Elements

  Curren looked at Haruyuki, and a very faint smile crossed her lips. “I had fun as well. And thanks to you fighting so hard, I got to see the trump cards of more than a few Burst Linkers.”

  Indeed, in their first duel, with Nickel Doll and Sand Duct, after getting them to show off their so-called super-special attack, Aqua Current had crushed it before immediately bringing the fight into close-range combat and finishing both of them off with a blade of flowing water. The next three duels followed similar trajectories, so he felt like there had always been at least one tight spot. Naturally, as a bodyguard, Curren likely had had a strategy every time. She had no doubt been confident she could completely protect him if it came down to that.

  Recalling the thrilling fights, Haruyuki blurted, “If I had to say, I actually prefer settling things before the trump cards are played.”

  “That’s boring.” The slightly boyish girl smiled even more mysteriously.

  When he thought about this combined with the fact that she knew all about Silver Crow’s abilities beforehand, and above all else, the fact that she wanted his real information as payment for the job, it was obvious that she was collecting a wide range of information on all the Burst Linkers. However, what the purpose of that might have been, he couldn’t begin to imagine. And the answer to the question of whether or not she was actually a “she” was still as unclear as ever.

  The sense of relief at escaping his state of near death and his interest in the many mysteries of Aqua Current mixed together in his heart, causing Haruyuki to sigh once more. It seemed like no matter what they talked about, he would just butt up against these core questions one after another, so he tried tossing out a question that seemed harmless enough.

  “Um, speaking of which, I heard from a friend that this Chiyoda Ward area is always depopulated. Because on top of it being very large, there’s a no-entry zone right in the middle, which makes it hard to fight in.”

  “That’s essentially it.” Curren nodded, sending the turned-in ends of her short hair swinging, and took a sip of her still-steaming Darjeeling tea. “But there are a lot of schools from Ochanomizu to Jimbocho, and there are a number of Burst Linkers who call this place home as well. Everyone prefers to fight at home, so on Saturday afternoons, it’s customary for people to gather in this neighborhood to duel.”

  “W-wow…So then, is your home around here, too, Curren?” Haruyuki asked without thinking, but Curren naturally did not reply. Instead, she continued to explain in quiet neurospeak.

  “But I chose this place today because in the worst-case scenario, I could have you flee to the other side of the no-entry zone.”

  “O-oh! I get it.” He was deeply impressed and let out another long breath. In other words, for an experienced Burst Linker like Curren, the fight started from the selection of the area.

  Just because I escaped from a bad situation doesn’t mean I can sit back and be happy with that. I still have so much more to learn. My road as a Burst Linker is still only just beginning. First, as soon as possible, I have to get up to level four, where my partner—Taku—is waiting…

  When this thought crossed his mind, Haruyuki finally remembered that Takumu was physically waiting for him in the hamburger shop. It had already been over twenty minutes since they separated on the other side of the intersection. No doubt he was fretting about whether Haruyuki managed to recover his points safely or if he had lost everything.

  He hadn’t yet asked Curren anything about what he really wanted to know, but he had to report to Takumu first. He was sure to meet Curren again. And the next time, it wouldn’t be as client and bouncer, it would be as Burst Linkers.

  With this in mind, Haruyuki took a deep breath and lowered his head once more. “Um, I have a friend waiting nearby. I’m sure he’s worried, so I should maybe get going. Curren, really, thank you for today.”

  “You’re welcome. But…” A grin larger than anything he’d seen since he slammed into her in front of the washrooms spread across her lips. Pulled along by her good humor, his own lips started to turn up at the edges, and then she continued, “There’s still one more thing I have to get from you.”

  “Huh? S-sure, what’s that?” He set himself back down in his chair and blinked in surprise.

  Aqua Current’s eyes glittered on the other side of her red glasses. “The rest of my compensation.” And then her lips moved slightly as she soundlessly shouted the acceleration command.

