The Red Crest

  “Wh-whoa?!” Haruyuki threw his head back fiercely at the white (steam and foam from the call location) and light pink (the bare skin of the caller) that was deployed in his field of view. The momentum sent him tumbling off the sofa, but of course, the window did not disappear.

  “Hey, Fuko, what are you looking up at the ceiling for?”

  “I forgot to give a warning about one little thing.”

  “Warning? To whom?”

  This back-and-forth held the unique echo of the bathroom and filled Haruyuki’s hearing. There was no room for doubt that the owners of the voices—which equaled the owners of the bare skin—were Kuroyukihime and Fuko.

  I can’t look! He squeezed his eyes shut, and even pressed both hands over his eyelids, but the window was displayed on his virtual desktop—it was actually inside his head, so it wouldn’t disappear with these sorts of actions. In fact, closing his eyes cut off the bright light of the living room, making the live video window even more vivid.

  In the center of this window, Fuko Kurasaki, foam like whipped cream strategically positioned on her body, smiled brightly as she looked directly up at the camera. “Corvus, I’ll say this just in case. If you should happen to run out while we’re in the bath, you know verrrrry well what will happen, okay? ”

  Y-y-y-y-yes, o-o-of course, I know! But before Haruyuki could answer—

  “Wh-wh-whaaaaaat?!” A cry that closely resembled a rival character from the shonen comics of the last century rang out on the other side of the camera. “F-F-F-F-F-Fuko, you didn’t actually connect a live circuit with Haruyuki, did you?!”

  “Now, now, it’s all right, Sacchi. I’m protected with carefully calculated angles and obstacles. ”

  Just as she said, due to the foam from the body soap and the angle of her body, only Fuko’s left arm and back were shown on the right side of the window.

  However, in front of her, Kuroyukihime had apparently been having her hair washed by Fuko and was, befittingly for the Black King who poured all her potential into attack power, without defense or maybe taking a no-guard battle strategy.

  “A-a-and what about me?!” Shouting, she wrapped her arms around her own body, but this action only further weakened her thin foam armor.

  No, Kuroyukihime! We’re still in junior high! Haruyuki cried out in his mind as he tried to turn his face away. But, naturally, the window chased after it, so the effort was in vain. And he couldn’t even remember the simple fact that all he had to do was disconnect the circuit or minimize the window with the hands currently covering his eyes.

  “Sheeah!” Suddenly, Kuroyukihime’s arm flashed out in a move like one of Black Lotus’s thrusting techniques, and the lump of foam she launched covered the camera on the ceiling of the bath in a thick layer.

  Haruyuki stared with a mental Ah! at the window dyed a single shade of white, and in his ears, he heard the voice of his Legion Master.

  “Haruyuki.”

  “Y-yes?” he replied ever so timidly.

  “While we’re in the bath, get three direct cables ready at the emergency disconnection hub,” she said in a tone that could even be considered kind. “It seems tonight’s special training is going to go long.”

  Getting the emergency disconnection ready meant they were diving not into the normal duel field but rather the Unlimited Neutral Field. In that case, the words “go long” held a truly terrifying nuance. Like someone saying “This is going to be a long trip…” in some sci-fi space movie as the crew, from a faster-than-light-speed ship, gazes at their home star.

  “L-long? Like how long…?” Haruyuki asked, not knowing when to give up.

  Kuroyukihime’s response was crisp. “Long enough that you’ll completely forget this video feed.”

  2

  Rubbing her hair with a towel as she returned to the living room, Kuroyukihime looked in turn at the three XSB cables and the small hub set out on the glass table, then at the glass of mineral water Haruyuki reverently held out to her, and nodded. “Mmm.”

  She accepted the glass and drank the water down, the ice lightly clinking. Standing at attention before her, Haruyuki sent glances at his Legion Master, fresh from the bath.

  Her warm, gray pajamas were the ones she had bought at the shopping mall attached to the condo on the day of her unexpected sleepover a month earlier. At the time, she had grumbled that they didn’t have black, but she had actually brought them with her today. The top was short-sleeved, while the bottoms were knee-length, so her flushed pink skin offered a vivid contrast with the gray of the fabric.

