Kuroyukihime’s Return

  But at the very least, it seemed like he wouldn’t need to worry anymore about things like his shoes disappearing from his shoe locker or weird stuff being put in the shoes if they stayed there. Mechanically, he changed out of his school shoes into his street shoes, and when he was about to leave school grounds, he did as instructed and disconnected his Neurolinker from the net. Wondering once again what the point was, he turned toward the school gates and started walking.

  “Haru!”

  A small voice reached his ears, and his legs stopped short.

  When he looked around, he noticed a small figure casting a shadow on the school wall, colored in the evening light. Aware of his face stiffening up involuntarily, Haruyuki said her name. “…Chiyu.”

  It wasn’t that he’d forgotten. He’d forcefully chased the events of the previous day out of his head, and now they instantly replayed in the back of his brain. Ah! What should I do? Okay, I have to apologize, first things first.

  As he panicked, Chiyuri Kurashima approached with a difficult look on her face, sinking slightly on the soft synthetic surface of the schoolyard.

  “Uh…um…yesterday, I—”

  “Haru, I heard about what happened at lunch,” Chiyuri said, cutting through Haruyuki’s flustered incoherence.

  “Huh? Lunch…oh, oh!”

  “I heard he hit you and you seriously went flying! Are you hurt? Are you okay?” Pulling her thick eyebrows together tightly, Chiyuri brought her face in closer, and Haruyuki unconsciously brought his left hand up to cover the bandage on his mouth. There was no way he could tell her that he was actually the one who had sent himself flying so spectacularly.

  “Y-yeah, I’m okay. I just cut my lip a bit. I’m not hurt anywhere else.”

  “You’re not? Oh good.”

  A faint smile crossing her still terribly stiff face, Chiyuri glanced around. Apparently due to this one incident at lunch, Haruyuki had immediately become a topic of conversation at school, and the students heading home around them were all staring openly.

  “Anyway, it’s good to walk home together sometimes,” Chiyuri said in a hard voice, and she started walking without waiting for an answer.

  Sometimes? We haven’t done that once since we started junior high, Haruyuki thought, but if he shouted out in protest and ran off, it would just be a repeat of his stupidity yesterday. Whatever else happened, he had to apologize for that stuff.

  Jogging after Chiyuri, who stalked forward in long strides unsuited to her stature, Haruyuki put a slight distance between them to walk alongside her. In this manner, they passed through the school gate and walked along the large road with only the sound of the in-wheel motors of passenger vehicles breaking the silence.

  Normally as soon as Haruyuki left school, the people, bicycles, and cars moving around him were automatically marked as colored symbols in his vision, allowing him to walk even with his eyes closed, but he couldn’t use the navigation while disconnected from the global net. Just as he started to wonder again why exactly Kuroyukihime had given him an instruction like that, Chiyuri to his right casually mentioned that very name and nearly made him jump.

  “I heard you were directing with Kuroyukihime in grade eight. For real?”

  “What?! Th-that’s…” He was about to ask how she knew that, but, thinking better of it, realized that was about right. More than Araya and his fist, the directing probably made the bigger splash at school. “Yeah, well…”

  Without even looking at him nodding, Chiyuri stuck out her small lips and started walking even faster. Haruyuki knew only too well from long experience that this was an expression of her very worst mood and wondered again why she was in such a state. To which he was again quick to tell himself that that was about right. If some idiot who had knocked over and dumped out her homemade lunch was doing weird things with some other girl without so much as an apology, it wasn’t just Chiyuri. Anyone would obviously be mad.

  “B-but it wasn’t anything special. It was…I just copied an app from her.” Haruyuki tried to explain it away, an unpleasant sweat running down his back even though it was October. However, the look on Chiyuri’s face did not soften, and he began to intently put together a dialogue in his head, even more certain of the need to apologize for the sandwich incident.

  “A-anyway, about…about yesterday…” He had finally gotten this much out of his mouth when they heard a voice ringing out ahead of them, and Haruyuki swallowed the rest.

  “Heey! Haru! Chiii! What a coincidence. You headed home now?”

