“Oh…I see. Yes, you’re right about that,” Asuna said, recalling the interior of the palace.
The Monument of Swordsmen was a 3-D object modeled in the game’s physical space, which meant it naturally had a limited area—certainly not enough for the names of every player to participate in boss battles up to the hundredth floor. There were only seven slots for each floor. So as Siune said, if a single party beat the boss, all their names could fit, but if it were a full raid, only the seven party leaders would be represented.
Once Siune was certain that Asuna had picked up on their intention, she continued. “In other words, for all the members of the Sleeping Knights to show up on the monument, we must defeat the boss with just a single party. We did our best on the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth floors, but we just couldn’t get over the top…So we came to a group decision. The maximum size of a party is seven, so we had room for one more. Presumptuous as it may sound, we wanted someone even stronger than Yuuki, the best of our guild, so that we could ask him or her to join us in our task.”
“I see…So that’s what’s going on,” Asuna said, letting out the breath she’d been holding. She looked down at the white tablecloth.
Leaving their names on the Monument of Swordsmen. I understand that desire.
Because all online games—not just VRMMOs—demanded plenty of time from their players, many people withdrew from them in the spring, when the Japanese school year ended and people looked for new jobs. It was an eventuality that even close-knit guilds that had been together for years would one day break apart. So it was natural to want to leave behind traces of that bond for as long as the game world existed.
For her part, Asuna didn’t know how long she’d be able to play ALO. If her mother got any tougher on her, she might take away the AmuSphere. So if her remaining time was limited, then she wanted to make each and every second count, just like they did.
“…What do you say? Will you accept? We converted here not long ago, so I’m afraid we’re not in a position to offer you much…”
Siune opened a trade window in order to present a money amount. Asuna cut her off immediately.
“Er, no, it’s going to cost quite a bit to undertake the task, so you should keep what money you have for that. As long as I get something from the boss, that should be fine…”
“Then you’ll accept?!”
The faces of Siune and her five companions sparkled. As she looked at each of them in turn, Asuna felt herself secretly wondering how it had come to this. It had only started with a little spark of curiosity about the mysterious Absolute Sword. And suddenly she was here, all the way at the front line, far from their dueling spot, introduced to a group of friends, and accepting an invitation to tackle the floor boss together. It hadn’t even been an hour yet.
Asuna stared into the amethyst eyes of Yuuki as they glittered with expectation—the very person who had dragged her into this roller coaster of events. It was too sudden, and too forceful, but such strange encounters were one of the joys of a VRMMO. And most important, there was a faint but certain feeling brewing inside of her: She could sense that she would get along with this odd duelist and her companions.
“Umm…Just give me a bit of time.”
It was for that reason that she didn’t want to take this decision lightly. Asuna sucked in a deep breath, fixed her eyes on the cups on the table, and tried to calm down her slightly bewildered thoughts into a rational state. She set aside her confusion and surprise, focusing just on the grand goal of Yuuki’s team.
Long ago, Asuna had led the charge against several boss monsters as the sub-leader of a guild that no longer existed.
She spent hours with other advanced guilds and solo players, arguing and screaming about attack patterns and weaknesses, even getting to her knees to beg for help when they were short on manpower. The reason she went to such lengths was to uphold an ironclad rule that existed in that world: not to allow a single fatality.
But now, everything had changed. In the land of fairies, the only rule every player had to follow was to enjoy themselves. Would it be “enjoyable” to admit you stood no chance and give up before trying? Yuuki’s guild had tried two boss monsters and acquitted themselves well, even as a tiny team of six.
Rather than worrying about likely failure and overthinking, she ought to try it out. It felt like forever since she’d played so recklessly. What was the worst that could happen? Only the loss of a few experience points each.
“…Let’s get as far as we can—setting aside our chances of success.” Asuna smirked mischievously, raising her head. Instantly, Yuuki’s adorable face burst into sunshine. The five companions raised a cheer, and she leaned over the table to squeeze Asuna’s outstretched hand in both of hers.
“Thank you, Miss Asuna! I had a feeling you’d say that from the first moment our blades struck!”
“Just call me Asuna,” she replied with a grin, which Yuuki returned.
“And call me Yuuki!”
Once she had shaken hands with each of the overly eager members at the table and they’d toasted with another round of mugs, Asuna turned to Yuuki and brought up something that came to her mind.
“By the way, Yuuki…you were looking for powerful people to duel, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, there must have been other good fighters before me. Do you happen to remember a spriggan dressed in black with a longsword? I’m guessing that he would be a much bigger help to you than me…”
“Ohh…” That seemed to be enough to remind Yuuki of Kirito right away. She nodded but frowned, crossing her arms. “Yes, I remember. He was tough!”
“Then…why didn’t you ask him to join you?”
“Hmm…”
It was rare for Yuuki not to have an immediate answer. She put on a distracted smile.
“He’s not right for us.”
“Wh…why?”
“He realized my secret.”
Yuuki and the others didn’t seem to want to talk about that, so Asuna couldn’t press further. She assumed the “secret” had to have something to do with her Absolute Sword strength, but whatever Kirito had noticed, Asuna couldn’t begin to guess.
