“All right, you’re running out of time. What do you want to show me?”
“…Come this way,” Asuna said, stifling a sigh as she crossed the living room toward the door to the little storage room that she used as an item repository. Once Kyouko had awkwardly tottered over, she showed her to a small window inside.
From the south-facing living room, there was a view of the large yard and the little path that traveled over hills and bumps until it reached the beautiful lake—a pastoral scene if there ever was one. But the only things visible from the north-facing storage room were the thick grasses around back, a little brook, and the close-hanging pine trees. During this season they were all covered in snow, leaving “cold” as the only apt description for the image.
But that was exactly what Asuna wanted to show Kyouko. She threw open the window and looked out at the deep forest.
“What do you think? Does it look familiar?”
Kyouko frowned again, then shook her head. “Familiar how? It’s just an ordinary cedar fores…”
The words disappeared from her tongue. She stared out the window with her mouth open, but she was looking somewhere else, not at the scene before her eyes. At her side, Asuna whispered, “Doesn’t it remind you…of Grandma and Grandpa’s house?”
Asuna’s maternal grandparents, Kyouko’s parents, ran a farm in the mountains of Miyagi Prefecture. The house was in a small village nestled in a steep valley, and the rice paddies were carved right out of the mountainside, with no room for mechanization. It was mostly rice that they harvested, but even that was barely enough for the single family to live on for a year.
It was thanks to the forested mountain they inherited that the family was able to put Kyouko through college despite their humble income. The old wooden house was built up against the foot of the mountain, and when sitting on the back porch, the only things you could see were a small yard, a brook, and the cedar woods beyond them.
But more than the Yuuki mansion in Kyoto, Asuna had always preferred to visit her Grandpa and Grandma’s house in Miyagi. She would throw tantrums in summer and winter vacation until they finally took her, so she could lie under the same blanket as her grandparents and hear stories about the old times. She had many memories, from eating hand-shaved ice out back in the summer, to pickling plums with her grandmother in the fall, but what she remembered most vividly of all was plopping under the covered table in the wintertime, eating mandarin oranges and staring at the cedar trees through the window.
Her grandparents wondered what she found so entertaining about the woods, but something about the way the tall black trunks split the white of the snow in an endless pattern made her mind seem to float away. When she looked at the trees, she felt like a baby mouse in its burrow under the snow, waiting for spring—a strange sensation that was somehow both lonely and warm at the same time.
Her grandparents passed away one after the other when she was in her second year of middle school. The paddies and mountain were sold off, and without anyone to live in it, the home was torn down.
Which was why, in this house on the twenty-second floor of Aincrad, both physically and conceptually far removed from that little village in the mountains of Miyagi, Asuna felt a tear-jerking sense of longing whenever she stared out of the north window through the snowy conifers.
She understood that for her part, Kyouko did not look back on her poor rural upbringing with fondness. But Asuna still wanted to show her mother the view from this window—the view that she had once seen every day and was trying desperately to forget.
At some point, they passed the predetermined five-minute mark, but Kyouko was still gazing at the cedar trees. Asuna moved up next to her and said, “Do you remember the Obon holiday when I was in seventh grade? The time that you and Father and Brother went to Kyoto, but I was insistent on going to Miyagi instead, and so I ended up traveling on my own?”
“…I do remember.”
“Well, I went so that I could apologize to Grandpa and Grandma. So I could apologize that you weren’t able to come visit the family grave for the holiday.”
“There was…a Yuuki family matter that I simply couldn’t be absent from…”
“No, I’m not blaming you. You see…when I apologized, they brought out a thick album from the tea cabinet. I was amazed when I saw what was inside. It started with your first thesis, then all of the writings you submitted to various magazines, your interviews, all filed away. They even printed out the stuff on the Internet and stuck in it there. And I’m sure they didn’t know the first thing about computers…”
“…”
“As he was showing me the things in the album, Grandpa said that you were their greatest treasure. You left the village and went to college, became a scholar, had your articles in fancy magazines, and were making a great name for yourself. He said you were so busy with your theses and meetings that it made sense you couldn’t go back home for Obon to honor the dead, and they never once were upset about it…”
Kyouko was listening to Asuna’s words in silence, staring out at the woods. There was no expression on her face, at least from the side. But Asuna kept pushing onward.