  Chiyuri’s legs stopped on a dime, and Haruyuki lifted his face. He saw a boy the same age as them smiling broadly with a hand raised on the escalator leading to Kannana Ring Road.

  His blue-gray uniform had a raised collar, unlike that of Umesato Junior. In his right hand, he held a refined, old-fashioned black schoolbag, and a kendo bamboo sword case was slung over his shoulder. His longish hair was parted cleanly in the middle, and the face below it was beautiful, clear—best and most aptly described as “fresh.”

  “Oh…Taku.” Blinking rapidly several times, Chiyuri smiled.

  Even though she was in such a bad mood. After thinking this, Haruyuki muttered his third That’s about right in his head. I mean, she did just run into her boyfriend while walking along with an annoying jerk who dropped her sandwiches.

  As Haruyuki and Chiyuri’s childhood friend Takumu Mayuzumi jogged toward them, bamboo sword case bouncing, he turned a cheerful, open smile toward Haruyuki.

  “Hey, Haru! It’s been ages!”

  “Hey, Taku. Has it been that long?” Haruyuki asked, glancing up at Takumu’s face, ten centimeters higher than his own.

  “It has. I haven’t seen you in two weeks already in meatspace. You never come to the condo events.”

  “Like I’d show up at a sports meet,” he returned, screwing up his face, and Takumu laughed as if to say, You never change.

  The three of them had all been born the same year in a skyscraper condo complex in Kita-Koenji. However, Haruyuki probably wouldn’t have become such good friends with this boy who had everything he didn’t based solely on that coincidence.

  Ironically, it was because Takumu was so good at his studies and managed to get into a famous K–12 school in Shinjuku that Haruyuki was able to hang out with him without fear. Takumu had never had to see Haruyuki’s pathetic self targeted for bullying the second he had started at the local public elementary school.

  Haruyuki had forced (or rather begged) Chiyuri, who had gone to that same elementary school, never to tell Takumu about the bullying. If he found out, Takumu might have tried to help him, calling out the gang of brats and taking them down with his bamboo sword.

  But Haruyuki had the feeling that even if he stopped getting bullied, he wouldn’t be able to keep being friends with Takumu.

  “That reminds me.” Haruyuki was first to open his mouth while the three of them walked side by side, something he almost never did at school. “I saw the videos of the city tournament on the net the other day. You’re amazing, Tak; only in seventh grade and already winning.”

  “I was just lucky. I was super lucky,” Takumu said as he laughed, scratching his head. “The guys who would’ve given me trouble got knocked out in the prelims. And then there was Chi here coming to cheer me on.”

  “What? Me?!” Chiyuri cried from the other side of Takumu, eyes wide. “I—I mean, I was just watching from the corner, that’s it.”

  “Ha-ha-ha! What are you talking about? You were really hollering! Stuff like Kick his teeth in!” Takumu raised his laughing voice cheerfully. “And on top of that, you even told me you wouldn’t give me lunch if I lost. And you looked serious, too, Chi.”

  “Oh, come on! I’m not listening to you anymore!”

  Watching Chiyuri increase her pace while covering both ears, Haruyuki nudged Takumu with his left elbow. “So that’s what all that screaming about the final match was.”

  “Well, you know. Ha-ha-ha!”

  H
e laughed with Takumu.

  It’s definitely better this way, Haruyuki thought.

  His choice two years ago hadn’t been a mistake. After all, the three of them were able to talk like this now, just like they used to. He didn’t want to ruin this relationship.

  At that moment, Takumu said lightly, almost like a counterattack: “So Haru, you got to have the Chi special for lunch yesterday, huh?”

  “Huh? Oh, that’s, well…” Seeing Chiyuri’s back suddenly stiffen, Haruyuki was slightly panicked. Crap, I still haven’t apologized. What should I do? Should I apologize now? Or maybe e-mail her once I get home—

  No, wait.

  How did Takumu know that?

  Haruyuki’s legs became tangled, and Takumu caught him with a “Whoa!” as he was about to fall. He was unaware even of this as his thoughts raced feverishly.