Suddenly, the leprechaun Talken spoke up to change the topic, pushing his round glasses higher onto his nose.
“So…as far as concrete plans to beat the boss…Wh-where do we start?”
“Ah…well…”
Asuna took a deep swig from her mug of fruit-flavored beverage to smooth the doubt in her throat, and then held up a finger.
“The first and most important thing is to have clear knowledge of the boss’s attack patterns. If everyone evades when you need to evade, defends when you need to defend, and attacks like crazy when it’s time to attack, we might just stand a chance. The problem is how to gain that information…I don’t suppose it will work to ask the bigger guilds that focus on taking down bosses. I think it’ll be necessary to give it a preliminary attempt, with the expectation of failure.”
“Yeah, we’ll be fine with that! The problem is, on the last floor, and the one before that, we went in unprepared and lost, and then another guild won right after that,” Yuuki noted sadly. On the other side of the table, Jun the salamander frowned, his spiky eyebrows folding together.
“We went back to it just three hours later, and it was already over. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but…it was like they were waiting for us to fail…”
“Ahh,” said Asuna, putting her hand to her mouth to think.
She’d heard rumors about various confrontations surrounding boss fights recently. Usually it was about the bigger guilds trying to run everything, but would they really bother to pay attention to a measly six-man party? Still, some information couldn’t be ignored.
“Well, in that case, we should be well prepared and expect to retry it as soon as possible if we wipe once. What time would be most convenient for everyone?”
“Oh, sorry. Talken and I can?
??t do nights. How about one o’clock tomorrow afternoon?” said Nori, the well-built spriggan, scratching her head apologetically.
“Yeah, that works for me. Shall we meet at this inn at one tomorrow, then?”
The Sleeping Knights each offered a comment of agreement. Asuna looked at the group and energetically cried, “Let’s give it our best!”
At last, Asuna left the inn, patting Yuuki’s shoulder as the excited girl thanked her yet again, looking sad as she left. She decided the first step was to return to her group of friends. She trotted back to the teleport gate in the center of Rombal, gleefully imagining how shocked they would be when she explained all that had happened.
She navigated the streets as best she could on shaky memory, and had finally emerged in the bustling circular plaza—when something odd happened.
With the suddenness of a switch being flipped, the world went black. Asuna was plunged into darkness without sight or sound.
4
There was a sudden falling sensation, like she’d been hurled into a bottomless pit.
Suddenly, her sense of up and down shifted ninety degrees, and she felt a powerful pressure on her back. Next, Asuna tensed against the shock of each of her five senses violently reconnecting and resuming.
After a few eyelid twitches, she was able to pry teary eyes open to see the ceiling of her room. At last, the familiar softness of her bed registered on her skin. As she breathed, quick and short, the chaos of her senses finally began to subside.
What had happened? It could have been a momentary power outage or an issue with the AmuSphere. She took a deep breath at last and sensed the scent of a perfume that did not belong to her. She sat up, suspicion sinking in, and her mouth fell open.
Standing right next to her bed with a stern expression, holding a thin gray power cord in her hand, was Asuna’s mother. She had pulled the power directly out of the AmuSphere Asuna was wearing.
In other words, the abnormal disconnection was the result of Kyouko powering off the AmuSphere. “Wh-what was that for, Mother?!” Asuna protested.
But Kyouko only glanced silently at the north wall, her expression severe. Asuna followed her gaze and saw the hands of the wall clock indicating that it was about five minutes past six thirty. Her mouth twitched in surprise.
Kyouko said, “I told you when you were late to dinner last month—the next time you’re late because of this game, I’m going to pull the plug.”
Her tone was beyond cold, almost gloating. Asuna nearly shouted back at her. She looked down to stifle that urge and managed to emit, low and trembling, “It’s my fault for forgetting the time. But you didn’t have to pull out the cord. If you shook my body or shouted at my ear, it would send a warning inside to me…”
“The last time I did that, it took you five minutes to wake up.”
“That’s because…I had to travel, and say good-bye, and…”
“Good-bye? You’re prioritizing simple pleasantries in that nonsensical game over actual arrangements in real life? Don’t you care about the hard work that our help put into the meal, only for you to let it go cold?”
A number of arguments ran through Asuna’s head. Even in a game, they’re still real people. Besides, when you go work at your school, you routinely waste an entire day’s worth of cooking with a single phone call. But she only looked down again, sighing a trembling breath. Her eventual response was short and simple.
“…I’m sorry. I’ll be careful next time.”
“There won’t be a next time. The next time you let this thing ruin your actual responsibilities, I’ll take it away. Besides.” Kyouko sneered, glaring at the AmuSphere still attached to Asuna’s forehead. “I just don’t understand you anymore. That bizarre contraption has cost you two precious years of your life, don’t you understand? Why doesn’t it make you sick just to look at it?”
“This one isn’t like the NerveGear,” Asuna mumbled. She took the double-ringed circle off her head. After the lessons of the SAO Incident, the AmuSphere was constructed with several safety mechanisms to prevent that from happening again, but Asuna recognized that it would be pointless to say so. Besides, it was true that, different device or not, Asuna had been in a vegetative state for two years because of a VRMMO game. Her mother must have been worried sick during that time, and both of her parents probably steeled themselves for her eventual death. She understood why the woman would hate the device.
