Having had a large amount of information stuffed into him in a short time, Haruyuki held his head up with an index finger on either side. It felt like his head was reaching the limits of its memory capacity.
“The thing you said you were worried about before, Kuroyukihime. Is it that the timing of the appearance of Wolfram Cerberus and Argon Array coincide? So then…that means, you think…” He lifted his face and stared at the black lotus avatar. “Cerberus may be an artificial metal color. Is that it?”
Haruyuki had worked his mental circuitry to the limit to come to this hypothesis.
“No idea!” was Kuroyukihime’s quick response.
“S-sorry?”
“How could I know? Not only have I not dueled him, I haven’t even been in a Gallery. I’d like to see him just once. I’d actually very much like to try fighting him, but he appears near the territories of the Leos and GW, so I can’t do that.”
“R-right.”
“And given that our opponent is level one, Uiui and I hesitate a little to challenge him,” Fuko added.
Kuroyukihime nodded. “So there, Haruyuki. You will study him in the guise of a revenge match. The full, unexaggerated power of your opponent. In other words, you have to draw out a feeling of desperation that goes beyond planning and strategies. The preamble to this has gotten quite long, but we are here for special training to that end. We won’t get any hints with a halfhearted approach. I’ll go full power as well!!”
H-huh?! Holding in the urge to scream, Haruyuki shrieked, “Uh, um, but, we only have like ten minutes left, and I mean, like, it doesn’t have to be actual battle style; a demonstration would be—”
“It’s okay. We have plenty of Burst points left over from spring break!”
“B-b-b-but when I really think about it, before I get revenge, I should really get the Theoretical Mirror ability—”
“No problem. All efforts converge on a single eventual point!”
“If push comes to shove, I’ll also help out. ”
Looking back and forth between the level eight and the level nine, Haruyuki gave voice to the only thing he could say in that situation:
“…Th-thank you for this opportunity…”
Five consecutive duels spanning thirty minutes, with the last one in Battle Royale mode with Fuko joining in.
After somehow managing to finish the special training time—the most serious fighting he could remember doing for the last little while—Haruyuki couldn’t immediately stand up after awakening in one of the library’s viewing booths. The vision of little yellow chicks circling his head continued for a while, and his body trembled on the reclined chair.
After about thirty seconds, the dizziness finally subsided, and he let out a long sigh. “I-I’m so hungry…” His stomach felt empty—as if he really had used up all the energy in his body from battle, which had taken up more than two and a half hours of subjective time—but it was a false sensation. He had just had a cutlet sandwich in the real world less than an hour earlier, so he couldn’t exactly refuel again now.
Staggering out of the booth, he made it to the fountain in the hallway and drank from it to distract his stomach. He was extremely uneasy about whether or not he could make it through his afternoon classes in this condition, but he had to, if he wanted to take back the pride that had been ripped away from him. If the alternative was clutching his knees and losing his nerve after his stunning defeat by a level-one newbie, then being knocked down to the point of dizziness by grueling training was by far better.
Or rather, perhaps understanding his extreme, foot-dragging nature, Kuroyukihime and Fuko had been kind enough to beat him black and blue. Maybe they did it while inwardly crying, but he couldn’t be certain of that.
Standing at attention in the deserted hallway, Haruyuki first turned toward the student council office, and then to distant Shibuya Ward, where he bowed his head before murmuring, “Thank you, Kuroyukihime, Master. Next time, I’ll definitely—I don’t know if I can beat him, but I’ll give him a good run for his money.”
Exactly.
It didn’t matter if his opponent was a genius or if he had the Physical Immunity. He would also forget new things like the Mental-Scar Shell theory and the artificial metal-color plan. Give what you get: this simplest obstinacy was precisely the first principle of Brain Burst—and of the fighting game genre.
Haruyuki now finally felt like he could accept both his unsightly defeat of the previous day and his own weakness. He would take it all in just as it was and move forward from there. If he did that, the road would surely spread out infinitely before him.
“…All right!!” Clenching his fists once more, Haruyuki started to run toward his own classroom.
13
Battling drowsiness, he managed to get through his two afternoon classes and the short homeroom after that. When he stepped outside after it was all over, a drop of rain hit him smack on the nose.