  Chiyuri had made those sandwiches because she knew that Araya and his gang were stealing his lunch money. She definitely wasn’t one for cooking, so he had wondered why…but could it be that she had actually done it on Takumu’s advice?

  In which case, that meant that Chiyuri had talked to Takumu. About the fact that Haruyuki was being bullied. If she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have said that just now.

  The inside of his head suddenly went incandescent, and unconsciously, Haruyuki pushed away Takumu’s hand on his right elbow.

  “H-hey! Haru?” Takumu inquired doubtfully, but Haruyuki couldn’t bring himself to look up at that face.

  Letting his gaze roam around, Haruyuki’s eyes met Chiyuri’s, an almost-frozen expression on her face. Her lips moved, and she looked as if she was about to say something. Before she got the chance, though, Haruyuki shouted, “Ah! Sorry, there’s just this show I want to watch! I’m gonna run ahead! See you, Taku!”

  He took off running. His legs insisted on getting tangled up, and he nearly fell more than once, but Haruyuki didn’t stop.

  The two of them were probably going to talk about him again. About how they could help Haruyuki. Just imagining the conversation, he was overcome with a sensation like the top of his heart was being twisted off. It was too ironic that just when Araya was finally disappearing through a seriously miraculous turn of events, he found out Takumu had already known all about it.

  He kept running, legs constantly in motion, until he passed through the entrance to his condo building and dove into an elevator.

  The dream Haruyuki had that night was probably at the top of the list of his all-time worst bad dreams.

  The bad kids from his elementary school, Araya and subordinates AB, and some outlaw students he didn’t know kept tagging one another out to square off against Haruyuki and knock him around. A slight distance away, Chiyuri and Takumu held hands and watched. More than the pain all over his body, it was their pitying expressions that he had the most trouble enduring.

  As the dream progressed, the number of spectators increased. His mother appeared next to the couple (Chiyuri and Takumu), and then even his father—who had left them a long time ago—showed up. The residents of his condo and his classmates joined as well, forming a circle and looking down at Haruyuki as he crawled along the ground.

  Now it wasn’t just pity on their faces but scorn. Too many people to count pointed their fingers at ugly, miserable Haruyuki and laughed.

  I hate this. I hate it here.

  With this thought in mind, he looked up at the remote, dark sky and saw a shadow there. A single bird, wings blacker than the night, spread its wings, soaring lightly.

  I want to be up there, too. Higher. Farther.

  I want to fly.

  To the other side.

  “Is that your wish?”

  3

  Haruyuki opened his eyes with a start.

  When he looked at his clock by the white light coming in through the window, the display said six thirty in the morning. Which meant he had been asleep nearly twelve hours.

  His entire body was drenched in sleep sweat, a slimy coating on his skin composed of the vestiges of his nightmare. Despite this, he couldn’t remember the details of the dream.

  Kuroyukihime’s final words to him the day before came dimly to mind. Could the instruction not to remove his Neurolinker all night have had some connection with his dream?

  Wondering about this vaguely as he showered and changed into his uniform, Haruyuki ate a breakfast of cereal and orange juice alone in the kitchen, put his dishes in the dishwasher, and, to complete his set of predeparture rituals, knocked on his mother’s bedroom door.

  “I’m leaving for school,” he called into the dim light inside her room, whereupon he heard an unintelligible croaking from the bed. Apparently, she’d had quite a bit to drink the night before.

  His mother took her terminal in hand, and he waited for her to charge five hundred yen to his Neurolinker. “Haruyuki, your Linker’s disconnected.” Her voice was unexpectedly tinged with annoyance.

  Oh crap. He hurriedly put a hand to his neck. After he connected to the global net, all the while feeling like he had forgotten something, his electronic balance quickly increased with a ring denoting the transaction.

  “I’m leaving, then,” he said again but with no response this time. Quietly closing the bedroom door, he put on his sneakers in the foyer and left the apartment, taking the elevator to the first floor and making his way through the lobby, muttering “Good morning” to other residents of the building whose faces he barely remembered.

