9

That day, Haruyuki had no idea how he got through his remaining classes, what he ate for lunch, or even which road he took to get home. When he came to his senses, he was flopped on his bed, still in uniform, and staring vacantly at the ceiling.

It was as if his memories of the day had all been placed in opaque wrapping and tumbled into soundless darkness. Almost as if the whole ordeal had been a dream.

Right, it was a dream. There’s no way that could have been real, right? he murmured to himself.

Of course, if he accelerated right then and there, picked an appropriate opponent from the matching list, and went to duel, the truth of the matter would quickly be made clear. He would know without looking whether or not he had his wings on his back. But he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in checking.

Rolling onto his side, he pulled up the blanket, from his feet to his shoulders, thinking he’d just skip his usual training and go straight to sleep. But that was when he heard the delicate chime of the doorbell in his auditory center.

He wanted to ignore it—probably some package for his mother—but whether he liked it or not, an image of the visitor popped up in a small window in his visual field. There stood his good friend Takumu, looking grim, and Haruyuki threw the blanket up over his head.

All day, Takumu had been asking Haruyuki what exactly had happened, including at lunch and after school. Given the bruise on Haruyuki’s jaw and the state Chiyuri was in, it was plainer than day that something had happened.

Chiyuri had apparently only replied with, “Ask Haru,” and Haruyuki could only respond with, “Nothing.” He was likely betraying Takumu whether he told him the truth or not, so he excused it in his head, telling himself he needed time to think, and fled to his condo.

But Takumu was apparently not going anywhere. The chime ringing again had a resoluteness to it, as if saying, I’ll wait however long it takes for you to come out.

Haruyuki sighed deeply and, half despairing, raised his hand to press the unlock button in the holo-dialog. When he got up and trudged out into the hall, Takumu had just opened the door and come into the entryway. With a look, Haruyuki urged him in.

They went into the living room, still not speaking, and sat down at the table across from each other. The silence continued for another three minutes or so.

“If there’s literally no way you can tell me, I won’t ask you about what happened anymore,” Takumu said abruptly, looking at the faint remains of the bruise on Haruyuki’s jaw. He took off his blue-framed glasses and met Haruyuki’s eyes directly. “But just tell me this, Haru. What exactly is Chi to you? Why would you just leave her when she’s looking so heartbroken—when she’s crying? Whatever happened, she’s my…friend, my best friend, you know, Haru?”

Unable to meet Takumu’s eyes, Haruyuki turned his gaze down and to the left.

I would never just leave her! he shouted in his heart. But to settle this mess that he had gotten Chiyuri tangled up in, he would have to make this creature Seiji Nomi submit to him completely. Unless he forced Nomi to delete the video of Haruyuki sneaking into the girls’ shower room, defeated him in the accelerated world, and got his wings back, Haruyuki would have no choice but to follow Nomi’s orders for all time. And Chiyuri would be stuck in the same position, with Haruyuki between them as a hostage.

If he considered things rationally, he should probably explain the whole situation to Takumu right now, regardless of what Nomi had said about keeping quiet. But Haruyuki wanted desperately to avoid telling Takumu about how he had been completely tripped up by Nomi’s vision-masking program and had dragged Chiyuri into this as a result of charging into the girls’ shower.

After all, that program was embedded in the photo you sent me. If you had just noticed the abnormal file size, this would never have happened, he murmured over and over in his head, conveniently ignoring the fact that he hadn’t noticed, either.

This thinking, clearly nothing more than blame shifting, pushed words he didn’t want to say from his mouth. “A-and you. How do you feel about Chiyu? If you’re going to come here saying all this stuff, maybe you should do something about it yourself?”

“I want to. I want to, but…I—”

I already betrayed Chi once.

The instant he felt he heard these unsaid words, Haruyuki slammed both hands against the table. “T-Taku! I mean, you’re just as bad as me!” he roared suddenly, letting the feelings overflow. “You always, always do this, keep your head down like this! You drag out all that old stuff forever and swallow all the things you want to say! I mean, you like Chiyu, don’t you?! You want to go out with her again, don’t you, Taku?!”

