6

Friday.

Haruyuki trudged forlornly down the road to school alongside students whose shining faces were full of excitement at the thought of the approaching end of the long week’s studies; soon they would be free for two whole days.

“I…A guy like me…,” he groaned to himself, having been overtaken first thing that morning by the deepest self-hatred.

If the dream he had the night he installed Brain Burst was the worst of his life, then the one last night would have to be said to be the lowest low point in his life. If it had been only Kuroyukihime performing acts he knew only virtually, it might have instead been the best dream of his life. But in the space of a heartbeat, the one person had become two, and on top of that—

“Ah! Aaaaaah…” He desperately resisted the urge to run off with his head in his hands.

Currently, Neurolinker companies were in ruthless competition to develop an app to record dreams, an idea that was itself almost dreamlike. He was deeply relieved technology hadn’t yet materialized. Well, a not-insignificant part of him had to admit that this was slightly regrettable, but—

“Oh! Good morning, boy!”

Haruyuki jumped at the sudden, chipper voice and corresponding pat on his shoulder. Turning and seeing the beautiful girl in black standing there, he jumped again. “Hyaho?!”

“Is that some kind of hip hello?”

Haruyuki shook his head back and forth at Kuroyukihime and the doubtful look on her face. “No! Uh! It’s nothing!! Um, g-good morning!”

“Mm.” Tilting her head even farther to the side, Kuroyukihime coughed lightly and continued. “Hmm. Oh. Yesterday…I apologize. That was childish of me.”

“N-no, not at all. I’m sorry, too…I barely even said good-bye before I left.”

On either side of the pair as they stood talking, students wearing the same uniform gradually came to a halt. Not only seventh graders, but eighth and ninth graders as well, looking on longingly and trying to say good morning to Kuroyukihime. Before they knew it, a line had formed behind them.

Seeing this, Kuroyukihime addressed the issue with a collective shout at the assemblage. “Oh! Morning, everyone!” She slapped Haruyuki on the back and started walking quickly. Haruyuki hurried after her, whispered conversations in hushed voices still reaching his ears.

“No. It’s completely understandable that you would want to leave. After all, your close…friend was accused of being a cowardly assailant. And on top of that, I made you say there’s no way you could direct with her to check it out. I am so sorry.”

“Huh? Uh…um. I did, though…direct.”

Kuroyukihime’s profile stiffened. “What?” Faster than the warning bells telling him something was off again somehow: “Where?”

Pinioned by that sharp voice, Haruyuki had no choice but to answer her honestly. “W-well, at her house…”

“Where in her house?”

“H-her…bedroom.”

“I see.”

For some reason, Kuroyukihime’s pace gradually started to increase. Her stride already a fair bit longer than his own, Haruyuki chased after her, sweat popping up on his forehead. In a few seconds, he was walking alongside her again, attempting to resume their conversation.

“I peeked into her physical memory. And her Neurolinker, it’s—”

“How long was the cable?” Kuroyukihime’s aura was piercing as she cross-examined him.

“Th…irty centimeters,” Haruyuki answered fearfully.

“Mm.”

Tak tak tak tak tak tak tak tak.

Dumbfounded, Haruyuki watched Kuroyukihime’s long hair swinging as she approached the school gates, now visible before them, at an incredible pace.

I don’t get it. This world is nothing but stuff I don’t get.

Haruyuki listened earnestly during morning classes, in an escapist kind of way, taking extensive notes, and when he heard the light chimes that signaled the lunch break, he had a hard time bringing himself to move.

If he’d thought about it rationally, he should have gone to see Kuroyukihime, who was likely in the lounge, to inform her immediately about the back door Cyan Pile had set up in Chiyuri’s Neurolinker and to discuss a means to follow the packets. But unless he figured out the reason for Kuroyukihime’s strangely foul mood before then, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on their conversation at all.

The truth was he often made people around him uncomfortable. Overweight guy, sweating like a greasy waterfall, talking nervously in a quiet voice; it was rare to find people who weren’t annoyed by him. Then the looks on their faces would just prompt Haruyuki to shrink further, lower his voice to its bare minimum, making it even harder to hear anything he said.

Kuroyukihime must have secretly been putting up with him until now. Maybe she had finally reached her limit.

In which case, it might have been better to just give up entirely on having a face-to-face conversation with her in the real world. If he did a full dive and they talked as avatars, at least he wouldn’t be sweating and the volume of his voice would be automatically adjusted. If everything would go more smoothly that way and proceed in a more businesslike fashion, then that should have been what he wanted.

Dejected, eyes on his desk, Haruyuki was in the middle of hashing out this debate with himself when suddenly he was loudly interrupted by an unfamiliar voice above him.

“Hello! You’re Haruyuki Arita from grade seven’s class C, right?”