  Just three seconds after he slipped out through the automatic doors to step into the condo courtyard, an intense shrieking noise echoed in his brain, and the world blacked out around him. In an instant, the town, sparkling in the morning sun, sank into the darkness of night.

  What the—?! Acceleration?! But…why? All by itself?!

  He held his breath as letters in the familiar flaming font arranged themselves before his eyes: HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!!

  He felt like he had seen this sentence somewhere before. But before he could follow the memory trail, the flaming text blinked out, and something even more mysterious appeared atop of his field of vision.

  First, in the center, the number 1800. Then, to the left and right, blue bars stretched out abruptly, with a somewhat thin green bar growing below them.

  Finally, the flaming text in the center of his view: FIGHT!!

  The number changed to 1799.

  Not knowing what to do, Haruyuki simply stared at the four-digit number as it counted down. Eighteen hundred seconds. Thirty minutes. It was a number he had heard somewhere. Right, wasn’t this the time limit for acceleration that Kuroyukihime had mentioned?

  But this time, Haruyuki hadn’t even said the B of the “burst link” command to start the acceleration. Also, the color of the world—it wasn’t blue, it was full-dive. And he basically had no idea what all the challenger and fight stuff was about. He looked around, desperately trying to get even the most tenuous grasp on the situation before quickly realizing something.

  The crisp October morning had vanished without a trace, but the space around him was still the same area in front of his building that had been burned into his memory. On one side, the familiar two-lane road, and on the other, convenience stores and office buildings. When he turned around, the high-rise condo from which he had just emerged pierced the darkness, towering above him.

  However, the jam of cars that should have been bumper-to-bumper on the road toward Shinjuku and the school-bound students filling the sidewalks were gone. Instead, the road was cracked and caving in everywhere, guardrails and signs were twisted, and the buildings’ windows were very obviously broken.

  Bricks were piled up at the intersection a little way away, almost like a barricade, and flames of something burning licked up at the sky from a metal drum. Traces of destruction also marred Haruyuki’s condo, which was in a terrible state, with crumbling concrete pillars and large holes in the exterior walls.

  Struck by the urge to run back inside and check the state of his own apartme
nt, Haruyuki staggered around a few steps and peered into the entrance through the bricks. He then opened his eyes wide in silent amazement. The interior of the building was just a flat gray surface spreading out boxlike, almost like the time he’d poked his head into a polygon building in a game.

  No. Not almost like. Exactly like.

  This was reality and also not reality. Haruyuki was currently in a full dive on the virtual net using the accelerated function, and the scene around him was a 3-D movie reconstructed from social camera images. Just like the frozen, blue world he’d seen in the lounge the day before. But he had never experienced this level of detail in a virtual space. It was impossible for him to pick out the pixel pitch. Even the lone pebble rolling by his feet was inscribed with a level of crispness that was overwhelming.

  So then what body did he have? Haruyuki looked down, expecting to find his familiar pink pig avatar. “…Wh-what is this…” Dumbfounded, his voice slipped out involuntarily.

  Legs, torso, arms—his whole body was polished silver and thin like wire. Almost like a robot, but far removed from a game or anime fighting robot.

  Panicking and bringing his hands to his head, the tips of his fingers merely slipped over the smooth helmetlike curves and found nothing like a nose or a mouth. He looked around for a moment and, seeing the cracked windows in the wall of the mixed residential building across the road from his building, he ran over, feet clanking against the pavement.

  The figure the large window reflected back at him was clearly a metal robot, from tip to toe. His body was very thin and small, only the streamlined head was awkwardly large. In a word, a total small fry.

  If I at least had some horns on my forehead…or both my eyes shone gold like beacons. As Haruyuki silently grumbled at the unknown avatar designer, he saw several human shapes squirming behind his reflection in the glass on the other side of the road.

  Metal body cowering, Haruyuki turned around with a gasp. He didn’t know when they had shown up, but looking his way were exactly three figures standing in the shadow of the ruined local convenience store. Under cover of darkness as they were, he could only make out their silhouettes, which were all much larger than his own.