“And then he added, ‘There might come a time when she gets tired and comes to a stop. She might want to turn back and see just how far she’s come. And we’ll always be here at this house, so she can find us…We’ve been keeping this little mountain home all this time, just so she knows that if she needs a source of support, she’s always got a place to come back to.’”
As she spoke, Asuna saw her grandparents’ old home, which no longer existed, in her mind’s eye. And overlapping that, she saw Yuuki’s little white house, from just a few hours earlier. A place for the heart to return. Even if they were physically gone, someone would always treasure them in their heart. And for Asuna, that place was this virtual cabin in the woods.
This home, too, would probably be obliterated someday. But in the truest sense, it would never be lost. A home wasn’t a place to hold things, it was a word referring to the heart, feelings, way of life—the way that her grandparents had done.
“Back then, I didn’t understand all of what he said. But recently, I feel like it finally makes sense to me. Running and running for your own sake isn’t all there is to life…There must be a way of life that can make someone else’s happiness into your own happiness.”
She envisioned the faces of Kirito, Liz, Leafa, Silica, Yuuki, Siune, and the rest of the Sleeping Knights.
“I want to lead a life where I keep smiles on the faces of everyone around me. I want to lead a life where I can support those who are tired. And to do that, I want to strive for my best with studies and everything else at that special school I love so much,” she finished at last, finding her words along the way.
But Kyouko only stared at the forest, her mouth shut tight. Her deep green eyes were looking far away, and it was impossible to gauge her true emotions at that moment.
For several minutes, the little room was silent. Two little animals that looked like rabbits frolicked and leaped in the snow beneath the large trees. They distracted Asuna for a moment, and when she looked back at Kyouko, she gasped.
A tear track was running down Kyouko’s porcelain white cheek, dripping off her chin. Her lips budged, but no audible words came out. After a few moments, Kyouko realized that she was crying, and hastily rubbed at her face.
“What…Why is it…? I’m not crying…”
“…You can’t hide your tears here, Mother. Nobody can stop from crying when they feel like crying.”
“Well, that’s inconvenient,” Kyouko snapped, rubbing her eyes, then gave up and covered her face with both hands. Eventually, faint sobs emerged. Asuna hesitated several times, then finally reached out and placed a hand on Kyouko’s trembling shoulder.
At breakfast the next morning, Kyouko was back to her normal self, reading the news on her tablet. The meal proceeded in silence after the morning greetings, and Asuna steeled herself for a
nother demand for the transfer school form. Instead, Kyouko glared at Asuna with slightly less danger than usual and said, “So are you claiming that you’re prepared to support someone else for your entire life?”
She nodded, surprised. “Y…yes.”
“But if you want to support others, you need to be stronger yourself. You must go to college. And that means getting better marks than you have already, in the third term and next year.”
“…Are you saying…I don’t have to…”
“What did I say? It depends on your grades. So get on it.”
With that, Kyouko got up and left the dining room. Asuna watched the door shut behind her, then lowered her head and thanked her.
She managed to maintain a somber mood as she dressed in her uniform and went to the door with her school bag, but as soon as she left the front gate, she started running down the gleaming, icy street. She couldn’t keep the smile from breaking out over her face.
She wanted to tell Kazuto that she would still be at their school for the next year. She wanted to tell Yuuki that she’d finally had a real talk with her mother.
Asuna couldn’t keep the grin off her lips as she raced through the crowds and toward the train station.
Three days later, as planned, they held a huge barbecue out front at the cabin.
