Early and Late

  Over the distant roofs, I saw the black robe flapping in the wind, mocking my regret.

  “Just you wait!” I shouted, and began to sprint, drawing the sword on my back. I wouldn’t be able to damage him with the blade in town, but I might be able to use it to deflect any thrown objects.

  I leaped from roof to roof, careful not to slow my sprint. The people in the streets below must have thought it was an incredibly lame stunt to show off my agility stat, but that wasn’t my concern now. I kept jumping through the darkness, the hem of my coat flapping behind me.

  The hooded assassin did not run nor even prepare to attack; he simply watched as I raced closer and closer. Once there were only two buildings between us, the assassin’s right hand plunged into the depths of his robe. I held my breath and took a forward stance.

  But when the hand emerged, it was not holding a throwing dagger. It was glowing a familiar sapphire blue in the gloom. A teleport crystal.

  “Shit!” I swore, pulling three picks from my belt as I ran. Holding them aloft, I flung them all together. It wasn’t to damage him but to inspire an instinctive dodge and delay the process.

  But the assassin was infuriatingly calm. The three needles and their silver bands of light did not faze him in the least as he raised the crystal.

  Just before the hooded robe, the picks ran into a purple system wall and fell onto the roof. I listened hard, trying to at least catch the sound of the voice command. If I heard the destination, I might be able to follow with a crystal of my own.

  But once again, my plan was foiled. At that very moment, the entirety of Marten was enveloped in the massive tolling of a bell.

  My ears—technically, the sound-processing center of my brain—were drowned in the bells signaling five o’clock, preventing me from hearing the assassin give the command for his destination. The blue teleport light flashed, and from a street away, I saw the black silhouette vanish without a trace.

  “…!!”

  I heaved a wordless bellow and swung my sword at the spot he had stood just three seconds before. More purple light flashed, along with a system tag, impassively warning me that it was an Immortal Object.

  I returned to the inn dejected. I took the street this time, stopping at the place where Yolko had vanished so I could stare at the black throwing dagger.

  It was impossible to believe that a woman had died there just minutes ago. In my experience, a player’s death came only when all effort, attempts to avoid the impossible, or personal strength had finally given way. There was no way someone could be killed in such an instantaneous, inescapable way. It just wasn’t fair.

  I crouched and picked up the dagger. It was small but heavy, cast of a single piece of metal. On the sides of the razor-thin blade were carved barbs that looked like a shark bite. It was clearly crafted by the same designer of the short spear that felled Kains.

  If I stabbed it into my own body, would I take huge, sudden damage as well? I was possessed by an urge to try it out, only maintaining control of myself by shutting my eyes tight and shaking my head.

  Inside the inn, I knocked on the room door and turned the knob. The lock clicked open again, allowing the door to swing open.

  Asuna had her rapier drawn. When she saw me, she gave me a look of equal parts fury and relief, and then said in a barely controlled growl, “You idiot! How could you be so reckless?”

  But then she sighed and, more quietly this time, added, “So…what happened?”

  I shook my head. “No good. He teleported away. In fact, I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. Of course…if that were Grimlock, then it’s a man…”

  SAO had no same-sex marriage rule. If Golden Apple’s former leader was a woman, then her spouse, Grimlock, automatically had to be a man. Not that this information would be very useful as a filter—a good 80 percent of the game’s population was male.

  It was just a throwaway comment. But to my surprise, it got a reaction: from Schmitt, whose large body was scrunched into a ball, the plate armor rattling as he trembled.

  “…No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” Asuna demanded.

  He ducked his head in even farther and mumbled, “That’s not him. Whoever it was in that robe on the rooftop wasn’t Grimlock. Grim was taller. Besides…besides…”

  What he said next took our breaths away.

  “That hooded robe belonged to the leader of GA. She always wore that plain old thing when she went out. In fact…Yeah! She was wearing it when she went to sell the ring! That…that was her. She’s come back for revenge against us all. That was her ghost.”

  He began to laugh maniacally. He was unhinged. “Ghosts can do anything. PKing in town? No problem! I wish she’d go and beat the last boss of SAO for us. You can’t die if you have no HP to begin with…”

  As Schmitt continued to laugh hysterically, I tossed the dagger onto the table between the sofas. It landed with a dull thud, a switch that abruptly cut through Schmitt’s mood. He stared silently at the jagged blade that gleamed evilly in the light.

  “Gah—!”

  The large man bolted upright, leaning away from the weapon. I kept my cool and explained, “It’s not a ghost. That dagger is a physical object—a few lines of program code that exists somewhere in the SAO server. Just like the short spear that’s still sitting in your inventory. If you don’t believe me, you can take this one, too, and examine it to your heart’s content.”

  “N-no way! You can have the spear back, too!!” Schmitt shrieked, opening his menu window and, after several input mistakes, materializing the black spear. The weapon appeared in midair and fell, clanking down next to the dagger.

  The large man put his head in his hands again. Gently, Asuna offered, “Schmitt, I don’t think it’s a ghost, either. If ghosts in Aincrad were real, there would be many more than just the Golden Apple leader. Nearly three and a half thousand people have died, and they’ve all got the same grudges to settle. Right?”

