Mother's Rosary

  “…It smells the way it did when Big Sis would hold me like this. The smell of the sun…” Yuuki whispered, letting her weight lean against Asuna.

  Asuna, meanwhile, uttered her first words here from trembling lips. “Do you mean…Aiko? Did she play VRMMOs, too…?”

  “Yes. That hospital let us use AmuSpheres in ordinary patient rooms, too. Big Sis was the original leader of the Sleeping Knights. And she was way, waaay better than me…”

  Yuuki ground her forehead into Asuna’s shoulder. Asuna reached up and traced the silky hair. The younger girl tensed up, then eased. “At first there were nine Sleeping Knights. But we’ve lost three of them now, including Big Sis…So we all had a discussion and came to a decision. When the next one went, we’d break up the guild. But before then, we had to create the best memory ever…a great, fantastic adventure that we could tell Big Sis and the others about when we were reunited.”

  “…”

  “We first met in a virtual hospice called Serene Garden, within a medical network. Our conditions are all different, but our circumstances are the same. So the server was set up for us to meet and have fun together in a VR environment, so that our last moments could be worthwhile…”

  Ever since Dr. Kurahashi had started to explain back at the hospital, Asuna had a suspicion about this. There was that same strength, cheeriness, and calm that all of the Sleeping Knights shared; she had wondered if maybe that meant that they were all coming from the same place.

  But even anticipating this bombshell, Asuna felt Yuuki’s words sink to the bottom of her chest, irrevocably heavy. The bright smiles of Siune, Jun, Tecchi, Nori, and Talken all flitted through her mind’s eye.

  “I’m sorry, Asuna. For not telling you the truth. The Sleeping Knights aren’t breaking up in the spring because we’ll be too busy to keep playing the game. It’s because two of us have been told that we have three months left at the most. So…so that’s why we wanted to make our final memories here, in this wonderful place. We wanted to put proof that we had been here on that giant monument,” Yuuki said, her voice trembling again. All Asuna could do was put more strength into her arms as she squeezed.

  “But it wasn’t really working for us…and we started to wonder if we should look for someone, just one person, who could help us. Not everyone was for it. They said that if whomever we chose found out the truth, it would be a burden on them and cause them terrible pain. And…that’s exactly what happened. I’m sorry…I’m sorry, Asuna. If it’s possible…I want you to forget about us. Right now, if you can…”

  “I can’t,” she replied shortly. She rubbed her cheek against Yuuki’s head. “Because it wasn’t a burden, not in the least. It wasn’t terrible. I’m so happy that I met you and was able to help you. Even now…I wish that you would let me join the Sleeping Knights.”

  “…Ahh…”

  Both Yuuki’s breath and her delicate body shuddered deeply for an instant. “I…I’m so happy I came here and got to meet you, Asuna…Just hearing that was enough for me. Now, at last…I’m satisfied…with everything…”

  “…”

  Asuna put her hands on Yuuki’s shoulders and pulled away. She stared into those wet, shining purple eyes.

  “But…but there are still so many things you haven’t done. There are all kinds of places you haven’t seen in Alfheim yet…and if you include all the other VR worlds, this place is endless. So please, don’t say you’re satisfied…”

  She was trying her best to keep finding the right words, but Yuuki’s gaze and smile were vacant, as though she were looking at something far, far away.

  “In the last three years…we’ve gone on all kinds of adventures in all kinds of worlds. I want the memory I created with you to be the final page.”

  “But…there has to be more…More things to do, more places to go…” Asuna suggested desperately. If she didn’t challenge Yuuki’s decision, the girl might simply disappear into the mist in a moment. Suddenly, Yuuki’s focus snapped from the distant horizon to Asuna’s face, and she smiled in that mischievous way she’d done so often during their struggle against the boss.

  “That’s a good point…I want to go to school.”

  “S…school?”

  “I’ve gone to school in the virtual world a few times, but it’s too quiet and pristine and well-mannered. I want to go to a real school again, the kind I went to years and years ago,” Yuuki said, grinning, then ducked her head in apology. “Sorry for asking the impossible. I really, really appreciate the way you feel. But I really am happy with this…”

  “You might be able to.”