In addition to Kirito, Lisbeth, Klein, Leafa, and Silica—the usual suspects—there was Yuuki, Siune, and the rest of the Sleeping Knights, and the racial leaders Sakuya, Alicia, and Eugene and their associates. They actually had to put together a food-hunting party to acquire enough ingredients to feed the thirty-strong guests.
Before they raised a toast, Asuna introduced the Sleeping Knights. She did not mention their conditions, but with Yuuki’s blessing, she explained that they were a veteran band that traveled from VRMMO to VRMMO, engaging in a memorable finish here in ALO before they disbanded.
The stories about the mysterious seven-man guild that defeated the twenty-seventh-floor boss on their own and the Absolute Sword who bested more than sixty consecutive dueling foes had spread far and wide throughout the game. Sakuya and Eugene immediately commenced with their recruiting speeches. Yuuki politely refused, which was a good thing—if all of the Sleeping Knights joined a particular race’s side as mercenaries, it could overthrow the current power balance of the nine fairy peoples. That would have a huge effect on the current progress of the Second Grand Quest, which was ongoing at the moment.
After the rousing toast, a storm of gluttony commenced, and Asuna ate, drank, and spoke with Yuuki the whole while. Over the course of the party, they decided that they should just go ahead and shoot for the twenty-eighth-floor boss as well, and the afterparty turned into a conquering tour of the twenty-eighth-floor labyrinth. They even piled into the top floor of the tower and dispatched the large crustacean boss, which would be funny if it didn’t sound like such a tall tale.
Unfortunately, the only names carved into the Monument of Swordsmen belonged to Yuuki, Kirito, and the few others who were party leaders, but the team made a pact to try the twenty-ninth-floor boss with just the Sleeping Knights again, and they called it a day.
Even as they continued their adventures in Alfheim, Yuuki participated in classes at school using the interactive probe. She visited the Kirigaya home in Kawagoe and also made a trip to Agil’s café in Okachimachi.
Yuuki had been cautious of Kazuto at first, due to his eerie intuition, but as a fellow swordsman, they actually got along quite well once she finally talked to him. After that, they traded barbs over Sword Skill usage in ALO and even the different ways that the probe could be improved in real life; at times, this got on Asuna’s nerves. The other Sleeping Knights got right along with Leafa, Lisbeth, and the others, and they had great fun planning big events as a group.
In February, Asuna and the Sleeping Knights defeated the twenty-ninth-floor boss as a single party, cementing their fame within all corners of Alfheim. In the middle of the month, there was a unified dueling tournament. Kirito blasted through the eastern block while Yuuki dominated the western, and the final match was broadcast on the Internet TV station MMO Stream to tremendous fanfare.
As countless players watched breathlessly, Yuuki and Kirito delivered a ferocious, stunning duel with endless major Sword Skills, including their own OSSs, for more than ten minutes. When Yuuki finally dispatched Kirito with her divine eleven-part skill, it caused a cheer that practically vibrated the entire planet.
For defeating the legendary Kirito—even without his dual blades—Yuuki was named the fourth champion of the dueling tournament, and the tale of the Absolute Sword surpassed the bounds of ALO to ricochet around the Seed Nexus.
In March, Asuna kept her promise to her mother by passing her final exams. With the probe on her shoulder, she joined Rika, Keiko, Suguha, and phone-based Yui on a four-day vacation to Kyoto. By this time, they had made the probe capable of handling multiple client streams at once, so Siune, Jun, and the others joined Yuuki in getting a tour of the city, which made the tour guide experience quite fulfilling.
The group was allowed to stay at the Yuuki family’s vast mansion, and the money they saved by doing this allowed them to splurge on delectable Kyoto cooking. Unfortunately, flavor was one thing the probe could not transmit, so they heard plenty of cheeky complaints from their remote audience. Asuna had to promise them that she’d recreate the cooking in VR when she got back, and paid the price with some truly humbling practice experiences in her VR cooking program.
