11

“A win rate of a hundred percent!”

Haruyuki clenched his right hand tightly, and then his shoulders fell as he continued, “Or it was. If only we hadn’t gotten taken down in that last fight…”

The following day, Saturday April 20, a bright evening. The place was the same as the previous day, the Arita living room.

Every week at that time was the crown jewel of the fighting game Brain Burst: the Territory Battles between Legions. Haruyuki and the other members of Nega Nebulus had been expecting some difficult fights that week given that they were going in with a battle formation that lacked their Master Black Lotus, but they ended up with an almost-complete win ratio.

It was because Lime Bell jumped right in, even though she had just joined the Legion the day before. Her healing ability might have turned out to be the ability to reverse time, but it could also definitely be used as a sham means of recovering HP. The only issue was, if she went back too far, repeatedly cycling through heal, hit, heal, they were back in damage territory, but she managed to keep this straight somehow with an expert’s knack.

Thus, Haruyuki and his friends adopted the strategy of always keeping either Silver Crow or Cyan Pile with Lime Bell for protection, while the other attacked and returned to the base for healing. This worked very well, and he thought that they were going to have a total Territories victory for the first time in a long time. But…

The long-distance, three-person team that challenged them last didn’t approach their base at all and showered the lone person who came to attack with concentrated firepower. The remaining two were forced to gradually advance, and when the three of them were all together, their enemies blasted with multiple special attacks and wiped out all at once.

“Well, it happens. Just winning as much as we did with a team that was thrown together’s more than enough,” Takumu said, sipping his large drink, and Haruyuki pursed his lips.

“Yeah, I know. In the end, they got us right in our weak spot, the fact that we don’t have any long-distance firepower, and we lost.”

“And that weak point’s not going to change when Master comes home, either.”

“If it’s without Incarnate, then yeah.”

They both simultaneously remembered Kuroyukihime’s long-range technique and how it severed the distant Umesato school building in a single blow, shivers running up their spines.

Chiyuri wasn’t there—perhaps embarrassed about all the crying she did the day before, she said she would dive from her own place—so it was just the two of them. After popping into his mouth a fry from the hamburger meal he had bought in the shopping mall on the first floor, Haruyuki cleared his throat and changed the subject.

“Anyway, nice work in there. And…Taku. That…Have you had any contact?” He left out the “from Nomi” part.

“No, none.” Takumu shook his head slightly. “I’m a little worried about it, though. I mean, it’s Nomi. He might have proposed the battle, but I seriously can’t believe he’d give up, even if he did lose.”

“Me, either.”

The air suddenly heavy, they both fell silent.

“That avatar that showed up there, Black Vise,” Haruyuki said as he chewed on the end of another fry. “He said something weird. About how former acceleration users who had lost Brain Burst couldn’t interfere with the Accelerated World. Wonder what that was supposed to mean.”

“Huh? Isn’t it just that they can’t accelerate, so they can’t fight?”

“That’s what I thought, too, at the time. But, like, that kind of goes without saying. You don’t really need to go out of your way to push the point. Hey, Taku. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it, but…” He glanced over at his friend sitting next to him on the sofa. “Your ‘guardian’…the captain of the kendo team at your old school…He had a forced uninstall with the Blue King’s Judgment Blow, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

“Did you guys talk after that? Like about Brain Burst.”

At this, Takumu furrowed his brow in an interesting shape and appeared to think for a minute. “I was in a pretty big hurry to transfer schools after all that…I went to say my good-byes to the kendo team, but our teammates were there, too, so naturally, I didn’t say anything about Brain Burst. And, I dunno, he seemed to be surprisingly over it, so I didn’t dare bring it all back for him.”

“Over it…?” Haruyuki muttered, and thought for a minute; he felt like he had heard something similar before. He soon hit on it.

Cherry Rook, Red King Niko’s guardian. After using the Armor of Catastrophe to run wild in the Accelerated World, he had been judged for his crimes by Niko’s hand and lost Brain Burst. Later, Niko had said he was back to his old self and was talking to her for real again. He had said that even though he was moving, he planned to keep playing other net games together with her. Somehow, this was similar to what Takumu had told him just now.

But there was no way either of these cases fit Nomi in any way. Nomi’s resentful screaming immediately before he left the Accelerated World stuck in Haruyuki’s ears even now. He had been prepared for the fairly likely eventuality of some kind of vengeance. But Haruyuki, Takumu, Chiyuri—none of them had had any contact from him.

