The Carbide Wolf

  “…!!” Haruyuki held his breath.

  Manganese’s tone eased slightly as she murmured, “Go back to your starting point, Crow. A strong power is born from an equally deep wound—you should already know that. That’s all I can say…Ask Cyan Pile about the rest.” She finished with this fairly cryptic suggestion, and then the woman warrior turned around, somewhat dashingly. As she walked, she likely gave the command to stop the acceleration; her tall form soon disappeared without a sound.

  His thoughts were still half-paralyzed, but Haruyuki carved Manganese’s words into his brain before staring at the gauges in the top of his field of view once more. Wolfram Cerberus’s health gauge actually had 70 percent left in it. The duel had taken a mere eleven minutes. He clenched formless fists and squeezed his eyes and his mouth shut before he quietly called, “Burst Out.”

  The instant he returned to the real world, he naturally traced out the same movements with his real body. With his eyes closed, he forced open trembling fists and held down the global net disconnect button on his Neurolinker. The circuit disconnection was shown in his field of view, and once that had disappeared, he lifted his eyelids.

  Unlike when he was accelerated, the evening scene of Honan Street looked slightly blurry. Haruyuki wiped his eyes with his fist and muttered, “…Dammit.”

  Still standing stock-still on the dim sidewalk, one more time: “Dammit!”

  With the passage of time, the shock at his unilateral defeat was steadily replaced with regret. He couldn’t use the excuse that Cerberus was an illegal avatar. If Physical Immunity was real, then it was indeed an incredibly powerful ability, but…if he was going to say that, then Silver Crow’s flight was the same thing. He was the only one in the Accelerated World who had the wings he had just used, and he lost completely to a level-one opponent.

  The memory of Manganese Blade telling him to acknowledge his opponent’s strength came back to life in his mind. But it didn’t look like he’d be able to do that right away. Acknowledging Wolfram Cerberus’s strength would mean also acknowledging Silver Crow’s weakness, and he didn’t want to do that. Even though he had broken through the guard of the super-class Enemy, the God Suzaku; had returned alive from the depths of the castle; had even won against the control of the Armor of Catastrophe…he couldn’t bear to throw away the self-confidence he had built up little by little.

  At that moment, the last thing Manganese had said echoed in a corner of his brain: Ask Cyan Pile about the rest.

  Why had she said that before leaving? Why had she brought up Cyan Pile—Takumu—out of the blue? It was true, he had originally been a member of the Leonids, but he had left after the battle with Haruyuki, eight months ago—

  “Oh…!” The instant his thoughts reached that, Haruyuki cried out with a realization. He staggered slightly and pressed his back up against the exterior wall of the building on the left side of the sidewalk.

  The defeat by a level-one opponent with an “illegal” power. That was how the situation must have looked from Takumu’s perspective in the hospital battle when Silver Crow and Cyan Pile fought for the first time. Level four at the time, Takumu had had the chest of his avatar pierced by the fist of Haruyuki, who had awakened the flight ability, and been carried high up into the sky like that. And then he had been pressed by Haruyuki.

  Do you concede, Taku?

  That you totally cannot beat me in this Accelerated World. Do you concede, Taku?!

  There was no way Takumu couldn’t have hated that. And yet he had acknowledged his defeat, and to atone for his actions, he even withdrew from the Blue Legion. After that, he had carefully guided Haruyuki, who was still very much a newbie; he had worried alongside Haruyuki, when he made a careless mistake and was on the verge of losing all his points; and he continued to firmly support Haruyuki even now, eight months later.

  “…Taku…” Still leaning against the building, he closed his eyes tightly once more and said his friend’s name.

  All this time, I forgot there’s something more important than getting the Theoretical Mirror ability, than purifying the Armor of Catastrophe, than anything, something I should do first. Losing badly to a level one, I finally realize it—or maybe I lost because I forgot…

  He took a deep breath, his chest trembling, let it out again, and pulled his back away from the wall. Upon reaching the road he originally came down, his pace quickly changed to a trot toward Kannana.

