8

“A-a hundred percent win rate?!”

The next day, the eighteenth, Thursday, lunchtime.

Haruyuki raised an astonished voice on a bench that sat upon the roof of Umesato Junior High. “That’s…not like a metaphor or something? They really haven’t lost once?”

“Yeah.” Takumu, seated next to him, nodded, the sandwich he had bought in the cafeteria resting on his knees. “I heard it from someone I know in Shinjuku. She says she watched every duel Nomi and Chi were in right from the first one, so I guess it’s true. Once Dusk Taker’s gauge is full and he takes to the air, no matter what the duel avatar, he doesn’t let them do anything.”

Haruyuki stared in amazement for a while at the hamburger he had just bitten into before nodding slowly. “Right, I get it. Close-range types can’t get near him in the first place, and with long-distance types, it’s a shooting match. It’d be impossible to take out Dusk Taker when he’s got a healer.”

“Yeah. It sucks for you, Haru, but flying’s basically such a huge power that you can’t materialize it without throwing away all other potential. But by taking it, Nomi’s got the perfect match for his long-range techniques. Right now, he’s deviating in unexpected ways from the principle of ‘same level, same potential.’ On top of that, tactically, he’s got no weak points.” Peeling back the plastic wrap of the sandwich half automatically, Takumu added in a heavy voice, “Yesterday, it seemed like the high rankers at level seven or eight were watching to see how it played out, so I don’t know what’ll happen when they show up on the field. But if Nomi ends up winning against even them, the situation’s way more serious than we were picturing.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“Haru, somewhere in our hearts, we’ve been thinking that no matter how strong Nomi is, once Master—once Black Lotus comes back…she can solve this in a single decisive stroke. But…”

Haruyuki very nearly dropped his hamburger. Reflexively, he gripped it as tightly as he could, and paying no attention to the sauce squeezing out to drip down onto his hand, he cried hoarsely, “T-Taku! Are you saying she’ll lose?! Kuroyukihime to Nomi?!”

“It’s not like I want to think that! But at the very least, we have to acknowledge that that’s Nomi’s plan.”

Haruyuki realized that Takumu’s hand was trembling slightly as he tried to farther peel back the plastic wrap. “Right,” his good friend said, almost groaning, pale face turning even paler. “That’s probably been Nomi’s plan right from the start. He’d chase us into a corner during the week Master’s away, hit us where it hurts, and line his ducks up in a row to take her down. It’s not even about fighting her. He…he’s trying to hunt the Black King, Black Lotus.”

“H-hunt?”

“Yeah. I got interested in targeting the Black King way back then precisely because she only had the fighting power of her dummy avatar. I figured if I could just take a few of her points, that kind of thing. But Nomi’s different. I know he thinks he can defeat Black Lotus in her true form and take this school—no, even the king’s throne…”

“Impossible.” Haruyuki shook his head vigorously, as if to chase away the cold sensation crawling up his spine. “As, as if Kuroyukihime would lose to that guy!”

For Haruyuki, the gorgeous jet-black avatar was the lone absolute presence in the Accelerated World. He sincerely believed there was no way she could lose to any Burst Linker, even another king. It was impossible for his Black King to be defeated by an acceleration user who broke the rules like Nomi. It was impossible, but…

If I were dragging her down…

If an idiot who gets infected with a virus, has secret video taken of him, and even gets his wings stolen were to dull her blades…Or, in the worst case, to have that effect in reality as well—

“Haru.” Takumu abruptly clasped Haruyuki’s shoulder firmly. “Haru. No matter what Nomi’s planning, there’s one thing we should do. Before Saturday, we have to do everything we possibly can.”

“Everything we can…So what’s that? As long as he’s blocking the matching list, we can’t touch him,” he muttered hollowly, and scowled fiercely. “Are you saying we should go to Shinjuku? You want the two of us to challenge Nomi’s team and take Chiyu down with him?”

