“Heh-heh, I understand how you feel. But I wonder if you can actually say that after seeing the specs. According to rumor, by moving the connection and slots to the external unit, they’ve managed to equip those Linkers with a console-line CPU, you know.”
“Oh!…N-no, but no matter how great the CPU is, it’s not like it’ll give you an advantage or anything in Brain Burst, right?”
“Mmm, now that you mention it, I suppose not. But I have heard that using the latest Linkers makes the effects processing just a little more gorgeous.”
“Seriously?! No fair, that’s no fair!”
“What? It’s not as if a beautiful appearance raises your win rate. Incidentally, I’m planning to switch to the new Rekto model next month.”
“Whoa! No fair! That’s way unfair! K-Kuroyukihime, let me try it—”
“Come come, you can’t use another person’s Linker. And even if you could, I feel like it wouldn’t fit your neck anyway. Ha-ha-ha…”
It was fun.
Just thinking about having Kuroyukihime all to himself, sitting on the sofa across from him, coffee cup in one hand, talking, nodding, and laughing, Haruyuki experienced a delight such that he nearly ascended to Heaven.
A face-to-face conversation in the real world with real voices was quite the luxury in the current age, and Haruyuki relished this style of communication, which half a year earlier he would have been too nervous to carry out satisfactorily. Which is why he didn’t realize a certain something: the fact that every so often, the faintest hint of sorrow would bleed into Kuroyukihime’s eyes.
Approximately two hours later:
Interrupting this time, which he wished could go on forever, was a low rumbling from Haruyuki’s stomach area.
“Whoops! Is it already that time? I’ve stayed far too long. It’s already suppertime.”
“N-no!” Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head back and forth. “It’s totally fine! I’m not even hungry yet—”
Grr.
His flesh emitted a hungry growl, once again betraying his heart. And this is why I’m sick of physical bodies! He restrained his stomach with both arms, but it was to the point where he could do nothing against the involuntary movements of his own innards.
“Heh-heh, no need to fight it. You were incredibly busy in the Territories today; you must have used up the majority of your energy. Make sure to fully replenish yourself for tomorrow.” Smiling, Kuroyukihime stood up.
He wanted so much to say, Well, in that case, how about you at least stay for dinner? but the only thing he could make was frozen pizza or frozen doria or frozen chahan rice. Very few would say any of these was the sort of menu one invited guests to enjoy.
Even as Haruyuki agonized about it, Kuroyukihime was picking up her bag from the floor, cutting across the living room, and walking away.
That pace—
For an instant, he felt it was the slightest bit heavier than her usual spirited step. A sharp insight pierced Haruyuki.
Maybe the truth is she actually had something else she wanted to talk about? And there I was blabbing about all my own stuff, using up all our time? I was just in my own world, so happy, so fun, and I didn’t pick up on something important…?
Forgetting the intensity of his hunger, Haruyuki opened his mouth.
But no words came out. In this situation, it would seem almost like an afterthought; how could he ask her if she was worried about something or anything like that? He should’ve picked up on this an hour ago. Or at least half an hour ago. He would just have to shut his mouth now and wait for her to say something.
Staring at her back as she moved down the hallway toward the glass door, Haruyuki prayed, God, please give me just one chance here somehow.
It was at that moment a low noise, like the Earth rumbling, came from the distance.
Naturally, the source of the sound was not Haruyuki’s stomach. It was lightning. Tossing his gaze toward the living room window, he saw white flash twice, then three times, deep within the thick clouds that weakly reflected the lights of the city. The flare was followed by thunder, slightly louder and closer this time.
Immediately, droplets of water began to tap against the window, and as he watched the neon colors bleed, Haruyuki said hoarsely, “Um, Kuroyukihime. This rain’s pretty crazy.”
Kuroyukihime also stopped. “The weather report said there was a less than ten percent chance until midnight,” she replied, her face to him in profile. “It’s rare for them to be this far off the mark.”
“Uh, um. Do you have an umbrella?”