Her mother sighed in response to Asuna’s silence and turned for the door.
“It’s time to eat. Get changed and come down at once.”
“…I’m not hungry today.”
It wasn’t fair to Akiyo the housekeeper, who cooked dinner, but she was in no mood to sit across from her mother and eat now.
“As you wish,” Kyouko responded, shaking her head as she left. When the door clicked shut, Asuna reached for the room control panel and set it to vent, hoping to drive out the scent of her mother’s eau de toilette. Instead, it persistently hung in the air.
The excitement she’d felt about meeting Yuuki the Absolute Sword and her wonderful friends, and the anticipation of a new adventure with them, had melted like a snowball in the hot sun. Asuna stood up and opened the closet, slipping on a pair of damaged jeans with ripped knees. Next was a thick cotton parka and a white down jacket on top of that. They were some of the few clothes in her possession that weren’t chosen for her by her mother.
She straightened her hair and grabbed a bag and her cell phone before leaving the room. She got down the stairs and slipped on her sneakers at the front door when the security panel at the door screeched, “Asuna! Where are you going at this time of night?!”
Asuna ignored her and opened the door before her mother could remotely lock it. The instant the double doors opened, metal security bolts shot out from both sides, but Asuna slipped through them just in time. The damp, cold night air struck her face.
Only once she had crossed the driveway and escaped the property through the walk-in entrance to the side of the front gate did Asuna let out the breath she’d been holding. The vapor turned white before her eyes before dissipating into the air. She pulled the jacket zipper up to her neck and stuck her hands into her pockets, then started walking for the Miyanosaka station of the Tokyu Setagaya line.
She didn’t have a destination in mind. She’d run out of the house in an act of rebellion against her mother, but even Asuna knew it was just a pointless bit of childish posturing. The phone in her jeans pocket had a GPS tracker, so her mother knew where she was at all times—not that Asuna had the courage to leave her phone behind. That frustration with her own weakness only amplified the feeling of powerlessness in her chest.
Asuna stopped in front of a children’s park at the end of a row of large mansions. She sat down on the reverse U-shaped piece of metal pipe blocking the entrance of the park and pulled her phone out of her pocket.
She traced the screen with a finger, bringing up “Kirito”—Kazuto’s contact info from her address book. Her finger hovered over the CALL button, but Asuna held it there, shutting her eyes.
She wanted to call him and tell him to come pick her up on his motorcycle with an extra helmet. She wanted to sit on the back of that tiny, noisy, oddly speedy vehicle with her arms clenched around his midsection, riding straight along the major roads empty in the wake of the holiday. Just like flying at top speed in Alfheim, that would certainly clear the cobwebs out of her mind.
But if she saw Kazuto now, she would lose control of her emotions and break down into sobs, revealing all the things she wanted to keep secret from him. Her forced transfer from their school. The possibility that she might not be able to play ALO anymore. The cold reality that pushed her in a direction that had been erected for her since birth, and her inability to fight against it—in other words, her own weakness, which she had tried to keep hidden.
She moved her finger away from the screen and held the SLEEP button instead. After a brief squeeze of the phone, she put i
t back into her pocket.
Asuna wanted to be stronger. To have the strength of will to never waver in her decisions. The strength to proceed in the direction that she desired, without relying on someone else to take care of her.
But at the same time, a voice screamed that it wanted to be weaker. The weakness to not hide her true self, to cry when she wanted to cry. The weakness to cling, to cry out for protection and help.
A snowflake landed on her cheek and melted into water. Asuna looked up, silently watching the faint blots of light as they descended from the pale gloom of night.
5
“So basically, Yuuki, Jun, and Tecchi will be the forwards, Talken and Nori will be midrange, and Siune will be the backup.”
Asuna examined the lineup of the Sleeping Knights with their equipment on display, a finger to her chin. When she’d been introduced to them last night, they were all in their light ordinary wear, but now they were outfitted with powerful ancient weapons.
Yuuki had on her black half armor and longsword, like the day before. Jun the salamander was wearing a blazing bronze full plate that seemed out of place on his petite frame, and there was a greatsword on his back that nearly matched him in height.
Tecchi the enormous gnome also had thick plate armor, as well as a tower shield like a door. His weapon was a heavy mace with menacing protrusions on all sides.
The bespectacled leprechaun Talken’s slender build was covered in brassy light armor, and his weapon was a frightfully long spear. Next to him, the imposing lady spriggan Nori wore a loose cloth dogi without any metal, to go with a steel quarterstaff that nearly reached the ceiling.
And Siune the undine, the only mage of the group, wore a priestly cassock of white and navy blue, with a round, puffy hat like a brioche bun and a thin silver rod in her right hand. It was a well-balanced party on the whole, but they were a bit underserved when it came to buffing and healing.
“So it looks like I ought to take a support role,” Asuna noted, loosening her sword belt to exchange her rapier for a magic-boosting wand.