“Yeah, that’s right! I do like her! I like her more than anyone!!” Takumu yelled back, making his chair clatter underneath him. “It’s exactly because I like her that I want to do this her way! I’ll wait as long as it takes for Chi to come up with her own answers!!”

“Wait?! And what are you going to do if the answer Chiyu comes up with is not you?! What are you planning to do if she decides to go out with some other guy?!”

“That’s fine! I’m fine with that!!” Takumu gritted his teeth and the edge of the table creaked where he was clenching it in stiff hands. He choked out his next words from deep in his throat. “If that’s what makes Chi happy. Even if that guy was, say…you, Haru. Even you. I’d be okay with that.”

“…Are you seriously saying that, Taku?” Haruyuki asked, the voice that slipped out strangely monotone, even to himself. “So then…what? Are you saying you’ll let me have Chiyu or something? Oh…or—”

No. No. I don’t want to say it. Why on earth would I want to say something like this? I mean, I, I’ve always wanted you and Chiyu to go back to the way you were, that’s it.

“Or do you like Kuroyukihime now? So then, if Chiyu and I got together, you could have her? Is that the plan?”

I just keep hoping and praying for you two.

Haruyuki accepted the heat and shock blooming in his right cheek half matter-of-factly. As well as Takumu’s powerful fist thrust across the table, its connecting with his face, and how he and his chair flew back and fell to the floor.

Peering through a veil of tears for the second time that day, as he stood up, Haruyuki saw the thin, threadlike trail of teardrops on his friend’s cheeks as well.

“Haru…Haru.” Takumu’s voice cracked and shook. “Haru, didn’t we decide we wouldn’t hide things anymore? Why…Why won’t you tell me? Why won’t you tell me the truth? I…Am I so untrustworthy a person?”

“Ta— Th—”

Taku, that’s not it. But nothing more in the way of a voice would come from Haruyuki’s throat. I can’t tell him.

If he laid everything out, Takumu would probably immediately try and confront Nomi or something. And then he’d know. That Haruyuki, that Silver Crow, had lost his wings. That he’d never fly again.

But he should actually confess that. If they were partners. If they were friends.

But Haruyuki couldn’t tell Takumu. He just couldn’t bring himself to spill the fact that he was so much weaker now than he had been at level one, that he was no longer qualified to be Cyan Pile’s partner.

Takumu waited for another ten seconds for Haruyuki to answer him, but finally, the fight left his shoulders and he turned around, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“Sorry for hitting you.”

Leaving the curt apology to linger, his tall, good friend walked heavily out of the living room. Haruyuki heard the front door latch, and then there was only silence.

How much time passed while he lay on the cold laminate floor?

Coming back to himself suddenly, he saw that the view outside the south-facing window had turned to night. He pulled himself slowly to his feet, brain still on pause, and changed into whatever clothes he could find before stepping out of the condo. He rode the elevator down to the first floor and crossed the lobby briskly.

The condo site was bustling with families visiting the adjacent shopping center. He saw a child clutching to her chest a bag from a video game shop, face shining, and was reminded that the latest in a popular RPG series came out that day.

…Maybe I’ll pick it up, too.

Buy the game, go straight home, put it into his Neurolinker, and play intently. But the stuff they sold these days required a ton of capacity. He probably didn’t have enough empty space in his local memory, but he could just erase some other game. That ridiculously large program…Brain Burst.

Right. I might as well stop playing that game. I mean, you do eventually get sick of any game. Now that I think about it, I can’t believe I spent a whole six months obsessed with that one.

If he left the accelerated world and stopped being a Burst Linker, Nomi’s stake in him disappeared. The video he had as evidence also lost its value, and he wouldn’t be able to hold Haruyuki hostage to threaten Chiyuri.

Wasn’t that the best choice right now? Of course, he wouldn’t be able to help her in her quest for level ten anymore, but he also wouldn’t drag her down and disappoint her with an avatar who couldn’t fly anymore.

Everything’ll just go back to normal. Something I had for a while will go away again, that’s it. Is there any reason left why I shouldn’t leave?

