However.
“But why?” Haruyuki spat out, looking at Kuroyukihime and Takumu in turn. “Why would the Red King go to all that hassle…?”
“And so we arrive inevitably at that question,” Kuroyukihime growled. “Hmm…There’s no reason to go so far as to put on this little suicide show, get Haruyuki to join the Red Legion, and obtain his loyalty by holding the Judgment Blow over his head. Not to mention that a Legion member with no sense of belonging to the Legion does no good and quite a bit of harm. Which means…”
Takumu picked up the thread as he pushed up the bridge of his glasses with his middle finger. “Which means there’s something she wants to make Haru do just once. Just one time, and she could threaten him to make him do it. That must be what she was thinking. So then, this ‘something’ should be what the Red King plans to bring up with Master later. Since her little-sister cover was blown, maybe she’s changed her strategy from the backdoor tactic she was working before?”
“Hmm.” After growling in a low voice once again, Kuroyukihime looked up at Takumu. “How can I put this?…You’re starting to look good for this.”
“S-sorry? For what, Master?”
“The glasses character. How about we call you ‘Professor’ from now on, Takumu?”
Sliding his back down the fence propping him up, Takumu moved his head sharply from side to side. “N-no…I do appreciate it, but I’ll pass.”
Haruyuki worked hard to suppress the urge to laugh and said, “I-I think Taku’s right. In the duel yesterday, the Red King could’ve mopped the floor with me, but she didn’t. Instead, she told me to set up a meeting with Kuroyukihime. Which means she’s choosing to negotiate as her Plan B, so isn’t that basically a declaration that her intent is nonhostile?”
“You’ve finally said something sensible!” Kuroyukihime hummed and recrossed her legs. She crushed the paper that had been the wrapper for the sandwich she’d just finished and sank it in the garbage can a ways off, in an incredible overhand throw. “But, well, fine. If she wants to talk, I’ll listen. At the very least, the sheer nerve of the King herself coming along, knowing full well that it outs her in the real world, is impressive, and in a child, no less. Haruyuki, call the Red King. The meeting will be today at four PM, the place—”
Here, Kuroyukihime cut herself off and stood up. She whirled around and grinned.
“Your living room.”
Th-th-th-th-that’s too soon I’m not ready we’re honorable and just junior high students.
The confused, rambling refusal Haruyuki was preparing was dodged by Kuroyukihime with a simple: “It’s all right for the Red King, but not me?”
Takumu invited Chiyuri to walk home with him, saying that he would come to Haruyuki’s place after that, so inevitably, Haruyuki went home alone with Kuroyukihime.
Glancing over at Kuroyukihime as she walked along revealed her to be exchanging cheerful greetings with many other students while she kept one hand on her holo keyboard. She was most likely bringing student council work home as usual, but Haruyuki’s thoughts were new and frantic.
Let’s see, the living room, kitchen, and toilet should all be nice and clean. And we have tea and snacks. The problem is my room. Especially that blood-decorated, M-rated collection of games from the beginning of the century. If she saw those, I’d never be able to come back from that.
He had to defend his room to the last. No matter what happened. He could not unlock that electronic key. Having made this resolution, Haruyuki glared at his condo building, just barely peeking out on the other side of the elevated Chuo Line track.
He got the unusually silent Kuroyukihime on the elevator, pushed a button, and got off on the twenty-third floor. All that was left was to walk a dozen meters along the shared outdoor corridor, and then they would be at his door.
“Um…my house is basically nothing special, it’s just a regular house. We don’t have any pets, either.”
“I—I see. Not a problem. I hate shedding animals.” Kuroyukihime coughed and stopped in Haruyuki’s footsteps.
Please don’t let anything happen! Prayer uttered, Haruyuki touched the unlock dialogue that floated up into his field of view. The click of the lock being released followed.
As soon as he yanked on the pull-type doorknob, Haruyuki’s ears picked up the rat-a-tat-tat of the consecutive fire of a machine gun, a cry of, “Aah! Help me!” in English, and a girl screaming, “Yaah! Die! You’re dead!”