“Guess our only choice is to go talk to him in person on Monday,” Takumu said slowly, and Haruyuki nodded slightly.

“Guess so. There’s the video thing, too…”

Now that he was no longer a Burst Linker, Nomi had nothing left to lose in the Accelerated World. If he decided to, he could reveal that video he secretly took to get his revenge and also disseminate the real identities of Haruyuki and his friends to other Burst Linkers. The only counterattack they had was the brain implant chip in Nomi’s head, but Black Vise had said something worrying about that.

If you lost Brain Burst, the BIC would automatically cease functioning and melt away.

The BIC body was a synthetic protein micromachine assembly. Depending on the programming, it could be detached/dissolved, in which case, it would no longer be detectable with a scan. In other words, it stopped being a reason for Nomi to be expelled.

Which is why Haruyuki and his friends couldn’t just cut off contact with Nomi. They still had to go to him and negotiate, to force him to delete the video. It was seriously depressing.

Finishing off his drink, Takumu dumped the ice in the kitchen, carefully washed the recycled materials cup, and threw it in the special bag. “Okay, then, on Monday at school. You want me to come with you when you go see Nomi?”

“No, I’ll be fine. I’ll go by myself, thanks. G’night.” He saw Takumu off at the door and went back to the living room to clean up, sighing. He looked at the clock on his virtual desktop, and then stared out the window at the night sky.

She’s still on the plane right now. Or maybe she’s landed at the airport already, he wondered idly, and then shook his pudgy head and switched tracks. He’d get to see her on Monday at school. He’d waited a whole week; he could handle another day and a half.

He had wrestled his emotions back under control, so that when the doorbell rang minutes later, he assumed Takumu had forgotten something. Not wanting to bother with the hassle of the intercom window, he went back to the entryway. “Coming,” he said as he unlocked the door.

“What? You forget some—” The thing got stuck in his throat, and his heart stopped. Without even being aware of this, Haruyuki opened his eyes so wide, they almost popped out.

Standing there, paper bag in one hand, carrier bag with motor assist dangling from the other, was a girl in the Umesato Junior High school uniform. In the slight breeze that wafted down the corridor, her dark red ribbon and long black hair fluttered, and he caught the faint scent of the tropics.

“How many seconds are you going to stay frozen?” she asked, and Haruyuki’s brain finally restarted.

Bwah! After several at-best-ragged breaths, Haruyuki squeezed out a hoarse voice. “K-K-Ku-Kuro—Kuroyukihime?! Wh-wh-wh—”

“Some hello. And after I came straight here from Haneda to bring you a souvenir.”

The expression on the face of the older student—Kuroyukihime, cheeks puffed out adorably—made Haruyuki jump to attention. Quickly, he swept his right hand back like a traffic control robot. “Oh! C-c-come in! Please come in!”

“Thanks. I’d be glad to.” Nodding crisply, Kuroyukihime walked into the entryway, left her shoes and carrier bag there, and stepped up into the hallway. She moved briskly past Haruyuki and went into the living room.

Chasing after her, feet tangling underneath him, Haruyuki no longer had any idea of what he should do and shot his eyes around and around his apartment before saying, “Uh, um, my mom never gets home until late.”

“I know. That’s why I came.”

“Y-you did? Uh, so…R-right, t-t-t-tea!”

Calm down! Calm down and deal with this! he told himself as he started toward the kitchen, and Kuroyukihime reached into the paper bag with a quick “Oh yes.”

“Perhaps you could also warm this up in the microwave for me.” She pulled out an enormous yellowish-brown sphere. Haruyuki accepted the object that was maybe fifteen centimeters in diameter and stared at it intently.

The characters printed on the clear packaging in a somehow Okinawa-like font read ANDAGI BOMB.

“Is this sata andagi?”

“Mmm. You did put in a request, didn’t you, saying you’d like one thirty centimeters round? As expected, there were none that big, so you’ll have to make do with this.”

“N-no, this is plenty big. I’m kind of surprised.”

“Right? I was surprised, too, when I came across it.”

Ha-ha-ha!

Haruyuki stared long and hard at Kuroyukihime’s laughing face, and finally felt his nervousness dissipate. At the same time, his eyes got a little misty, so he hurriedly whirled around and escaped to the kitchen.

He pulled the enormous Okinawa-style doughnut from the bag and warmed it in the microwave. He brought a bottle of oolong tea and two glasses to the table, rolled the now-heated andagi onto a plate, and after a moment’s thought, took it and a small knife out with him.