  She was completely right. If I died in this game, I would sure be mad enough about it to come back as a ghost. Though, if there was anyone I knew serene enough to just accept fate and move on, it had to be the man who led the KoB.

  But Schmitt just shook his head, still downcast. “You just…don’t know her. Griselda was so strong and so noble…and so incredibly strict when it came to corruption and doing wrong. Even more than you, Asuna. So if someone walked her into a trap…Griselda would never forgive them. She’d come back as a ghost to punish them, if she had to…”

  A heavy silence filled the room.

  Outside the window, which Asuna had shut and locked, the sun was down and orange lanterns lit the streets. It would be full of lively players looking to relax, but oddly, the sound seemed to be avoiding this individual room.

  I took a deep breath and broke the silence.

  “…If that’s what you think, then do as you wish. But I won’t believe it. There has to be a logic to these two safe-haven murders that fits within the rules of the system. I’m going to find it…and you’re going to help me, like you promised.”

  “H-help…?”

  “You said you’d tell us where Grimlock likes to eat. That’s our only clue now. I’ll stake the place out for days on end, if I have to.”

  To be honest, while I could find Grimlock, the blacksmith who created the black spear and probably the dagger next to it, I had no plan for what to do after that. I wasn’t in the Army, so I couldn’t just lock him up and try to interrogate him.

  But if what Yolko said before she died was right—“he has the right to seek vengeance against all of us, for the sake of the leader”—and Grimlock was motivated by revenge against the three who voted against selling the ring, or against all the guild members equally…If he was motivated by something as strong as the love for a deceased wife…

  If I could sit with him face-to-face and speak to him, maybe something might get through to him. That possibility was the only thing I could bet on at this
point.

  Schmitt hung his head again but heavily, reluctantly lifted himself from his seat. He stumbled over to a writing desk along the walls, took the pre-supplied parchment and feather quill, then wrote down the name of the restaurant.

  As I watched, a thought occurred to me, and over his back I said, “By the way, can you write the names of the other former Golden Apple members? I’ll go back to the Monument of Life and check for survivors.”

  The man nodded and picked up the quill again to continue writing. He brought back the parchment eventually and handed it to me, saying, “It’s pathetic to admit this, as a front-line player…but I don’t feel like going out into the open anytime soon. When the time comes for the next boss raid party, leave me out. Also…”

  With a gaunt expression devoid of his former boldness, the DDA’s lancer and team leader asked, “Can you escort me back to headquarters?”

  Neither Asuna nor I could mock Schmitt for the cowardice.

  As we walked the terrified giant from the inn on the fifty-seventh floor back to the DDA fortress on the fifty-sixth, the two of us never stopped scanning the darkness. If anyone had coincidentally been unlucky enough to cross our path wearing a hooded black robe, they might have been jumped.

  Even through the massive gates of his headquarters, Schmitt’s face did not lose its fear. As I watched him trot hastily into the building, I sighed and turned to Asuna.

  She was biting her lip. “…It’s…very frustrating…what happened to Yolko…” Asuna mumbled. I rasped an acknowledgment.

  To be honest, Yolko’s death was at least twice as shocking to me as Kains’s. I couldn’t get the mental image of her falling through the window out of my mind.

  “Until now, I’d kind of felt like I was along for a ride…but now I can’t see it that way anymore. We have to solve this mystery—for her sake. I’m going to scope out this restaurant. What about you?” I asked.

  Asuna looked up at me with a start and replied firmly, “I’m going, of course. We’ll get to the bottom of this together.”

  “…All right. Let’s do this.”

  In truth, I was a bit hesitant about involving Asuna further. If we kept going with this case, we could easily turn ourselves into Grimlock’s next targets.

  But Asuna turned on her heel, crisply silencing my concerns, and strode toward the teleport gate square. I sucked in a deep breath of cold night air, let it out in a burst, then chased after that long chestnut-brown hair.

  8

  The place on Schmitt’s parchment was a small pub in a cramped section of the twentieth floor’s main city. Based on the look of the place, squashed into the twisting alley with a forlorn little sign, it did not look like the kind of restaurant that served meals that could be eaten every day without tiring.

  But it was also true that the best spots to eat were found in out-of-the-way places like this, and it was difficult for me to stifle the urge to rush in and start trying everything on the menu. If Grimlock were the hooded assassin, he had already seen my face, and he would never show up here again if he saw me here.

  After a survey of the surroundings, Asuna and I hid in the shadows nearby, then noticed that there was an inn within view of the restaurant. When the foot traffic dried up, we darted over to the inn and rented an upstairs room that overlooked the alley.

  As we hoped, the window had a clear view of the pub entrance. We extinguished the lights and took seats beside the window, hunkering down to observe.

  It wasn’t long before Asuna turned to me and asked dubiously, “Hey…we’ve got a good position now, but how are we going to recognize Grimlock if he goes in there?”

  “Good question. That’s why I originally thought of bringing Schmitt with us, but that didn’t seem likely, the way he was acting…Anyway, despite the robe, I got a pretty up-close look at this possible Grimlock. If someone with the right build comes along, I can force myself into a duel challenge to check out his name.”

