8

He absolutely could not let his guard down. He had been so firm, and yet…

Why—? How?!

“Seriously, how did it end up like this…?” Haruyuki relaxed and leaned against the transparent inner tube.

The sound of water and the voices of children playing beat against his eardrums. The sunlight pouring in through the windows reflected off the surface of the water around him, flickering irregularly. The water, at a constant temperature of twenty-eight degrees Celsius, communicated a comfortable coolness to his back and limbs.

Sunday, July 14, one PM. Haruyuki was in a pair of loose surf shorts—Neurolinker on, of course—floating in one corner of the twenty-five-meter pool. The wall on the south side was glass, and it offered a view of the towns of Shibuya, Daikanyama, and Meguro from a height of 150 meters above the ground.

“Amazing,” Haruyuki murmured. “I’ve never been in a pool this high up before.”

“Me neither.” Takumu nodded, similarly floating nearby. His beach shorts were the sporty leggings type, and he had naturally taken off his glasses. He wasn’t using an inner tube or a kickboard, but he was good at anything sporty, so he seemed to be able to float merely by moving his arms and legs slowly. “When I think about this much water being on such a high floor, I get a little nervous, you know?”

“Um. How many tons of water are in this pool?”

“It’s about twenty-five meters long, eight meters wide, and a meter and a half deep, I’d say…So calculating from that, the volume’s just three hundred cubic meters. Which means, the weight’s three hundred tons.”

“Th-three hundred tons! I can’t believe the floor doesn’t collapse.”

“I’m pretty sure this building’ll be okay. Ravine Square opened up right around the Olympics, so.” Takumu looked up at the summer sky outside the window.

Shibuya Ravine Square opened the same year as the Tokyo Olympics twenty-seven years earlier, a redevelopment around Shibuya Station. Centered around the forty-six-floor office building Ravine Tower, soaring up to a height of 230 meters on the east side of the station, the complex also included two mixed-use tower condos of 180 meters on the west side of the station, and then the thirty-four-floor commercial South Tower, also 180 meters, on the south side.

Shibuya Hikarie, which opened in 2012 on the other side of Meiji Street, was actually 180 meters tall, for a total of five skyscrapers clustered together in the small area. Although the name sounded like loving in Japanese, the area’s nickname was actually Ravine, for the “valley” of an urban canyon that the area had turned into.

The pool in which Haruyuki and his friends were floating was in the high-cost, high-rise hotel in the upper floors of South Tower. As a general rule, it was for hotel-guest use, but they were visiting during the narrow wedge of time between checkout and check-in, so there was basically no one in the pool except Haruyuki and his friends. There were three or four adults in poolside deck chairs and about the same number of seven- or eight-year-olds in the water, and that was it.

Because they were in the luxury hotel of a skyscraper, he couldn’t help but remember the fierce battle that unfolded two weeks earlier at Tokyo Midtown Tower. In order to slip past the ferocious attack of the Archangel guarding the building and beat down the ISS kit main body, they had investigated the strategy of staying over at the hotel in the top floors in the real world and diving into the Unlimited Neutral Field from there.

But this strategy had been scrapped due to the wall of the giga-premium lodging fee of thirty thousand yen for one night. Although if they hadn’t had to fight Metatron’s first form head-on, they wouldn’t have met her in her true form.

Regardless, Haruyuki was generally far removed from luxury lodgings, so how could he allow himself to simply bob along in the pool of this hotel, which was probably in the same price range, when he wasn’t even a hotel guest?

“Whoa! Wh—! Oooooow!”

A familiar cry of delight came from him, and Haruyuki turned the inner tube around.

Trotting out of the locker room was Chiyuri in a shorts-and-top-type swimsuit, and behind her was the girls’ camp of Nega Nebulus plus one—Kuroyukihime, Fuko, Utai, and their guest, Rin Kusakabe, filed in wearing swimsuits of all colors.

This was not the first time he’d seen the girls in revealing outfits. At the eighth-grade class B’s reverse cosplay Café Animal Kingdom at the school festival, all the girls had been suddenly clad in animal swimsuits with extremely little surface area due to an operation error on Haruyuki’s part, an incident that was still too fresh in his memory.

But in the end, that had not been reality but an AR image created by their Neurolinkers, and the optical phenomenon that leapt into his IRL eyeballs now was indeed orders of magnitude different in terms of details, texture, and of course, impact.

No, how can I definitely say that what I’m seeing now is a real scene? What if my Neurolinker was hacked, and a video that would normally be impossible was being projected into my mind?