  Perhaps this thought was a trigger; in that instant, the live video from earlier started to puff up and start playing in his head. Kuroyukihime pressed the glass, now with nothing but ice in it, up against his cheek.

  “Heeyaaah?!” Leaping up, Haruyuki then faced a direct hit from the special attack Super Chilly Kuroyukihime Smile.

  “If you don’t hurry and forget the things you should forget, the time we dive in the Unlimited Neutral Field will only get longer, you know, Haruyuki.”

  “Uh, um, we’re not doing the zero G training anymore?”

  “That’ll make us sick—I mean, I don’t like the background texture, so we’ll do it next time. Or are you saying that you’d like to try and firm up your memories in a weightless space?”

  “N-noofcoursenotridiculous! I’ll forget everything—I’ve already forgotten! I’ve completely forgotten!” he shouted, moving his hands and head from side to side on a horizontal.

  “Oh my, is that so, Corvus? So then, are you telling me you’ve forgotten my heartfelt warning?” Now it was Fuko’s voice echoing in the living room, and Haruyuki’s entire body snapped to a stop, frozen.

  He turned toward her, emerging slightly behind Kuroyukihime, with her Vacuum Smashing Raker Smile, and protested vehemently, “N-n-n-no, I didn’t forget! I remember! I completely remember!”

  “What? Those words are going to extend your special training by a month, you know?”

  “N-n-n-no, I don’t remem— No, I forg— Wait, um…” Flapping his hands, he displayed his powerful Mega Stunned Haruyuki Panic.

  The two older girls suddenly let out small giggles and then began to laugh out loud in earnest. Unable to react any further, Haruyuki could only freeze in place.

  Five minutes later.

  In a state of total lethargy in reaction to the too-great mental load, Haruyuki stared vacantly from a ways off on the carpet at Fuko’s handling of the blow dryer she held to Kuroyukihime’s hair.

  In contrast with the simple gray pajamas that were Kuroyukihime’s sleepwear, Fuko’s was a pale-blue, fluttering negligee. Since she was sitting on the sofa with her legs out to one side, about 65 percent of her shapely legs were exposed beneath the lacy hem. Normally, he very much wouldn’t be able to turn his gaze in that direction, but he was currently in a state of mental shutdown, so thinking it had to be okay, he took in this sight, more beautiful than anything.

  “Ah!” A small cry of realization fell from his mouth. Now, he did hurriedly look away. And then hung his head deeply. It wasn’t that he had seen something he shouldn’t have; just the opposite. When he looked at Fuko, something that normally would definitely have entered his view did not now: her trademark over-the-knee socks.

  “It’s all right, Corvus,” she said, suddenly.

  A shudder ran through his body. But he couldn’t lift his face. “B-but…” Head still hanging, he managed to get this out.

  “Right from the start today, I wanted you to see, Corvus,” came her immediate, gentle response. “So, go on then, please lift your face.”

  “……”

  After hesitating another few seconds, Haruyuki nervously started to move his gaze. His eyes traced out the striped pattern on the carpet, reached the angle of the sofa, and went left. Finally, his field of view captured two snowy white, bare legs. The nails shining brilliantly at the ends of the toes and the line of the metatarsals popping up slightly were entirely without uncann
iness, but the construction of these legs was different from Kuroyukihime’s or Haruyuki’s. They were artificial, made of metal and biocompatible nanopolymers—prosthetic legs.

  Going back from the legs to the negligee, Haruyuki finally met Fuko’s eyes again, and she greeted him with a smile more gentle than anything.

  “Please come closer, hmm?”

  Kuroyukihime, having her hair brushed by Fuko, also encouraged Haruyuki with an unusually warm smile.

  Steeling his resolve, he lifted himself up from the carpet and crawled over to the girls on all fours. When he plopped down on the floor again, Fuko’s hand stopped, and she sat up straight on the sofa. At the same time, the noise of a motor so faint Haruyuki normally didn’t notice it reached his ears.