  “…Huh?” Yuuki blinked in surprise, then stared at Asuna. The older girl thought hard, trying to summon the memory from the back of her mind.

  “I think you might be able to go…to school.”

  10

  The next day, January 12th, 12:50 PM: On the north end of the third floor of Building Two, Asuna sat in a chair in the computing room far from the lunchtime bustle, her back straight.

  There was a small domed machine, about three inches across, fixed to the right shoulder of her school blazer with a thin harness. The base was made of plated aluminum, but the dome was clear acrylic with a video lens inside. Two cables ran out of the base’s socket, one traveling to Asuna’s cell phone in her jacket pocket and the other to a small desktop PC on the table next to her.

  At the PC, Kazuto and two other students in the mechatronics class with him were huddled together, exchanging mysterious tech terminology that sounded like magic spells or sorcerers’ curses.

  “I’m telling you, the gyros are too sensitive. If you’re going to prioritize eye tracking, you need to allow the parameters to go a little looser…”

  “But won’t that cause major lag if there are any twitchy movements?”

  “In that case, you’ll just have to trust the learning capabilities of the optimization program, Kazu.”

  “Um, excuse me, Kirito? Lunchtime’s almost over…!” Asuna snapped, frustrated with being stuck motionless in the same position for more than thirty minutes. Kazuto looked up, letting out a thoughtful hum.

  “Well, I think the initial settings should be okay now. Uh, can you hear me, Yuuki?” he asked, not to Asuna, but to the dome on her shoulder. Yuuki the Absolute Sword’s cheerful voice piped up out of the speakers on the machine.

  “Yes, I can hear you!”

  “Good. We’re going to initialize the lens area, so speak up when your field of vision becomes clear.”

  “Okay, got it.”

  The half-sphere piece of tech on Asuna’s shoulder was called an “AV Interactive Communications Probe,” and Kazuto’s team had been testing it out since the start of the year. It was essentially a tool that allowed a user to see and hear distant locations in the real world through the use of an AmuSphere network. The lens and mic inside the probe collected data that were sent to the Internet through Asuna’s phone, where they eventually reached Yuuki’s full-dive space through her Medicuboid at Yokohama Kohoku General Hospital. The lens could swivel freely within the dome, synchronizing the visual source with the movement of her eyes. From Yuuki’s end, it felt like she was a tenth of her original size, perched on Asuna’s shoulder like this.

  When Yuuki mentioned that she wanted to go to school, Asuna recalled this device, especially when she’d heard so many complaints about this particular research theme.

  The lens whirred as the motors fine-tuned its focus, and when Yuuki said, “There,” they stopped.

  “That should do it. There’s a stabilizer on board, but try to avoid any sudden movements if you can, Asuna. And don’t shout too loudly. Even a whisper will still carry over just fine,” Kazuto explained.

  “Got it, got it,” she responded, stretching at last, then getting slowly to her feet. Kazuto pulled out the cable connected to the PC. She spoke softly to the probe on her shoulder. “Sorry about that, Yuuki. I was hoping to show you around the school first, but now our lunch break is over.??
?

  Yuuki’s voice emerged from the little speaker. “That’s okay. I’m really looking forward to sitting in on your class!”

  “Okay. In that case, let’s go and say hello to the teacher for my next period.”

  She waved to Kazuto’s team, who were all exhausted from their forced probe setup, and left the computing room. As she walked through the hall, descended the stairs, and crossed the bridge connecting the buildings, Yuuki exclaimed at each and every feature she noticed. But when they reached the door marked FACULTY ROOM, she fell silent.

  “…What’s wrong?”

  “Umm…I’ve never been very comfortable around faculty rooms…”

  “Hee hee! Don’t worry, none of the teachers at this school are super teacher-y,” Asuna whispered, laughing. She thrust the door open. “Pardon me!”

  “Pardon meee.”