It was Takumu’s turn to be silent. Finally, he took his hand from Haruyuki’s shoulder, closed his eyes behind his glasses, and whispered, “Don’t make me say it.”

“…Sorry,” Haruyuki apologized after a long sigh, hanging his head. “We can’t try to choose between Kuroyukihime and Chiyuri…Let’s just believe that right now the people at Akihabara BG and Blood Leopard will get to the bottom of the list-blocking mystery for us.”

These words were closer to an entreaty to some god than an actual expectation, but the truth was they didn’t have any other options left to them. Even if they went to Akihabara again, all they’d be able to do was basically wander the streets at random.

Haruyuki took a big bite of his crushed hamburger, and as he chomped away, he stared up at the slightly overcast sky.

Haruyuki made it through the two hours of the afternoon somehow, and after he slipped away as always, practically fleeing the chilly air of the classroom, he changed his shoes and gave everything he had to a dash off school grounds. With a feeling like praying, he connected to the global net and checked the anonymous mailbox he had given Blood Leopard, but—

“…Still nothing…”

He knew the situation was not as simple as all that, but that didn’t stop a tidal wave of disappointment from crashing over him, and his shoulders fell.

The day after tomorrow, Saturday evening, Kuroyukihime would already be back from Okinawa. He should have been excited for that moment, but right then, that excitement was perfectly matched by the desire for her to stay safely away, if even for just another day.

Forty-eight hours left. In that time, they had to discover Nomi’s secret, delete the video, and get Chiyuri back. But the only thing he could do right now was wait eagerly for information.

Tortured by a burning impatience, Haruyuki hung his head as far as it would go and arrived at the road home alone. Takumu definitely couldn’t skip practice for a third day, so he was at kendo.

Haruyuki trudged back to the condo under a sky that intermittently dropped rain on him, entered the spacious lobby, and looked up. At that moment, he saw the back of a girl in the uniform of his own Umesato Junior High, standing in front of one of the two elevators at the opposite end of the lobby.

Short hair down to her shoulders. Sports bag slung across her body. Even from behind, Haruyuki immediately knew it was Chiyuri. But why, at that hour? Chiyuri was on the track team, and she normally spent every day after school running around the track until the teachers kicked her out. She shouldn’t have been home until a full two hours after Haruyuki, himself a member of the “Go Home” team. And as far as he could tell from seeing her in class that day, she didn’t have a cold or anything like that.

Once the familiar back disappeared into the elevator and the door closed, Haruyuki finally got it. She was skipping practice at Nomi’s instruction. To duel in Shinjuku this evening, just like yesterday. To keep using her own avatar as bait to lure in the enemy and heal Dusk Taker, who sat safely up in the sky.

“…Chiyu,” he murmured, and unconsciously clenched his hands into tight fists. He didn’t know what this feeling was, welling up with the heat and density of molten metal from the bottom of his stomach. But, agitated by it, he ran to the elevator and flew inside the instant the door opened. There, he impulsively struck the button for two floors below his, the twenty-first.

When he got out of the elevator car, he ran once again and stopped in front of the Kurashimas’ door. Unhesitatingly, he pressed the doorbell button displayed and listened to the tinkling sound effect. Chiyuri would already know through her home server that the visitor was Haruyuki. He waited stubbornly, and finally, he heard the sound of the lock, and the door opened.

Perhaps her mother had gone shopping, because it was Chiyuri herself standing there on the step into the apartment. She looked as though she had been in the middle of changing; her blazer was off and the blue ribbon hung undone from the collar of her shirt.

To all appearances totally calm, Chiyuri tilted her head slightly and uttered a single word. “…What?”

“I came to talk,” Haruyuki replied immediately. In truth, he hadn’t practiced what he would say, but nonetheless, his mouth moved automatically.

“…That so.” Clipped again. Chiyuri whirled around and headed back down the hallway.

Haruyuki held his breath and stepped over the threshold. He quickly took off his shoes and chased after her.

