The door to the bathroom across from the sink was shut tight. It wasn’t locked, and the lights were off. Her sweaty hand gripped the aluminum doorknob.
With a deep breath, she flipped the light switch with her free hand and opened the door.
“…”
Shino stared at the interior.
“…I feel really stupid,” she muttered. The beige interior of the bathroom was, of course, empty. At long last, from her neck to her shoulder and further on down, she felt the tension drain away. She made a half turn, leaned back against the wall, and slid down to a seated position.
There was no one else in the apartment. Nor were there any signs of a break-in so far. Naturally, that did not preclude the possibility that someone had hacked her old electronic lock, watched the progress of the GGO tournament on a cell phone, then left just after Death Gun’s defeat.
If that was the case, the intruder should still be in the area. As long as the possibility of a return visit was greater than zero, she ought to call Kyouji Shinkawa for help at once—but Shino didn’t have the strength to stand at the moment.
She glanced up at the kitchen alarm on top of the refrigerator. The digital readout said that it was 10:07.
What an incredibly long three hours that was. Eating the yogurt out of this empty container here before I dove in feels like ancient history at this point.
She felt like something inside of her had changed, and also that nothing had changed.
But at the very least, the hasty panic that Shino felt dwelling within her for a very long time seemed more distant now. Perhaps she had learned that the haste to be strong, to get stronger, was an empty thing. It all started with a single step.
“All…right!” she told herself, then realized that she was ravenously thirsty. Shino walked over to the sink, filled a glass with tap water, and drank it down in one go.
Just as she was about to fill up another cup, she heard the old-fashioned ding-dong of her doorbell.
She tensed up, staring at the door. Her breath caught in her throat as she imagined the lock turning all on its own.
Perhaps it was the police already. But when she looked at the clock, it had only been three minutes since she logged out. It was much too quick for them.
She stood there long enough for the doorbell to ring again. Stifling her breathing, she approached the door without making a sound. She reached out hesitantly to put the chain on the door, but just as her fingers were about to touch it…
“Asada, are you there? It’s me, Asada!” came a familiar, high-pitched boy’s voice through the electronic lock’s intercom.
She felt the tension drain out of her shoulders and stood on her sandals as a footstool to look through the peephole, just in case. Through the fish-eye lens was the very person she was just about to call—her former classmate and GGO friend, Kyouji Shinkawa.
“Shinkawa…?” she asked through the intercom.
He immediately responded, though he didn’t sound quite sure of himself. “Um…I just wanted to celebrate with you…I bought this for you—sorry, it’s just from the convenience store.”
She looked through the peephole again to see him hold up a small box that looked like it contained a piece of cake.
“Th…that was really quick,” she blurted out. Even counting the time she spent in front of the results screen, it was less than five minutes since the tournament ended. Perhaps, instead of being at home, he’d been watching in a nearby park and rushed to the store on the way here. That hastiness was appropriate for the AGI-heavy Spiegel, she had to admit.
But at least it saved her the trouble of having to call him. She breathed a sigh of relief and put her hand on the knob. “Hang on, I’ll open up.”
She looked down as she reached over and noticed that she was still wearing the baggy sweater and short pants, which wasn’t much, but she didn’t feel in the mood to change. Shino turned the knob ninety degrees.
The door opened to reveal Kyouji Shinkawa, grinning away. He was heavily outfitted with jeans and a fleece-lined military jacket, but it was cold enough outside that even that seemed inadequate.
Shino hunched her neck at the chill against her bare legs and said, “Ooh, it’s freezing. Quick, come in.”
“Uh, sure. Thanks.”
Kyouji bowed and stepped into the foyer, squinting as he looked at Shino, as if she was glowing.
“Wh-what? C’mon, shut the door before it gets cold inside. Oh, and make sure to lock it,” she said, feeling a bit self-conscious about Kyouji’s gaze. As she turned back into the apartment, she heard the heavy click of the door lock behind her. Back in the main room, she picked up the remote off the table and turned the heat on higher. With a heavy groan, warmer air flooded into the room, driving away the chill.