  With two echoing greetings, Asuna strode past the line of desks. The teacher in charge of fifth-period Japanese had been the vice principal of a middle school until retirement, and he volunteered to go back to work when this special, urgent education facility was arranged. He was in his late sixties but was adept at using the various network devices around the school, and he carried an intellectual bent that drew Asuna to like him.

  She explained the situation, feeling relatively sure he would understand the circumstances, but felt a bit nervous all the same. The white-haired, white-bearded teacher listened with a large cup of tea in hand. When she finished the story, he nodded.

  “Yes, that’s fine. And what did you say your name was?”

  “Oh, er…Yuuki. My name is Yuuki Konno,” the probe responded instantly. This did seem to catch the teacher off guard, but his mouth crinkled into a grin soon after.

  “Miss Konno, I would be delighted if you sat in on my class. We’re about to cover Akutagawa’s Rail Truck, and it doesn’t get good until the very end.”

  “O-of course! Thank you, sir!”

  Asuna thanked the teacher as well. The warning bell rang then, so she quickly stood up and bowed, then left the faculty room. The two girls breathed a sigh of relief. They shared a look and laughed, and Asuna rushed off to the classroom.

  She was deluged with questions from her classmates as soon as she took her seat and they noticed the strange device on her shoulder, but an explanation of how Yuuki was in the hospital and a demonstration of its voice capabilities helped them understand how it worked right away. At that point, the other students started introducing themselves. Once it was finished, the bell rang again, and the teacher walked through the door.

  At the prompting of the student on daily duty, the class was called to stand and bow—the little lens inside the probe whirred up and down—and the elderly teacher walked over next to the front desk, stroked his beard, and began the lesson, just like any other day.

  “Ahem, please open your books to page ninety-eight, as we will be covering Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Rail Truck today. Akutagawa wrote this story when he was thirty years old…”

  As the teacher spoke, Asuna brought up the appropriate section of the textbook on her tablet and held it up in front of her so Yuuki could see. But she nearly dropped it when she heard what the teacher said next.

  “Now we’re going to start this from the beginning. Would you like to read, Miss Yuuki Konno?”

  “Huh?!” Asuna blurted.

  “Y-yes, sir!” Yuuki stammered at the same time. The classroom was filled with hushed murmurs.

  “Is it too hard for you?” the teacher asked. But before Asuna could speak up, Yuuki blurted out, “I-I can read it!”

  The speaker on the probe had a powerful enough amp that her voice reached the corners of the room. Asuna stood up with a start and held the tablet up to the lens with both hands. She twisted her head to the right and whispered, “Yuuki…c-can you read it?”

  “Of course. I’m a bookworm, believe it or not!” Yuuki retorted. She paused, then clearly and enthusiastically began to read from the textbook: “…The construction of the light rail between Odawara and Atami began in…”

  Asuna closed her eyes as she held up the text, concentrating solely on Yuuki’s voice as it read with rich inflection. On the screen of her mind, she could see Yuuki, wearing the same school uniform as her, standing at the adjacent desk. Asuna was certain that this scene would one day come true. Medical science was making leaps and bounds by the year. In the very near future, they would develop a solution that wiped out HIV altogether, and Yuuki would be able to return to normal life soon after. Then they could truly walk hand-in-hand around the school and the city. They’d stop to get fast food on the way home, chatting about nothing in particular with burgers in their hands.

  Asuna wiped her eyes with her left hand so that Yuuki couldn’t see. The other girl was busy reading the century-old text with emotion and enthusiasm, and the teacher did not seem inclined to stop her. The post-lunch school was silent, as if the entire student population were listening to her read.

  After that, they sat through sixth period as well, and when it was over, Asuna took Yuuki for a tour, as she promised. What she didn’t expect was that more than a dozen classmates would join them, each clamoring to point out this or that to Yuuki.

  Once they were alone again at last and sitting on a courtyard bench, the sky above was already turning orange.

  “Asuna…thank you so much for all of this. It was really fun…I’ll never forget this day,” Yuuki said out of the blue, suddenly serious.