Six months earlier, Haruyuki had also been struck with a similar impulse and come to her house. That time, it was to direct with her and try to see whether or not she was Cyan Pile, the mysterious Burst Linker who was attacking through the Umesato local net at the time.

This time, too, Brain Burst was at the heart of it. Despite the similarity, the situation now was completely different. Chiyuri was the Burst Linker Lime Bell, and on the surface, she stood in opposition to Haruyuki and Takumu of her own free will.

She flopped down on her bed, clutching one of the many stuffed animal cushions laying around—probably a sea creature of some kind—to her knees. “So what’s there to talk about?”

Haruyuki stayed standing near the door, and words came out as his mouth moved. “You skipping practice?”

“Yeah.”

He met her eyes with an unusual firmness as she gave him the bare minimum of an answer, and further asked, “Did Nomi tell you to?”

“…And if he did?”

“If he did, quit it. It’s wrong to put Brain Burst above real life.”

Here, for the first time, the expression on Chiyuri’s face changed. Her brow furrowed slightly, and she replied in a sour voice, “You’re one to talk. Haru, the only thing you ever think about is Brain Burst.”

“Th-that’s not true. I’m not on any teams, and because of that, I never forget to do my homework.”

“And you put the rest of your time into the game.”

He held his tongue and Chiyuri suddenly grinned.

“Just stop. It’s only a game. Don’t get so serious.” Her face was cheerful and smiling, but Haruyuki, who had spent a lot longer looking at that face than he had at his own, could see a clear, albeit faint, awkwardness hidden in her expression. But Chiyuri smiled even more broadly and made a peace sign with her right hand.

“It’s pretty amazing. Just yesterday, I went up two whole levels. The people in the Gallery said that going from level one to level three in a day might be the fastest ever in Brain Burst. And, I mean, I’ve got a bazillion invites to Legions.”

“…Chiyu.” As Haruyuki said her name in a voice that caught in his throat, he took a step forward.

“I’m only skipping practice just right now, so don’t worry about it. Once I’m settled enough so I can fight on my own, I’ll slow it down. I’ve already got a pretty good feel for how the duel—”

“Chiyu!!” he half shouted, and words escaped from his throat like they were fleeing his body. “Chiyu, you obeying Nomi, it’s because of that video, isn’t it?! He told you he’d turn the video he secretly took of me in to the school, didn’t he?! If he did, you don’t have to worry about threats like that! Nomi can’t use it. If he does, I’ll reveal his real info to other Burst Linkers, and he knows that. That…He can only use that video to threaten you, not me! So just forget about it!” Even as he spoke, he knew it wouldn’t make a difference, no matter what he said.

If Nomi did expose the video, Haruyuki would almost certainly be expelled. Not only that, it was possible he would be arrested and sent to juvenile detention after a family court trial. As long as that possibility actually existed, Chiyuri would continue to obey Nomi. Because she was Chiyuri. Because she was Haruyuki’s childhood friend who had always and forever tried to protect him.

She lowered her eyes and stayed silent for a long time before smiling once more. “It’s not like that, Haru. I just want to hurry up and get points so I can level up. I told you that the other day, too.”

“That’s…that’s not like you at all!” Haruyuki shouted, eyes at some point starting to well up with tears. “It’s me, it’s all my fault! Being made to dance like a puppet by Nomi, all my weaknesses uncovered, and on top of that…if he takes you from me, too, what am I supposed to do…?” Dropping to a squat on the floor, Haruyuki hung his head and Chiyuri’s voice, similarly wet, reached his ears.

“You don’t get it, Haru.” He raised his face with a start to see his childhood friend still had a smile on her lips but two thin tear trails dragged down her tanned cheeks. “You don’t get anything about me.”

“Huh…”

“Nothing…You don’t understand anything at all!!” Suddenly shrieking tearfully, Chiyuri started to do something wholly unexpected. With the fingers of shaking hands, she began to undo the buttons of her shirt, starting at the top.