  11

  He jumped onto an EV bus near the Honancho intersection, headed north, and got off at the Kita-Koenji bus stop, the one closest to his house. It was 7:50 PM. It had been after seven when he left Utai Shinomiya’s house, and given that he had taken a detour into the Nakano No. 2 Area, sat in the Gallery once, and fought one duel, he was home relatively quickly. This was one of the good things about Brain Burst, but dragging the regret at his loss back to the real world made the acceleration technology meaningless, so he had to do his best to switch gears—that’s what his master, Kuroyukihime, had told him, quite severely.

  However, that day at least, he couldn’t do that. The whole time he was on the bus, Haruyuki intently examined every angle of the fight against Wolfram Cerberus. And then he did the same for the fight against Cyan Pile eight months earlier. The two battles were similar in a way. In which case, this time Haruyuki’s regret had to be the same as Takumu’s from back then. Whatever the reason they fought, at the very least, Haruyuki shouldn’t have said that. Those words had no doubt left a wound inside his friend that wouldn’t disappear.

  Go back to the beginning, Manganese Blade had told him. He had no doubt that one beginning for him was that fight with Takumu. He’d have to start there, or he’d never reach the Theoretical Mirror.

  Racing through the entrance hall of his condo, Haruyuki launched his mailer and sent a short text message to Takumu, who should have been home already. The answer that came back to him a few seconds later was a brief GOT IT.

  “—I’m sorry, Taku!!”

  Standing next to the dining table in the Arita living room, Haruyuki bowed his head deeply.

  Takumu—Takumu Mayuzumi—sat in his chair, blinking rapidly. He put the tip of his finger to his sharply tapered jaw and appeared to think for a while. “What did you do now, Haru?” he asked timidly, when he finally lifted his head. “You couldn’t have leveled up without any margin again, right?”

  “N-no, it’s nothing like that. I mean, level six is still a ways off and all.”

  “So then…does it involve Chii? Did you do something to make her mad and you want me to go apologize with you or something?”

  “N-no, it’s nothing like that. I mean, if it was that, I’d run around for a while,” he answered, stammering, still bent at the waist.

  His friend offered him a broad, wry grin. “No matter how good I am at this, I can’t tell from just a ‘sorry.’ Well, anyway, sit down, Haru. Let’s talk while we eat. You haven’t had supper yet, right?”

  On the table were six neatly packed rice balls arranged carefully on a square plate. There were also plates full of Japanese-style side dishes, like chikuzenni stew and sablefish pickled in Kyoto-style miso. It was the Mayuzumi evening meal, all delivered for two at Takumu’s request to his mother. Naturally, this had not been Haruyuki’s intention in mailing Takumu, so he was at maximum apologetic. But all he had eaten was the mizuyokan at Utai’s house, so his stomach was also at maximum hunger, and it ignored his earlier intent and continued to complain one growl after another.

  “…Sorry, Taku.” The words contained a different kind of apology from before, and Haruyuki sat down across from Takumu.

  “It’s fine. It’s more fun to eat with you. The only things my family ever talks about over dinner are developments in global finance and my recent grades,” Takumu said, laughing brightly. He was wearing a plain T-shirt and a pair of jeans, the ultimate in simple looks, but even still, his appeal was not reduced in the slightest.

  Really, I have to rethink a bunch of things. I
ncluding the sense that a guy like this is friends with me even now, Haruyuki told himself, as he picked up his chopsticks. He joined Takumu in saying, “Let’s eat,” and first brought some of the chikuzenni, which included a bit of taro root, to his mouth.

  Since both parents worked in the Mayuzumi house, he had been told previously that the food on the dinner table was as a rule half-prepared frozen foods. Even so, it was much more an actual meal than Haruyuki’s basic supper of frozen pizza. He ate a rice ball, some stew, and half of the grilled fish in a trance before his stomach finally settled down.

  “…I lost.” The words spilled one by one from Haruyuki’s mouth. He glanced at Takumu—his hand had stopped with dinner and he was staring intently at Haruyuki—and said once more, “Earlier…I stopped by Naka-Two on my way home from school…and I completely lost there to a new opponent. The duel time was a mere eleven minutes, and he still had seventy percent of his gauge left.”