“Aaaugh!!” Haruyuki cried in turn as he ran straight into the living room, removing his shoes being too much to deal with at that moment.
There he saw a previous-generation game console connected to the panel monitor on the wall, cases from his M-rated game collection scattered all over the floor, and the figure of the Red King sitting cross-legged on the sofa gripping a wireless controller.
“Wh-wha—My room…locked…” Haruyuki took a step into the living room, mouth flapping, and the Red King glanced back at him.
“Oh, you’re home! Big brother, this is quite the hobby you’ve got. I love this kind of thing!”
Next to Haruyuki, standing stock-still with all thought processes stopped, he heard a slightly stunned voice. “Well, I can’t say I hate it myself. The Western games from this era did have a certain philosophy. Mmm.”
At exactly that moment, an older mafia don character was blasted away in a splash of blood on the large monitor.
“Yes! That’s five cleared!”
Looking down at the elementary school girl posing triumphantly, Haruyuki muttered hollowly once again, “How…? It was locked…”
The Red King paused the game and finally turned her entire body around. She stared first at Haruyuki, then at Kuroyukihime next to him, before smiling like an angel, red pigtails bouncing. “I told you, didn’t I? That your mom gave me a spare key for your place. It’s easy enough to fiddle with that a bit and make it a master key. But don’t worry, big brother. I didn’t touch the other kind of M-rated games behind your reference books!”
His life was over…
His bag fell with a thud from his right hand, which had lost the ability to hold things. The Red King turned her gaze from the gobsmacked Haruyuki to stare at Kuroyukihime again, innocent expression wiped from her face.
Putting the controller aside, the girl lifted both legs and leaped down from the sofa. Her clothing was no longer the simple, pure white blouse and navy skirt of the day before. She was draped in a bright red T-shirt, black vest with a zipper overtop, and cut-off jeans that showed her slim legs right up to the base, accented with red and black-striped thigh-high socks. And around her neck glittered a Neurolinker with a semitransparent, ruby-like exterior.
The girl, clad in colors like the bright blaze of a fire, took a few steps forward, dangerous smile still playing around the edges of her mouth, and next to Haruyuki directly confronted Kuroyukihime.
In stark contrast in black, not a single color on her body as if she were an aggregate of cold darkness, the junior high school girl returned an aloof gaze and a cool smile.
He could almost see the blue-white sparks crackling between the two of them and steadily retreated, momentarily forgetting the disastrous scene in the living room.
They’re not actually going to just dive into a duel right here, are they?
He observed them with serious misgivings as the Red King placed both hands on her hips, lifted her sharp chin, and spoke without even a trace of the demure-sister act from earlier.
“Hmph, so you’re the Black King. I get it. You sure are black. I wouldn’t be able to see you at night, even if you were standing right in front of me.”
Her usual sharp self, Kuroyukihime returned, arms folded, “And you are actually scarlet, Red King. It’d be interesting to hang you in an intersection and make cars stop.”
The sparks increased a level in voltage, and Haruyuki took another step back, silently screaming.
These two were both level-nine Kings. Special rules applied if they
got into a duel, and the loser would be unceremoniously stripped of Brain Burst. They certainly wouldn’t enter into that fight lightly, but the low threshold of Kuroyukihime’s flash point went without saying, and the Red King was doubtless a no less short-tempered personality.
I—I have to throw myself between them!
Haruyuki resolved to nobly sacrifice himself. “U-uh, I sure am happy I get to have a cute little sister and a beautiful older one all at once!” he said, scratching the back of his head with one hand. He turned a sheepish grin on them before he heard:
“I will kill you again.”
“What is wrong with you?”
Two extracold voices lashed out at him simultaneously, piercing his brow and his heart.
No longer bothering to even glance at Haruyuki, staggering and crumbling, the two Kings continued to face off for another few seconds before finally averting their gazes together with disdainful sniffs.
After going a step further and clicking her tongue as if to nail an extra bonus, the Red King looked down on Haruyuki. “Hey, hurry up and make some tea. Don’t you have any manners?”
