3

Haruyuki opened his eyes with a start.

When he looked at his clock by the white light coming in through the window, the display said six thirty in the morning. Which meant he had been asleep nearly twelve hours.

His entire body was drenched in sleep sweat, a slimy coating on his skin composed of the vestiges of his nightmare. Despite this, he couldn’t remember the details of the dream.

Kuroyukihime’s final words to him the day before came dimly to mind. Could the instruction not to remove his Neurolinker all night have had some connection with his dream?

Wondering about this vaguely as he showered and changed into his uniform, Haruyuki ate a breakfast of cereal and orange juice alone in the kitchen, put his dishes in the dishwasher, and, to complete his set of predeparture rituals, knocked on his mother’s bedroom door.

“I’m leaving for school,” he called into the dim light inside her room, whereupon he heard an unintelligible croaking from the bed. Apparently, she’d had quite a bit to drink the night before.

His mother took her terminal in hand, and he waited for her to charge five hundred yen to his Neurolinker. “Haruyuki, your Linker’s disconnected.” Her voice was unexpectedly tinged with annoyance.

Oh crap. He hurriedly put a hand to his neck. After he connected to the global net, all the while feeling like he had forgotten something, his electronic balance quickly increased with a ring denoting the transaction.

“I’m leaving, then,” he said again but with no response this time. Quietly closing the bedroom door, he put on his sneakers in the foyer and left the apartment, taking the elevator to the first floor and making his way through the lobby, muttering “Good morning” to other residents of the building whose faces he barely remembered.

Just three seconds after he slipped out through the automatic doors to step into the condo courtyard, an intense shrieking noise echoed in his brain, and the world blacked out around him. In an instant, the town, sparkling in the morning sun, sank into the darkness of night.

What the—?! Acceleration?! But…why? All by itself?!

He held his breath as letters in the familiar flaming font arranged themselves before his eyes: HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!!

He felt like he had seen this sentence somewhere before. But before he could follow the memory trail, the flaming text blinked out, and something even more mysterious appeared atop of his field of vision.

First, in the center, the number 1800. Then, to the left and right, blue bars stretched out abruptly, with a somewhat thin green bar growing below them.

Finally, the flaming text in the center of his view: FIGHT!!

The number changed to 1799.

Not knowing what to do, Haruyuki simply stared at the four-digit number as it counted down. Eighteen hundred seconds. Thirty minutes. It was a number he had heard somewhere. Right, wasn’t this the time limit for acceleration that Kuroyukihime had mentioned?

But this time, Haruyuki hadn’t even said the B of the “burst link” command to start the acceleration. Also, the color of the world—it wasn’t blue, it was full-dive. And he basically had no idea what all the challenger and fight stuff was about. He looked around, desperately trying to get even the most tenuous grasp on the situation before quickly realizing something.

The crisp October morning had vanished without a trace, but the space around him was still the same area in front of his building that had been burned into his memory. On one side, the familiar two-lane road, and on the other, convenience stores and office buildings. When he turned around, the high-rise condo from which he had just emerged pierced the darkness, towering above him.

However, the jam of cars that should have been bumper-to-bumper on the road toward Shinjuku and the school-bound students filling the sidewalks were gone. Instead, the road was cracked and caving in everywhere, guardrails and signs were twisted, and the buildings’ windows were very obviously broken.

Bricks were piled up at the intersection a little way away, almost like a barricade, and flames of something burning licked up at the sky from a metal drum. Traces of destruction also marred Haruyuki’s condo, which was in a terrible state, with crumbling concrete pillars and large holes in the exterior walls.

Struck by the urge to run back inside and check the state of his own apartment, Haruyuki staggered around a few steps and peered into the entrance through the bricks. He then opened his eyes wide in silent amazement. The interior of the building was just a flat gray surface spreading out boxlike, almost like the time he’d poked his head into a polygon building in a game.

No. Not almost like. Exactly like.