Frozen before her, Haruyuki swallowed hard as Chiyuri, after a moment’s hesitation, ripped her shirt off. Her torso, clad in nothing more than a simple undershirt, was revealed to Haruyuki’s gaze without any obstructions of any kind.

A few days earlier, when Haruyuki had been tricked by the visual mask and charged into the girls’ shower room, he had seen Chiyuri completely unclothed, but for some reason, seeing her like this in front of him now hammered into his brain with overwhelmingly huge implications.

“…Will you get it if I do this?” Chiyuri whispered, her voice wavering. “Even if my avatar in the Accelerated World is following Nomi, the me in the real world is here…where you could touch me if you wanted to. Do you still not get it? No one’s taking me away from you or anything like that.” She stared at Haruyuki with tears spilling out of fiercely shining eyes and said, measuring each word, “I move of my own free will. I always have; I always will.”

Haruyuki—

—did not get it.

Chiyuri moved of her own free will. What was that supposed to mean? That just like she had been saying, she had determined that, as a Burst Linker, it was more to her advantage to go along with Nomi rather than Haruyuki and their Legion and join up with him to get even more points?

Instantly, Haruyuki realized the burning emotion that had propelled him from the condo entrance to this spot was jealousy. He was supposed to like Kuroyukihime and want Takumu and Chiyuri to work everything out, but just thinking about Chiyuri at Nomi’s side, something endlessly black welled up from deep in his heart.

But Haruyuki brushed this feeling aside and simply hung his head. “I’m sorry. Please put your clothes on.” He didn’t understand Chiyuri’s intention. But he decided to trust her. She was probably fighting, too, trying to get out of a bad situation under her own power. He had to believe that at least. If he couldn’t believe that after everything she’d said, he didn’t deserve to call himself her friend anymore.

He stood up, taking care to not look at the motionless Chiyuri, and turned back toward the door. “I believe you.” He said his last words firmly. “So please believe me, too. Nomi’s not going to beat me. I’m going to take back everything he’s taken.” And then he opened the door and took long strides toward his own house.

Stepping out of his living room onto the balcony, Haruyuki placed both hands on the railing and stared out at the urban center of Shinjuku rising up in the eastern sky. Catching the angled sunlight, the government center, which stood more than five hundred meters tall, glittered and sparkled among the other skyscrapers in the herd. Duels were no doubt well under way against the backdrop of these giants. Dusk Taker was steadily increasing his fighting abilities, and there was nothing Haruyuki could do right now about the Accelerated World shouting his name from the rooftops.

As if he would give up now. “…There’s still one thing I can do,” he murmured, clenching the rail tightly.

And that was think. Scrutinize all the information, investigate, hypothesize. No robber could take just this weapon from him. Still in his uniform, Haruyuki felt the cool wind blowing across the twenty-third floor as he began to recall the particulars of how this situation had come about—every single event from the moment Nomi Seiji had started at his school eight days earlier.

It was late that night when Takumu informed him that Dusk Taker hadn’t appeared in Shinjuku that day, but rather in Shibuya. The area might have been different, but what he did was exactly the same as the previous day. No midlevel Burst Linkers were able to fight back on first contact with Nomi, who held the most powerful cards imaginable: flight, healing, super flame, etc.

The tag team managed a win rate of 100 percent for the second day in a row, scoring a vast number of points. As a result, Dusk Taker was at level six. Lime Bell had reached level four.

This was no longer a phenomenon that fit in the duel framework. It would have been more fitting to call it an invasion of the existing Accelerated World.

Around the time the sky of Shibuya was red with the flames of war, Haruyuki was still leaning up against the railway of his balcony, intently ponderous.

The playback of his memories went past the mortal combat with Nomi on Tuesday and instead focused in on the scene in Akihabara the previous day and its mysterious Burst Linker, Rust Jigsaw. What he was doing was also an invasion of the existing system. He was using the special privilege of list-blocking to earn easy points in the Akihabara BG local net.