“Unfortunately, I am as you see. Sorry, but…” She spread empty hands, and Haruyuki wholeheartedly expected her to continue with something about waiting the rain out here. But… “…perhaps you could lend me one?”
“Uh…Yeah, right, of course.” Nodding firmly, he had no choice but to head toward the entryway when a second phenomenon stopped his feet.
A window popped up in the right side of his vision with a yellow warning mark.
“Oh…There’s a lightning strike advisory and a network damage report for Suginami and Setagaya.”
“So it seems. I can’t honestly believe that I would draw down a direct strike, but…I hate the idea of net lag on the way,” she said, furrowing her brow.
During the time you were coming and going, AR information—from local traffic bulletins, a navigation line to your destination, the distance you’d traveled to how many calories you’d burned—was quite handily displayed all over your visual field through the Neurolinker. But when the net wasn’t working properly and lags were frequent, it conversely made walking very difficult.
“Hmm. But the time is still the time, after all.” The normally immediately and incredibly decisive Kuroyukihime displayed a rare moment of indecision as she looked at the clock. Haruyuki followed her example and shifted his own gaze to the bottom right of his virtual desktop. 8:07 PM. The sort of time that couldn’t really be said to be early anymore but wasn’t particularly late, either.
The quiet sound of rain and thunder came to them from the other side of the window, and the two continued to stand awkwardly in the living room in unsettled postures.
Haruyuki breathed in and out several times before opening his mouth. But no matter how he tried, those final words would not come out. There was no real need for him to feel any kind of pressure, though. It would be better for her to wait until the rain stopped, or at least until the lightning storm had passed. It was a completely inoffensive thing to suggest, a thing that was, in fact, only natural. So then why was his heart rate soaring suddenly?
He couldn’t pick up the expression on her face, in profile two meters away from him. Hesitant, weary, somehow nervous, or maybe just waiting for something?
Pee-pong.
The default beep suddenly sounded, and Haruyuki froze with a gasp.
The window that appeared in the center of his vision this time was a text message through his home server. Sender: His mother. Subject: By tomorrow night. Main text: I won’t be home, so take care of things.
A third miracle. Although really, it was nothing so exaggerated as that. Practically every other weekend, Haruyuki’s mother came home on a different day from the one she had left on, and the rest of the weekends, she didn’t come home at all. However, for Haruyuki, this was the best and perhaps the ultimate timing. He closed the window and pushed a voice from his closed throat.
“Uh, uh, umm…It wouldn’t be any b-b-bother or anything at all. Th-that, umm, uh…” Haruyuki wrestled with whether or not to let her know the details of his mother’s mail and that there weren’t any kind of obstacles.
Kuroyukihime went ahead and got right to the heart of it. “No, your mother should be coming home pretty soon. It would no doubt be a bother. I’ll just…”
The instant he heard that, several of the safety valves in Haruyuki’s heart blew out, and the words flew out of his mouth on their own. “No, i-i-it’s fine! My mom said she isn’t c-c-c-coming home toda
y!”
Crap! That’s way too blunt! I was just supposed to say I wanted her to wait out the rain. Haruyuki fell even further into panic. But…
Kuroyukihime merely twitched her upper body a nearly indiscernible amount. Finally, after rolling her eyes halfway around in the opposite direction from Haruyuki, still in profile, she said distinctly, “Is that so? Well then, I suppose I’ll impose on your kindness.”
“P-p-p-p-p-please d-d-d-d-do!” Bobbing his head up and down, in the back of his mind, Haruyuki was grateful for his mother’s principle of extreme laissez-faire. He could only pray now for the lightning above his head to tie things up for even a few seconds longer. If possible, an hour, no, at least thirty minutes…
Kuroyukihime started to walk again as her mouth moved at a fairly high speed. “Now that I’m thinking about it, we’re all meeting here at your house again tomorrow, and if I go home now, it’d just be twice the hassle.”
“Th-that’s true. It’s completely inefficient—”
—Huh?
It’s annoying to go home, since she’ll be here again tomorrow? What does that mean?