“Taku, is that real?” Haruyuki murmured.

Takumu shifted his fingers to the place on his temple where his glasses usually were and hit thin air. But he didn’t even seem to notice. “I guess we’d find out if we took a visual screenshot. If it’s real, the warning about taking photos without permission should sound.”

“Makes sense. Okay. I’ll give it a go. It’d be pretty serious if our vision had been hacked.”

“Okay, I’ll check, too, with video…”

“Hey! You two! What’re you muttering about?!”

But fortunately—if you could call it fortunate—Chiyuri reached the deck before Haruyuki and Takumu could open their virtual desktops and fired her superpowerful Chiyuri Beam at them for the first time in a while. “Oh! No way! You weren’t trying to take a screenshot, were you?!”

A shiver of fear running up his spine at his childhood friend’s sharp intuition, he shook his head at the same time as Takumu.

““We weren’t!””

“So then, what’s that hand about, hanging in the air like that?” she asked, eyebrow arched.

Their heads shook faster.

““Warm-up stretches.””

“You usually do those before you get in the water, you know.”

“You too, Chiiko. Make sure to stretch properly before swimming, all right?” Fuko appeared from behind Chiyuri and smiled at Haruyuki and Takumu in the water, who were also smiling. Her bikini and light-blue pareu, complete with ultrathin knee-highs to protect the nanopolymers of her prosthetic legs, looked very good on her.

Wondering what this particularly earth-shattering Raker Smile meant, Haruyuki brought a stiff smile to his own face, and Kuroyukihime came to stand next to Fuko. She was in a simple black bikini with a violet butterfly pattern.

The subzero Kuroyukihime Smile was fortunately not activated, and she looked at Haruyuki with a straight face as she spoke. “That inner tube looks comfortable. Is it your own?”

“Y-yes. The mail yesterday said to bring a swimsuit, so I figured, just in case…”

“I see. Would you lend it to me for a bit later?”

“S-sure, of course. However long you want.”

While they were talking, Utai popped her face out from behind Kuroyukihime. Her swimsuit was an orange one-piece with a large ruffle on the chest. She already had a red polka-dotted inner tube around her waist.

UI> I BROUGHT AN INNER TUBE, TOO! With a satisfied smile, Utai spun the plastic unit around for them.

Fuko suddenly picked her up from behind, inner tube and all. “Oh, you! Wearing an inner tube’s against the rules, Uiui!”

UI> HOW IS IT AGAINST THE RULES?! Utai flailed her legs as she tapped at the keyboard with both hands.

“Because it makes you too cute, obviously! ” Fuko whirled her around, showing off her surprising arm strength. “So much that I could just toss you in the pool like this!”

UI> STI@PLSAEEEEEEE

“Come, come! That’s quite enough, Fuko. Before you throw her in, you have to make sure Uiui warms up, too.”

“Oh! You’re right. Okay, I’ll let you stretch really well before I throw you in.”

…You can just throw her in. Or like, if it’s come to this, I feel relieved that Chocolat and the others can’t be here, or like maybe a little sad?

These thoughts in his mind, Haruyuki couldn’t take his eyes off the enchanting poolside view. But abruptly, the surface of the water rose up roundly right beside him.

“Wh-whoa?!” Haruyuki reeled with such force that he very nearly did a somersault, and Takumu held down his inner tube.

Breaking through the surface of the water with a splash was Rin Kusakabe, who had at some point unbeknownst to him dived into the water. Water dripped off her cute clover-patterned tank-top-style bikini and matching headband.

“Hello, Arita.” Rin looked up at Haruyuki and grinned, water reaching her chin.

“Oh…H-hello, Kusakabe.”

The members of Nega Nebulus—excluding Chocolat Puppeter and her friends who they hadn’t yet met in the real—met up in the morning and took care of their shopping and dinner in Shibuya, but Rin, a member of Great Wall, had joined them here at the pool.

Haruyuki had only just dueled with her older brother, Ash Roller, the day before, but it had been two weeks since he’d seen Rin, and for a moment, he was at a loss at what to say to her.

And then Rin placed her slender fingertips on Haruyuki’s inner tube and said in a small voice, “Um. Your inner tube. Would you let. Me also borrow it later?”

“Oh! O-o-o-o-o-o-of course! Not even later, right now…” He hurriedly lifted it away from his body and set it to float in the water.

“G-g-g-g-g-go ahead— Huh? Whoa?!”

The reason Haruyuki cried out and Rin also yelped rather adorably was because someone jumped in from the sky above with a “Hup!” It was none other than Kuroyukihime, who flew right into the hole in the inner tube with a loud splash. Water droplets flew through the air to hit Haruyuki and Takumu in the face.