Already seated at the dining table, Kuroyukihime took the knife from the plate, and as adroit with a blade as would be expected, she split the andagi into two perfect halves. “Here.” She pushed one half toward Haruyuki, steam rising up from the golden cross-section.

“Th-thanks.” He took it from her and bit into the edge. Enjoying both the crunchy surface and the moist insides, he thought to himself, I get it. There’s a reason it’s this big.

“I-it’s delicious. Really delicious.”

“Is it? Good.”

Here, Haruyuki finally stumbled onto the question of why he had even asked for a giant andagi in the first place. Munching on it, he tried desperately to remember his own actions, as the smile on the face of Kuroyukihime across the table from him grew even broader, beautiful like a narcissus.

“Now then, Haruyuki,” she said.

“Y-yes?”

“Shall I tell you what I’m feeling right now?”

“O-okay.”

“Forty-nine percent the desire to praise you for a job well done. Fifty percent the desire to punch you.”

And the last one percent?

This was perhaps not the time to ask such questions, and he straightened his back. A rather large lump got caught in his throat and after somehow managing to swallow it, Haruyuki thrust his head downward.

“I-I’m so sorry! I take responsibility for everything. I didn’t want to bother you on your trip, but then I ended up relying on you in the end…And, I mean, I made you run fifteen hours from Okinawa and everything…”

“Look, you.” The smile changed to a dangerous look suddenly, and Kuroyukihime produced an extremely displeased voice. “I’m not mad about having to fight. Just the opposite. Why didn’t you call me right from the start? If you had said even a word about the situation, I would’ve flown home from Okinawa right away!”

“Th-that’s…I mean, you only get one school trip your whole life, don’t you—”

“Either way, it wasn’t that much fun! And I suppose you won’t understand the reason for that, either, unless I tell you!” She said it with such force that if she had been her duel avatar, there was no doubt she would’ve sliced the table in two with the sharpness. She frowned sullenly, but, fortunately, she soon sighed, dropped most of the swords in her voice, and continued. “Well, that’s fine. In any case, you’ll tell me now. Everything from start to finish—don’t leave out a single byte of information!”

And then Haruyuki told her everything as he chewed on the giant doughnut. The long, long story from the appearance of Seiji Nomi to the first battle with Dusk Taker, the training in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and the events leading up to the previous day’s battle.

When he had finished the nearly hour-long explanation, Kuroyukihime lowered her long lashes and sighed softly. A few seconds later, she opened her mouth. “Haruyuki. When you summoned that Enhanced Armament—Gale Thruster—I thought my heart would stop.”

Drinking his oolong tea, Haruyuki jerked his face up. However, no words came out.

Sky Raker, the recluse of the Accelerated World, had given Haruyuki the Gale Thruster. She had been a core member of the initial Nega Nebulus and also Kuroyukihime’s friend. Seeking the sky as if possessed, Sky Raker had asked Kuroyukihime to cut her own legs off for her. Kuroyukihime had agreed—and after that, she had apparently thrown herself into the bloody battle with the other kings.

But right now, Kuroyukihime’s face was calm, a somehow plaintive smile rising to her lips. “So unexpected…that she would be the one to initiate you into the Incarnate System.”

“…I’m sorry. I didn’t get your permission. I just went off on my own.”

“No.” Kuroyukihime shook her head gently at his apologies. “She’s likely more qualified for it than I am. Of all the high-level Linkers who have mastered Incarnate, Raker is probably the one who most believes in the possibilities of that system. And…I no doubt could not have been that complete of a demon toward you.”

A giggle tumbled from her lips and Haruyuki gave her a big nod.

“Sh-she was amazing. She pushed me off of the top of the old Tokyo Tower.”

“Ha-ha-ha! That’s so like her.” She laughed fondly for a moment before abruptly falling silent.

She dropped her gaze to fix it on a single point on the table, but then finally stood up, chair clattering slightly. She moved to the front of the large window on the southern side of the apartment and stared wordlessly at the night outside.

For a while, Haruyuki watched her back with the long black hair flowing down it, but then resolved himself and stood up as well. He walked over to her and looked outside with her.

“The Incarnate System is extremely enormous,” she said slowly, after a few seconds. “Thus, it enthralls everyone who touches it. They master the depths of the power, charging forward to make it their own. But, well…this is what I think. If it were a simple program bug, the administrator wouldn’t just leave it, they’d do something about it. Thus, the power is not an irregular system generated accidentally but rather…part of Brain Burst from the start. Perhaps as some sort of trap.”