This was reality and also not reality. Haruyuki was currently in a full dive on the virtual net using the accelerated function, and the scene around him was a 3-D movie reconstructed from social camera images. Just like the frozen, blue world he’d seen in the lounge the day before. But he had never experienced this level of detail in a virtual space. It was impossible for him to pick out the pixel pitch. Even the lone pebble rolling by his feet was inscribed with a level of crispness that was overwhelming.

So then what body did he have? Haruyuki looked down, expecting to find his familiar pink pig avatar. “…Wh-what is this…” Dumbfounded, his voice slipped out involuntarily.

Legs, torso, arms—his whole body was polished silver and thin like wire. Almost like a robot, but far removed from a game or anime fighting robot.

Panicking and bringing his hands to his head, the tips of his fingers merely slipped over the smooth helmetlike curves and found nothing like a nose or a mouth. He looked around for a moment and, seeing the cracked windows in the wall of the mixed residential building across the road from his building, he ran over, feet clanking against the pavement.

The figure the large window reflected back at him was clearly a metal robot, from tip to toe. His body was very thin and small, only the streamlined head was awkwardly large. In a word, a total small fry.

If I at least had some horns on my forehead…or both my eyes shone gold like beacons. As Haruyuki silently grumbled at the unknown avatar designer, he saw several human shapes squirming behind his reflection in the glass on the other side of the road.

Metal body cowering, Haruyuki turned around with a gasp. He didn’t know when they had shown up, but looking his way were exactly three figures standing in the shadow of the ruined local convenience store. Under cover of darkness as they were, he could only make out their silhouettes, which were all much larger than his own.

The shadows huddled together as if discussing something. Unconsciously, Haruyuki strained his ears.

“…too, but he looks like the jumpy type.”

“And I don’t have his name in memory. Maybe a newbie?”

“But he’s metallic. That’s gotta mean something.”

They’re—They’re not NPCs. Haruyuki felt it instinctively. Their demeanor, their tone—he was sure they weren’t the creation of some program; they were real, live people. But this was the accelerated virtual net. Which meant they had also installed Brain Burst, just like Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime.

In which case, they probably knew what this was all about. I’ll just go and ask them, Haruyuki thought, and he stepped nervously into the road, advancing to the white center line. Abruptly, he felt a new pair of eyes on him. He stopped moving and ran his gaze quickly over the scene.

There they were. Never mind the group of three down there. He didn’t know where they had appeared from, but on the roofs of the abandoned buildings, on top of piles of bricks, strange silhouettes were staring down at Haruyuki from all directions. However, they didn’t come any closer, and…they seemed to be waiting for something.

At a loss, Haruyuki, in the middle of the road, shifted just his gaze. In seemingly no time, the count in the top of his field of view had gotten down to 1620. There was no change in the two bars stretching out to the right and left of the numbers. And he hadn’t noticed until now, but underneath the bars were small English letters.

The text on the left side read SILVER CROW, and on the right was ASH ROLLER.

I know this screen configuration. I totally know this screen, Haruyuki thought, hit by a powerful sense of déjà vu.

It wasn’t anything new. This kind of game program had swept through the arcades of Japan more than thirty years before Haruyuki was born, at the end of the 1900s. And just recently, too, he felt like he had seen something like this. It was—

Standing stock-still, searching his memory, he jumped at the sound of a sudden explosion behind him. He tried to turn around, lost his balance, and fell on his backside with a thump. A remarkably large silhouette towered above him.

A motorcycle. And not the motor-drive type he was used to seeing. It was saddled with something like the guts of the internal combustion engines that had been outlawed ages ago, and those guts were roaring and rumbling. The front fork was ridiculously long, and the tire wedged between it was also so thick as to be a joke. A faint burning scent wafted up from the rough gray treads.

Haruyuki turned his eyes upward and timidly took in the rider straddling the leather seat on the other side of the exaggeratedly bent handle bars. Body encased in studded black leather, boots on each firmly planted foot, arms crossed over the chest. His head was tucked inside a helmet, also black, but the visor was a flashy thing with a skeleton design.