As Haruyuki stood frozen in place, stance unnatural and look baffled, before his eyes, Kuroyukihime placed her bag on a chair at the dining table and said: “So then, I’ll just duck into the mall downstairs.”
The words lingered in the air as she stepped out the door.
Supposedly, Haruyuki had made the expensive and fancy frozen margherita pizza he had secreted away in the depths of the freezer for supper, put more coffee on, and watched the evening news with Kuroyukihime on the sofa, but he had almost no memory of this time.
When he came to, he was alone in the living room.
However, the faint sound of a hair dryer coming from the bathroom down the hallway led him to believe that the whole thing had not, in fact, been a hallucination.
Here, finally, the transmission of his brain, which had been racing idly for more than two hours, managed to get into first gear, and Haruyuki recommenced his interrupted thoughts.
A hassle to go home. So then, was it okay to interpret those words to mean that she would not go home before the time of the race the next day? In which case, didn’t that inevitably lead to a situation in which Kuroyukihime remained in his house the whole night? In other words, wasn’t that “staying over”? Was such a situation legally and theoretically permitted to happen, despite the fact that they were in junior high? But there was no other way to interpret it.
Keep it together! Even if that’s what’s happening, you gotta deal with it calmly! I mean, it’s not the first time or anything. I mean, that time, too, she just sort of ended up staying. But that time Niko was here, too, and we had that big retro game playoff and then it just ended up us sleeping in the living room and all…
“Thanks for letting me use the bath.”
The door to the living room abruptly opened, and Haruyuki sprang to attention, looking over at the owner of the voice with such force that his vertebrae threatened to shoot out of his spine.
She was clad top and bottom in simple, warm gray pajamas that she had probably bought before at the shopping mall on the ground floor. “Somehow, I keep getting new pajamas,” Kuroyukihime said with a faint, wry smile, pulling her hair back with a hair tie.
“Ha—yeah…You can leave those here if you—” His mouth ran on automatic up to that point before he belatedly realized what he was saying. “I-I-I didn’t mean it like that! T-t-t-today’s just because of the lightning and it’s not like I’m totally thinking I want you to stay over again or anythi— I—I—I—I mean, it’s not like I would hate that at all or anything, so, uh, um, ummmm.”
Haruyuki gesticulated wildly with both head and hands while Kuroyukihime’s smile grew broader until she finally offered him a life raft.
“Maybe you should use the bath, too, before the water gets cold?”
“Right! I’ll do that!” He practically rolled off the sofa and escaped from the living room at top speed.
A bundle of confusion once more in the still-steamy bathroom, he hopped in and out of the bath, and while he changed into the sweats that served as his pajamas, Haruyuki gave his full attention to the actions he had to select from now.
And the answer he came up with as a result was slightly—no, fairly pathetic:
“Please use my mom’s bedroom! It’s the door at the end of the hallway! O-o-o-okay, then, good night!” he chattered/shouted from the entrance to the living room, locked himself up in his room, and yanked his duvet over his head.
He had vaguely guessed that Kuroyukihime had come over because she wanted to talk about something. But in circumstances like this, Haruyuki simply could not believe that he was able to stay calm face-to-face, what with her in her pajamas. He had no doubt that, just like before, once his brain overheated, he would end up spitting out all kinds of things that would be a hundred times better kept to himself. He wouldn’t even be surprised if he just collapsed from hyperventilation or dehydration or arrhythmia before he even got the chance to say something stupid.
And if that was where this was going, it was better to hide in his bed. At the very least, he’d be able to make it through the night without forever saving in his brain a memory that made him cry out “gaaah” or “ugh” every time he remembered it later.
But having activated full backward-looking-psychological-shut-in mode for the first time in a long time, Haruyuki gritted his teeth with self-loathing. The thought that he had grown stronger was nothing but wishful thinking, and he curled up into a tight ball.
Which is why, ten or so minutes later, when he heard a light knocking on the door and a voice asking, “Can we talk a minute?” he was deeply surprised that he didn’t pretend to be asleep.
