2

With a mere three classes in each grade, the private Umesato Junior High School in eastern Suginami was in no way large. Even still, the eyes of all three hundred and sixty school students, neatly lined up in the gym, exerted a substantial pressure when focused in one place. If, hypothetically, he himself had been standing at that focal point, Haruyuki was confident the combined force of so many eyeballs would burn an actual hole into him.

However, the person on stage for the welcome ceremony, speaking in a voice so clear it reached even the very back row without the use of a Neurolinker, appeared so cool as to give the impression that the pressure load of those eyes was automatically zero.

“The majority of you are likely feeling anticipation and unease in equal measure. In particular, the new students among you might be deeply perplexed by this unknown school and these unfamiliar schoolmates. However, I want you to consider this: The people behind you right now looking so calm and comfortable were in the exact same uneasy position, sitting in the exact same seats as you, a year ago, two years ago…”

I can’t even believe that someone who can say amazing things like this could actually be the destroyer of order in another world, a murderer without mercy, and a demon instructor who’d put even a US Marine to shame.

As he grumbled to himself, Haruyuki turned his gaze to the female student on the stage, with a longing he couldn’t entirely suppress—Kuroyukihime, uniform blouse adorned with a deep red ribbon and her long, well-proportioned legs encased in black tights.

With her, he had a special relationship—or so he called it, because, even though it had already been six months since its inception, and it was undeniably special in every way, Haruyuki still couldn’t manage to get to a place where he was able to say “girlfriend” and “boyfriend.” The general attitude at school seemed to be on that same page, with some even theorizing that Kuroyukihime had rescued the tiny, round, younger student from bullying out of duty or pity and now dragged him around like a beloved pet.

And Haruyuki had no complaints about this theory. He actually even thought it was probably true, although she did hold off on the pet treatment. But he was perfectly satisfied with the idea, serving his princess as a knight—no, a servant—no, no, a page.

“…a year is thirty-one million, five hundred thirty-six thousand seconds, and although this time looms before you now as an eternity, it will pass in a mere instant. Spend it wisely. Thank you.”

Bowing her head, long black hair fanning out in front of her before her body bobbed back up along its wave, Kuroyukihime added herself to the line of student council members behind her.

As he clapped earnestly along with the rest of the students, Haruyuki was suddenly struck with the thought, I’m in eighth grade and she’s in ninth. Which means just one more year. And then she’ll graduate from Umesato. But, okay, that doesn’t mean our relationship has to end. Our bond is much stronger than just students at the same junior high—as Burst Linkers, we’re parent and child.

He squeezed both eyes shut tightly before opening them again to clap his hands even harder when, staring single-mindedly at Kuroyukihime on the distant stage, he got the impression that the detached beauty twitched for a mere instant.

Her narrowed jet-black eyes stopped dead at the very front of where the new seventh graders were lined up, and then quickly faced forward again. Haruyuki furrowed his brow, craned his neck from his seat, and tried to see whom she had pierced with that gaze. But of course, he couldn’t make out any one person in the sea of uniforms.

Returning to the school building after the entrance ceremony, Haruyuki almost climbed to the third floor out of habit before hurriedly changing course for his new classroom on the second.

He had been notified of the location of his new homeroom via his Neurolinker, but he wouldn’t know the names of his new classmates until he stepped through the door. Fervently praying—Please don’t let there be anyone who’ll call me Pig and make me buy him snack bread again!—Haruyuki slipped through the door of eighth grade class C.

“Haru! Heeey!”

He heard the voice at the same time a pounding came at his back, knocking the breath from him. Haruyuki whirled ninety degrees to his left to see a familiar cat-shaped hairpin holding back familiar front fringe. The face of his childhood friend grinned back at him to reveal fang-like incisors.

“Ch-Chiyu. You’re…here?”

“What. What is that complicated look for?”

“N-nothing,” he replied, cocking his head and wondering if maybe she had had that nightmare last night, given the way she was sniffing and pursing her lips.