Haruyuki listened, dumbstruck at the creaking voice coming from within. “The Century End stage! It’s been forever. Alllllll riiiiiiiight!” From one of the folded arms, an index finger popped up into the air and waggled left to right. “And as a special bonus, my opponent is a shiny newb. Super all riiiiiiiight!”

Bringing up his right boot, the skeleton rider laid it on the handle bar and rubbed it dexterously. As he did, a thunderous, booming roar sent Haruyuki flying once more.

No matter which way he looked at it, this guy didn’t seem brimming with warm friendlies. More importantly, if Haruyki’s memory served, this was a battle stage. So then this rider was…

“Wh-whoa…” Haruyuki retreated slowly and turned around. “Whoaaaaa!” He started running in earnest, thin robot legs clanking.

Behind him, the engine roared once again, and the sound of the tires squealing against the pavement threatened to pierce his eardrums. A mere second later, he felt an incredible impact and a sharp pain in the middle of his back before he was flying high up into the night sky. At the same time, the blue SILVER CROW bar in the top right of his view shrank abruptly.

Spinning around in space, Haruyuki thought, I knew it. So then this is a fighting game, I’m a newbie who doesn’t know his left from his right, and my opponent is a veteran player who figured that out five minutes ago.

There’s no way I’m going to win.

“Ha-ha-ha! So you’re already being hunted? That’s because you broke your promise to me, boy.”

Lunch break.

Kuroyukihime, directly connected to Haruyuki in the lounge again just like the day before, laughed smoothly at the mere thought, shaking her head, bandaged under her bangs to encourage healing. Although awful to look at because of the bleeding, her injury was apparently nothing more than a cut. She had stopped every word of gratitude and apology he had in his vocabulary with a wave of her right hand.

“I-it’s not funny. I thought I was going to die. I mean, I know it’s my fault for accidentally connecting to the global net, but…”

Watching with amusement as Haruyuki stuttered, Kuroyukihime lifted her teacup from the table and brought it to her lips. Next to the saucer was a shrimp gratin with steam rising from it, untouched just like the large plate of pork curry in front of Haruyuki.

The student council members sitting at the table with them had already begun moving their chopsticks and spoons, and Haruyuki’s stomach made a slight, pathetic sound. However, Kuroyukihime’s lecture or explanation or whatever it was didn’t seem like it was likely to end anytime soon.

“But, well, I suppose it’s saved me the trouble of having to explain it all to you. The cost of the lesson was somewhat high, but you do understand now, yes?”

“Understand…what?”

“The truth about the Brain Burst program. It’s no sweeping conspiracy or mystery, it’s just—”

Haruyuki nodded sharply and mentally articulated the end of Kuroyukihime’s cutoff sentence. “It’s just a fighting game. Encounters using the real world as a stage. It’s crazy.”

“Ha-ha, it certainly is quite crazy, something to really make people talk.”

“I mean, think about what you could do with this amazing of acceleration technology! And you go with a fighter?! The genre was already obsolete thirty years ago!”

At this, Kuroyukihime tilted her head slightly as if thinking, a sarcastic-looking smile slipping out from somewhere. “Hmm, I think you need to phrase it slightly differently. Better to say that we Burst Linkers are accelerated to play fighting games. Conversely, we fight so that we can continue to be accelerated. We must. This is the one unpleasant part of this program.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“Mm…I should probably explain the rest to you in the field. Go ahead and accelerate.”

“O-okay…”

Haruyuki let go of his unfinished business with the large plate of curry in front of him and shouted the “acceleration” command as instructed after straightening up on his chair.

“Burst link!”

A clang slapped his body and his consciousness, and the students around him stopped moving instantly. At the same time, all color vanished, only to be replaced with that transparent blue.

Kuroyukihime in front of him was also static, but her avatar in its bewitching black dress soon stepped out of her neat, uniformed figure, a soul escaping the body. Haruyuki slipped off his chair in his pink pig body and stepped forward so that he wouldn’t have to see the rotund real-life self he was leaving behind.

“So…what are we doing?”

“You have a new icon in the left of your field of vision, yes?”