  Asuna automatically responded with cheer. “What do you mean? The teacher said you could come every day. Japanese class is third period tomorrow, so don’t be late! More important, is there anything else you’d like to see? It can be anywhere outside of the principal’s office.”

  Yuuki giggled, then fell silent. Eventually, she offered hesitantly, “Um…there’s one place I’d like to go.”

  “Where?”

  “Can it be outside of school?”

  “Uh…” Asuna mumbled, thinking it over. The probe’s battery would hold out for a while, and there was no reason she couldn’t travel with it, as long as her phone got Wi-Fi. “Yeah, it’s fine. I can go anywhere that I get signal!”

  “Really?! Then…I know it’s far, but…do you think you could take me to a place called Tsukimidai, in the Hodogaya ward of Yokohama?”

  From western Tokyo, where the school was, Asuna and Yuuki rode the Chuo, Yamanote, and Toyoko lines on their route to Hodogaya in Yokohama.

  They limited themselves to whispers on the trains, of course, but out in the open, Asuna freely conversed with the probe on her shoulder, unconcerned with what anyone else thought. The neighborhood had apparently changed in the three years that Yuuki was hospitalized, and so they stopped here and there wherever her interest was caught, explaining this and that feature.

  Given that pace, when they finally got off the train at their destination of Hoshikawa Station, the big clock at the center of the traffic rotary outside showed that it was after five thirty.

  Asuna looked up to the sky, which was transitioning from deep red to purple, and took a deep breath. The cold air here seemed to carry a different flavor than what was found in Tokyo, perhaps because of the nearby rolling hills covered in trees.

  “It’s a beautiful place, Yuuki. The sky’s so clear and open here,” Asuna said cheerfully, but the girl’s response sounded apologetic.

  “Yes…I’m sorry, Asuna. I shouldn’t have forced you to come so far away…Will you be okay with your family?”

  “Just fine! I’m always late to come back home,” she replied automatically, but in fact, Asuna hardly ever broke her evening curfew, and when it did happen, her mother was furious. But in this case, she didn’t care how much trouble she would be in for being out late. She would take Yuuki as far as she wanted to go, as long as the probe’s batteries held up.

  “Just let me send a quick message,” Asuna said lightly, taking out her phone. She opened the messaging app, taking care not to shut down the connection
to the probe, and sent a message to her home computer explaining that she would be late returning. She was certain that her mother would send an angry message about breaking curfew, then a direct call, but if she kept her phone connected to the Net, it would automatically send the call to voice mail.

  “That should do it. So, where do you want to go, Yuuki?”

  “Well, um…turn left at the station, then right at the second light…”

  “Got it.”

  Asuna began to walk, passing through the small shopping district outside the station in accordance with Yuuki’s directions. With each bakery, fish market, post office, and shrine they passed, Yuuki made a wistful comment or two. Even into the following residential area, she was sighing and gasping at every house with an especially big dog or any tree with beautiful stretching branches.

  It was easy for Asuna to understand that this was where Yuuki once lived, even without her saying so. No doubt the place they were heading at the moment was—

  “…When you turn up ahead, stop in front of the white house…” Yuuki directed. Asuna noticed that her voice was faintly trembling. She turned right along a park lined with poplars bereft of their leaves and saw a house on the left side of the street with white tile walls.

  She took a few more steps and came to a stop at the bronze front gate.

  “…”

  Yuuki let out a long sigh on Asuna’s shoulder. Asuna absently lifted her left hand to trace the aluminum base of the probe with a finger as she whispered, “This…is your home, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think…I’d ever see it again…”

  The white-walled and green-roofed house was a bit smaller than the others in the neighborhood, but it had a larger yard. There was a wood table and bench in the grass, and beyond that was a large flower bed surrounded by red bricks.

  But the table was faded from the sun and rain, and the only thing in the flower bed was desiccated weeds. Warm orange light poured out of the windows of the houses on either side, but all the storm shutters were closed on the little white house. There was no sign of life coming from it.