  His hand dropped to the table, still clutching his chopsticks. The instant his empty stomach was sated, the regret that welled up once more naturally turned his hands into fists. “…And my opponent had just become a Burst Linker…he was level one…”

  For a full ten minutes thereafter, Haruyuki explained the events of Nakano Area No. 2 without leaving anything out, from the part where he joined Frost Horn’s Gallery. He spoke in great detail, from the appearance and abilities of the miraculous genius newcomer Wolfram Cerberus, to how he himself had lost against him.

  Even after hearing everything Haruyuki had to say, Takumu remained silent. Finally, without saying anything, he reached out his left hand and firmly grabbed Haruyuki’s fist, which was clenched upon the table. “Just one fight doesn’t decide anything, Haru.”

  Reflexively, he lifted his face, and Takumu relaxed his grip. He patted Haruyuki’s hand before pulling his arm back. “I mean, even if you fight a hundred times and lose a hundred times, you don’t know how the hundred-and-first time will turn out. That’s the game of Brain Burst, right? It looks like you’re totally focused on the fact that you’re higher level, Haru, but you completely lost the information war. I mean, even though your opponent knew that Silver Crow is a flying type, you knew nothing about…Wolfram Cerberus’s Physical Immunity.” Takumu’s words were filled with a warm, deep compassion.

  But the more compassionate he was, the sharper the thorn of guilt stabbing into Haruyuki’s heart felt. Because Haruyuki had once thrown the very opposite words at Takumu. Words a Burst Linker must absolutely never say, no matter what the situation.

  “…I’m sorry, Taku,” Haruyuki murmured once more, head hanging deeply. This time, he didn’t stop there, but earnestly put the feelings filling his heart into words. “I…I don’t deserve to have you saying that to me. I mean…that time, I said that to you, right? Even though I only won the one time…” He took a deep breath. “I said, you totally can’t beat me in the Accelerated World. I made you concede.” He managed to somehow voice the words that made him want to get a knife and cut out his tongue just reproducing them and jerked his head up.

  Hearing this, Takumu’s smile did not disappear from his face. But Haruyuki felt like he did see a pain that hadn’t been there before, bleeding into his light-colored eyes. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. And the words that came then weren’t ones blaming Haruyuki. “Haru, that time, you had the right to say something much, much harsher than that. I mean, I was targeting Master—your precious and only parent—with illegal means, and I lost to you desperately defending her. If you had thrown me down to the ground that time, you could have made me lose all my points. But you didn’t; you forgave me. When I think about it, what you said wasn’t even enough.”

  “No, no, that’s not it, Taku.” Haruyuki hurried to interrupt Takumu’s words of self-reproach. He didn’t need to be reminded of the fact that Takumu still seriously blamed himself for the backdoor program incident when Cyan Pile, his Burst points starting to dry up, had targeted the Black King, who was in a state of hiding.

  But this crime of Takumu’s was already being erased. He had taken on the role of guiding Haruyuki, to the point of changing Legions, and after that, he had fought hard, sustaining many injuries, in the Chrome Disaster incident, and then in the Dusk Taker incident as well. Nega Nebulus already couldn’t exist without him, and more than anything, Kuroyukihime herself had long ago forgiven Takumu.

  It was actually Haruyuki’s crime that hadn’t gone away. Reflecting on this awareness once more, he changed the swirling vortex of feelings in his heart into words one by one.

  “What I want to apologize for…It’s the fact that I said that to you, but it’s also the fact that I forgot about it until now. Way, way sooner, I should have—when you quit the Leonids and joined Nega Nebulus, I should have apologized for saying anything like that to you and asked to take it back. Manganese Blade told me to go back to my starting point…And that’s when I finally realized it. It’s because I’m the kind of guy who can say something like that to a good friend and then forget about it. It’s that, on top of losing to Cerberus, I’m sure of it.”

  There, once again, he stood up, the chair clattering, pressed his hands against the table, and bowed his head deeply and forcefully. “Taku, I’m really sorry. That…I said something that hurt your pride as a Burst Linker, that I looked down on you. And then I forgot about it this whole time. Please forgive me.”