Shifting his gaze as instructed, he realized that there was, in fact, now a burning B mark among the app start-up icons lined up there. He raised his left hand and clicked on it.

“That’s the menu for the fighting game software Brain Burst. You can see your own status and battle results and look for Burst Linkers around you to challenge them. Try pressing the DUELING button.”

Nodding, Haruyuki clicked the bottom-most button on the menu. Immediately, a new window opened, and after a momentary search display, a list of names appeared.

That said, there were only two names on it. Silver Crow, the name he had seen that morning, which probably referred to Haruyuki himself, and one more. Black Lotus.

He had absolutely no doubt that this was Kuroyukihime’s Burst Linker name, but he lifted his head briefly to confirm. As expected, the black swallowtail avatar nodded lightly.

“Right now, because we’re cut off from the global net and only connected to the school’s local net, there’s just you and me on the list. Or at least there should just be us.”

“Yes…Black Lotus.” He wanted to say something like What a pretty name or It suits you perfectly, but, of course, there was no way lines like that would flow out of his mouth all smooth and cool. Haruyuki’s pig nose simply twitched.

“All right, then. Now click on my name and ask to fight me.”

“Wh-what?!”

“I’m not saying we’re going to fight for real. We’ll just let the time run out and end in a draw.” With a faintly wry smile, Kuroyukihime made a small, encouraging noise.

Haruyuki lightly clicked her name on the list, all the while wondering at the fact that here he was playing one-on-one in a day and age when massive battle games with tens of thousands of people connecting on the same field were not uncommon. He selected DUEL from the pop-up menu that appeared and subsequently YES from the YES/NO dialogue that followed.

In an instant, the world changed again.

All the students disappeared instantly from the frozen blue lounge. Color returned to the pillars and tables, which decayed as if weathered, and a thick layer of dust clung to the windows. The sky was dyed a deep orange, and a dry wind blew up from somewhere, stirring grasses he didn’t know the names of sprouting up from the floor.

The familiar 1800 was carved out in the top of his line of sight. Blue bars stretched out on both sides, followed finally by the flaming text FIGHT!!

“Hmm…a Twilight stage? You pulled a rare one.” Kuroyukihime’s voice echoed beside Haruyuki, whose eyeballs rolled in his head as he took in the scene. “The properties of this stage are burns well, collapses soon, and unexpectedly dark.”

“U-uh-huh…” Nodding, Haruyuki took a look at his body and saw that at some point, his pink pig frame had transformed into the thin silver robot. He shifted his gaze, wondering what form Kuroyukihime had taken, but standing before him was the same black dress avatar, not even slightly altered.

“That’s your duel avatar, hm? Silver Crow, good name. Good color. I like the form, too.” Kuroyukihime’s hand stretched out to stroke the smooth silver head.

The definite sensation of being touched made Haruyuki realize all over again that this was a real virtual reality, a place where the childish no-touching code—ostensibly for protection—did not exist.

“Th-thanks. It’s kind of wimpy, but I can’t redo it. Right? So who came up with the design and the name? But wait—duel avatar?”

“Just like the name, an avatar for fighting. The design is by the Brain Burst program and you yourself. Last night, you had a very long, scary dream, didn’t you?”

“…I did.” He couldn’t remember the details, just intuitively felt that it was an incredible nightmare. Unconsciously, he rubbed his thin robot arms with his hard palms.

“That was because the program was accessing your deep images. Brain Burst carves up and filters the player’s desires, fears, and obsessions to compose your duel avatar.”

“My…images. Fears and…desires,” Haruyuki mumbled, looking down at his body again. “This…this tiny, weak, smooth body is what I wished for? I mean sure, it’s true I’m always thinking it’d be better if I lost some weight…even so, a little more hero-like—”

“Ha-ha-ha! It’s not as simple as that. What the program reads is not your ideal image but your feelings of inferiority. In your case, you should probably just count yourself lucky you didn’t end up with that pink pig as is as your duel avatar. Although I like that one, too.”