“A-a trap…?”

“Mmm. To lure us Burst Linkers in and draw our minds to another dimension somewhere…”

The meaning of her words was a complete mystery to Haruyuki. Still, he furrowed his brow and tried to understand somehow. Kuroyukihime glanced at him and then touched her left hand gently to his cheek.

“No, don’t bother yourself about it. All you need to do is simply move straight ahead the way you are. Mmm…Perhaps you…You might be able to surpass that deep darkness and approach the true light at the heart…”

Laughing softly, Kuroyukihime brought her right hand up to his face as well. Her expression and tone shifted. “Now. Shall I tell you the remaining one percent of my feelings?”

Haruyuki’s entire body stiffened with a gasp. Something more than punch?! So then, some kind of leg technique?! Or maybe a submission hold?!

As Haruyuki’s mind raced with absurd thoughts, Kuroyukihime wrapped both arms around his neck and pulled him firmly toward her chest. Held tightly, his brain quickly over-revved at the pressure from all directions and the sensation of contact against his face; the gears whined and shrieked.

A voice arrived at his no doubt burning red left ear from so close that the lips uttering it were practically touching him. “I wanted to do this. Ever since I got Chiyuri’s mail telling me you had had your wings stolen…and that despite that, you were trying so hard to stand up to your enemy. All this time, I’ve wanted to do this.”

Kuroyukihime hugged Haruyuki even harder, with a power that seemed impossible for those thin arms, and whispered in a trembling voice, “You really did do great. It must have been so hard…I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. I…I’m a failure as a guardian.”

A hot droplet touched his left cheek with a plop.

Haruyuki opened his eyes. The glossy hair swinging in his field of vision blurred and mixed with the light. Unconsciously, he raised his arms and wrapped his hands around her slim waist. He forced out shudderingly, “M-me, too. I’m sorry for making you worry.”

“I was worried,” she told him, half shouting, and her shoulders shook in tiny earthquakes. “I was so worried. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had lost you…I was scared. I was really scared!”

Throat blocked, Haruyuki couldn’t say anything more. So he chanted in his heart earnestly, I’m here. I’ll always be with you. I’ll never disappear.

For the next minute or two, thin sobs escaped her, but at last, she took a deep breath and finally relaxed her hold slightly. “I have to give you your reward,” she said suddenly.

“Huh, re…?” Haruyuki blinked repeatedly.

“You defended wonderfully in the Territories, didn’t you? I told you, if you ferociously defended Suginami, I would let you ask me for anything as a reward.”

Having such a thing whispered in his ear, Haruyuki’s consciousness was plunged once again into the red zone.

However…

Rude thoughts like directing with a thirty-centimeter cable or bathing suit pictures were instantly swept away.

Being here like this right now.

This person continuing to exist for him in this world. What else could he want?

I’m going to get a lot stronger and someday become a knight who can protect you from any enemy. So until then, please be by my side, watching over and guiding me.

The instant he made this wish, his mouth began to move half automatically.

“Then please be with me.” He gave voice to the feelings welling up deep in his heart just as they were. “Please be with me forever. That’s it…That’s all I want.”

Even after you graduate. As my mentor. As my Legion Master. And as my guardian, he was about to add in the back of his mind when Kuroyukihime’s body, so gentle against Haruyuki’s head, stiffened intensely with a snap.

She suddenly ended the embrace, dashed back nearly two meters, hit the sofa, and fell onto it. Although her face was kind of a mess with the tears, she had opened her eyes wide as if she’d forgotten all about that, and was flapping her mouth. Finally, her face burst into rapid flames from her neck up to her forehead. Her voice, turned inside out, rang out at a high pitch.

“Wh-wh-wh-what are you even talking about?!”

“Huh? Um, what? I—I. Just. It’s. Nothing.”

Not understanding what was happening, he opened and closed his own mouth at the same high speed, and after a full ten seconds or so had passed, Kuroyukihime’s face started to return to its usual paleness, from the top to the bottom. Haaah. Letting loose a very long sigh, she shook her head back and forth repeatedly.

“Understood,” she murmured suddenly. She stood and walked over to Haruyuki once more, placing her right hand on his head. “I promise you. I will be by your side. Forever and into the future.”

So said Kuroyukihime, brushing aside her hair, the biggest smile slipping onto her lips.