A little girl passing Haruyuki looked up at him with a strange expression. And that was when he realized he had tears streaming down his face as he walked along through the throng of people. Hurriedly, he wiped at his face roughly with both sleeves of his hoodie and started running for the gate to his condo.

Just duel with someone to earn the points to pay Nomi. Meet his quota like he was told and get his wings back someday.

If Haruyuki fought in Suginami, Takumu would be called to his duel’s Gallery if he had “audience standby” switched on, so Haruyuki decided to change areas, and he walked up to Kannana Street.

After thinking a bit about whether to get on the inner-or outer-ring bus line at the Koenjirikkyo intersection bus loop, he waited for the bus to Shibuya. Nakano and Nerima to the north were the territories of the Red Legion, Prominence, and he didn’t feel like seeing its ruler Scarlet Rain.

When the rounded, electric-engine EV bus and its many wheels stopped, Haruyuki stepped onto the ramp. At the edges of his vision, the fare was subtracted with a clink from his e-money balance. He crammed himself into an empty seat in the corner and let his thoughts drift as he stared at the night scene flowing past.

There were about a thousand Burst Linkers in total, and Haruyuki had been taught that the majority lived in Tokyo. However, he didn’t know the aggregate total—i.e., the total number of people who had obtained the power of acceleration, including the number of people who had lost it in the seven years since the Brain Burst program appeared on the network.

Just how did they, these former Burst Linkers, feel now? Were they biting their lips in regret? Did they simply remember it fondly? Or were they shaking with deep-seated resentment?

Haruyuki tried to imagine himself in their place. If I lost all my points and ended up facing a forced uninstall, would I be able to walk away, to just think of it as “game over”? I mean, here I am clinging to the idea of being a Burst Linker, despite the fact that my wings, which are basically the reason for my existence, have been stolen.

No, there’s no way I’d be able to forget so easily. I’d probably scramble around trying to get Brain Burst back again.

And “beyond that”…there has to be some people at that stage. There’s just no way there’s no one out there, anger and despair only growing, brooding about trying to bring the accelerated world itself down with their expulsion. Kuroyukihime explained it before, how even if some kid did complain, without any physical evidence, no one would believe him or her, but is that really true? If the media or the police started getting anonymous tips one after another, wouldn’t even the grown-ups start looking into it?

How exactly has Brain Burst been able to stay this completely hidden for more than seven years? And just what is the creator of the program trying to do by setting up this situation?

As he let his mind meander along this track half escapistly, the bus turned left at Koshu Kaido and entered Shibuya, Green Legion territory, where his privilege to go unchallenged in his own Legion’s territory would no longer be valid. Haruyuki—Silver Crow—would be registered on the matching list and could easily be trespassed upon at any moment.

…Anyone will do.

Haruyuki closed his eyes, leaned deep into the seat back, and waited for the moment. Silver Crow was now just a close-range type, weak to hits. Long-distance, close-range, mid-range—he had no advantage over any opponent.

Eight PM was the busiest time slot for duels, even on a weekday, and it was only thirty seconds later that the thunder of acceleration filled his ears.

Sucked into darkness, Haruyuki fell briefly as he transformed into his duel avatar and stepped onto the ground. Of course, the first thing he did was check his back; there was not a trace of the metal wings. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly once, and then looked around anew at his surroundings.

As before, it was Koshu Kaido at night, but the lines of vehicles that had been squeezed onto the road were gone, including the bus he had been riding. The road surface was cracked and caved in, the landscape dotted with mountains of rubble.

A Century End stage, huh? Haruyuki avoided the gazes of the Gallery members taking up positions on the roofs of the surrounding ruined buildings, and he cast his eyes at the ground. Without even checking the name of his duel opponent, he waited in the middle of the wide road. The guide cursor indicating the direction of his enemy twitched, and then pointed east.

Finally, from deep in the darkness, he heard the thick roar of an engine. For a mechanical type, it was approaching pretty quickly. So a locomotive type, then. In which case the sound he was hearing was coming from an old-school internal combustion engine, and the Burst Linker who owned such a device was—

Haruyuki finally raised his head.