“P-please don’t say that. I hate it.” He quickly considered putting together a new black knight avatar for the school’s local net as he asked, “But then does that mean that Brain Burst also made your school avatar? That’s the image of your inferiority complex? But it’s so beautiful…”

“No.” Eyes darkening slightly, Kuroyukihime lowered her face. “This is one I put together myself with an editor. I…For my own reasons, I’ve sealed off my actual duel avatar. I’ll tell you the reason one of these days, when the time comes.”

“Sealed…?”

“Unfortunately, my duel avatar is ugly. The epitome of hideous. Although that’s not the reason I’ve sealed it away…Anyway, enough about me.”

Kuroyukihime shrugged, and her face quickly found its usual mysterious expression. She petted Haruyuki’s helmet head once again with a pale hand. “This morning you were thrust into a fight with another Burst Linker through the global net. You fought with this brand-new avatar. And you were thoroughly defeated. Correct?”

“Uh, well, pretty much. He crushed me.” Haruyuki reluctantly remembered the fight stage he had been abruptly pulled into before school. He had been smashed, rammed, and sent flying by the rude rider in the skeleton helmet straddling the bike in the dark ruins, and his health gauge had dropped to nothing in the blink of an eye.

Together with a pathetic sound effect, the text YOU LOSE had appeared in front of him, and then…“I’m pretty sure…It showed my name and level one, and then some weird number. Burst…points, I think? That went from ninety-nine to eighty-nine.”

“Good, it’s good you remembered. Burst points! Those are the very things that send us into this merciless battlefield.” Nearly shouting, Kuroyukihime took a few steps toward the window and whirled around. She thrust the parasol she held in both hands down onto the floor with a sharp snap, and a small shard of the cracked pavement flew off. “Burst points are, simply put, the number of times we can accelerate. Accelerate one time, lose one point. The initial value immediately after installation is one hundred, but because you accelerated once in the lounge yesterday, you used up a point. And then you ended up using another point earlier.”

“Gah…s-so how do we pay for them? Are we actually charged real money?”

“No,” Kuroyukihime countered crisply. “There’s only one way to increase your burst points: win Duels. If you win, your points go up ten for a same-level battle. However, your points drop ten if you lose. Like you did this morning.”

Turning her face sharply to the twilight sky on the other side of the window, Kuroyukihime continued, almost murmuring. “Acceleration is extremely powerful. It goes without saying that winning fights means earning a perfect score on a test or winning big at certain types of gambling or sports becomes child’s play. The freshman player who broke the record for home runs at the big Koshien tournament this summer was a high-level Burst Linker.”

“Wh—”

“Therefore.” She cast the baffled Haruyuki a somehow sad glance. “Once we’ve tasted this forbidden nectar, we have no choice but to keep accelerating forever. And to earn the burst points that permit us to do so, we have no choice but to keep fighting forever.”

“J-just wait a minute.” That talented heavy hitter was a Burst Linker? No, that’s not the issue. Isn’t there something off about Kuroyukihime’s story? Haruyuki thought hard and then opened his mouth. “Uh…um, before, you said if you win in a Duel, you get ten points, and if you lose, you drop ten points, right? Then that means…since you use points accelerating, the points all Burst Linkers share only go down. So people who aren’t good at fighting naturally lose all their points…What happens then?”

“You really do catch on quickly. It’s simple. You lose Brain Burst.” Her dark eyes almost burning, Kuroyukihime stared directly at Haruyuki. “The program is automatically uninstalled and can never be reinstalled. There’s no point in changing Neurolinker models, either. It recognizes you by your unique brain waves. People who have lost all their points can never accelerate again.” After relaying this in a bleak tone, she added, “Although it’s not the case that the total pool only diminishes because new people join in the fight, like you. That said, right now, the trend is a slight decline.”

But Haruyuki barely heard this last part. “You lose…Brain Burst.”

Even though he had only tasted the power of acceleration two or three times, his back seized up at the mere thought. And it wasn’t just that he wouldn’t be able to accelerate. For Haruyuki, there was also the fact that he would lose his one point of contact with Kuroyukihime, who lived in a totally separate world. Once again, he felt the weight of those ten points taken from him by that skull rider.

