“Welp, thanks for saying it, Cyan Pile.” Yuniko, returning once again to tiny demon mode, jerked her slender chin out, hands still in her pockets, and glared at Takumu. “This whole time, you’ve been the one saying all the smart stuff. What’s your deal? You the glasses guy? Your nickname ‘Professor’?”
After looking slightly injured momentarily, Takumu quickly regained his composure. “I’m saying, show us some proof, Red King,” he replied. “We’re a Legion of just three people; if you’d have us brave danger and dive in, you should have come with some kind of collateral for asking that!”
“Isn’t the collateral right here?” Yuniko quickly jerked her right hand, freed from her pocket, around her virtual desktop; bringing three fingertips together, she flicked. A semitransparent name tag again appeared in Haruyuki’s field of view. But this one was a little larger. Because it didn’t just have her real name; her address was displayed below that.
Haruyuki stared dumbfounded at the row of letters that started with “Tokyo, Nerima Ward” and ended with the name of a school and dorm he’d never heard of. She had exposed enough about her true identity just by telling them her real name and showing them her face; revealing her current address went beyond bold and into reckless.
Takumu and Kuroyukihime also appeared surprised by this, and under the wordless scrutiny of the three junior high school students, Yuniko jabbed at her own thin chest with the thumb on the right hand she pulled away from her desktop.
“Don’t you get it yet, why I contacted you in person? On the real side, I’m just an elementary school kid with no strength, no money, no organization. If I was attacked here, I’d be helpless. If I betray you, you can come and make me pay anytime,” Yuniko said, and Haruyuki watched as her eyes caught the afterglow of the midwinter sun streaming in the window and burned a radiant red.
She was fiercely determined, to the point where it was almost desperation. And it was true that a member of your own Legion breaking the nonaggression pact and going after other Legions was a problem you couldn’t shut your eyes to. But the major premise here was that at the end of the day, Brain Burst was a fighting game, a thing that existed to play, to enjoy, to thrill.
Which is why Haruyuki thought it was a mistake to sacrifice your real-world self to Brain Burst. He was sure this was the issue that had confused Takumu three months earlier, a problem that probably made him suffer even now.
“Yu-Yuni,” Haruyuki called out unconsciously on Takumu’s behalf, silent as if overawed, groping for what to say next.
“I know what you wanna say.” The Red King smiled self-deprecatingly as she lowered her right hand, as if guessing Haruyuki’s feelings from that single word. “But you know…You’ll probably realize this if you get up here one day, but when you get this game, the real is just so incredibly weak. Because of this ‘acceleration’ technology. If you knew exactly how much time me and that girl there had spent in the Accelerated World up to now, it’d knock you flat on your butt.”
“Huh…so your total play time…?” Haruyuki cocked his head and did a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Break it down to about ten duels a day. If the average time for one fight is twenty minutes, that’s a total of two hundred minutes—just over three hours. That was a lot of game play for someone in junior high, but it wasn’t unreasonable.
Over three hours a day, that would be a hundred hours a month. Twelve hundred hours in a year. And Yuniko said it had been about two and a half years since she became a Burst Linker, so…
“About…three thousand hours?”
That seemed huge, but compared with full-blown VRMMORPG (virtual reality massive multiplayer online role-playing game) addicts, it was practically nothing. Those guys easily dove ten consecutive hours in a single day.
But Yuniko started cackling the instant she heard the results of Haruyuki’s earnest mental arithmetic, and even Kuroyukihime was roused to a faint, wry smile.
“Huh? That’s not it? Then how how many hours in total, Yuni…?”
“Not telling. You decide the answer yourself. And—” The expression on the Red King’s face was suddenly scary as she continued darkly, “Quit with the ‘Yuni.’ Makes me itch all over. Niko’s good. Call me ‘Niko,’ and don’t you dare add any cutesy flourishes or anything.”
Feeling like he’d been let off the hook somehow, Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down and ran his eyes over the room. “Umm…then does this mean we can help Yuni—the Red King after all, as Nega Nebulus?”