Even if he and Chiyuri were in the same class, as long as the bullying didn’t start again, he had nothing to be afraid of. But problems were problems, and this was one more. If he and Chiyuri were in the same class, the sides of their triangle could end up—

“Hey, Haru. And Chi, too!”

Pounded on the back once again, Haruyuki spun ninety degrees in the opposite direction to look up and see Takumu’s smiling face behind blue glasses.

Apparently all three of them had been put in the same class, which meant their triangle would end up smaller. He remembered Chiyuri talking the night before about how they could go back to the way they were and was aware of a faint fluttering in his heart as he produced a similar smile. “Hey! You’re in class C, too, huh, Taku?…Let’s see.”

He applied a dimly remembered probability formula to the situation and voiced the answer he managed to come up with. “The probability of three students ending up in the same class…is one-third times one-third times one-third, so one-twenty-seventh? Seriously random!”

Takumu shook his head lightly as he walked toward the windows. “No, it’s one-ninth.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Why?” Chiyuri, having arrived at the same solution as Haruyuki, also raised her voice in surprise.

Entrusting his sharp, tall physique to the window frame, Takumu raised his wireless glasses abruptly and explained, “If it’s the probability that all three of us would be in class C, it would be one-twenty-seventh, just like you said, Haru. But in this case, we didn’t know which class it would be. So the problem becomes the probability of all three of us ending up in class A or class B or class C, so the number is tripled and you get one-ninth.”

“Ah!”

“Right!” Nodding again with Chiyuri, Haruyuki finally laughed and added, “Just like you, Taku. Polishing up your professor character even over spring break—”

“Haru, you seriously need to quit that! If I get stuck with the nickname Professor or Glasses or something in this class, it’ll be on your head.” Looking honestly put out, Takumu glanced around eighth grade class C, filling up with students, and lowered his voice. “Anyway. There are a lot of coincidences in the world, but if you do the calculation, the probability’s unexpectedly greater than your initial impression. So I think we should be ready just in case.”

“Huh? For what?”

“The incoming seventh graders,” Taku said in an even lower voice, bringing his face closer to the bewildered Haruyuki. “The possibility of an unknown Burst Linker mixed in with those one hundred and twenty people.”

Haruyuki took a sharp breath and nodded repeatedly. “Th-that’s—I mean, the possibility’s not zero, but would anyone go to a different school than their parent? It’s one thing to transfer like you did, Taku, but…”

“Yeah, normally, you wouldn’t dare make someone your ‘child’ if they were going to go to a different school from you, right? Because if there were other Burst Linkers at that school, there’s a pretty strong possibility your child would end up fighting on their side. I mean, the strongest relationship in the accelerated world is that of parent and child, but school affiliation comes right after.”

Just as Takumu noted, Burst Linkers going to the same school would eventually, inevitably find one another “in the real.” So if you fought, the battle would have to be to the death, the kind of fight where the rules didn’t apply, a fight going beyond the framework of the game itself. In that sort of situation, if both parties wanted to keep Brain Burst, the only thing to be done would be to shake hands and call a truce somewhere, somehow.

Which was why no Burst Linker would choose as their child someone who might go on to a different school. All of which was to say, given that the only Burst Linkers enrolled at Umesato Junior High were Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki, and Takumu—and Chiyuri for the time being—it was basically impossible for an unknown Burst Linker to come to their school as an incoming seventh grader. However, that didn’t mean they didn’t need to bother checking.

“Um…when exactly do new students first connect to the local net?” Haruyuki asked Takumu, trying to remember what it had been like when he was a new student the previous year.

“Should be right about now. If it’s the same here as at my old school, once the entrance ceremony’s over and you go back to your classroom, that’s when the new accounts are handed out.”

Mulling over this answer, Haruyuki finally smiled and said, “Then how about we do this? If we have to spend the Burst Points to see if there are any new Burst Linkers, let’s check out Chiyu’s duel avatar in the duel field at the same time. After the next homeroom, I’ll accelerate and challenge Chiyu. Taku, you join in the Gallery.”