“Now then. What are you going to do, Haruyuki?”

Faced with this nearly whispered question, Haruyuki lifted his head. “What do you mean?”

“At this point, you can still go back. To the regular world, without acceleration or fighting. You won’t see those idiots who were bullying again, I guarantee it as a student council member.”

“I—I…” I don’t care about acceleration or Brain Burst or whatever. I just don’t want to be away from you. Of course, he couldn’t say anything like that. Instead, he clenched his silver fist and replied, “I still have to repay you.”

“Oh?”

“You gave me Brain Burst and pulled me out of that hell. I can at least see that you didn’t do it to steal my initial hundred points. If you had, you could’ve told me anything; you had millions of options. So there must be something you want me to do. Some objective that was worth taking the time to check my squash game score and lecture me from square one about acceleration. Am I right?”

“Hmm. An astute inference.”

Through his silver mask, Haruyuki stared squarely at the beautiful avatar with her faint smile. “I…I’m actually not the type of person who gets to talk to you like this. I’m not cool. I’m a blob, a crybaby, I hold grudges, I get jealous of the only two friends I have, I run away at the drop of a hat. I really am a waste of skin. I’m basically the worst.”

What am I saying? he thought, but the words poured out of him and he couldn’t stop talking. His expressionless, mirror-like avatar was some consolation, at least. “Even so, you reached out to me, you directed with me, and I know it’s just because I was kinda good at that game, I know you didn’t have any other reason, but I—I wouldn’t even, I mean.”

Seriously, what am I saying here? Get it together before you talk. Aah, this is exactly the kind of time you need to accelerate. Except you’re already accelerated.

Spiraling deeper into panic, Haruyuki felt compelled to bare everything in his heart. “So…so I want to live up to your expectations. I want to properly repay the…m-mercy you showed me. I don’t know what I can do, but if you’re having some trouble, I want to do anything and everything to help. So I…I won’t uninstall Brain Burst. I’ll fight…as a Burst Linker.”

What the—? I should’ve just said that last part! How could I have said all that other stuff?

Having finished vomiting words, Haruyuki made his thin avatar even smaller and stared down, acutely embarrassed. He braced himself for the fact that there was no doubt she was thinking that Mr. Self-Conscious here had gotten the wrong idea about things somehow when the staccato pace of her response shook his sense of hearing.

“Mercy? Don’t use words like that.”

Lifting his eyes slightly in shock, he saw her face twisted with more obvious emotion than he had witnessed in her these few days. “I’m nothing but a foolish, helpless junior high student. I’m a human being, the same as you, standing in the same place, breathing the same air. To say nothing of the fact that at this stage, we are both Burst Linkers, exactly equal. You’re the one creating a distance. Do these two virtual meters feel that far to you?” Silently, she extended her pale right hand.

They do, Haruyuki murmured to himself. You have no idea how terrifying it is for someone like me to even be seen by someone like you, who has everything. I’m happy to be your servant. Just being a pawn to be moved on your orders is an unexpected happiness. If I take your hand now, you’ll end up with expectations of me you shouldn’t have. Poisonous expectations you’ll definitely end up regretting several times over.

It’s the same with Chiyuri and Takumu. I’m satisfied being their happy, fat friend. If they would just quit pitying me and sympathizing with me, I couldn’t ask for anything better.

The voice that came out of Haruyuki’s mouth was dry, like the trees in the virtual twilight. “You rescued me from hell. That’s…For me, that’s a life’s worth of happiness. I don’t need anything else. Nothing at all.”

“Is that so?” Kuroyukihime murmured, lowering her hand. A hard, heavy silence ruled the stage for a brief while. It was her voice that broke the tension, smooth as if nothing had changed at all. “I gratefully accept your aid. It is true that I currently have the tiniest, troublesome problem. I’d like your assistance in resolving the matter.”

Haruyuki nodded, holding his breath momentarily. “I’ll do whatever I can. What do you need?”

