The chaotic, cramped display cases automatically shut themselves, and the front shutter clattered down as well. Agil turned to me at last.

  “Listen, Kirito, when it comes to making a living as a merchant, number one is trust. Number two is also trust, and even with nothing at number three and number four, only by the time you get to number five do you reach ‘making easy money…’”

  This rather baffling admonishment faded out as the bald shopkeeper caught sight of the player standing next to me. His whiskers shook as Asuna gave him a brilliant smile and bowed politely.

  “It’s been a while, Agil. I’m sorry to bother you out of the blue like this. We need immediate help with this, I’m afraid…”

  Agil’s grumpy features turned pleasant in an instant. He thumped his chest bracingly, told her he would handle it, and prepared some tea.

  There’s just no way for a man to overcome his innate parameters, it seems.

  Upstairs, once we had explained the incident, Agil’s jutting brow knotted and his eyes turned sharp.

  “His HP ran out in the safe haven? And you’re certain it wasn’t a duel?” he rumbled in his deep baritone. I leaned forward in the rocking chair and nodded.

  “I can’t imagine that no one would see the victory announcement, so it seems to be the natural conclusion now. Plus…even if it were a duel, there’s no way he would accept a duel when he was out getting dinner, especially a full-finish duel.”