“Mmm. There are many risks, but for the present, let’s accept this thing at face value. And it’s not as if there aren’t benefits.”
“B-benefits?” Haruyuki asked in response, and Kuroyukihime shifted her gaze to glance at the Red King.
“Exactly. Because for the incomparable Prominence to come to us with such a significant request, they’ve naturally prepared some bargaining points. For instance…they won’t lay a hand on our modest Territory in the future. Things like that.”
“Tch!” Clicking her tongue softly, the Red King—Niko—waved her right hand lightly. “Got it. If verbal’s good, we can make an agreement right now. I’ll tell my guys not to touch Suginami for the time being.”
Kuroyukihime dipped her head and from crossed arms lifted a single finger on her right hand. “However, that is just one point. Scarlet Rain…exactly how are you intending to ambush Chrome Disaster in the Unlimited Field? I’m sure you know it’s very nearly impossible to target and confront someone there.”
“I won’t make any trouble for you guys. I’ll take responsibility for this, set the time and place. Right now, all I can say is…it’ll probably be tomorrow evening.”
“My. Can you do that?”
Yuniko nodded her assent to Kuroyukihime’s question and its implications.
“In that case, I’ll let you handle it. We’ll meet again here after school tomorrow and dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. Acceptable, yes? Haruyuki, Takumu?”
What exactly is this Unlimited Field, though?
But even before the desire to pose that question, Haruyuki couldn’t help but feel his heart lurch. What? My place again?! It might be okay because his mother wouldn’t be back from Shanghai until the following day, but if he came home tomorrow and this time Niko was in the middle of appreciatively sampling the “other kind” of M-rated games in the living room—if that happened, he’d be doomed forever.
He had to defend it. This time for sure, he would defend his room!
Making this vow, Haruyuki bobbed his head as Takumu slowly nodded.
“Well, then let’s leave off there for today. Haruyuki, thank you for the coffee.” Kuroyukihime stood as she spoke and stared again at the collection of vintage Western games from several dozen years earlier scattered around the living room. “I’d like to come over and play sometime. You have a lot of titles I’ve never even heard of.”
“S-sure, that’d be great.” One of the ones that doesn’t have too much blood and guts, he added in his head as he saw Kuroyukihime and Takumu to the door.
“Okay, Haru, see you at school tomorrow. Whoa! It’s already so late!”
First Takumu, too impatient to even take the time to wave a hand, ran off toward the skyway connecting to a separate wing, and then Kuroyukihime slipped on her loafers and turned around.
“U-um…I’ll walk you home. It’s already late—” Haruyuki offered, but a dismissive wave of her hand interrupted him.
“No need to worry. It’s common for me to be even later with student council business. And my house is surprisingly close.”
“Oh…is it? But be careful.”
“Mmm-hmm. All right, then, thanks for having me over. See you tomorrow.” Kuroyukihime smiled, raised her right hand, and started out the door.
“’Kay then, Blackie,” Niko drawled at her back from behind Haruyuki. “Don’t be late tomorrow, y’hear? Now then, back to what I was doing…”
“Hold up!” Kuroyukihime whirled at top speed and shouted after the Red King who ha
d started trotting back off into the living room. “Hold on a sec, Red!”
“Whut?”
“You can’t possibly be intending to stay here again tonight?” She glared at Niko, throwing her neck back, eyes shining from deep within, and demanded an explanation.
“Totes. Too much hassle to go all the way home and stuff.”
“Quit fooling around and go home! Children should go home, do their homework, brush their teeth, and go to bed!!”
Niko guffawed, and let the heat roll right off her. “It’s just, I go to a boarding school. And I got a three-day pass to leave, so even if I do go back, there won’t be anything for me to eat. So! Biiiig brother, what am I gonna make for supper tonight?” Uttering the last bit in angel mode, Niko disappeared into the living room.
“Wh-wha—” Kuroyukihime, on the verge of a massive explosion, both fists clenched and shaking, glared sideways at Haruyuki, who was standing stock-still in mute amazement. “I take back my ‘see you tomorrow.’ I’ll stay here tonight as well.”