“First of all, I need you to learn how Duels work. Go ahead and click on your name displayed below your health gauge. Open ‘Help’ and check what all the normal and special attack commands are for your duel avatar.”

“S-special attack?” he parroted, staying the hand about to reach up.

“Mm. When the program creates your duel avatar, it allocates your already fixed potential according to your attributes. Some excel at attacking, others have solid defenses, and peaky types aim to settle battles in a single move with a special attack. But the overarching principle is that the general potential of duel avatars at the same level is exactly equal. You were crushed in your first fight, but it’s not because your opponent was stronger. You simply didn’t know how to fight.”

That bike guy (Ash Roller) was level one just like Haruyuki. Did he really have the same battle ability as Silver Crow, even though he had seemed so overwhelming? If he did, then this small, slender robot avatar definitely had to have an incredible special attack. Heart pounding, Haruyuki stretched out a silver finger and clicked on his name.

A semitransparent window popped open.

The movement of his body was depicted by a simple, human-shaped animation with the name of the technique displayed to its right.

First up, a motion readying the right fist against the upper thigh before being thrust forward. Normal attack: Punch.

Next. A motion pulling in the right leg and jamming it forward. Normal attack: Kick.

And finally, the special attack. Cross both arms, open them to the left and right, and thrust the head out. This one was called Head Butt.

That was it. There was nothing else.

“Um,” Haruyuki muttered, dazed. “Normal attacks, Punch and Kick…and all I have for a special attack is a Head Butt.”

“Oh?” Hearing this, Kuroyukihime put the fingers of her right hand to her lower jaw and tilted her head. Her expression didn’t seem to change, but, unable to face her any longer, Haruyuki quickly hung his head. Just imagining a tinge of disappointment floating up in those black eyes made his whole body suddenly hot.

Before he knew it, his mouth was opening on its own. “No, it’s fine. I mean, I expected this. Take one look at this avatar, and you can clearly see it’s no good. I’m sorry I can’t live up to your expectations. It’s fine if you kinda leave me be. Just think of me as a lottery you didn’t win.”

“You…idiot!!”

Haruyuki lifted his face, his whole body shaking with a start. Before he knew it, Kuroyukihime was standing in front of him, beautiful eyebrows raised, looking down at him with eyes like raging fires.

“I won’t tell you how to live your life; as junior high students, we’re on the same level. However, when it comes to Brain Burst, I have more than six years more experience than you. Were you not listening? When I told you that all the duel avatars have equal potential? Or have you already forgotten?”

“B-but it’s just that my only attacks are Punch, Kick, and Head Butt…”

“In which case, you most certainly have some strength somewhere to compensate.” Her gaze softening slightly, Kuroyukihime continued as if admonishing him. “It was your heart that gave birth to this duel avatar. If you don’t believe in it, then what does that say?”

“That the person who is least able to believe in me is me,” Haruyuki murmured to himself as he nodded. “I’m sorry. I believe…maybe not in myself, but at least in what you say.”

As she listened, Kuroyukihime’s face opened up slightly—although just into a bitter smile—and Haruyuki’s shoulders relaxed a little.

“It seems you need to learn something else before how to fight. Strength—” For a brief moment, the bitter smile became faintly melancholy. “Strength is by no means simply a word indicating victory. I spent a fair bit of time learning this. And by the time I learned the lesson, it was already too late.”

Haruyuki couldn’t understand the meaning behind the words she quietly spun out. He tilted his head and started to ask, but she didn’t give him the chance, suddenly changing tracks.

“Time’s almost up.”

Looking, he saw that the counter with its original 1800 had just barely twenty seconds left.

“So shall we make the next lecture a hands-on lesson?”

“Y…es? What do you…?”

Haruyuki stared, puzzled, and Kuroyukihime flashed him a bold smile.

“Of course, you’ll go and get them back. Your ten points.”

At the time that the Duel ended with a draw screen, the acceleration released.

The moment they returned to the real-world lounge, Kuroyukihime yanked out the direct cable without giving Haruyuki a chance to say anything. “Now then! Let’s eat, Arita. It’ll get cold on us.” She grinned and picked up her small spoon off the table.