Their new homeroom teacher was a young man who taught Japanese History. Sugeno, as this teacher was named, was for his age a surprisingly firm advocate against children needing the net, and, although Haruyuki personally could not get onboard with that idea at all, their new teacher was well received by other students because of his passion.

He ignored Sugeno’s policy speech, the general gist of which was, “If you look up everything on the net, you’ll all end up adults who can’t think for themselves!” and somehow managed to make it through the student self-intro time. As soon as first period was over, he invoked the acceleration command.

“Burst Link!”

Skreeeee!

The dry thunder reverberated loudly in his brain as the scene around him was dyed a single shade of blue. At the same time, Sugeno, on his way down from the podium, and the other students, on their way up from their chairs, froze instantly.

Time hadn’t stopped. The Brain Burst program hidden in Haruyuki’s Neurolinker had just accelerated his consciousness a thousandfold.

He touched the conspicuously bright, flaming B icon on the left side of his virtual desktop and launched the console, then waited for the matching list to refresh with a certain amount of heart pounding.

Silver Crow—the name of Haruyuki’s own duel avatar—soon popped up at the very top of the list. The level display to the right read 4. Black Lotus, aka Kuroyukihime, soon followed him. Her level was, obviously, nine. And then Takumu appeared, Cyan Pile, level four like Haruyuki.

After a slight pause, another row of letters sparkled into existence: Lime Bell. Level one.

The search list display then disappeared. Which meant that at that moment, there were four Burst Linkers connected to the local Umesato Junior High net. Lime Bell had to be Chiyuri. And since all one hundred and twenty freshmen should have, without exception, finished signing into the local net by now, Haruyuki concluded that there were no new Burst Linkers among the incoming students after all.

However, there was, in fact, just one thing gnawing at him. The way Kuroyukihime had turned momentarily toward the row of new students during the entrance ceremony. What was the meaning of that?

He briefly thought about shooting off a mail to ask, but he thought the better of it. Kuroyukihime, as student council vice president, was probably swamped with a million tasks that had piled up over the break.

As his avatar’s finger went to push down on the name of Umesato Junior High’s fourth Burst Linker, Haruyuki considered her briefly. Lime, that probably meant a yellow-green. So a little more mid-range than close-range. But he wouldn’t know what kind of abilities she actually had until he met her in combat.

The duel avatar is the manifestation of the feelings of inferiority of the person dwelling within it. Kuroyukihime’s words from six months earlier came back to life in his ears.

Naturally, it wasn’t as if you could immediately intuit a host’s mental scars just by looking at his or her avatar. The truth was, even now, Haruyuki couldn’t begin to guess at what kind of complexes Takumu and Kuroyukihime had that would produce such powerful avatars. That said, it was true that the avatar was the manifestation of a hidden interior.

In the frozen blue world, Haruyuki glanced over at Chiyuri’s back, which was seated in front of him, one row left. Gulping back his slight hesitation, he touched Lime Bell’s name and clicked on DUEL in the pop-up menu.

The field that appeared while he changed into the argent Silver Crow was a Factory stage, complete with enormous gears and rumbling conveyor belts. He waited for the flaming FIGHT to explode and scatter, then slowly stood.

His classmates had disappeared, and eighth grade class C was crawling with mysterious machines in their place. Haruyuki looked around and first saw the large, blue Cyan Pile. He nodded slightly in that direction before turning his gaze on the avatar opposite him, small like himself.

Lime Bell was wrapped in a color more verdant than he had expected; it was like the green of fresh leaves. Her body’s supple lines were clearly female in nature, with limbs and torso basically as slender as those of Silver Crow, and armor resembling a tree leaf equipped around her waist. On her head was a pointy, wide-brimmed hat rather like a witch’s, and below that was a face mask with upturned eyes, reminiscent of a cat’s.