The light of the round headlamp blinded him. Going for a ridiculously flashy spin turn, the American motorbike screeched to a halt, red sparks flying from both front and rear brake rotors, the surrounding bonfires reflected in its chrome parts.

“Hey hey heeeeeeeey!!” The skull-faced rider leaned back in the long seat and flipped the index fingers of both hands out at Haruyuki.

Haruyuki didn’t have to look up at the name display; appearing before him was none other than his old friend, the motorcycle-using Ash Roller. Which meant both the stage and the opponent were exactly the same as the very first accelerated duel of his life, six months earlier.

“Mega crazy long time, man! What, you just so in love with me you came all the way to Pucker Valley??? Maaaaaan?!”

“…Huh?” Dumbfounded, Haruyuki forgot about saying hello or anything and countered with a question. “Wh-what is ‘Pucker Valley’?”

“Whoa whoa whooooaa, come on, keep up! Yashibu, obvs! Yaaaashibu!”

“……” Giving it another second or so of thought, Haruyuki finally grasped that he meant Shibuya. “Um, hey, Ash. I don’t think shibui means puckery in English; it’s bitter, sure, but not in the way you’re going for. Bitter-sour is nigai…So I think you should actually be saying Nigaya. So, um.”

“…For serious?”

“…For serious,” he retorted finally, caught up in the force of Ash’s personality, despite the fact that he had never been more depressed, and the Gallery on the buildings alongside the road erupted in laughter. Ash Roller looked in their general direction and brandished the middle fingers of both hands.

“Nothing to LOL at, maaaan! I’ll kick all of your asses, just wait!!” He quickly turned his skull face back to Haruyuki and lowered his voice. “So then, what’s shibui in English?”

“Uh, umm…rough, maybe?”

“Oh ho! So then it’d be ‘Rough Valley,’ huh?…But who cares about that!!”

“Y-you’re the one who ask—”

“Keep it shaddap! Had a few wins and now you’re all pumped full of yourself, aren’t ya?! Watch and weep!!” he shouted, and pressed a button on the edge of his handlebars. Clang! Two bright red cones peeked out from mysterious pipes, one to either side of the handlebars’ fork.

No way. But no matter which way he looked at it, they couldn’t be anything else. “A-are those missiles?” Haruyuki murmured, stunned.

“One hundred percent! Missayles! Complete with homing, you flying monkey!”

“B-but missiles on an American motorbike, design-wise…I mean, how does that work aesthetically…?”

“Heeey! These things are totally Century’s End, mega cooooool!! So go on, fly away! And then weep those tears!!” Ash Roller howled, and then craned his neck as though he had finally noticed what was different about Silver Crow. “So why you got your wings all shut up? The duel’s started, y’know. Hurry up and spread ’em!”

Haruyuki shook his head slightly and said hurriedly, “I have my reasons. Today, I’ll be fighting you on the ground.”

“Huh? Well, you do what you want…But don’t take me lightly or I’ll seriously make those tears fall hard, got it?”

Haruyuki stared as clouds of white smoke flew up from the rear wheel, and the bike peeled out to the right. In his recent fights against Ash Roller, he had shifted to a game plan of slamming into the wall-climbing motorbike with hard drop attacks, but he couldn’t use that strategy anymore, of course. All he could do was dodge the charge toward him and inflict incremental damage from behind.

The bike spun around some distance off and came barreling straight at him. Haruyuki lowered his stance and focused his mind on scrutinizing the incoming trajectory. The nature of a gamer meant that body and heart moved instinctively once the fight began, but obviously, Haruyuki hadn’t gotten past Dusk Taker stealing his wings. That enormous hole still gaped in his heart, and he felt like he was now shoving his hand into that hole and poking around to see what, if anything, was in there.

“Hngah!” Baiting the hook until the last possible second, he dove to the right with a fierce battle cry, and the tread of the front wheel brushed his leg.

Now! He whirled around to slam his fist into the rider.

But.

“Hyaaaah!”

A boot launched abruptly from the side of the bike and connected with Haruyuki’s helmet. As he soared through the air, he saw Ash Roller standing straight up in his seat, leg thrust out, following through on the kick.