  “Whaaat?” Asuna yelped, her eyes wide.

  In SAO, visually focusing on another player brought up a green or orange “color cursor” with information about them. But the only information it would display for a stranger was an HP bar and a guild tag, but not a name or level.

  This was a common-sense measure to minimize criminal activity. If a player’s name could be identified at a glance, they could be harassed with malicious instant messages, and if their level were publicized, it would make it easier to pick out a weak target to hunt down or extort in the open when they were vulnerable.

  However, not having access to strangers’ names also made it rather difficult to search for an individual player, as we were currently doing.

  The only surefire method I knew to confirm a player’s name was to challenge them to a one-on-one duel. By hitting the duel button in the menu and pointing out the target’s cursor, a system message would appear, notifying me that I’d just challenged so-and-so to a duel. This method would show me the official player name as recognized by the system, spelled in the Western alphabet.

  However, the same message would also appear with my name in front of the target. So it was impossible to use such a method while also staying secretive about it, and naturally, it was extremely rude behavior. On top of that, there was no stopping the other player from accepting and drawing his weapon.

  Asuna opened her mouth, about to say something about my idea—probably that it was dangerous. But she closed it just as quickly and nodded, looking stern. She understood that it was the only way, but she advised, “If you do talk with Grimlock, I’m going to be there, too.”

  When she put it that flatly, there was no way I could force her to stay here in the room. Now it was my turn to reluctantly accept the plan. I checked the time: 6:40 PM, just around the time that adventurers would be returning from their travels to eat at their favorite restaurants. For having such an unassuming appearance, the little pub’s swinging door was in a state of nonstop flux. Yet so far, I hadn’t seen a single player who matched the height and build of that robed figure.

  We had no clue to rely upon other than this restaurant, but in fact, there was one other worrisome element on my mind. In that inn on the fifty-seventh floor, Schmitt had moaned that the robed figure on the roof wasn’t Grimlock, that “Grim was taller than that.” It seemed unlikely that the rattled Schmitt would be calm enough to make that snap judgment, but if it were true, this whole stakeout was a waste of time that would get us nowhere. We would be staring at the door of a hidden legend of a restaurant, never to sample its wares…

  Suddenly, I clutched my stomach, overtaken by a wave of hunger.

  At that moment, something passed in front of my eyes. It was wrapped in white paper and smelled very good. I stared closely at the object Asuna was holding in front of me, keeping her eyes on the pub door. She said, “Here.” I had to be sure.

  “Y-you’re…giving it to me?”

  “What else would I be doing? Waving it under your nose to make you jealous?”

  “A-ah. Of course not. Sorry—and thank you.”

  I took the wrapper, ducking my head in apology. Asuna was deftly producing another object of the same likeness, never taking her eyes off of the door.

  I quickly unwrapped the package to see a large baguette sandwich. Between the crispy toasted bread was a pile of vegetables and roasted meat. I gazed at it in amazement, only for Asuna to coldly note, “It’s going to run out of durability and vanish if you don’t hurry up and eat it.”

  “Oh! Er…right! Here goes!”

  There was no time to stare. The durability of food items was, with the exception of certain special ingredients, generally quite low. On a number of occasions, I’d had a packed lunch disappear in my hands as I was about to eat. There was a special item that could be crafted only by master crafters, a little box called a “Permanent Storage Trinket” that could keep food ingredients fresh permanently, even if left out in the open field. Sadly, the box was so small that you couldn’t fit anything
larger than two peanuts in it.

  So I took big, quick bites, savoring the volume of the sandwich as best I could. The flavoring was simple but tastefully vivid, encouraging more bites. Durability of food had no effect on its flavor, so as long as it existed, it tasted freshly made.

  I chowed down on the large baguette, keeping my eyes on the pub at all times, and heaved a sigh of satisfaction when I was done. Next to me, Asuna was still chewing politely.

  “Thanks for the food. Anyway, when did you have time to arrange a meal? They don’t sell proper food like this at the street carts, do they?”

  “I told you, it was about to run out of durability. I had a feeling it might come to this, so I put them together this morning.”

  “Ohh…No wonder you’re the manager in charge of the KoB’s daily activities. I never even thought about our meal plan. By the way, where’s it from?”

  The taste of the baguette, with its crispy bread, veggies, and roast meat, was good enough to rank highly on my personal list of best restaurants, so I was eager to insert it into my regular rotation. But Asuna’s shrugged response was not what I expected.

  “You can’t buy it.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s not from a store.”

  She clammed up and didn’t seem likely to share any further detail. It took me a while to figure out what she meant: If it wasn’t sold at an NPC shop, it must therefore be player-made.

  I sat in dumbfounded silence for a good ten seconds, then panicked and realized I needed to say something, anything. I couldn’t afford a repeat of my abysmal mistake in ignoring Asuna’s fashion statement from the morning.

  “Uh…well, gosh, how should I say this…I w-wish I hadn’t just gobbled it down like that. I mean, I could have sold it at auction in Algade and made a killing, ha-ha-ha.”

  Wham! Asuna kicked the leg of my chair with a white boot, and I sat up straight, trembling.