It all passed like a dream. Asuna and Yuuki shared a long, long journey, through the virtual and real world. There were so many more places to go, and Asuna believed that she would have plenty of time for all of it.
One day, close to April, a sudden cold front coming across the Sea of Okhotsk blanketed central Japan in an unseasonal snow. The thick carpet seemed to cover the hints of spring in the air, and the weak sunlight took its time melting the layer of snow.
That was when Dr. Kurahashi sent Asuna a message saying that Yuuki’s condition had taken a turn for the worse.
11
As she stared at the brief message on her phone screen, Asuna repeated a single phrase in her mind, over and over:
That can’t be.
It couldn’t be. Yuuki had been active and assertive in all of their recent activities, and Dr. Kurahashi himself said that her brain lymphoma wasn’t progressing. There were cases of HIV being successfully held at bay for more than twenty years now. And Yuuki was only fifteen…She was supposed to have so much time. This turn for the worse was just another case of opportunistic infection, and she would survive it the way she had before, several times already.
But another part of her knew what it meant. It was the first time the doctor had sent her a message directly. It meant The Time had come—The Time that she had trembled in fear of every night until she convinced herself it wasn’t true.
Asuna froze for several seconds, trapped between two arguing voices, then squeezed her eyes tight. She booted up her mail program, sending a short group message to Kirito, Lisbeth, Siune, and the others of their little group of friends. Once that was done, she changed out of her home wear and automatically chose her school uniform to save her the trouble of picking something out. She raced out of the front door with her shoes barely on, where the gentle afternoon sun reflected bright and white off the remnants of snow on the street and into her eyes.
It was two o’clock on a Sunday at the end of March. Everyone on the street walked slowly, as if savoring the long-awaited arrival of spring. Asuna ran hard toward the station, weaving her way around the pedestrian traffic.
Later, she couldn’t even recall checking the train times and the travel thereof. The next thing she knew, she was racing through the gate of the station closest to Kohoku General Hospital. It felt like the inside of her head was fogged out with a light blur; scattered pieces of thought rose to consciousness and faded.
Hang on, Yuuki, I’m coming, she thought to herself, tee
th clenched, as she darted toward a taxi pulling around to the curb outside the station.
Her visit had already been cleared ahead of time at the front desk of the hospital. When Asuna tensely informed the nurse of her reason for visiting, she received a guest card at once and was told to hurry to the top floor of the center ward.
She waited through the elevator trip, impatiently watching the number crawl upward one at a time, then leaped out as soon as the door opened. She practically slammed the card against the security gate sensor and resumed running, knowing that it was terribly bad hospital manners. As she followed the blank white corridor route by memory, the door to Yuuki’s clean room came into view around the final turn.
And she came to a stop, her eyes bulging.
Of the two doors there, the first one was the entrance to the monitoring room. And the one in the back with the huge warnings and caution signs was the door to the air-sealed clean room. It had been, naturally, shut tight when Asuna visited before, but now it was wide open. As she watched helplessly, a nurse in completely ordinary garb quickly approached.
When she saw Asuna, the nurse nodded and whispered, “Inside, hurry,” as she walked past. At this prompt, Asuna took several unsteady steps toward the inner doorway.
Her eyes were stunned by the pure white of the room. The huge array of machines that had filled it before were all pushed up against the left wall. Two nurses and a doctor were standing next to the gel bed in the center of the room, watching over the small figure lying on it. All three were wearing their normal white uniforms.
As soon as she saw this, she understood. It had reached the stage of no return. The Time had come, as was preordained many years ago, and she had no choice but to watch it happen.
Dr. Kurahashi looked up and recognized Asuna immediately. He beckoned her over, and she worked her limp legs just enough to carry her into the room.
It was only a matter of feet to reach the bed, but it felt like an eternity. Asuna struggled onward, each step carving down the distance toward cruel reality, until she stood at the side of the gel bed.