“K-K-K-Kuroyukihime, wh-wh-what are—?”

“I made the reservation, you know, earlier, Haruyuki?” And here, at last, the subzero Kuroyukihime Smile was activated. “Mmm. It is a rather comfortable inner tube, isn’t it? What is it made of?”

He wasn’t sure just how serious she was when she asked these questions, as she slipped her slender legs out of the inner tube and shifted to a sitting posture.

“R-right, it’s a nanocrystal elastomer. Lightweight, thin, very elastic, feels good to the touch, and it’s also very resistant,” Haruyuki said, like he was an inner-tube salesperson or something.

And then from the deck, Chiyuri clapped her hands together with an exasperated expression. “Okay, no more playing! Pay attention! I will now reveal today’s special guest!”

The four in the water looked up, and Utai and Fuko stood up from their stretches.

With the seven looking on, a girl with short hair walked briskly out of the locker room. He knew it was a girl because of the snowy-white dress-type swimsuit she wore, but her long, slender physique had a neutral air about it. For a moment, he wondered who it was, but when he saw the semitransparent external Neurolinker equipped on her neck, he finally understood. This was Akira Himi sans glasses—Aqua Current.

This was probably the first time he’d seen Akira’s naked face, and he stared unconsciously until Fuko clapped her hands together.

“Okay, everyone, get ready!”

Hurriedly, he stretched out in the water. Turning toward Akira on the deck, Kuroyukihime thanked her on their behalf. “Akira, thank you so much for getting so many precious tickets for us today.”

“Thank you very muuuuch!” the other six immediately chorused.

Akira nodded coolly. “You’re welcome.”

Yes: The reason common junior and senior high schoolers like Haruyuki and his friends were able to have their fill of resort life at the lofty pool of the luxury hotel was because Akira had gotten a number of tickets for them. And she had been able to do that because her mother had apparently been the chef and pâtissier at the restaurant of an affiliated hotel.

“Okay, everyone, have fun,” Akira announced, sounding exactly the way she always did, as she put on a white swim cap. “I’m going to swim.”

She had been later than the others because she had done her warm-up exercises in the locker room, and now she artlessly bent over and dived into the lane to the far right with a form that seemed incredible to an amateur’s eyes. She slid into the water and didn’t pop up again until she’d gone nearly ten meters and then started to swim in a crawl. It looked entirely effortless, yet she was extremely fast. In the blink of an eye, she had swum twenty-five meters, and she flipped around to return. With her white swimsuit, she looked almost like a beluga whale.

“W-wow…That’s Aquamatic for you,” Haruyuki muttered.

Takumu once again caught the light on his air glasses. “I can’t just let her beat me like this. I’m going to swim a bit, too.” He moved smoothly into the neighboring lane and kicked at the wall at the same time as the returning Akira turned. In contrast with Akira, his form was powerful, and he swam hard.

Haruyuki didn’t so much as go near the school pool, but because he had been forced to take swimming lessons as a kid, of all the sports in the world, swimming was the only one he didn’t hate. But of course, he couldn’t begin to compare with the speed Akira and Takumu produced, so he simply treaded water and wondered what to do next.

Still on Haruyuki’s inner tube, Kuroyukihime pinched his shoulder. “Haruyuki, how are you at swimming?”

“Oh, well, I’m not awful.”

“Oh-ho! That’s good. So then how about we begin our training?”

“Huh? T-training? What training?”

Kuroyukihime grinned. “Oh my, knowing you, I’m sure you surmised the reason we came to this pool long ago.”

“Reason? …It wasn’t because we got tickets?”

“No, if Akira hadn’t been able to arrange for the tickets, I was thinking we could go to the Daikanyama sports center. I wanted you to get a little accustomed to it before the meeting.”

“Accustomed? To what?”

He whirled around. Akira and Takumu were still swimming, and Chiyuri, Utai, and Fuko were continuing to warm up. Rin, looking puzzled, was next to Haruyuki.

“…To the. Water?” There was nothing but water around, so he hazarded that response, and Kuroyukihime smiled again.

“So close.” She spun around with the inner tube and pulled her face in close to Haruyuki and Rin. “The sensation of floating in the water…Or to be more specific, to the sensation of artificial gravity.”

“……!!”

He took a sharp breath and exchanged a glance with Rin before asking in a similarly small voice, “S-so then…does that mean it’s finally going to be implemented today? The…Space stage?”