“Oh, Haruyuki. I’ll have coffee, black.”
I like second cousin Tomoko from yesterday better, all baking me cookies and making me curry and stuff.
Honestly dejected, Haruyuki retreated to the kitchen on all fours, positioned himself where the two of them couldn’t see him, and gently wiped the corners of his eyes.
Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime sat down next to each other at the large dining table while the Red King perched cross-legged on a chair on the other side. Just as they were sipping their coffees—Kuroyukihime’s black, Haruyuki’s with milk and sugar, and the Red King’s essentially a café au lait made of milk alone—the door chime finally rang.
“Wow, this takes me back!” Takumu’s cheerful voice called out as he came inside, the door unlocked remotely by Haruyuki. “How many years has it been since I came over here, Ha—”
And then he saw the devastation on the living room floor, immediately grasped that something of some import had happened, and clapped Haruyuki on the shoulder lightly, sympathy rising up behind his glasses.
Next, he looked at the Red King, and after narrowing his eyes for a moment, he set himself down next to her without a word. A cup of coffee with only a little milk was already waiting there for him, and he mumbled his thanks as he stretched out a hand. Affably, he offered, “First, how about we start by introducing ourselves? It would make sense for you to tell us your name, I think, Red King.”
The girl sniffed quickly, but at the hard look Takumu shot her, she opened her mouth. “Well, whatever. I can do that much for you at least. I’m…Yuniko. Yuniko Kozuki.”
She followed that with a snap of her fingers, and a crimson name tag popped up in Haruyuki’s field of vision, inscribed with “Yuniko Kozuki” in a rather cute font. Although it was a business card sort of thing to give people you were just meeting, it was also a simple ID card. In the bottom right corner of the tag, a resident net certification mark glittered, and given the fact that even a wizard-level hacker would have a tough time forging this, the name on the tag had to be real.
The only other thing on the tag was her date of birth. Born December 2035, which meant she had just turned eleven.
There was often a discrepancy between the mental and physical ages of Burst Linkers, but in the case of the Red King—Yuniko—there was something that was hard to pin down. Sometimes, she seemed much more mature than Haruyuki, and other times, she was more like the girl her tag said she was.
“Hmm, Yuniko, huh?”
Tomoko-now-Yuniko gave the grinning Takumu a suspicious look. “Now what’s your name, Cyan Pile?” Which meant the Red King had already done a fair bit of checking into Nega Nebulus.
Takumu had also likely made that assumption, and while his smile warped to include a hint of cynicism, he obediently voiced his real name. “I’m Takumu Mayuzumi. A pleasure.” He slid a gentle finger, probably sending the Red King his name tag.
Yuniko momentarily stared into space, then turned her gaze on Haruyuki before her, jerking her chin.
“Y-you already know my real name, don’t you? Haruyuki Arita.”
“Gimme your tag,” he was ordered, and he reluctantly turned to his desktop.
Finally, the eyes of all three fell on Kuroyukihime, who had stayed silent for this exchange. She lifted her face from her cup and blinked her long eyelashes slowly. “Hmm? Oh, is it my turn? I’m Kuroyukihime. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Yuniko Kozuki.”
“Come on! That’s not your real name!!” Yuniko shouted immediately, and Kuroyukihime flicked a finger coolly.
Instantly, a jet-black name tag appeared not only in front of the Red King, but also in Haruyuki’s field of vision.
KUROYUKIHIME
To the lower right of this, in a large Mincho font, the seal of resident net certification shone, and Haruyuki shook his head with a sigh. He really could not understand this girl.
The Red King released her breath slowly through her nose with an expression that was difficult to describe and finally clicked her tongue loudly. “Aah seriously, fine, whatever! I’ll just remember you’re totally shameless and actually have the nerve to call yourself ‘hime’ like a princess!”
Even if she was to force Kuroyukihime to give up her real name, Yuniko would have no positive proof that the next tag would be the real thing, either, since Kuroyukihime had clearly hacked the quantum cypher key of her tag.