The biker quickly dropped down with a thud and started accelerating again. Twenty meters out, he spun the machine around and stood in his seat again; apparently, he controlled the accelerator with his right foot.

“See this?! Maaaaan! That’s my new jam! V-Twin punch, yo!!”

I don’t know about the name, but the trick’s amazing. Haruyuki admired it as he got to his feet.

Ash Roller maneuvered the enormous bike with just his legs, like a surfboard. Now it wasn’t just the vehicle itself that attacked; the rider could strike, too, erasing the gap that used to open up when Haruyuki dodged the machine’s assault.

…Maybe I’m screwed? Haruyuki murmured to himself.

In a simple contest of blows, Ash Roller, with his bike’s charging ability, had the advantage. If they were both to strike simultaneously, for instance, Silver Crow would be the one taking serious damage. It was actually a waste of time to fight back now.

Haruyuki threw both arms down and stood stock-still as the bike’s front wheel sprang up directly in front of him. He danced through the air like a broken stick, crashed into the road, and then tumbled two, three times before slamming into a mountain of debris and finally coming to a stop.

I guess the hole’s empty after all, Haruyuki thought vacantly, head spinning as he lay there awkwardly. Stripped of my wings, I have nothing. All I can do now is target low-level Burst Linkers, ones who are more compatible with me, and just keep fighting. Steadily earn points in fights and deliver what I’ve saved up to Nomi. For two whole years. Until the day he gives me my wings back.

The engine was suddenly growling right next to his head.

Hurry up and finish the job, he thought and waited, but the hard, hot tread did not crush him even after several seconds. Instead, a voice came from high above him.

“Sooooooooo bad, yo. Hey, Crow. Why aren’t you flying, man?”

Haruyuki lifted his head a little and caught the skull face in the corner of his eye. “…I can’t fly,” he replied thinly, at a volume inaudible to the Gallery. “My wings are gone. So I can’t win at same-level duels anymore. I just wanted to test that today…Go ahead and end this already.”

Once again, he heard nothing but the rumbling of the V-Twin engine.

“…Finish it?” The voice that finally reached his ears contained a stillness he had never heard before in Ash Roller. “What d’you mean?”

“There’s nothing to mean. If you run that tire over me a few times, the duel will be over.”

“Hmm. So this your deal, then? You can’t fly no more. So you can’t win. So you’re throwing the duel and letting me have it.”

Even in his current state, Haruyuki could tell he wasn’t being complimented on his fighting attitude. However, even if he could use every bit of cunning he had to come up with some brilliant scheme to win this, there was no point. The only thing that mattered now was being able to hit his average in all the fights from now on, forever. And he knew that was already impossible. So—

“There’s no point in standing up anymore,” the still fallen Haruyuki muttered, and awaited Ash Roller’s abuse.

But the reply he got was even quieter—so restrained it could even be said to be calm. “Hey, you remember, man? That second duel between you and me…That time you lifted up the ass of my bike.”

“……” How could he forget? That was Haruyuki’s first win, a fight to be memorialized. But saying nothing, not even nodding, he waited for Ash Roller to continue.

“You really had me. Ass up in the air, and my bike wouldn’t move, like, even a millimeter, no matter how much I revved the engine. So then I was just stuck sitting there, and you went to town on me. It was like that checkmate thing. But, man…” Eyes glittered behind the skull of the helmet, and Ash Roller let out a low, strained voice, “That time, did I throw it? Did I give up like you are now and let you beat me?”

You didn’t.

The Burst Linker before Haruyuki, who had sunk pretty much all his potential into the Enhanced Armament of the motorcycle, leaving the rider himself with essentially zero fighting ability at the time, had jumped down from his seat, swinging real punches at Silver Crow and his metal armor.

In the end, Haruyuki had unilaterally pounded on his opponent until he could no longer stand and won the duel. But Ash Roller had not capitulated, right up until the very last dot of his HP gauge was shaved away. Howling curses the whole time, he had been on his feet, swinging his fists, until the very moment Haruyuki knocked him unconscious.