So it wasn’t necessarily so far-fetched to think that there was some kind of connection between Rust Jigsaw and Dusk Taker. At the very least, they were likely using the same logic to block the list. He again felt a keen regret at losing Rust Jigsaw’s real self in the crowd.

Tasting once again the bitterness he had chewed so thoroughly on since the day before, Haruyuki called to mind the figure he had glimpsed from behind. The gray team jacket. The pale neck with the sharp Neurolinker tan. Receding quickly into the distance, rubbing that neck as if in pain.

The boy waved his right hand just as he was on the verge of disappearing from Haruyuki’s sight, as if to say that the passersby in front of him were in his way—

The playback of his memories stopped dead on this moment.

He rewound a few frames.

With the outstretched fingers of his right hand, the boy quickly pushed through the air, right around chest level.

Why was this scene bugging him so much? He tightened his grip on the railing of the balcony and mustered every bit of processing power he had. The feeling he got in puzzle games, that faint clicking in the core of his mind when he touched on a clue that led to a solution, came over him in waves.

Think. Think. Replaying the boy’s back over and over and over, Haruyuki unconsciously made the same motion.

Raise his right hand, sweep it to the right.

This movement felt strangely familiar. He waved his right hand again. Wave his right hand. Wave.

This— It wasn’t to shoo the person in front of him out of the way. It was the movement to close a window on a virtual desktop.

But the boy hadn’t been wearing a Neurolinker. In which case, maybe some kind of retina-projection wearable device? No, in the movie of his memory, there was absolutely no trace of any equipment like that.

So the boy was looking at a holowindow with no Neurolinker and no other device?

Impossible. As far as Haruyuki knew, no supersmall contact lens monitors had been developed, and there was no device that could be embedded in the eye.

Just when he was about to abandon this line of thinking with the idea that he was mistaken, words Nomi had said to him abruptly came back to life in his mind.

“You don’t think that the only portable devices in this world are Neurolinkers, do you?”

That was what he had said as he pointed to the small digital camera he had used to secretly film Haruyuki in front of the Umesato shower rooms. It had meant nothing more than that. So why was it bugging him so much now?

“Device…A device other than a Neurolinker,” he murmured, touching the aluminum silver device around his own neck.

A VR machine that was not a Neurolinker. They did in fact exist. Around 2020, before Haruyuki was born, you put this enormous headgear on your head. However, the machines of that time were only for full dives. Neurolinkers were the first to actually implement AR of the sort where you could operate a virtual desktop while going about your daily life in the real world—

“No.” Haruyuki furrowed his brow. “No, that’s not right, is it? The first thing to implement AR was…” He stopped and let his gaze wander through space.

Something in among his vague memories was jabbing at him. Between the initial headgear and the current Neurolinker, there had to have been another kind of device.

After struggling for a while, Haruyuki moved a quiet finger and tapped on the drive icon on his virtual desktop. He dove steadily into the countless data folders within his Neurolinker’s local memory. At a very deep level, a folder with the simple name of F appeared.

F was for father. Here he had saved all the information, or rather memories, he had relating to his real father, a man he had not heard from once since he’d left them way back when. Very few photos. Sound files. Text memos. And a data folder on his father’s work that Haruyuki had copied from the home server right before his mother would have deleted it completely.

His father had worked at a key network-related company. He’d almost never made it home, and even when he was home on a rare day off, his vision would be full of work materials; he never bothered to look at anything else.

Remembering that there should have been something about the development history of a VR device among these materials his father had left on the home server, Haruyuki pushed aside the prickly emotions stabbing at his heart as he waded intently through the folder. Finally, he found the file he was looking for and opened it. He traced the chronological text with a finger and scrolled through it.

