Elements

  “S-seriously?” Opening his eyes wide in amazement, Haruyuki tried earnestly to digest what Takumu was saying. “Let’s see. So in other words, this Aqua teams up with new people at level one or two who are on the verge of losing everything and keeps winning tag-team matches while completely protecting them?”

  “That’s basically it.”

  “Th-that’s kinda amazing and stuff. He has to be some kind of super-high-level veteran, huh? Like level seven or eight, practically a king…”

  Takumu smiled faintly at Haruyuki’s tone of admiration and shook his head lightly before announcing the most surprising thing of the day. “No. One of Aqua Current’s nicknames is The One. He’s…level one.”

  Heading south for fifteen minutes or so down Meidai Street as he mulled over the previous day’s conversation, Haruyuki saw a large intersection come into view ahead of him. This region that bumped up against Yasukuni Street was Kanda Jimbocho, the largest book neighborhood in the world, an area in existence since the previous century.

  It went without saying that in the present day of 2046, book was a word that indicated electronic Neurolinker publications. Everything had been shifted online, from publishing to selling, and the act of reading the books purchased by readers, using a special viewer on their virtual desktops, had of course been made into a book culture of “full dives in a preferred environment and within a preferred format” for the reader’s enjoyment.

  However, there were still many people who insisted that a book was not digital data, but something that must actually exist printed on real paper and bound. Haruyuki did feel a longing for the beautifully bound hardcover books like the ones that Kuroyukihime often read in the school lounge, and he remembered fondly the large encyclopedias in the collection of his father, whose face he could no longer clearly see in his mind.

  The bookstores that existed in the real world had seemed unable to overcome the relentless shift to e-books and had been faced with extinction, but they had survived by specializing to meet the needs of these peculiar customers. Rather than selling books, they now created them: They printed onto paper and bound the e-books their customers brought in. In other words, “bookstores” did business functioning like the old printers, along with selling new releases of the few paper media and old books that existed, and even now they were concentrated in Kanda Jimbocho.

  Haruyuki and Takumu were headed toward a large bookstore facing the Suruga Daishita intersection. On the roof of the building, perhaps out of the stubbornness of a standard bearer for paper culture, the advertisement featuring a character from a book for younger people was printed out on a large panel of actual paper (rather than being AR), and was proudly enshrined on the top of the building. Since they had both cut off their connection to the global net, the only commercial advertisement in their field of view was this billboard.

  In response to the job details Haruyuki had sent the previous night to the mail address that was his official contact point, the mysterious bouncer Aqua Current had designated as the place of their first meeting the cafeteria that shared the top floor of the bookstore building. As Takumu took the lead and started to cross the street to that bookstore, Haruyuki tugged lightly on his sleeve.

  “You can wait here, Taku.”

  “Huh? But…” His childhood friend shook his head.

  Haruyuki lowered his voice as he said firmly, “Being exposed in the real is the biggest taboo. Once your real identity is out there, you never know when you’ll be PKed, right? I don’t have any choice but to pay that price, given that I’m on the verge of losing everything. But there’s no need for you to be exposed to that danger, too. It’d just be senseless obstinacy.”

  “…Okay.” Fortunately, Takumu nodded, even while the look on his face said he wasn’t completely convinced, and he indicated a nearby burger place with his eyes. “Then I’ll wait over there. And I’ll be hoping for good news.” He took a step back, and then it was Takumu grabbing hold of Haruyuki’s arm tightly. “Good luck, Haru. Everything’s just barely started.”

  If, hypothetically, there was a tag-team match right after he met the bouncer to recover his points, it was possible that he would have the misfortune to lose in the first duel and then lose Brain Burst. Haruyuki nodded deeply, trembling slightly.

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t plan on getting off the train here, though. Don’t worry. I’m gonna do everything I can to earn points. And then I’ll be back.”

  “That sounds like something the hero of, like, a con game movie or something would say as he goes off to do some dangerous job and score a huge payoff.” Takumu’s face switched from nervous tension to a broad grin all at once. There was no doubt he was trying to ease Haruyuki’s own tension.

  …Even though, in movies like that, the hero’s plan never actually went off without a hitch.

  But Haruyuki grinned, silently grateful for his friend’s thoughtfulness, and returned in the sunniest voice possible, “It’s very similar in a way, you know. But those movies always have a happy ending, right…? Okay, I’m off!”

  He took a step back and lifted a hand in a wave before running across the street just as the light turned green.

  The smell of paper, evoking a vague fondness in him, wafted through the large bookstore. The first and second floors were for sales of new releases. The third and fourth floors were used books. The fifth and sixth were on-demand printing and binding of e-books, and the seventh floor was the cafeteria, where readers could delve into those newly printed books.

  Haruyuki took the elevator straight up to the seventh floor and looked around the large space from the entrance. About two-thirds of the thirty or so tables were full, and the majority of customers had a drink in one hand as they turned paper pages. Surprisingly, there were more than a few younger people of about junior and senior high school age. Groups of three or four brought their heads together over thin booklets, and people read pocket-size paperbacks alone. It was impossible to identify which one was Aqua Current. And it was possible Aqua Current wasn’t even in the cafeteria.