“…No,” Haruyuki answered in the negative, in a voice so thin even he could barely hear it. At the same time, below his own helmet, he felt tears welling up for the millionth time that day in his avatar’s eyes.

“…But. But. I…My wings aren’t coming back. You wouldn’t get it. You get to keep fighting forever with that bike of yours.”

Again, a long silence.

The Gallery on the surrounding buildings started to make impatient noises. However, Ash Roller appeared not to pay them any mind as he shook his head and spit out quietly, “Dick. You giga dick. No, tera. You fucking tera dick. You made it to level four and you still don’t get it at all…When we dueled the third time and I watched you suddenly fly and all, do you have any idea how much I— No, not just me. Every single Burst Linker who learned there was some guy in this world who could fly. Do you have any idea how floored we were, how much we…”

The skull rider swallowed the rest and thrust his face forward abruptly. “Hey. Where are you now?” he asked in a near whisper.

“…Huh?” Haruyuki blinked eyes full of tears, not quite understanding the sudden question.

“I’m asking you where you dived from.”

As a general rule, you should never be asked for the location of your real body during a duel. But for some reason, Haruyuki, thrown for a loop, answered without a single thought of the risk of being outed in the real. “K-Koshu Kaido…I’m on a bus.”

Ash Roller clicked his tongue briefly and kept talking, his meaning becoming increasingly incomprehensible. “Okay, when we’re done here, get back to your house ASAP. Go to the toilet, get in bed, and then dive up.”

“U-up…?!”

“Keep your voice down, idiot. The Gallery’s gonna hear! And what else does ‘up’ mean but the Unlimited Neutral Field? Once you dive, come to the lights at Kannana and Inogashira Street again. As for the dive time…right. Nine on the dot. You better not be even a minute late.”

Having given the dumbfounded Haruyuki this order, Ash Roller yanked himself up and ran his finger through the air. A draw Offer opened up in front of Haruyuki.

“C’mon! Just say yes already!”

Pushed by Ash Roller, not understanding anything about anything, Haruyuki clicked the OK button.

The duel ended in an unexpected way, and once he had returned to the electric bus racing along a real world road, Haruyuki immediately cut his global connection. He almost tripped down the stairs in his urgency to get off the bus when it stopped at the next stop, looked both ways, ran to the nearest intersection, crossed to the opposite side of Koshu Kaido, and leapt onto a bus headed back the way he’d come.

As he tumbled into a seat, panting, he wondered what Ash Roller had in mind. Was he planning the coup de grâce? Did he invite Haruyuki to the Unlimited Neutral Field where there was no instant logout, to steal all his points and force the cowardly Silver Crow to leave the accelerated world forever?

No way, that couldn’t be it. Ash was putting himself in the same level of danger, after all. He had no guarantee that Haruyuki wouldn’t show up with a bunch of friends. But then, why—

“Well…whatever,” Haruyuki muttered, and gave up on thinking altogether. Ash Roller might have been the foe he had most frequently come up against in the accelerated world, but Haruyuki definitely didn’t hate him or anything. If an opponent like that was to be the one to deliver his final blow, then so be it.

When he returned to the Koenjirikkyo bus loop, the hands of the clock had swung around to half past eight. After running full speed all the way home, Haruyuki, as instructed, used the bathroom, drank some oolong tea, stuffed a slice of yesterday’s leftover pizza in his mouth, and jumped into bed.

This might be my final acceleration.

In which case, I wish I could see the person who invited me into this world—Kuroyukihime. Even if I can’t explain everything that’s happening, I wish I could just say a few words to her.

Although this thought popped into his head, he was reluctant to call Kuroyukihime himself, when he knew she was in distant Okinawa, hands full, no doubt, with her responsibility to keep 120 students together. And yet, as the time display at the edge of his vision approached nine, he thought that, maybe, she might call him. He waited the whole time, but the receiving icon didn’t flash even once.

When the digital readout reached 8:59:58 PM, Haruyuki closed his eyes tightly, took a deep breath, and murmured the command.

“Unlimited Burst.”