After giving voice to this terrifying announcement/declaration of war, she shut the door forcefully, removed her shoes, and stomped down the hallway, returning to the living room.
His brain completely frozen, Haruyuki needed a full minute to reboot.
What’s going on?
What’s going on how is this happening is this actually real? Or is it, A to Z, all of it, fake and made of polygons?
Haruyuki sat down on the living room sofa, clutched a cushion, and let his gaze wander in space.
Maybe all of it right from the start—meeting Kuroyukihime, getting Brain Burst, becoming the Burst Linker Silver Crow—every little bit of it was a dream. He was probably running some kind of app to escape reality by constantly viewing a lengthy simulation.
Although Haruyuki tried seriously to doubt what was happening, the aftertaste of the slightly burnt hamburger he had eaten just half an hour earlier, the happy sensation in his stomach, and the sounds of water and girls’ voices as they played around, echoing from the bathroom and separated from him by a mere hallway, were just too real.
After Kuroyukihime’s sudden declaration, the three went shopping together in the shopping center at the bottom of the condo, made supper together, and did the cleanup. Ending the night with Niko and Kuroyukihime using the bath together first. But…
The situation and the sudden and precipitous turn it had taken was just too unrealistic, and Haruyuki was, wastefully, left running on automatic. His consciousness simply could not adjust to the scenario “home alone,” “two girls come to stay over,” and “make dinner, get in the bath.” Exactly what was the optimal solution to the problem of how to act now? What choices would be normal at a time like this, for a boy?
Smoke coming out of his ears in puffs, Haruyuki kept the excessive load of his thoughts scraping round and round. In anime and games of this type, this sort of scene generally had the boy going to ask about the temperature of the water, after which some crazy accident happens, and he ends up tumbling into the bath. Resulting in bath buckets and shampoo bottles being thrown at him until he beats a hasty retreat.
In which case, me doing that is really the optimal solution.
Haruyuki bounced to his feet and started staggering toward the bathroom. Already in his mind, he could see nothing other than a cut scene of Kuroyukihime and Niko covered in bubbles, washing each other.
However, unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—just before he could open the living room door, he heard two sets of footsteps heading his way down the hall. Haruyuki teleported to the sofa at light speed.
The knob turned with a violent clack, and Niko sprang through first, shouting, “Ice cream!” as she ran into the kitchen. When he instinctively averted his eyes from her, roughing it in a loose sweatshirt and shorts, his gaze fell upon Kuroyukihime.
She was wearing thin pink pajamas, likely bought at the shopping center that evening. From the slightly doubtful-looking figure, towel over damp, shining hair, came the scent of a touchingly defenseless loveliness, an impression he would never have even imagined given her usual black accoutrement, which separated her from other people. All Haruyuki could do was gaze at her, jaw dropped.
“Don’t stare at me like that. This color was all they had in my size,” Kuroyukihime said, turning away, and Haruyuki finally came back to his senses, shaking his head violently from side to side.
“N-n-n-n-no, it’s fine! Th-th-they look good on you! Really good!”
“D-do they? They’re not a bit childish?”
“No! Not at all! They’re perfect. Just right. Critical hit.” He had desperately, frantically gotten that much out, still kneeling, spine straight, when Niko popped her head in from the side and waved a popsicle in her right hand.
“Hey! Silver Crow! Know what?”
“Wh-what?”
“This girl might look like this now, but take her clothes off and she’s surprisingloof—”
The ending was courtesy of Kuroyukihime landing a merciless blow to her solar plexus.
“Now.” Squeezing the Red King’s throat from behind, Kuroyukihime smiled coolly. “You hurry and use the bath, too. The water will get cold.”
He looked at Niko dangling there and flew off the sofa, giving a little scream in his head. “R-right! Okay, I’ll leave you two and take a quick jump in the tub! There’s barley tea in the fridge, so please help yourself!”
The evening ended with an M-rated retro game tournament that lasted until the middle of the night.