Kuroyukihime finally smiled. “Much cuter than referring to oneself as ‘King,’ don’t you think?” she asked, complacent and cool. “In any case, now that the introductions have been concluded without incident, perhaps you will allow me to get straight to the point.” Her smile vanished, and her jet-black eyes were alight with a sharp gleam. “First of all, Red King—or rather, Yuniko. I must hear exactly how you cracked Haruyuki in the real.”
First staring blankly at this unexpected opening, Haruyuki belatedly held his breath.
Right. This is the thing we should be concerned about more than anything else. How the Red King disguised herself as my second cousin Tomoko, not just the reason she did. Cracking the real is the ultimate taboo for Burst Linkers. Because it was directly connected to the safety of one’s real-world self.
Glancing over at the now pale and easily read Haruyuki, Yuniko shrugged lightly. “You don’t need to make that face. Even in the Red Legion, the only one who knows you’re Silver Crow is me. I give you my word as King. As for how I pinned you down…” One corner of her mouth yanked its way up. “Same tech I used to sneak into this house. Social engineering. And in a way only an elementary school kid like me can do.”
“Huh? What do you mean…?”
“Everyone knows you guys’ territory is Suginami. And I guessed from the times you showed up that you were a junior high student. You following me so far?”
Because of the requirement that Burst Linkers must have been wearing a Neurolinker from birth, even the oldest ones were currently only sixteen. Strictly speaking, it was possible for some to be in tenth grade, but if they were students, the majority were in junior high, giving Yuniko’s guess legs.
Nodding sharply, the Red King tucked her chin in slightly and continued. “So, then I used the fact that I’m in elementary school and systematically applied for school visits to every single junior high in Suginami Ward. Cuz if you get a visitor’s pass, you can connect to the in-school local net. And then I just accelerate a bit while the teacher’s showing me around and take a look at the matching list—”
“Which means you could discover Silver Crow at any point. Hmm, extremely troublesome, but your method makes sense,” Kuroyukihime said, slightly vexed. “However. You couldn’t have known anything more than that he was one of the three hundred students attending Umesato. How on earth did you determine it was Haruyuki here?”
At this, the Red King pursed her lips and fell silent for a moment. Face downturned, she gave Haru
yuki a sidelong scowl before producing a voice that sounded very much like like she was excusing herself.
“Listen, it’s not like I have any particular feelings for you one way or the other, okay? At best, it’s your duel avatar I got business with, or more like just the wings on your back. I found Silver Crow at Umesato Junior High, I set up camp at a restaurant where you could see the road between the school gates, and I accelerated whenever students came out on their way home. I can tell you, I was pretty surprised when this guy was the person at the gate when Silver Crow appeared on the matching list.”
Normally, this jab would’ve cut deeply, but right now, Haruyuki’s resources were stretched too thin for that. His eyes grew round, and he flapped his mouth a few times before timidly asking, “Exactly how many Burst Points did you use…?”
“’Round two hundred maybe.”
“T-two hundred!!” Haruyuki shouted, Takumu nearly dropped his cup, and Kuroyukihime offered a large, wry smile.
“I see. In other words, this is a method that only you, an elementary schooler who’s also a King with points to spare, could employ. However, well…your tenacity’s quite commendable. Have you really fallen so hard for Haruyuki?”
“That’s not it!!” Irrationally, she kicked Haruyuki’s shin with a bang under the table, and Haruyuki yelped.
“I told you!! My business is with the avatar, not the person inside!! I mean, if things had gone well, right about now I would’ve stolen him away and made him my subordinate!!”
“So, then,” Takumu said quietly, still smiling, almond eyes filled with a cool light, “this ‘business’ is the ultimate reason you expended two hundred points, cracked Haru in the real, threw yourself into a social engineering project, and asked for this meeting.”
As soon as he spoke, any hint of childishness was absent from Yuniko’s face. “That’s right,” the Red King agreed in a low voice, shaking her neatly bound red hair, entrusting her slim body to her seat back.
Her dark green eyes shot straight at Haruyuki from beneath half-closed lids. The pressure of that gaze was more than sufficient to remind him that even if she was a small girl, she was still a King like Kuroyukihime.