  “About eighty percent of the output is covered by artificial muscle fibers, but fine control is difficult with just that, so I still need servo motors in the joints.” Her fingertip traced the knee area.

  When he looked closely, a faint line ran around the leg, about five centimeters wide, at the kneecap. Other than that, it was really impossible to tell the leg apart from a biological one. This line, normally covered by her over-the-knee socks, was probably the connection between her real leg and the prosthetic, but the precision with skin color, the continuity of faint shadows was such that it was thoroughly impossible to believe that the area above the line was flesh and the area below it machine.

  “It’s. Amazing. It’s like…a work of art. Um, if they’re this beautiful, I wonder…if you really need to wear socks,” Haruyuki murmured.

  Fuko giggled and ran her fingers from the connection line up to the thigh above. “The reason I wear the knee socks isn’t to hide my prosthetic legs, but to protect the artificial skin. In fact, from this line until about fifteen centimeters up is, strictly speaking, not biological.”

  “Huh?”

  “The attachment socket is covered in nanopolymer skin and wraps up my own legs. They’re fused on the skin cell level, so I can’t take off the attachment part by myself anymore.”

  “Your own…legs,” Haruyuki repeated in a quiet voice.

  “I talked to you a little about this before.” Fuko started to nod slowly. “My legs aren’t missing because of an accident or an illness, but because of a hereditary genetic defect. So the fetal defect would have been reported to my parents fairly early on in the pregnancy.”

  The expression on the face of the older girl as she told this story didn’t seem to be at all different from her usual look, but the end of her sentence trembled just for the hint of a second. Sitting alongside her, Kuroyukihime moved about ten centimeters to the side to bring her body up against Fuko’s. She placed her hand on her friend’s knee.

  As if encouraged by this contact, Fuko began anew: “Normally, with a defect like missing legs, the parents would think about aborting. There was a real possibility that I wouldn’t get life in this world…At the time, actually, my parents apparently really struggled with it. Considering that, I should be grateful they allowed me to be born. But…ever since I was little, until this year, when I turned sixteen, this feeling of resentment toward my parents has stabbed into my heart like a small thorn. Why…why did they give birth to me…?”

  “…”

  Unable to immediately think of something to say, Haruyuki clenched his hands tight, still sitting on his knees on the carpet.

  All Burst Linkers carried in a place deep in their hearts their own individual wounds. The Brain Burst program used these wounds as a forge to produce the duel avatar, so an avatar’s appearance and abilities inevitably reflected the state of these wounds, although the degree to which they did so varied.

  The most significant characteristic of Fuko’s other self, Sky Raker, was not the beautiful female-type duel avatar itself, but the Enhanced Armament it had been born with, Gale Thruster. A streamlined rocket booster equipped on her back, although its firing time was short, the thrust surpassed even Silver Crow’s flying ability.

  Fuko had once described Gale Thruster as “incomplete wings”—that her feeling of being afraid of reaching the sky even as she sought it produced its absolute maximum altitude of three hundred meters. However, that was not the case. Haruyuki and Fuko had learned this in the final stage of the Hermes’ Cord race, at the pinnacle of the orbital elevator they reached together. Gale Thruster—no, the duel avatar Sky Raker—hadn’t been born to fly, instead bound to the surface of the earth by gravity.

  “But, you know, that thorn, Corvus…You pulled it out for me.”

  Sunk into thought as he was, these words reached Haruyuki’s ears in a cloud.

  The servo motors made a slight operation noise, and Fuko got down off the sofa and dropped to her knees in front of Haruyuki. She shifted to a more formal kneeling position with such a smooth motion, it was no different from biological legs, then reached out her left hand. Her soft palm gently wrapped around Haruyuki’s clenched fist.

  “What you said to me at the end of the Hermes’ Cord race, ‘You’ve always been a duel avatar meant to fight in space’…these words made me finally realize what’s important. That…maybe there’s meaning even in being born with legs that are only less than half as long as a healthy person’s.”