Having no other choice, Haruyuki reached out to the plate of curry rice in front of him. In his perceived timeline, he’d brought it over from the counter more than thirty minutes ago, but as it was still steaming hot, his stomach clenched.

The same critical looks from the surrounding tables that he’d gotten the day before shone a spotlight on Haruyuki, and he wanted to abscond with his curry to some corner of the cafeteria. But he couldn’t combat his empty stomach. He’d shoveled three quick bites into his mouth when he heard one of the seniors at the same table start talking to Kuroyukihime, and his throat clamped shut.

“Kuro, isn’t it about time you told us? We’re seriously dying of curiosity here. We really want to understand exactly what your relationship is with the young man here.”

Haruyuki lifted his head with a start to recognize the fluffy-haired student council member he’d seen there yesterday. He was pretty sure she was the eighth-grade clerk.

“Mm.” Kuroyukihime placed her spoon beside the gratin dish and gracefully lifted her teacup, looking rather thoughtful. The students around her fell instantly silent. “To be blunt, I told him I liked him, and he blew me off.”

The world was full of shrieks and cries of surprise.

Spoon in mouth, curry in hand, Haruyuki fled.

“Uh…um, the thing is!!”

After spending the two remaining hours of the afternoon under laser-like scrutiny, Haruyuki diagonally behind Kuroyukihime objected somewhat awkwardly as they headed toward the school gates. “What were you thinking?! Everyone’s going to pick on me now!! They will totally be picking on me!!”

“It was a proud declaration.” After a quiet laugh, Kuroyukihime continued, her expression composed. “I didn’t go so far as to tell the truth, did I? And I don’t think you were as displeased as you’d have me believe.”

As she spoke, she swiftly gestured over her virtual desktop, allowing the flicking of her fingers to be seen. A file promptly arrived through the local net, and an icon started blinking in Haruyuki’s field of view. Clicking on it, a large image opened up in front of his eyes.

It was a picture of himself, curry spoon in mouth, exposing his idiotic, gaping face.

“Gaaah!” he shouted, seeing it and immediately throwing the file in the trash. “Wh-wh-wh-when did you take this camera screenshot?! Even speed has its limits!!”

“What? It was just to commemorate.”

While they were having this back and forth, eyes seemingly capable of actual murder and maiming bore holes through Haruyuki. Too late, he pulled his shoulders in but couldn’t completely hide himself in the shadow of Kuroyukihime’s slim body.

“Stand up a little taller. Not that many boys in this school have blown me off. You are, in fact, the only one.”

“But exactly when did I do that?!”

“You’re so harsh. You’ll hurt me all over again…Anyway.” With a single word, she put the issue on hold, and, recovering her center, she said in a low voice: “Once you leave the school gates, your Neurolinker will be connected globally. Which means that any Burst Linkers in Suginami area number three, which includes here, will be able to force you to fight. Before someone jumps you, accelerate, find Ash Roller in the matching list, and challenge him.”

“A-area? Does that mean that there are limits on the range where you can fight?”

Kuroyukihime dipped her head slightly at his question. “There are. You might start a Duel with someone on the opposite side of Tokyo, but thirty minutes will pass before you can even meet them. At any rate, you might one day set foot on a group field where any number of people can connect without limits, but that won’t be until you get past level four. Right now, focus on the battles in front of you.” She brought the lecture to a close in a slightly sharper voice. “I’ll just say this: If you lose, you can’t ask for a rematch right then and there. You can only fight the same opponent once a day. I’ll be in the Gallery, but unfortunately, I won’t be able to help you…Don’t look so disheartened. If you just fight like I outlined in the mail I sent you, you won’t lose.”

“O-okay.” His throat issued a gulping sound, and he nodded. He copied and pasted the content of the text she had sent him during sixth period to his brain.

“This is your real debut battle, Silver Crow. Good luck.”

She pushed his back lightly, and Haruyuki stepped out onto the road leading to the battlefield.