  I’m hopeless, a guy who only sees himself. I act like my problems, my struggle, my pain are the only ones that exist…I just sulk and get jealous. Without even considering other people’s feelings, I hardened the shell of my heart, made it thicker, made it so that everything would bounce off it…

  Right, just like Silver Crow’s imperfect mirror armor. Even if it can bounce back a certain degree of physical attack or heat or light, it can’t repel a truly powerful attack like Cerberus’s head butt or Niko’s laser. A totally lukewarm existence, that’s me…

  “I forgive you. On one condition.”

  Hearing these sudden words, Haruyuki ever so timidly lifted his gaze and found there Takumu’s gentle smile, the same as always.

  His friend set his chopsticks down, stood up, and went around the table to stand in front of Haruyuki. His large hand, calloused from his wooden kendo sword, clapped down firmly on Haruyuki’s slumped shoulder. “A jumbo parfait from Enjiya. How’s that work for you, Haru?”

  “…”

  Desperately swallowing the things welling up in his heart, Haruyuki asked, “…All you can eat?”

  “Ha-ha-ha! Just one’s good. I’m not as big of a challenger as Chii is.” After laughing cheerfully, Takumu’s expression grew stern, and he put his hands on both of Haruyuki’s shoulders. He tugged on them to make Haruyuki face him square on and continued in a serious voice. “Haru, I said this before, too, but back then, you had every right to say whatever you wanted to me…But I won’t argue about it with you now. It doesn’t seem like that’s what you want. So instead, let’s make a promise. Someday, when we both make it to level seven, when we join the high rankers, we fight one more time with everything we have, no holds barred.”

  “…Taku.” A little surprised, Haruyuki opened his eyes wide. Above him, Takumu’s eyes were nothing but serious.

  “You’ve made it through so many trials, and you’re gradually getting stronger. But I’m working hard to beat you next time with my own power. How about it, Haru?”

  Right, Haruyuki finally realized. This was Takumu’s kindness. It was a declaration that he would render those words that Haruyuki had given voice to—you can never beat me—invalid. It was a vow to aim for tomorrow’s victory as a Burst Linker, rather than shrinking at one defeat.

  “Got it,” Haruyuki replied. “It’s a promise, Taku.”

  “Okay then.” Takumu grinned and nodded sharply before removing his hands from Haruyuki’s shoulders. “Let’s hurry up and eat. Somehow, I can already see that the next plan is homework, since I’m here anyway, huh?”

>   “Y-you got me. Just like you, Professor Mayuzumi.”

  Takumu jabbed Haruyuki’s shoulder one final time before returning to his seat on the other side of the table. Inwardly, Haruyuki spoke to Takumu’s back:

  Thanks, Taku.

  Almost as if he had heard these words, his friend turned around and said something unexpected. “Haru. About what Manganese Blade said before—‘Go back to your starting point’…If that’s it, then I think there’s a starting point you should go back to more than the duel with me.”

  “Huh? Wh-what?”

  “You’ll have to figure that out yourself…But it was pretty great of Manganese to give you that advice, huh? Haru, you do always get the older ladies—”

  “N-no! It’s not like that!” He hurriedly cut Takumu off (with a protest he had recently heard elsewhere) and settled back into his seat. He picked up a rice ball, opened his mouth wide, and started chewing, before speaking with his mouth full, ever so impolitely. “But I mean, you too, Taku. Do you know Manganese Blade? Like, maybe you were pretty friendly back when you were in the Leonids?”

  “As if. She’s an executive of the executives, the close aide of the Blue King. Although there was a little ‘thing’ when I left the Leonids,” Takumu mused with a faraway look in his eyes, and Haruyuki unconsciously leaned forward.

  “A little thing? Like what?”

  “Okay, if you finish your homework by eight, I’ll tell you.”

  “Ngh…Th-then I’m gonna start while we’re eating.”

  Even more impolitely, Haruyuki started tapping away at his virtual desktop with his right hand while holding a rice ball in his left; it made Takumu click his tongue with a wry smile. Looking at that familiar expression through a holo window, Haruyuki once again was deeply grateful that he had a friend like this by his side. The pain of being utterly defeated by Wolfram Cerberus also seemed to recede just a little at that moment.