What made the greatest impression, however, was the massive hanging bell on her left arm, probably a musical hand bell. Wondering if it was a weapon or just the instrument it appeared to be, Haruyuki took a step toward her.

“This color’s kind of…flashy?” Lime Bell—Chiyuri—said, staring fixedly at the bell connected to her hand and cocking her head.

“Don’t complain. Basically no one gets a color with that high level of saturation, even if they want it.”

“So…” Orange eyes narrowed dubiously beneath the hat. “You’re…Haru?”

“I am. And I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother!” He added the last bit at tongue-twister speed.

But Chiyuri cried out mercilessly. “So skinny! These game avatars, they’re the expression of some trauma? Was that it? Ooh! Wow! I get it!”

“Just drop it.” He glanced down at his waist, which was more than half as thin as in real life, and turned away abruptly.

And suddenly, there was Cyan Pile. The blue avatar, pile driver in his right hand, looking down on the yellow-green avatar with eyes somehow full of tension. Eyes Chiyuri met silently.

Before, half a year ago, and unable to bear the fear of losing Cyan Pile, Takumu set up a backdoor program in Chiyuri’s Neurolinker. The virus’s main purpose was to use Chiyuri’s Neurolinker as a stepladder in order to connect to the Umesato Junior High local net from outside. His goal was to hunt Black Lotus, the Black King, the biggest bounty in the accelerated world. However, a secondary effect of the virus allowed Takumu to steal information from Chiyuri’s audio and visual feeds, which he used to dig into Chiyuri’s true feelings.

When he later confessed his crimes and apologized, Chiyuri was, naturally, furious, and declared that she was breaking up with both Haruyuki and Takumu. It took a full week before she would even talk to them again. The terms of peace she laid out were all the parfaits she could eat at Enjiya, and both of their Neurolinker balances had gotten infinitely lighter meeting these terms, but even so, the relationship among the three of them had been restored and was back to the way it used to be.

Or so Haruyuki had believed, had hoped, anyway. But the fact that the Takumu-Chiyuri line of their triangle still fluctuated unstably could be seen in their eyes as they stared at each other.

“Well, we should get right into the newbie lecture,” Haruyuki announced, as if to ease the faint tension, and turned again to the yellow-green avatar. “Chiyu, you already heard the basic rules for Brain Burst from Takumu, right?”

“Yeah. Basically, you win a bunch of fights, get a bunch of points, get to level ten, and you’re done. Right?”

“It’s not as simple as that. Although I guess it is actually…” Shaking his head at what a certain someone would say if she heard Chiyuri’s rather indifferent words, Haruyuki continued. “A-anyway, to win duels, you need to see through to your opponent’s weak points and fight in a way that gives you the advantage. And to do that, you have to have a seriously perfect understanding of your own avatar.”

I never thought the day would come when I’d be in the position of lecturing someone else. Slightly moved, he continued on, lifting the tip of his right pointer finger.

“In your field of vision right around here, you have your own health gauge, right? Touch that and then open ‘Skill List’ in the window that pops up.” Generally, her parent, Takumu, would be teaching her this, but following the flow of the conversation, Haruyuki took the initiative.

“O-okay.” Nodding, Chiyuri stretched out a slightly awkward finger and tapped a point in space. She then flicked around a bit on her virtual desktop. “Umm, it looks like there’re three normal attacks, and then one special attack, Citron Call? So, like, this bell in my left hand, it’d be…”

Muttering to herself, Chiyuri aligned her movements with the animated silhouette in the Skill List, whirling her left arm and the enormous bell that began at her elbow until she finally snapped both down from above. But naturally, nothing happened.

“What? It didn’t do anything at all.”

“Because you have to fill up the blue special-attack gauge below your health gauge to use your special attack.”

“So how do I do that?”

“Damage an opponent in a duel or take a blow yourself—” He had gotten that far when Chiyuri slowly brought up the enormous bell and aimed it at Haruyuki’s head, so he hurried to add, “A-and you can also fill it by destroying the stage. You can break any of the machines over there!”