  However, having come this far, all he could do was accept his fate. The instant the time display in the lower right of his vision showed the appointed one thirty PM, he stepped into the cafeteria and told the older waiter at the counter exactly what he had been instructed to in the mail. “Um…I’m meeting someone at table seventeen.”

  With a quick “Right this way,” he was shown to an empty table; whether that was good or bad, he didn’t know. Sitting on the natural wood tabletop was a still-steaming cup of coffee and a small shopping bag. At any rate, he sat down in one of the two chairs, and after glancing at the paper menu the waitress handed him, he ordered an orange juice.

  Exhaling loudly, Haruyuki checked his surroundings once more. The table was next to the window, so to his immediate right on the other side of the organically variable light window was a view of Jimbocho. The customers at the tables in front of him and to his left were both adults. He didn’t feel anyone looking at him, but Aqua Current had to be checking him out from somewhere.

  He had gotten that far when a faint electronic beeping tickled his eardrums. And then again a few seconds later. That was when he realized the source of the sound was inside the white shopping bag on the table.

  After the beeping went off a third time, he hesitantly stuck a hand in the bag, and his fingertips grazed a thin, panel-shaped object. Gingerly pulling it out, he saw that it was a black tablet device, a type of multi-use portable terminal that had been in widespread use before Neurolinkers became practical. On the seven-inch EL monitor, a single window and a software keyboard were displayed. In the window was nothing but the single line of text: ENTER YOUR NAME.

  Reflexively, he typed ARITA and then hurriedly pushed the backspace button before moving his fingers once more. The text he input was, of course, SILVER CROW. He had no sooner touched the ENTER key than the screen changed completely. At the same time, he heard a small electronic beep, different in tone from before.
Haruyuki looked at what appeared on-screen next and gasped.

  A boy with hair that just wouldn’t lie flat, weakly angled eyebrows, round eyes, and pudgy cheeks—none other than Haruyuki himself. His picture had been taken by the small camera built into the upper part of the device. The photo disappeared, immediately replaced by the next window popping up.

  PAYMENT HAS BEEN RECEIVED. REQUESTED SERVICE WILL BEGIN AT 1:40 PM. PREPARE AND WAIT AS YOU ARE.

  This new text also disappeared in a mere ten seconds. The device turned itself off, and the monitor went black.

  As he automatically returned the tablet to its original home in the shopping bag, Haruyuki couldn’t stop himself from belatedly rethinking the whole thing. Why? Why is the bouncer Burst Linker Aqua Current…doing something like this?

  His orange juice arrived, and he drank half of it down in one go; his brain used the fuel to rev back up to full throttle. It was true that a Burst Linker’s real name and photo were information with a very real weight in the Accelerated World. Once they got out, it was all over. Outlaws known as Physical Knockers, or PKs for short, would attack you in the real and steal every last one of your burst points. As long as there were buyers, you could probably sell the information for a pretty penny.

  But Aqua Current’s clients were without exception on the verge of losing all their points, and newbies at level one or two on top of that. Such Linkers wouldn’t be prey for real attacks. But maybe he collected once the players had grown or something? He got a player’s photo and then got their points back into the safe range before flying off to sell the info to some PK, months later?

  But the night before, Takumu had said that not a single one of the people Aqua Current protected were victims of real attacks, then or later. Put another way, if there ever had been even one case like that, Aqua Current’s ratings would drop through the floor, and people would stop hiring him.

  In short, the questions of why he persisted in this bodyguard play style and why he demanded real information in payment were still the same enormous mysteries as before.

  By the time Haruyuki reached this conclusion, the clock was coming up on 1:35. He felt a wave of nervousness rising up from his stomach, along with another signal from a nearby region.

  “Yikes.” Haruyuki hurriedly looked around the cafeteria and stood up once he noted the washroom sign. During duels, the physical desires of your real-world body were basically cut off, but taking care of what could be taken care of beforehand was something like Burst Linker etiquette.

  He hung his jacket on the back of his chair and then walked briskly toward the washrooms. Honestly. The world’s advanced with computerization to this extent, why can’t they make it so that you can take care of expelling unnecessary fluid online or something…

  Perhaps because his mind was taken up with such pointless thoughts; or perhaps because he was walking hunched over, facedown, as was his wont; or perhaps because his Neurolinker was cut off from the global net; or maybe thanks to all these factors—when he started down the hallway with the washroom sign, Haruyuki was just the tiniest bit delayed in noticing the existence of someone coming from around the corner.

  That person had stopped about a meter back, so if Haruyuki had actually been watching where he was going, he could have avoided a collision. But with his head hanging and his mind racing, he only finally understood the situation when brown short boots entered his field of view.

  “Ah!” he cried out in a tiny voice, and hurried to put on his emergency brakes. But his real-world body was too dull, and he couldn’t completely control the amount of inertia he had.

  Seeing Haruyuki staggering forward, the other person quickly took a step to the left. So if he had simply continued on the way he was, it would have ended with him alone tripping a little. Or it should have.