Shino plopped down onto the bed and looked up to see Kyouji standing at the edge of the room, looking uncomfortable.
“You can sit wherever you like. Oh, need anything to drink?”
“Uh, no, I’m fine.”
“Listen, I’m tired, so unless you really don’t need anything, speak up,” she teased.
Kyouji finally smiled weakly, set the cake box down on the tea table, and sat on the nearby cushion. “Sorry for barging in like this, Asada. But…like I said earlier, I wanted to help you celebrate as soon as possible,” he said, clutching his knees like a child. “Um…congrats on winning the BoB. It was incredible, Asada…Sinon. You’re finally the greatest gunner in GGO. But…I always knew this would happen someday. You’ve got true strength, the kind nobody else has.”
“…Thanks,” she said, hunching her neck at the ticklish feeling the compliment gave her. “But my victory was only a tie at the top…plus, as I’m sure you noticed watching the feed, there was a bunch of weird stuff that happened in this one…I have a feeling that the entire tournament might get nullified.”
“Huh…?”
“Um…listen…”
Shino wasn’t quite sure how to bring up the topic of Death Gun to Kyouji. She herself didn’t know enough about the incident to explain it all logically; plus, at this point, it almost felt to her like all of those events were some kind of strange hallucination.
Perhaps…
Could this all have been the product of sheer coincidence? Was it even possible to have someone poisoned at the same time they were shot in the virtual world? The only thing Shino actually saw was the scene of Pale Rider losing connection. If he and the other victim really did die, then Death Gun and his crimes were real, but nothing about that was certain until this was revealed.
In either case, the police would arrive within another ten minutes. She could explain it all to Kyouji then. Shino made up her mind and changed the topic.
“No, never mind. Just some weird players involved. Anyway, you really showed up here quick. It was barely even five minutes after the event finished.”
“Um, well…the truth is, I was watching on my phone nearby. So I could congratulate you as soon as possible,” he said hurriedly.
Shino smiled. “I had a feeling that was the case. You’ll catch a cold in this weather. Maybe I should make some tea after all.”
But Kyouji shook his head and stopped her. The smile was waning from his face, replaced by an expression more of desperation. Shino blinked in surprise.
“Um…Asada…”
“Wh-what?”
“I saw you…inside the cave, in the desert…”
Together with the look in his eyes, Shino understood what he was trying to say at once. She recalled what happened in the cave and felt heat burst along her face from cheek to ear.
“Oh…That was, uh…”
She’d completely—perhaps intentionally—forgotten about how she’d laid down on Kirito’s knees and cried and wailed. Kyouji had witnessed the whole thing. It was so careless of her that she hadn’t considered this possibility.
She looked down in sheer discomfort, while Kyouji continued. She was sure that he was going to ask what the connection wa
s with that man, but his statement took her by surprise.
“He was…threatening you, wasn’t he? He blackmailed you into doing that stuff, right?”
“H-huh?”
She looked up, stunned. Kyouji was leaning forward in a slight crouch, an odd look in his eyes. His lips trembled irregularly as he gasped, “He threatened you, and forced you to snipe his target…but in the end, you caught him off guard and blew him up with that grenade. But…that’s not enough, Asada. Like I told you before, you need to make him pay…”
“Uh…err…” Shino was at a complete loss for words. She scrambled around for something to say. “Listen…no, he wasn’t threatening me or anything. I realize it’s not something you’re supposed to do in a free-for-all competition…but I nearly had one of my spasms while in the dive. I lost control, and I…I took it out on Kirito. I said some horrible things to him.”
“…”
Kyouji’s eyes were wide as he listened raptly.
“But…while I did find him obnoxious, I thought…he was like my mom. Maybe that was why I cried like a little girl again…It’s embarrassing, really.”