  “Meaning…”

  “Yes.” Fuko nodded and took her hand away from Haruyuki’s fist, which had loosened at some point, and touched her own leg with her palm. “In the bottom of my heart, somewhere so deep that even I can’t see it, I’m sure I’ve wanted it all this time. A world that’s natural with these legs. That’s…”

  “A weightless environment?” Unconsciously, Haruyuki finished Fuko’s sentence for her.

  The gentle smile before his eyes moved slowly up and down. “I’d forgotten for a long time, but when I was still in the lower grades of elementary school, before I became a Burst Linker, I read this small paper media book at the library nearby. It was science fiction for adults, so the kanji characters and terminology were difficult, and I struggled with them, but I used the AR furigana reading function in my Neurolinker and pushed myself to keep reading. Because that book was about children who were given arms instead of legs through genetic engineering to be more adapted to a weightless environment. It was almost like I was one of them. I was totally captivated.”

  Here, Fuko’s smile changed into something a little sadder.

  “The book was incredibly old, published in the last century, so there wasn’t a rating chip embedded in it. Which was why I could read it; it was actually designated as fifteen or older. So halfway through, the librarian found me and took it away. I just had to read it to the end, so I tried to get my parents to buy me the digital media version, but there wasn’t one. The PM version was removed from the library before too long, and I never did get to finish it.”

  She moved pale fingers gently on her knees as though tracing them across a paper page.

  In Haruyuki’s brain, novels, manga, and anime were things scattered around as data on the network. It was hard for him to imagine a book you could lose and never read again, but even so, for some reason, he felt like he could understand Fuko’s sad bittersweetness.

  “Of course, I was very sad.” Lifting her face, Fuko continued, “But I was a child, so eventually, I forgot about the book, and now I can’t even remember the title or the author’s name. But…I suppose that desire, me also wanting to go to a weightless world, remained somewhere in my heart all this time. After that, when I became a Burst Linker, the program took the mold of this wound and desire that even I had forgotten and produced Sky Raker and Gale Thruster.”

  She stopped there and looked back at their Legion Master, who was still on the sofa. The pajama-clad Kuroyukihime looked at her friend with a tranquil expression and then finally, soundlessly, stood up and sat down so that she was on Fuko’s left side.

  Fuko’s mouth stayed shut for a while before she started again in a slightly softer tone. “But because I forgot my true wish, I set my sights on something stunted in the Acceler
ated World. If I had realized sooner that the place my avatar symbolized was not the sky, but space beyond that; if I could have believed in the existence of a Space stage that would someday come and had waited for it—I wouldn’t have made Sacchi so sad, I wouldn’t have created the trigger for the destruction of the Legion—”

  “You’re wrong, Fuko.” Kuroyukihime reached out both hands abruptly and wrapped her arms around the girl to cut her off. “If we’re going to talk about blame, then it also lies with me and all our Legion members for not trying to understand the strength of the feelings you were holding back all that time. You reached level eight to be freed of the yoke of gravity, and still you were not permitted to touch the sky. I should have understood and accepted you, the fact that you were willing to cast aside even your avatar’s legs. But rather than doing so, I chastised you. I was so reluctant to lose your combat abilities. I was the one pushing my desire to become level ten on everyone in the Legion, an act of ultimate self-righteousness.”

  At that time, Haruyuki hadn’t been a member of Nega Nebulus—he hadn’t even been a Burst Linker—so he could only guess at the details of the situation. But from the bits and pieces of information he had gained so far, he thought he had grasped the facts at least.

  Two and a half years earlier, in the winter of 2044, the first Nega Nebulus had been destroyed. The sequence of events leading up to this tragedy was tangled and complex. The fact that Kuroyukihime accepted Fuko’s request and amputated Sky Raker’s legs with her own sword. The fact that at the meeting of the Seven Kings immediately after that, she had taken the head of the first Red King Red Rider, who was insisting on the necessity of a mutual nonaggression pact. And the fact that even later, everyone in the Legion had taken on the challenge of attacking the Castle and the utterly impenetrable guard of the Four Gods. These were not all unrelated incidents.