As they sat on the floor around the massive game console from forty years earlier, chattering and laughing, slaughtering the flat images of creatures, Haruyuki could not stop wondering if the whole thing was actually real.
Me and these people, we’re basically only connected through the VR game Brain Burst. So I should recognize that the foundation of our relationship is online—the Net.
I do love Kuroyukihime, and she says she likes me, too. But the intermediary for those feelings up to now has basically been the quantum signals exchanged nonstop between our Neurolinkers. And I thought I was okay with a relationship that could be widely recorded and captured by vector data.
But today we made supper together, we ate it together, we took turns in the bath, and now we’re sitting here separated by only a few dozen centimeters; we can even feel each other’s body heat.
In this world where the border between real and virtual is endlessly blurred and we can’t even tell how much of the information our senses receive is analog and how much is digital—is this something that can happen in this world? How am I supposed to grasp and process off-line human relationships? After all, off-line—in the real world—all I’ve done is run away, hide, and shrink from everything.
The showy scream erupting from the enormous boss monster on-screen interrupted his rambling, whirling thoughts. At the same time, Niko dropped her controller and flopped over backward.
“Aah…I’m can’t go anymore. I’m tired. Tired!”
“Well, I did tell you. Children should—Naaah.” Kuroyukihime put her left hand to her mouth and yawned elegantly.
Looking up at the clock on the wall since he had already removed his Neurolinker for the night, Haruyuki saw the time creeping up on midnight. “O-okay, I guess we should head for bed already? Umm…Yuni—I mean, Niko—maybe the sofa here is good for tonight. And Kuroyukihime, please use my mom’s bedroom. Oh, but maybe it’ll be cold in there if I don’t turn the heater on for a bit—” Haruyuki had gotten that far when Niko interrupted loudly.
“Whatever. Such a hassle! Bring out a blanket, I can just sleep…here…” She buried her head in an enormous cushion and soon closed her eyes.
“Mmm. That’s good for me, too. Sleeping together in a pile, surrounded by games, a historic experience…actually…” And then she, too, was flat on her back.
Although he wondered at this, there was no way to do anything like valiantly pick them up and carry them to bed, so Haruyuki did as he wa
s told and brought out whatever blankets they had. He gently covered Niko and Kuroyukihime, who were already asleep, and thought to himself, Now, then. I guess I should go sleep in my room?
But isn’t it kind of jerky to leave my guests to sleep on the floor while just I go sleep in a bed? Shouldn’t I sleep on the floor, too, in the interest of fairness? Isn’t that what a gentleman would do?
After persuading himself with this rationalization, Haruyuki turned the ceiling light to its lowest setting and curled up in a ball on the spot. The floor, embedded with heat-circulating pipes, was slightly warm, and the large, malleable cushions were fluffy and soft. And from so close he could reach out and touch it, he could smell the most amazingly pleasant scent.
Haruyuki closed his eyes tightly beneath his blanket thinking that there was no way he’d be able to sleep in a situation like this. But oddly, rather than nervous tension, a strange serenity descended on him, and his consciousness immediately dropped into a gentle darkness.
Haruyuki woke just once in the middle of the night.
When he stood to go to the washroom and casually shifted his gaze, an unexpected scene popped into view in the dim illumination of blue-white moonlight.
Niko and Kuroyukihime, who had been a meter or more apart, were glued together, sleeping deeply, as if they had at some point been squeezed down the valley of the two cushions. More than that, Niko had her head buried in Kuroyukihime’s chest and was tightly gripping the fabric of her pajamas with her right hand. And Kuroyukihime had both of her arms around her, as if wrapping up Niko’s red hair.
Rather than surprise at this sight, he felt something hit his chest and make him gasp, and Haruyuki opened his eyes wide.
The Red King and the Black King. Level-nine Burst Linkers bound by the special rule of sudden death.
Haruyuki couldn’t even imagine how many hours these two had passed in the Accelerated World, engaging in mortal combat over and over each time they went, or what lay ahead for them. But he could say this at least. If they both had their sights set on level ten, then one day, they would have to fight. Because the only way a King could move forward was by defeating another King.