“But Asada…it was because of the spasm, right? You wouldn’t have done it otherwise? He doesn’t…mean anything to you, does he?”
“Huh…?”
“You told me to wait, remember?” Kyouji said, eyes full of desperation as he leaned forward on his knees. “You did. You said that if I waited, you would be mine someday. So…so I…”
“…Shinkawa…”
“Say it. Say he means nothing to you. Say you hate him.”
“Wh-what’s going on…?”
She did remember telling Kyouji to wait before the tournament, in the nearby park. But that was meant in the sense of wait for me to overcome my obstacles. Only when she did that could she be a normal girl.
“But…you won, Asada. You’re strong enough now. You won’t have any more attacks. So you don’t need him. I’ll be with you forever. I’ll…I’ll always be around to keep you safe,” he mumbled, getting to his feet. He stumbled a few steps closer—then suddenly threw his arms wide and embraced Shino with all his strength.
“Wha…?!”
Shino was too stunned to do anything but tense up. Her arms and ribs creaked, and the air leaked out of her lungs.
“Sh…in…ka…wa…”
The shock and pressure drained her breath away. But Kyouji only squeezed harder, pushing heavily enough to knock her backward onto the bed.
“Asada…I like you. I love you. You’re my Asada…my Sinon,” he croaked, less a passionate confession than a chanted curse.
“Stop…it…!’
Shino thrust her arms against the bed to support herself. She put her strength into her legs, leaned her shoulder her against his chest, and…
“Stop it!!”
It came out as nothing more than a desperate whisper, but she was able to knock Kyouji back. She gasped for air.
Kyouji, stumbling backward, fell onto his bottom when his leg hit the cushion behind him. The cake box fell off of the table and splattered wetly onto the floor. But the boy barely noticed. He just stared at Shino in pure surprise, unable to believe that she would reject him.
His round eyes eventually faded, and his lips trembled harder and harder. “No, Asada. You can’t betray me. I’m the only one who can save you. You can’t look at any other men.”
He stood up slowly, approaching again.
“Sh…Shinkawa,” she mumbled, unable to recover from the attack.
It was true that when she invited him in once before for dinner, and when he hugged her in the park, there had been a glimpse of this kind of impulse within Kyouji. But she figured that as he was a boy, this kind of action was somewhat of a given, and that weak-willed, reserved Kyouji would never lose control of himself like this.
But as he stood silently over Shino, who sat helplessly on the bed, there was something insane that gleamed in his eyes, something she’d never seen before.
Shinkawa isn’t actually…going to…
The fragmented thoughts crossed through her brain bit by bit, until fear spread over her, greater than her shock. But Shino’s imagination, while working in the right direction, was woefully inadequate in predicting the measure of his response.
Mouth parted, panting restlessly, Kyouji reached into the front pocket of his military jacket. He grabbed something inside of it. When the hand emerged, it was holding something strange: a shiny, plastic, cream-colored object about eight inches long.
The tapered tube was about an inch wide on average, with a grippable protrusion sticking out diagonally, which Kyouji used to hold it. There was a green button where the grip met the main tube, and he had his index finger placed against it.
A silver-metal part was affixed to the very end of the tube, a bit spiked, with a hole at the very end. All in all, it looked like a child’s toy laser gun, but the very lack of any decoration gave it the look of a tool, a device designed for a specific purpose.
He slowly and simply moved the tip to Shino’s neck. The chilly touch against her skin made all the hair on her body stand on end.
“Shi…k…wa…?” she gasped, but he cut her off before she could say anything further.
“Don’t move, Asada. Don’t speak. This a high-pressure needleless syringe. It’s got a drug called succinylcholine inside. If it gets into your body, it’ll render your muscles useless and stop your lungs and heart at once.”
If her mind could be said to have an outer shell, this shock would have caused the bottom of it to give out. Even Shino couldn’t keep track of how many times that had happened today.