The first headgear-type VR machine realizing the full-dive technology had come onto the market in May of 2022. The first generation of the current Neurolinkers was released in April of 2031.

The instant his eyes took in the name of a certain device printed between these two in small letters, his heart jumped into his throat and his breathing stopped. The skin covering his body suddenly froze, and Haruyuki grabbed on to the railing as hard as he could with both hands.

No way. Ridiculous. Impossible. But…

It could happen, if you used this. Looking at a virtual desktop without a Neurolinker…and connecting to a local net without one, too.

Lips trembling, he released the words into the air in a hoarse voice.

“…Brain…implant chip…”

Brain implant chip. BIC for short.

A wild child existing only for the briefest of moments in the history of wearable VR machines.

The device itself was a small neuroelectronic chip implanted between the surface of the cerebrum and the dura mater. With self-growing terminals placed on the sensory area of the brain surface, the owner was able to use AR displays like the virtual desktop and even do full dives without equipping any external devices whatsoever. In a certain sense, it was the ultimate VR machine, much more so than the Neurolinker. It was developed and put on the market in 2029. However, only a few years later, it was banned within the country.

Because, unlike the Neurolinker, you could never power down a BIC, much less take it off. If, hypothetically, a black hat hacker got into your system, you’d face some extreme difficulties in fighting back. Conversely, if you were to use it maliciously, you could get around rules in a variety of ways. The prime example of this was a high school or university entrance exam, or any kind of certification test really. At the time, Neurolinkers did not yet exist, so the basic principle for entrance exams was no VR machines, but if you had a BIC implant, you could easily get full marks in memorization-type subjects. It was essentially the same as bringing every dictionary and reference book ever printed in with you.

Cases of desperate parents implanting BICs in their test-taking children popped up all over the country, and once the phenomenon spread to the bar exam and the civil servant test, the government was forced to regulate the production and use of BICs. As of the present day in 2047, BICs were illegal VR machines.

Which was exactly why Haruyuki hadn’t even considered the possibility when Nomi started at Umesato. Now, however, he had to assume no other conclusion was possible. General use of BICs was restricted, but their manufacture continued for specialized applications, and he had heard that there were even hospitals that would implant “dark chips” diverted into the black market. He had absolutely no idea how a junior high school kid would manage that, but if there was one person who could probably do it, it was Nomi.

Seiji Nomi/Dusk Taker—and probably Rust Jigsaw, too—had a second VR machine on the surface of his brain. It wasn’t that Nomi was blocking the matching list while connected to the Umesato local net. He had never connected a Neurolinker with Brain Burst in it to the net.

In other words, he used his Neurolinker as a normal standalone. In so doing, he avoided the supposedly unavoidable duels that were the risk that went hand in hand with the privilege of Brain Burst’s power of acceleration, for he could also connect to the network with the BIC. Take the kendo match with Takumu, for instance: While Nomi used the BIC in his head to connect to the local net, he used his unconnected Neurolinker to physically accelerate and dodge Takumu’s shinai. It was only natural that his name wasn’t on the matching list when they looked.

Except for that one moment when he was connected through his Neurolinker rather than the BIC and had used acceleration to get top marks on his social studies test—

“Right…That’s right…,” Haruyuki squeezed out hoarsely, killing all of the countless windows still displayed in his field of vision with a wave of his hand.

Finally. He had finally gotten it. The only correct answer.

And this information was lethal for Seiji Nomi. You could check for the existence of a BIC with an X-ray scanner. If a chip was discovered in Nomi’s brain, his acceptance at Umesato Junior High would definitely be rescinded.

If Haruyuki played this card, he could drag Nomi down to the same place as he was in. To a battlefield without privileges. In which case, there was only one thing left for him to do. Duel him, fight with every bit of strength he could muster—and win.

He stared out at the night sky over the center of Tokyo; Dusk Taker was no doubt soaring through it right about then. “Nomi…This time for sure, I’m finishing this,” he said briefly, each word a bullet.