Instead, he sat up in bed and took a deep breath. With the air pressure, he chased the worm of weakness from his body and replied in a clear, if hoarse, voice, “Sure.”
Once she soundlessly opened the door and came in, he saw that Kuroyukihime was inexplicably holding one of the large cushions from the sofa in both arms. She looked around the room before briskly stepping over to the edge of the bed and sitting down.
“I thought you’d tell me no,” she said in a small voice, her back toward him.
“…I thought I would, too,” he replied distinctly.
“So why’d you change your mind?”
“Hmm…uh…”
He was surprisingly calm. Despite being in this rather earth-shattering situation, Haruyuki felt composed and relaxed, perhaps because of his relief at having made it to this moment without committing any egregious errors.
“Because I was pretty sure you actually had something important you wanted to talk about.”
“What? You managed to see through me that far and yet you take the superspeedy sleep strategy?”
“I-I’m sorry.” He scratched his head as he apologized to the thin back, snapped straight before him.
“…Well, you did let me into your room now, so I’ll forgive you.” Kuroyukihime relaxed her shoulders, shifted slightly on the bed, and looked at Haruyuki sitting in the center of it. Her expression was kind, but, of course, the sorrow that had shaken her that whole day had still not disappeared from her eyes.
She lifted a slender finger and stroked the piano-black Neurolinker attached to her neck. At the same time, she murmured, “‘Those who lose all their points and have Brain Burst forcefully uninstalled lose all related memories.’”
Haruyuki gasped. This was the system to maintain the confidentiality of the Brain Burst program, the existence of which had been proven to them a mere two months earlier. It was absolute salvation for the defeated, and at the same time, an extremely merciless punishment.
Kuroyukihime brought her hand down as a faint smile with all kinds of emotion rose to her lips. “I was terrified when that final rule, a rule I had only heard rumors of before, was made so undeniably explicit. Because if I ever lose to another King just once, in that instant, I will forget
who I have been. But, well, Haruyuki, at the same time, I…I was also relieved.”
Unable to instantly grasp her meaning, Haruyuki was confused. Kuroyukihime squeezed the cushion on her lap, hung her head low, and continued.
“Two and a half years ago, I forever banished one of the Kings from the Accelerated World with a surprise attack during a meeting. Ever since, I’ve been afraid in the depths of my heart. I thought he…the boy who was the first Red King, Red Rider, was out there somewhere in Tokyo nursing a deep grudge toward me.”
Haruyuki took a sharp breath.
She had told him this story countless times up to now. He had even seen a video file with a recording of that scene. So he had thought he understood the size of the scar this incident had left on her heart, but at the same time, he had foolishly thought that she had already overcome that pain.
“B-but…” Instinctively, he leaned toward Kuroyukihime, sitting on the right side of the bed, and started speaking in a daze. “Even if it was a surprise attack…wasn’t that still a just attack according to the rules? And he was the leader of an opposing Legion, plus back then, you didn’t have the non-ggression pact, right? So then there’s nothing to hold a grudge about—”
“That’s not it, Haruyuki.” Kuroyukihime interrupted his desperate words, shaking her head gently but firmly.
“Huh…What do you mean…?”
“I used my level-eight special attack Death By Embracing when I took off Red Rider’s head. The range is a mere seventy centimeters, but in exchange, it has a very high attack power. That said, it shouldn’t have been enough to kill Rider in a single blow. After all, he was the same level and a very pure fighting type, with a very high defensive capability, third after green and blue. Yes…you likely see it now. At that time, I activated the Incarnate System. That prohibited power that all seven Kings vowed not to use after the subjugation of the fourth Chrome Disaster.”
This time, Haruyuki was at a complete loss for words.
The image control system was a high-level interface hidden within Brain Burst. Deliberately using this system to go beyond the boundaries of the game was the so-called Incarnate System. Its power was tremendous, but at the same time, it held a terrifying dark side. Those who sought the power of the Incarnate had their hearts swallowed up by darkness; this was the consensus of the high-ranking Linkers Haruyuki knew. Kuroyukihime before him was no exception.