He looked up at the sky to see thick gray clouds hanging there, as dense as any in the Thunder stage. The weather report on his virtual desktop said 2.5 millimeters of rain every hour starting at three thirty PM. It was enough rain that outdoor practice for the sports teams would be canceled, but of course, that had no bearing on the work of the Animal Care Club.
Moving at a trot to the rear yard, Haruyuki first said hello to Hoo before getting to work on the hutch cleaning at 1.2 times his usual speed. Unfortunately—he supposed—his colleague Izeki had sent him a colorful text saying that she had to get ready for the school festival, so she couldn’t come to the hutch that day; she definitely wasn’t just skipping because of the rain.
Around the time he had finished washing the water bath, he heard light footsteps behind him. When he turned his face that way, a girl approaching him at a trot, carrying a red umbrella, came into his field of view. It was the Animal Care Club super president Utai Shinomiya, but something was different from usual. He squinted his eyes and realized that her feet were in red boots.
“H-hello, Shinomiya,” Haruyuki greeted her, still carrying the bath, and accidentally stared at the boots, which were made of breathable, waterproof fabric. That reminds me—I used to wear boots like that when it rained. When did I stop, I wonder… His thoughts drifted away.
UI> HELLO, ARITA. IT’S A LITTLE EMBARRASSING TO HAVE YOU LOOKING SO CLOSELY. The words popped up in the semi-transparent chat window, the two boots squirming on the other side of it.
“Oh! S-sor— I’m sorry!” he cried out, slightly panicking at the possibility of him getting tagged a leg fetishist. “Um! I—I just thought your boots were cute!”
Silence.
Quiet filled the rainy courtyard. Utai’s face turned bright red, and she hung her head. Belatedly realizing what he had said, Haruyuki froze, until he was finally rescued by the protesting flapping wings of a hungry Hoo.
After polishing off one of the thin slices of meat from Utai’s hand, the white-faced owl gave them a little show of flight around the hutch to improve his digestion before returning to his perch.
Haruyuki watched as Hoo instantly switched to nap mode, and said, quietly, “Looks like he’s gotten pretty used to this hutch, huh?”
Utai removed the protective glove from her left hand and nodded, her fingers flashing. UI> YES. I ALSO NEVER IMAGINED HE WOULD SETTLE DOWN TO SUCH AN EXTENT IN ONLY A WEEK. IT’S THANKS TO EVERYONE IN THE ANIMAL CARE CLUB WORKING SO HARD FOR US.
“Oh, no, I mean…All I do is clean…And Hoo seems to like Izeki better and all.”
Maybe because he sounded somewhat jealous, Utai giggled as she typed, UI> THAT’S NOT TRUE AT ALL. HOO TRUSTS YOU QUITE A BIT, ARITA. A LITTLE LONGER, AND I WAS THINKING THAT I’D ASK YOU FOR YOUR HELP IN FEEDING HIM.
“Huh? But you said Hoo would only eat from your hand,” he began reflexively, only to snap his mouth shut. A second later, he changed his tone and asked, “Shinomiya, is the reason for that…because Hoo was hurt by his previous owner?”
Utai’s hands stopped cleaning up the fe
eding kit, and she looked straight at him. She nodded slowly, blinking her large eyes. UI> IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY AT HOO’S LEFT LEG, THERE IS STILL A SCAR FROM THE MICROCHIP BEING GOUGED OUT.
Haruyuki read this and lifted his gaze with a gasp. He focused on the left leg of the owl—whose ears were flattened and who had both eyes closed—and indeed, there was a horizontal scar about two centimeters wide that looked like it had been sliced opened with a blade.
“…So awful…Such a big cut.” He bit his lip and clenched his hands.
It was true that keeping a northern white-faced owl as an individual was hard. The food was special, and a fairly large cage was required. But all this would have naturally been explained at the stage of buying him in the pet shop. And no matter what the situation, gouging out the microchip with a blade and then tossing the injured pet outside like that, all to avoid additional expenses, was inexcusable.
The fact that Hoo had not lost his life and was here now, safe and sound, was something of a miracle. Recognizing this all over again, Haruyuki murmured, “I just know it was because you were so serious about taking care of him that you saved him.”
After a moment’s pause, the cherry-colored font was falteringly displayed. UI> I NEVER AGAIN WANT TO SEE ANYTHING LOSING ITS LIFE IN MY HANDS.
After a few seconds, he grasped the meaning of this and swallowed his breath. That meant that a life had been lost in Utai’s hands. And it hadn’t been a pet like Hoo. A person—no doubt her own older brother and her parent as a Burst Linker, Kyoya Shinomiya.