  Skreeeee! The sound of impact slammed into Haruyuki’s consciousness. The lights went down in his field of view, and then he saw a familiar font blazing red:

  HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!

  The duel field on his fifth time that day was a Moonlight stage, pale light streaming down to the ground. Haruyuki stood stock-still on the roof of a palace-shaped building, dyed a color reminiscent of bones.

  There was no one in the Gallery around them. Because this was a direct duel, the field was closed and disallowed entry to anyone other than the combatants.

  A little ways off, the incarnation of water stood quietly, a pale gold in the moonlight. The only sound was the faint babbling of the four streams of water spilling off hands and feet and carving an arc in the air almost like wings on its return to her fountainhead.

  When the numbers of the timer, which started at 1,800, had reached 1,770, Haruyuki finally opened his mouth and uttered timidly, “Uh. Um, what is the rest of your compensation? Why go to all the trouble of a duel?”

  Eyes that shone blue beyond the flowing water blinked once, slowly. “To take all the points you have now as payment…Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

  Her voice had lost nearly all of the strong filter applied to it in the four battles up to that point; it sounded very much like Curren’s real-world voice.

  Considering this, Haruyuki slowly cocked his head.

  “My…points? No, but that’s—you just replenished them.”

  “At the same time as I replenished them, I collected information. Now that I’ve thoroughly analyzed your fighting abilities, I’ll take your points. This way is many more times effective than fighting solo to earn points.”

  Splrsh.

  The avatar took a step forward, accompanied by the light sound of water. But all Haruyuki could do was give voice to his next question, still standing stiff as a board.

  “You say that, but…you can’t exactly take seventy points in one duel.”

  “The scary thing about direct duels is that you can’t get the cable out right away. After the duel is over, you return to the real world, you move your real arm, you pull the cable out of your Neurolinker. But way before you can do all that, your opponent’s accelerated again.”

  Splrsh. Another step forward.

  “B-but I was told that there wasn’t a single Burst Linker who you had failed to protect, who had lost all their points.”

  “More correctly, it would be no one’s ever lost all their points in a normal duel with a Gallery. Can you really say that there are no Burst Linkers who didn’t disappear in a direct duel after that, without anyone knowing?” The words sent a shiver up his spine, and the water racing around her body sped up ever so slightly. “Now. Get ready. Show me everything you have.”

  A fierce intensity pushed at him from the slim avatar, and his breath stopped.

  Haruyuki had only felt this kind of pressure once before. On the roof of that hospital, the first time he set eyes on Black Lotus, the avatar of his teacher and parent, Kuroyukihime. Just that one time.

  Overawed, Haruyuki raised his arms and moved to ready them in front of and behind him. But he quickly dropped them again.

  “Do you give up?” Aqua Current asked, still emitting that same aura.

  Haruyuki slowly shook his head. “Um. Not quite.”

  Even now in this situation, his mind was quiet for some reason. He wasn’t giving up, but it wasn’t like he’d decided that everything Aqua Current had said had been a lie. It was just something modest yet important inside of h
im that lowered his hands.

  “Um. Since the first tag match I fought with you, Curren—no, since before that, when I bumped into you in front of the washroom, I’ve—I don’t know. I trusted you. Like, this is a good person; this person will definitely save me.”

  Beneath the flowing water, the blue eyes blinked once more. Staring at their light head-on, Haruyuki continued speaking.

  “It’s like, even if you betrayed that feeling, I don’t want to fight you with hatred. A little while ago, I fought with the friend who’s waiting for me downstairs. We fought for real. We threw all our feelings—all the anger and resentment we’d been carrying around for years—at each other. But at the end of that fight, I trusted him, and he trusted me. I decided then. Once I trust someone, I’m always going to trust them. Because…that’s the same as trusting yourself.” He took a deep breath, and smiling faintly beneath his mirror surface, he finished up, “And I…I dunno. I like you. And stuff. Girl or boy.”