“Oh! I can?” Nodding and looking slightly dissatisfied—or maybe that was just his imagination—Chiyuri walked over to a steam engine–like object enshrined in the place where the podium used to be. Without hesitation, she brought her left hand down on the thing as it vigorously puffed out steam. The satisfying sound of an explosion was accompanied by sparks and white smoke.

“Wow! This is fun!”

Haruyuki watched, shivers running up his spine, as the pointy-hatted avatar smashed the gears that made the belt conveyor go round with an innocent cry of delight. She showed not even the slightest appreciation for the reality of the explosions nor the extremely detailed modeling of the stage. This was why girls…

As Haruyuki grumbled on in his head, Takumu, who had been silent up to that point, murmured softly from beside him. “Haru, did you notice? Chi’s HP gauge isn’t going down at all. I mean, Factory stage mechanical objects are supposed to do some damage when you break them, even if it is just a little.”

“Oh! You’re right.”

“Given her appearance, her relative defensive ability is high. Not a surprise, though. After all, green is the color with the best defense, after the metallics.”

At Takumu’s cool analysis, Haruyuki suddenly remembered talk he’d heard of the Green King’s legendary iron wall.

Lime Bell’s armor was clearly harder than Silver Crow’s had been at level one. Which probably meant Chiyuri was also a defensive type. He couldn’t help feeling, though, that this was the exact opposite of her actual character. As he contemplated Lime Bell, her special-attack gauge grew to nearly half full, shining blue.

“Hey, Chiyu, that’s enough,” he said, and the avatar turned around and walked briskly back over. Without a moment’s hesitation, she brandished the large bell and aimed it straight at him.

“Gah?!” Haruyuki cried out and reflexively brought both hands above his head.

Whirled twice counterclockwise, the bell was suddenly encased in a dazzling yellow-green radiance.

“Citron Call!!” As she uttered the name of the unexpected attack, particles of light began gushing out of the bell. As she lowered her arm to hold steady at a right angle to her torso, the light covered Silver Crow’s entire body, accompanied by a magnificent pomp and fanfare sound effect.

“Hng!” Unable to predict what kind of damage it would do, Haruyuki held his breath and pressed his eyes shut. Maybe heat, maybe impact, maybe even an acid melting-attack like the Citron part might—

“Huh?”

“Wha?”

Chiyuri’s and Takumu’s incredulous voices reached his ears from either side, and Haruyuki carefully opened his eyes a crack.

Looking down at his own body nervously, he still had the same old smooth, silver gleam. He didn’t feel any pain or heat at all, and his HP bar hadn’t dropped in the slightest.

“What is this?! Nothing happened?!”

“Th-that can’t be.” Haruyuki reflexively shook his head at Chiyuri’s indignant cry. “Your attack definitely hit me. And your special-attack gauge’s down, too. It’s not anything with continuous damage, either. Maybe it’s damage with a timed launch and a delayed effect?” Muttering away, he waited for something to happen, but after several seconds, then several minutes, there was still not the slightest movement in Silver Crow’s HP.

“Hmm. Maybe this is, like, a dazzle kind of attack with just the light and sound. I mean, that is a yellow kind of thing.”

“That is so boring!” Chiyuri placed her right hand on her hip as if the indignation of it was too much to bear. “Haru, you give me one of your special attacks!!”

“What? That’s obviously impossible. And all I have for a special attack is a head butt.”

“I can make do with that, if this is what I have.”

As their usual song and dance, the same old routine from the real world, unfolded, Takumu abruptly murmured, “No. Your special-attack gauge’s gone down too much for it to be just an illusion attack. You had it half full and you used all of it. There should be a more practical effect.” Crossing his sturdy arms, Cyan Pile turned a face lined with narrow slits downward. “It’s not damage, and it’s not weakness. So then…Oh! Hold up! What if—!!”