According to what Utai told him the day before, Kyoya had lost his life in an accident in the mirror room of the Noh stage after being caught under the enormous three-paneled mirror there. Utai said she had been there with him, but that probably wasn’t all of it. Maybe the young Utai had tried to stop the bleeding from the wound inflicted by a fragment of the broken mirror with her own hands. But it had been useless. Kyoya had passed on.
Envisioning this tragic scene in the back of his mind, Haruyuki suddenly realized something, and his eyes flew open.
Utai Shinomiya’s duel avatar, the Shrine Maiden of the Conflagration, Ardor Maiden. That figure, upper body white as snow, lower body clad in true scarlet. That pure, yet heavy, deep red, perhaps…
He took his eyes off Hoo and looked at Utai standing beside him. At her small form wrapped in the snowy white uniform of Matsunogi Academy, wearing the red boots.
Perhaps reading all the thoughts in his mind through his eyes, Utai smiled slightly and nodded sharply. UI> EVER SINCE THAT DAY, THE SATURATION OF THE HAKAMA TROUSERS OF MY DUEL AVATAR CHANGED, ALBEIT SLIGHTLY. From a pale pink…to a deep scarlet. PERHAPS IT IS THE COLOR OF MY BROTHER Kyoya’s blood.
After that, they continued to work wordlessly for a while. Once they had finished cleaning the hutch and dealing with the garbage, Haruyuki submitted the log file. But even after all their duties were complete, Haruyuki couldn’t really bring himself to open his mouth.
Every duel avatar was clad in a color symbolic of their nature, and more than a few had a design with a two-tone color. In fact, Haruyuki’s Silver Crow was split into the silver armor elements and matte-gray body elements.
So even given an avatar with a white upper body and a pink lower body, no one would think that level of color difference strange. Categorizing them on the color wheel, they would fall into the “slightly long-distance white type.”
What was unique about Ardor Maiden was that she had two very different colors of unbleached cloth and scarlet. The previous day, Utai had explained it as being because of the two aspects of herself, the original her and the Noh kokata her. But that definitely wasn’t the whole story. Ever since that day when she had held her deeply injured brother in her young hands, desperately trying to stop the flow of blood, Utai’s lower half had been dyed a deep red.
So the color of her duel avatar’s hakama had changed—and that was probably also why Utai had lost her physical voice.
“I’m sorry, Shinomiya,” Haruyuki apologized suddenly, and Utai turned around, pulling her backpack on in front of the bench, cocking her head to one side. “Yesterday, you told me so much. All so that I could learn the Theoretical Mirror ability. But my head’s been full of other things since last night…”
If only he had gone straight home from Utai’s the night before. If only he hadn’t thought of dueling a little in the Nakano Area. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have encountered Wolfram Cerberus, he wouldn’t have been defeated in such an ugly way, and he would have been able to focus on the mirror again that day. In order to repay Utai’s feelings after she had sincerely shared what was likely her most painful and sad memory—her brother’s death—he had to learn the mirror ability as soon as possible. And yet, ever since his loss the previous evening, Haruyuki had only been able to think about that.
“I’m really sorry. But…But I…” Unable to say anything more, Haruyuki hung his head deeply.
After setting her backpack neatly on her back, she stepped in a pool of water with her red boots and walked over to him. She stopped in front of him and grinned as she typed. UI> THERE’S NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE. BECAUSE I’VE BEEN SO LOOKING FORWARD TO IT, I CAN HARDLY STAND IT, YOU KNOW?
“Huh? Looking forward to it? To what?”
UI> TO MY BOX SEAT FOR YOUR REVENGE MATCH WITH THIS WOLFRAM CERBERUS, NATURALLY.
“…S-sorry?”
UI> IT’S GETTING TO BE TIME. NOW THEN, SHALL WE HURRY IN THAT DIRECTION?
And then she opened up her umbrella before a now-speechless Haruyuki. Half on autopilot, he picked his bag up from the bench and pulled out his folding umbrella. He opened it with a shk, and almost as if that were a signal, the drizzle turned into real rain.
“Um, that’s— Did Kuroyukihime tell you about Cerberus?” he asked, speaking slightly more loudly so as not to be drowned out by the louder sound of the rain.