The chill at the nape of her neck spread to the tips of her limbs, and as she felt them throb with numbness, her brain worked overtime to put the words that Kyouji said into an understandable thought.
Kyouji had just said that he would kill Shino. If she didn’t listen to what he said, he’d use that toylike injector to pump her full of a drug with a long and confusing name, stopping her heart for good.
But in parallel to this thought, a voice in the corner of her mind kept stating, This is a joke, right? Shinkawa wouldn’t do something like that, would he? But her mouth was now as immobile and brittle as dried-out wood. And the sensation of the metal tube pressed a few inches below her left ear was chillingly, mercilessly cold, a phenomenon that brooked no possible humor.
Shino was unable to see Kyouji’s face due to the reflection, but she stared at him all the same. His young, rounded chin moved, emitting a voice devoid of feeling or inflection. “It’s all right, Asada. There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re about to become one. I’m about to give you the feelings I’ve been saving up ever since we first met. The injection will be very soft and gentle…It won’t hurt a bit. Don’t worry. Just let me handle everything.”
Shino had no idea what he meant. It sounded like Japanese, but it might as well have been a foreign language. Two phrases stood out, echoing over and over in her head.
This is a high-pressure needleless syringe. I’ll stop your heart at once.
Syringe. Heart. She’d just heard those two words very recently…somewhere else.
At this point, it felt like something from an imaginary fantasy. On a moonlit desert, in a tiny cave, from the mouth of a boy with the face of a girl. Zexceed and Usujio Tarako had been injected with some kind of drug, and their hearts failed…
But did that mean—could it be?
Her lips trembled and spasmed, and she heard her own voice leak out like it belonged to someone else.
“Then…are you…the other…Death Gun?”
The tip of the syringe pressed to her neck twitched. She saw Kyouji’s mouth take on the admiring smile that she so often saw when she spoke with him.
“Wow…incredible work, Asada…You figured out the secret of Death Gun. That’s right, I’m part of Death Gun. But in fact, until the BoB started, I was the one playing Sterben. I hope you saw that video of me shooting Zexceed in the pub i
n Glocken. But for today, I got to play the real-life role. After all, I can’t have any other man touching you, Asada. Even if it is my brother.”
Her body stiffened.
She had only once heard him mention that he had a brother. But aside from the fact that he’d been sickly since birth and in and out of hospitals, Kyouji said nothing about him, so Shino never bothered to ask further.
“B…bro…thers? So the one in the killer guild in SAO years ago was…your…brother?”
This time, Kyouji’s eyes bugged out in true shock.
“Wow, you knew? I didn’t think Shouichi would reveal that much during the tournament. Maybe he decided he liked you, too. But don’t worry, I won’t let anyone else touch you. In fact, I wanted not to inject you with the drug today, though I knew my brother would be mad…I mean, in the park, you said you would be mine.”
He stopped briefly. The drunken smile on his lips faded, replaced by another empty expression.
“But…then you were with him…You’re being fooled, Asada. I don’t know what he said to you, but I’ll drive him away. I’ll help you forget him.”
He clutched her right shoulder, still pressing the syringe to her neck with his other hand. He pushed her down onto the bed, then got onto it with her, straddling her thighs, mumbling as he did.
“…Don’t worry, I won’t let you be alone. I’ll come with you very soon. We’ll be together, just like GGO…No, let’s do a more fantasy-themed one. We can be reborn in that world and live together as husband and wife. Going on adventures…having kids…It’ll be a blast.”
Kyouji was completely off the rails now. Somewhere in Shino’s paralyzed brain, she was able to cling to just one thought: The police will be here soon, so keep him talking.
“But…without his partner, your brother will be at a loss…a-and…I didn’t get shot by Death Gun in the game. So if I die, then everyone will start to doubt the legend of Death Gun you spent so long crafting,” Shino said, taking great pains to keep her desiccated tongue moving. Kyouji pressed the tip of the syringe under her exposed collarbone, a twitching smile on his face.