Haruyuki and Chiyuri simultaneously snapped their heads toward him.

“What, Taku? You think of something?”

“Well, it seems kind of crazy, but…Chi, hit Haru a bit with your bell, just normally.”

“Okay, got it.”

Kliiing!!

Before Takumu had even really finished speaking, Chiyuri had swung the massive bell without any compunction whatsoever, and Haruyuki, who stood and took the blow to his head, saw countless stars.

“O-ow!” He had barely squeezed out a groan before Takumu’s merciless instructions continued.

“You still don’t have enough in your gauge. Try maybe three more times.”

“Okay, got it.”

Klinklinkliiiing!!

Chiyuri’s bell is cool. Makes a great sound whenever she hits something. His thoughts swirling deliriously, Haruyuki was soon splayed on the ground like a human X.

In Brain Burst, which was at most a fighting game, your HP, attack power, and defensive power didn’t necessarily increase dramatically only when you leveled up. You might get new special attacks or abilities, which would broaden the scope of your battle tactics, but if you were hit without resisting like this, you’d be hit with a suitable amount of damage, regardless of the level of attacker. And Haruyuki’s HP gauge went down about 30 percent with the four hits, while in exchange, Chiyuri’s special-attack gauge once again went up to just over half and glittering blue.

Groaning as he stood, Haruyuki saw the bell being swung around once more and the gleaming of a yellow-green light effect.

It’s weird. When Kuroyukihime gave me my first lecture, there wasn’t anything resembling this “teaching with the master’s body” stuff. And why am I the one who’s stuck being Chiyu’s duel partner here, anyway?

Although it was too late to do anything about it now, these thoughts raced through his mind as Chiyuri gave voice to her attack name for the second time, much more loudly than before.

“Citron Caaaaaall!!”

The crisp ringing of the bell. The ribbons of lime-green light spilling out. And to top it all off, a refreshing citrus scent. All wrapped Silver Crow in several layers.

“Whoa?!” Haruyuki cried out, surprised from the very bottom of his heart. It was the first time in several months he could say that of the accelerated world.

The HP gauge in the top left of his screen, which had been down 30 percent—

It was filling back up before his eyes!

HP recovery.

This was basically an impossible phenomenon in the genre known as fighting games. In fact, up to that point, Haruyuki had never once seen a gauge recover in Brain Burst.

Actually, to be accurate, he had personally seen exactly one example: Chrome Disaster, the cursed Enhanced Armament that they had annihilated and expunged three months earlier in an incredible battle. That avatar had had a power called “Drain,” which absorbed the health of cannibalized opponents. However, since the fight with Disaster had been in the Unlimited Neutral Field—where the HP gauges of other avatars could not be seen—he supposed that this was honestly the first time he had witnessed the physical recovery of a gauge.

In a mere ten seconds, his HP had returned to full and the yellow-green light disappeared. But Haruyuki and Takumu, a little ways off, were both unable to move or produce any sound.

It was Chiyuri’s millionth dissatisfied cry that unfroze them. “This sucks! Come on! Your hit points went back to what they were!! No fair, I want a do-over!!”

“I’m not being unfair,” he managed to say hoarsely, and then turned his gaze on Takumu, seeking an explanation.

Cyan Pile’s blue eyes were wide open beneath the mask’s thin slits. “Wh-what is this?” he finally moaned in a low voice, shaking his head from side to side. “That was definitely a recovery ability just now. So Chi, your avatar’s a healer, then.”

“What? So does that mean, like, a monk? Kinda boring.” Chiyuri sounded slightly disappointed, and Haruyuki, finally overcoming his shock, simply said the first thing in his head.

“Healer. That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Do they even have healers in Brain Burst?”

In contrast, Takumu lowered his voice even further, as if he were afraid. “It’s not boring. It’s crazy rare. This is going to blow up when you make your debut in the duels, Chi. Maybe more than when Silver Crow showed up.”