“Fuko and I have carefully considered that the possibility definitely exists.”

“B-but why today? The rumors were all pointing to July fifth…But no matter how many days pass, it totally never shows. Some people are saying it might never be implemented, at this rate.”

Kuroyukihime nodded firmly. Drops of water fell from her wet bangs onto the pale skin of her chest and then rolled down. “I also thought that if it was going to be implemented, it would have been on the fifth. Because that was exactly a month after Hermes’ Cord appeared in the Accelerated World. But it’s not as though we had any firm basis for thinking that. Brain Burst updates pretty much on its own schedule…Some things will be one month after the official event, but they’ll also really stretch and push all kinds of commemorative days.”

“Commemorative days…You mean like Culture Day or Respect for the Aged Day?”

“Oh…I’ve. Heard that. Too. The Ocean stage was implemented. On Marine Day,” Rin said.

“That’s exactly right.” Kuroyukihime raised a single finger. “Incidentally, everyone’s favorite, the Sewer stage, was also implemented on September tenth, Sewer Day.”

“Is there actually such a day…? Huh? But wait.” Furrowing his brow, he searched his hazy memory. “I’m pretty sure that exists—Space Day, right? And that’s in September, too.”

“Oh, well done! Space Day is September twelfth, the day that the space shuttle carrying the first Japanese person was launched into space.”

“Wow. I get it…No wait, not that.” He shook his head, the water around him splashing. “If there’s a Space Day, then wouldn’t the Space stage be implemented on that day? Which means that’s still two months off?”

“But that would mean too much time would pass from the Hermes’ Cord race,” Kuroyukihime noted. “After the formal event for the Odaiba theme park, Tokyo Grand Castle, the Ancient Castle stage patterned on the same motif was implemented thirty days later. I highly doubt they would drag it out three months. This is complete supposition on my part, but I believe the developer intended to implement the Space stage on July fifth, thirty days after the race, but there turned out to be a commemorative day unrelated to space a little later, so they postponed it. Perhaps.”

“This developer’s kinda doing things at random, huh?” Haruyuki said.

“That didn’t just start now. To begin with, the very idea of giving a bunch of mere seven-year-olds something like the Brain Burst program and then going completely hands-off is entirely too random.” Kuroyukihime denounced both game master and Originators at the same time, and Haruyuki unconsciously sank down into the water, but Rin displayed a surprising boldness and giggled. But she quickly got a strange look on her face and gave voice to another question.

“Um. So then. Today…July fourteenth is a commemorative. Day not related to space? So. What day. Is today?”

It was Fuko who replied, having come along to sit on the edge of the pool behind them at some point, her legs in the water up to the knees. In the water a little ways off, Utai was floating with her inner tube, having gotten in or been tossed in by Fuko. Chiyuri seemed to be swimming briskly together with Takumu and Akira in the opposite lane.

“All right, a multiple-choice quiz for Rin and Corvus.” Grinning, she raised three fingers. “One: Dandelion Day. Two: Morning Glory Day. Three: Sunflower Day.”

““…””

After exchanging another look with Rin, Haruyuki asked timidly, “Um, none of them seem to have any connection with space, though?”

“I wonder? Maybe think very caaaarefully?”

“Um…”

Dandelions…They have that fluff that flies away. And I feel like the shape of the fluff doesn’t not look like a space shuttle reentry capsule.

“D-Dandelion Day!”

“Ennnh! Wrong! As punishment, thirty seconds underwater.”

Still smiling, Fuko stretched out her right leg and moved it up and down in Haruyuki’s direction, so with a “’Kaaay…” he launched the timer app on his Neurolinker and took a deep breath before submerging his head below the water.

Of course, this was the pool at a luxury hotel, so the water was quite clear. He took his eyes off his own shadow wobbling on the floor of the pool and looked ahead. Instantly, Rin’s chest, in the clover-patterned swimsuit, appeared at close range, and overwhelmed, he turned his body to the left.

This time, the lower half of Kuroyukihime poking through the inner tube on the water surface assaulted his retinas. Bubbles of air escaping his lungs, he was instantly in pain, but he felt like if he gave up then and there, they’d figure something was up, so he earnestly held on. He changed the orientation of his body once more, and the instant the digital numbers of the timer hit thirty, he pushed up above the water surface.

As he panted and gasped, Fuko grinned and said, “Nice work, Corvus. How was the view underwater?”

She knows!! Haruyuki froze, Rin’s face reddened as she covered her chest with both arms, and Kuroyukihime let out a cry.

“Wh-what view?!” she demanded. “What did you see?!”