  Hearing this, Aqua Current blinked once more, and the incredible pressure emanating from her entire body disappeared. She pulled both arms in, joining them to the water flow of her body.

  “I’m sorry. That was a lie.”

  The instant he heard this, even though he had believed that it was, Haruyuki did indeed stagger a little. He managed to brace himself, and after staring vacantly at Curren for a moment, he asked, “H-huh? Why would you do that?”

  “Because you directed so defenselessly. I wanted to scare you a little. But that didn’t work too well.”

  “Well, inside, I was super freaked-out.”

  Curren looked at Haruyuki, and smiled gently on the other side of her veil of water. Or at least, he felt like she did.

  Accompanied by the splashing of water as she approached him, she turned around at his side and looked up at the enormous moon hanging in the night sky. Haruyuki’s own gaze followed, and then a quiet voice reached his ears.

  “That friend…I want you to treasure him.”

  “Yeah…I’m going to.”

  “…A long, long time ago, I also had a lot of companions—friends. And a master who I trusted and loved more than anyone.”

  Her quiet voice rode the gentle babbling of the flowing water and flowed toward him. The sound made Haruyuki feel the long, long flow of time.

  “But something happened, and my companions all went different ways. My master disappeared from the Accelerated World. And my friends went far away, one after another. But I still believe that we’ll all come together again…that there will be a time when we can walk together, looking up at a beautiful night sky like this again.”

  Suddenly, Haruyuki felt like he saw a vision.

  A group of avatars marching along beneath the beautiful starry sky. Chatting excitedly, laughing together, they walked along to some distant land.

  “Yeah. I’m sure that time will come,” he said.

  Curren placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. She moved around from his left to stand in front of him and set her other hand on his other shoulder. This close up, Haruyuki met her gaze and felt like he briefly spied the true face of the water avatar.

  Aqua Current stared firmly into Haruyuki’s eyes and said with a smile, “What I said before was mostly a lie, but one thing was true.”

  “Huh? What?”

  “I need to receive the rest of my compensation, which only you can give me.”

  Haruyuki stared at her blankly.

  “It’s the me that’s inside you,” Curren murmured. “Memories of me.”

  “M-memories?”

  “Yes. It’s still a little early for you and me to be meeting. You have to support your master and walk with her one step at a time, hand in hand, down that long, long road. Until then, we Elements should not intervene.”

  Haruyuki didn’t understand the meaning of most of what Aqua Current was saying. His eyes wide open, the majority of his view was filled with the flow of transparent water and the glitter of those blue eyes.

  “Later on, as she starts to move forward on her own feet with her sword of faith drawn again, I’m sure we will meet once more. So right now, I’m going to erase the me within you.”

  “B-but, I mean, erasing memories…how…?”

  What Aqua Current was speaking of was absurd. Even though he knew that somewhere in his head, the gentle babbling of the streams and the flickering light itself blanketed his consciousness, washing away all thought.

  “I…I’m the only one who can. ‘People are a circuit filled with water—all knowledge and memory flowing is water itself.’…This is my will.”

  “W…ill…,” Haruyuki murmured absently, and Curren gently pressed her forehead up against his.

  The whole world was enveloped in water. From somewhere far away, he heard a voice.

  “Now. We part ways temporarily. We’ll meet again, Silver Crow. Someday at the end of the path that your wings guide you down…”

  Pssh pssh. Pssh pssh. The water had at some point started flowing into Haruyuki. It filled his consciousness, his thoughts, his memories, and passed through.

  “Memory Leak.”

  From very, very far away, he felt like he heard a voice. The white light of the babbling brook washed it all away—everything grew distant.

  Finally, there was the sound of someone’s gentle voice.

  Count to fifty and open your eyes.

  7

  …Forty-five, forty six, forty-seven… Eyes closed, he counted innocently. Forty-eight, forty-nine…fifty.

  He slowly opened his eyes.