Utai nodded as if it were obvious. UI> YES. IT WAS DECIDED THAT ON BEHALF OF SACCHI AND FU, I WOULD CAREFULLY WATCH OVER YOUR FIGHTING STYLE.
“O-oh, really…”
So then, if I don’t put up a good fight all the way today, the special training tomorrow will be double—no, triple. Tremors of fear shook his heart, while the reluctance that still hadn’t disappeared made his feet heavy. When Haruyuki made no move to start walking, Utai looked up at him from under the brim of her umbrella, and the fingers of her right hand danced.
UI> ARITA, THIS IS WHAT I THINK. THAT PERHAPS YOU MET CERBERUS WHEN YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO MEET HIM, C.
“When I was supposed to?”
UI> YES. THE THEORETICAL MIRROR ABILITY, WITH THE ABSOLUTE RESISTANCE TO LIGHT-TYPE ATTACKS, AND THE ABILITY PHYSICAL IMMUNITY, WHICH COMPLETELY REPELS ALL PHYSICAL ATTACKS, ARE VERY SIMILAR POWERS, DUE TO THEIR EXTREMITY. IT FEELS THAT WAY TO ME. IN WHICH CASE, FIGHTING CERBERUS IS SURELY NECESSARY FOR YOU TO REACH THE MIRROR STATE OF MIND.
“I…guess so…,” Haruyuki murmured, and in that moment, Hoo—whom he had thought was sleeping after filling his stomach—flapped his wings loudly in the hutch, and added a bonus cry of “Gwee!”
And of course, Utai noted, UI> SEE? HOO IS WISHING YOU LUCK.
Haruyuki could only grin wryly at this. He looked first at the white-faced owl in the animal hutch and then at Utai beneath her red umbrella. “Right. If I don’t go now, it’ll be like I’m running away from another fight with him, using the Theoretical Mirror as an excuse. Kuroyukihime said I had to concentrate my whole self, too.”
UI> THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT!! Hitting her virtual enter key with force, Utai took that hand and squeezed Haruyuki’s left wrist once. Then she turned around and stepped out into the rain falling at her booted feet.
They departed the rear yard for the front, slipped through the gates, then turned left. After they’d walked a ways, the wide street of Oume Highway spread out before them.
The day before, Haruyuki had entered Nakano Ward from Honan Street far to the south, but since Nakano Area No. 2 bordered their current location of
Suginami Area No. 2 along the north-south edge, if they just went east, they would reach it from some point or another.
As he walked in that direction alongside Utai on the sidewalk of Oume Highway, Haruyuki opened a navigation map on his virtual desktop. He adjusted the magnification and made it show him the area around Nakano Station where he had fought Cerberus the previous day. Half to himself, he muttered, “If we just keep walking this way, we’ll get to Naka-Two in about a kilometer and a half. But if we’re going to Nakano Station, maybe it’s better to take the train from Koenji. But then that’s the opposite direction from your house, Shinomiya.”
Then he heard a relaxed voice from behind. “It might be faster to get a bus on Oume Highway rather than the train. There’s one coming in three minutes for Nakano Station.”
“Oh, there is? So there’s a bus on this road, too…I don’t usually use it, so I forgot.” Scratching his head, his eyes still on his map, he now heard an exasperated voice.
“Now, look here. You see any number of these buses on your way to school every day. Honestly, Haru, you’ve always been like this. It’s like you don’t even see things you’re not interested in.”
“Th-that’s not true! I already know about eighty percent of the faces of the people in the same class— Wait.”
Here, Haruyuki finally realized that he was having a conversation with people with his real voice and jumped up into the air. The umbrella in his right hand spun around a hundred and eighty degrees on its axis, and he looked back and forth at the two very familiar faces there.
“Huh? Takuchiyu?! Why are you here?”
“Look, Haru. I won’t say don’t stick our names together, but shouldn’t you at least do ladies first?”
“O-okay, then Chiyutaku…But that kinda sounds like tsuyudaku.” At his own words, he started to imagine the gyudon pork bowl with extra miso soup before abruptly shaking it off. “S-seriously! Why are you here?!”
The tall boy carrying a wooden sword case over his left shoulder and a blue umbrella in his right hand—Takumu Mayuzumi—replied, in the most matter-of-fact way, “With this rain, Chii and I got out of practice early, so we figured we’d come cheer you on. We were waiting for you at the gates.”