“…the other is Iron Pound.”
“Huh, okay. Even if he is on the enemy side, I’m glad Utan’s back to his old— Wait, whaaaaat?!” Haruyuki involuntarily shrieked at the third name Rin uttered so casually. If he had heard right, Rin’s attacking team included the fearsome boxer avatar, number three of GW’s Six Armors, also known as “Iron Fist.”
“Heeeeey, Prez! How long you gonna jabber over there? Job’s not even close to done here!”
Izeki had apparently overcome her numbness, and at the sound of her voice, Haruyuki was forced to once again put the situation on hold. Before the Territories, he had to first take care of his club work right now. It was unclear how Izeki was interpreting Rin’s presence, but if Haru neglected to explain it, he had the feeling that by next week, an extremely suspicious rumor would be flying around the second floor of the main school building.
Returning to the hutch with Rin still hanging from his shirt, Haruyuki blathered on with an explanation he forcefully twisted out in an even shriller voice. “Uh, um, Izeki, this is Kusakabe, but she’s, uh…You know there’s a special Matsunogi Academy member of the club, right? So she’s a friend of her friend, and she came to help out today.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. Fuko Kurasaki, who was a “friend” of the special member Utai Shinomiya, was the “master” of Rin Kusakabe. That she had come to help was something Haruyuki made up on the spot, but it was possible to make that true after the fact. He would just have to get Rin to actually help with the cleaning now.
“Hmmmm.” Izeki made a long, noncommittal sound, perhaps accepting this, perhaps not, and she flicked her eyes back and forth between Rin and Haruyuki. “You got it going on, huh, Prez? Maybe, like, I’m in the way?”
“I-I-I’m not doing anything! And y-y-you’re not in the way at all; you’re super helpful, super!”
Possibly acknowledging his shrieked reply, Izeki nodded her head, sending her curls swinging. “’Kay,” she said. “Anyway, I’ll keep cleaning or whatever. What’re we gonna do after collecting all the leaves? Burn ’em?”
“I-if we burn them, the patrol cars’ll be here super fast, super!”
“That was a joke.” Grinning, his colleague returned to the hutch, and Haruyuki followed her with a heavy breath.
Rin finally released his shirt, and he handed her the broom he had in his right hand before setting himself to fetch the dustpan and a garbage bag from the small cupboard beside the hutch.
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning snapped through the space between his eyebrows.
Murderous intent…?! Before he leapt back, a voice announcing a new danger rang out through the yard.
“Ah! Haru, what exactly is going on here?!”
His entire body froze with a start, and Haruyuki seriously considered whether he should turn toward the east, the direction the voice had come from, or run away to the southwest, toward the central courtyard. If Izeki hadn’t been there, he might well have chosen the latter, but the president couldn’t very well abandon his members in the middle of work and flee.
Left with no other choice, his body creaking like the wheels of a gear, Haruyuki turned and saw Chiyuri in her tracksuit, holding up a shopping bag full of what were likely refreshments.
To her left stood Utai Shinomiya, red backpack slung over her shoulders, carrying a second bag with a meal for Hoo in her hand. Farther back, smiling brightly, but still clad in an aura that forced Haru to conjecture certain things, was Fuko Kurasaki. And then, walking to Chiyuri’s right, dressed in her jet-black custom uniform, her beauty almost intimidating, the look drifting across her face reminiscent of an unsheathed blade, the vice president of the Umesato Junior High student council, Kuroyukihime.
The similarly tracksuited Takumu coming in and out of view behind the four girls was some comfort, but the grin on his face said, Don’t give up, Haru. Haruyuki shook his head furiously back and forth and desperately tried to make his face say, Help me, Taku.
“So, like, it’s a whole party. They all helpers, too?”
Glancing back, he saw Izeki, broom in one hand, looking at Haruyuki with a truly exasperated expression.
“Prez, what exactly are you?”
“I-I’m nobody!” he replied, in a small voice.
Finally abandoning the hope of fleeing, Haruyuki straightened his back and turned to face Kuroyukihime and the others, as he repeated once more in his head:
Right. By myself, I’m absolutely nobody. Nothing but a regular, nothing-special-about-him, timid, socially phobic, game-obsessed junior high school boy.
But just when I’m with my precious friends, I can definitely be someone. I can try a little harder than when I’m by myself; I can stand a little straighter. And I can believe in myself, just a tiny bit.
Inside the animal hutch, perhaps sensing that Utai had arrived, Hoo flapped both wings forcefully. Haruyuki took a step forward as though that flapping were pushing at his back and waved his right hand in a wide arc at the five people approaching.
END
AFTERWORD
Reki Kawahara here. Thank you so much for reading Accel World 9: The Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer.
This is the volume on the Armor of Catastrophe, Chrome Disaster, which first appeared in Volume 2, and was taken up as a main part of the story in Volume 6. But in Volume 9 here, we finally get to see the end, for now at least. I really do appreciate all of you putting up with the “to be continued” at the end of Volumes 6, 7, and 8, and sticking with me right up until “the end.”
But since there are still so many plotlines left stacked up in here (or rather, so many were added in this volume…), it doesn’t look like we’ll reach the conclusion of the story itself anytime soon. What will Haruyuki aim for in the end? What is hiding in Kuroyukihime’s past? Why does the Accelerated World exist? Although it’s not entirely certain that I’ll really be able to write everything out to that extent, I’d like to keep going the way I have been, one volume at a time, having fun with it myself. At any rate, I want to make Volume 10 something cheerful and fun that is complete in one volume! Yes!!
And I wasn’t sure whether or not to touch on this, but maybe just a little…Those of you who have read Volume 8 of my other series Sword Art Online were no doubt wondering “Who is that?!” when you saw the new girl character standing in the way in the spread with the preview of Accel Volume 9 at the end of the book. Who exactly that was is made clear in part four of this volume, but I had no intention of announcing, “So-and-so is a girl!” through her appearance there. (At any rate, I’ll avoid spoilers.)
I’m sure I’ll have a chance to write about her in more detail in the future, so until then, I’d be pleased if you could be in anguish over it…It would help, anyway. (lol)
Since I only have a few lines left, I’ll make one announcement here. I believe it’s probably also noted on the obi band of Volume 9, but Accel World is being turned into a television anime show. Sunrise is doing the production. The Sunrise. I’m right in the middle of the Gundam generation, and the structure of the duel avatars has been influenced in a variety of ways by the Sunrise robots, so I couldn’t be happier at just getting to see Crow and Lotus moving on-screen. I do sincerely hope you will all take in the anime version of Accel!
To my illustrator, HIMA, who put heart and soul into the design for said new character; my editor, Miki, who gave me more corrections than basically ever before on the scene with that character (lol); and, to repeat myself, all you readers who stayed with me right until the end of the Armor arc, thank you so much!
Reki Kawahara
August 11, 2011
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Reki Kawahara, The
Seven-Thousand-Year Prayer
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