  Round white table. It looked a lot like the ones in the lounge at school. On the table was a glass of orange juice with a third or so of the juice left. On the other side, an empty chair.

  He blinked rapidly and absently surveyed his surroundings. A cafeteria. At the other tables, young people his age and older customers were enjoying a brief afternoon respite, paper media in hand.

  I…I came here to duel. To replenish my few remaining burst points…I asked for the protection of the bouncer and fought together as a tag team…and we won. Right, we won. We got my points back up to seventy. Now I don’t have to be freaked about total loss anymore.

  The details of the fight were strangely hazy. In fact, it was like the memory flowed away along the edge when he tried to recall it. However, rather than thinking this strange, Haruyuki clenched both hands and held them up in a pose of determination.

  “I’m totally never leveling up by accident again!” he said in a quiet voice, and he hurriedly dropped his head at the doubtful stares he got from the people around him. Perhaps because of his immense relief, he was suddenly starving, and though he drained the remaining juice in the glass in a single gulp, it was still very much not enough.

  I’ll have a hamburger or something when I report to Takumu on the mission’s success.

  With this thought, Haruyuki threw himself to his feet. Befitting a cafeteria run by a bookstore, a paper bill had been inserted into the glass cylinder on the table. He pulled it out and checked it, but all it said, of course, was one orange juice at 380 yen.

  He settled up at the register—although this at least was through his Neurolinker—and rode the elevator down to the first floor. He passed the new releases display and headed outside. Pulling his head in at the chilly November wind, he crossed the road at the Suruga Daishita intersection just as the light turned green.

  Takumu was waiting in a fast-food place immediately on the other side. He snaked through the crowd and went to slip through the large automatic door. There was a woman coming out of the shop at the same time, so he stepped to one side and let her pass. Her inward-curling hair shook a dozen centimeters or so to the side, and a faint fragrance drifted up.

  Pssh. Pssh pssh.

  Abruptly, he felt like he heard the light babbling of a stream, and Haruyuki stopped in front of the automatic door.

  “Huh?” He looked back, but of course, there was no water flowing there. The sun was shining, and the tiles of
the sidewalk were dry.

  He thought that maybe someone had spilled a bottle of some drink, but there was no sign of anything like that. An older person carrying a bag with the logo of the bookstore on it, a group of foreigners who looked like tourists visiting the bookstore district that was Jimbocho, a girl in a peacoat moving away at a brisk pace—no one appeared to have heard the sound.

  Guess I imagined it.

  Turning around, Haruyuki forgot about the water and hurried through the automatic door of the hamburger shop. When he looked around, the sight of his friend waving his left hand wildly from a seat near the window leapt into view.

  He had apparently already guessed that the mission had gone well from the look on Haruyuki’s face. Even still, Haruyuki popped up the thumb on his right hand.

  He made a beeline for Takumu, whose fine features were wrinkled up in laughter almost to the point of tears.

  The Story Thus Far

  April 2047. Haruyuki Arita, Takumu Mayuzumi, and Chiyuri Kurashima have advanced to eighth grade at Umesato Junior High School and been placed in the same class. A few days earlier, Chiyuri succeeded in installing Brain Burst as Takumu’s “child,” and the three of them vowed to go forward hand in hand, not only as childhood friends, but also as comrades in the Legion Nega Nebulus.

  However, the appearance of a new enemy, in the form of new kendo team member Seiji Nomi, utterly destroyed the bond between the three. He beat down Takumu in kendo matches, he grasped Haruyuki’s weakness, he threatened Chiyuri—and he stole from Haruyuki the greatest strength of his duel avatar Silver Crow: the ability to fly.

  Haruyuki fell into an unprecedented abyss of despair. And on top of all this, their Legion Master, Kuroyukihime, was in far-flung Okinawa on a school trip. As Haruyuki tried to bear up and face this total adversity, he received a long-distance call one spring day from Kuroyukihime…

  1

  “I have to go. Okay, I’m hanging up now. Bye!”