  But at the same time as the other person moved, Haruyuki foolishly tried to change course in the same direction. Breathing faster in shallow panic, he tried to return to his original course. But that movement was catastrophic; the left foot that should have gone out before him got caught on his right foot. After that, all he could do was fly forward like the physical attack of a blue-type duel avatar.

  Along with a series of sensations that he would have written out as wham boing fwump thud, Haruyuki dragged the other person along with him as he tumbled heavily to the floor.

  At least, at the very least, please let this not be one of the following people: (1) a senior citizen, (2) a girl or woman, or (3) a scary person.

  “Ngh…ngh…”

  From the voice uttered from extremely nearby, it was clear that Haruyuki’s single-minded prayers had not been heard; the person was obviously (2). All he could do then was pray that (3) was not also a condition met. He rolled his body, which was pressed up against the other person, off to the left, and picked himself up, pressing his back against the wall, as he apologized in an almost soundless voice, “I—I’m—I’m—I’m sorr—”

  In the center of his field of view blurred by sweat or tears, the person Haruyuki had bodychecked finally sat up. Given that she had been stopped, the blame for not paying attention/going too fast/taking his eyes off the road was 100 percent his. And on top of that, no matter how he looked at it, the other person was a girl his own age—in other words, the type of person Haruyuki was most likely to find himself unable to communicate with.

  Her physique was fairly slender, and she was wearing a gray peacoat with skinny jeans. Her hair was short, the ends turned neatly inward. And on her fine-featured face were glasses, rarely seen these days, with red plastic frames. She very much looked the part of a girl who liked books, and hardcovers in particular.

  It didn’t look like (3) applied, for which he felt the slightest sense of relief, as he bowed his head deeply once again. “Uh, I really am so sorry. I wasn’t really watching where I was going.”

  “It’s fine,” the girl in glasses said briefly, as she stood up. Looking around, she reached a hand out to a spot on the floor near Haruyuki. He saw a small shoulder bag lying there and reflexively reached out to pick it up.

  “Oh! Don’t…,” the girl said quietly.

  “Huh?” Surprised, Haruyuki piled on yet another mistake. He lifted the bag up from the bottom, the flap fell open, and a small panel-shaped something tumbled out.

  “So—Sorry!” The third apology caught in his throat like a hiccup as he reached out for the thing that had fallen on the floor.

  The girl inhaled sharply and quickly leaned over at the same time. But Haruyuki, sitting on the floor, was just the tiniest bit faster. He picked up the portable net terminal, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand and unusual for this day and age, and went to return the device to the bag. That was when he caught a glimpse of the terminal’s monitor.

  “Huh?” The half-formed question slipped from his mouth.

  Maybe because the impact of the fall had been detected with a motion sensor and woken the device from sleep, the monitor was flashed on. That was fine. The problem was the photo displayed on the screen. He brought his face in close and stared hard.

  “Please give that back,” the girl said quietly, and tried to grab the terminal.

  But Haruyuki unconsciously retracted his hand to prevent her from doing so. Because what the monitor was showing him was the unappealing face of a boy with ruffled hair, round eyes, plump cheeks. No matter which angle he looked at it from, there was no way it could be anyone other than Haruyuki Arita.

  “What…is this…? How…?” Holding the terminal reverently with both hands, Haruyuki looked up, dumbfounded, at the girl in glasses.

  Her small face stiffened, and the corners of her eyes twitched as she plucked the terminal from his hands, but she made no motion to leave.

  It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that this girl had fallen in love with Haruyuki at first sight and secretly taken his picture. It wasn’t impossible, but the probability was pretty close to that of an enormous meteorite falling to the ground and destroyi
ng the earth the following day. In other words, the chances were that—no, it was definite that…

  While this bookish girl was, according to his previous classification, (2) a girl, she was also (4) a Burst Linker. With this portable terminal, she had operated Haruyuki’s matching tablet from the women’s washroom. The photo his tablet’s camera had taken had been sent to her portable terminal, and then she had collided with him on the way out of the washroom.

  If that was the case, then this girl before him was the bouncer meant to save him, the legendary Burst Linker nicknamed “The One.”

  “Aqua Current?”

  At this, the bespectacled girl turned her face up to the ceiling and slumped back against the wall.

  4

  At any rate, Haruyuki took care of his business. When he came out of the boys’ washroom, the girl in glasses accompanied him silently to the table he had been at before. They sat down across from each other, and she stared at him wordlessly.

  Very much unable to meet her eyes, Haruyuki shrank into himself as far as he could and checked her out with upward glances. Looking at her again in this bright area, he found that, while she was conservative in her clothing and hairstyle, including the glasses, there was also an air of mystery about her that made him hold his breath. Her eyes were “dark”—he wasn’t sure if that was the right word, but they made him feel like their depths were not visible to him; there was something fathomless to them. A certain kind of pressure that faintly reminded him of someone else…

  Abruptly, the girl—although, that said, she was probably a year or two older than him—reached a hand into her bag and pulled out a disc-shaped object, two silver plugs sticking out from the sides. An XSB cable with a cord reel. She pulled out one plug, lifted her turned-under short hair, and inserted the plug into her white, semitransparent Neurolinker. She then pulled out the other plug and slid it across the table toward Haruyuki.