Haruyuki lifted his head with a start. Standing before him were two female students he had never seen before. They wore eighth-grade ribbons, and both had holo tags displayed on their shoulders indicating that they were on club business. Newspaper club.

Throwing his head back with a grunt, Haruyuki saw a new icon flashing in his view: SREC. This was to let him know that the Neurolinker of the person with whom he was speaking was recording their conversation. Of course, this wasn’t permitted for just any conversation, and within the school, it was only allowed in a handful of situations.

For instance, reporting for the school newspaper.

Without even noticing the students around them watching, ears perking with interest, Haruyuki got ready to run as fast as he could, not caring how it looked. However, he saw that his interlocutors clearly had experience in this type of situation, as one of them had slipped in behind him to block his retreat.

As he sat paralyzed in a half-standing position, a pair of hands popped out to rest atop a holo keyboard, and after a quick glance over at the recording icon flashing brightly, the newspaper club’s hard-nosed investigative journalist let fly with a question that hit too close to the heart of things.

“We’re working on the column ‘Heart of the Rumor: Head Shot’ for the Umesato Real Times! Let’s clear this up once and for all: Is the rumor that you and Kuroyukihime are dating actually true?!”

Haruyuki mustered all his mental strength and responded in a voice that could almost have been called calm. “It’s a lie. It’s a rumor. No basis in fact.”

Ten fingers tapped away in front of him at the invisible keyboard while the owner of those fingers attacked again. “But according to the information we have obtained, you and Kuroyukihime have directed on two occasions in the lounge. Not only that, but the two of you even went on a direct date at a café within the school district!!”

“Wh…”

The girl looked down at Haruyuki, who was stunned they knew that, and the light caught the lens of her glasses, which appeared to be real.

This is bad. This is super bad. If I get the answer wrong now, there’s no coming back.

In the back of his mind, several sensational headlines flashed past. He could hear somewhere the battle cries of the members of the Kuroyukihime fan club seeing them and calling for blood.

One cheek spasming and twitching, Haruyuki set his brain to work—three times more accelerated than when he’d been fighting Ash Roller—deriving a response that wasn’t entirely inoffensive.

“Uh, th-th-that was…okay. I—I—I just know a bit about her Neurolinker OS, so uh, her Neurolinker was weird in this one place, and she asked me to fix it. That’s all. The café thing was nothing more than her thanking me. That’s it. Nothing more. Not in the slightest.” With a tight smile on his face, he shook his head briskly.

The newspaper club girl stopped typing and knitted her eyebrows.

There shouldn’t have been any way that she could check whether people directing were having a conversation in neurospeak or whether they were just operating their Neurolinkers. As an excuse, it strained credulity, but she shouldn’t have been able to find anything to disprove his story.

Relieved, Haruyuki added new bricks to further build on the wall he had created. “I—I mean, if you saw how she is when she’s with me, you could tell. When we talk, she gets into a bad mood pretty quickly. So there’s, like, no way we could be dating or anything.”

And that should be the end of this interview.

Or so he thought, but the girl tilted her head and returned doubtfully, “Bad mood? It didn’t look like that at all, though.”

“I-it’s true! I mean, this morning, she got mad and stormed off. She always gets like that when Chiyu, I mean Kurashima, comes up.”

“Kurashima…? I’m sure she and Kuroyukihime talked about something in front of the school gates.” After blinking rapidly several times behind her glasses, the theatrical journalist disappeared from the newspaper club girl’s demeanor, and her fingers raced. The recording icon disappeared from Haruyuki’s view.

“Is the interview over?”

“Oh. Yeah. Or rather…,” she mumbled in a strange tone. After exchanging a glance with her partner behind Haruyuki, she started talking in a normal tone. “Okay, look. The truth is, we weren’t actually buying into that rumor at all. To be blunt, we figured it was some kind of mistake, which is why we came to interview you.”

“Huh?”

Bringing her face in close, the girl whispered so that only Haruyuki could hear. “Hey, Arita. I mean, it’s kind of crazy, but…maybe Kuroyukihime and you are really…you know?”

“Huh?!”

“I mean, look. You’re close with Kurashima, and whenever you talk about her with Kuroyukihime, she gets in a bad mood. That’s, well…you know?”

The other club member, who had come around to the side again, picked up where her associate had left off. “Yeah. I mean, no matter how you look at it…”

Then they both whispered at Haruyuki like shrine maidens uttering an oracle. “She’s jealous, right?”

When he came to, Haruyuki was in his usual stall in the boys’ washroom. Which meant that he had run away again, but he didn’t have a drop of energy to spend regretting his actions.

Jealous? How do you write that character? Ugh, too hard, I don’t know.

In an attempt to allow his thoughts escape, too, he was already drawing possible characters, one line at a time, in stark red like a brand.

Kuroyukihime has that sour look every time we talk about Chiyuri because…she’s jealous.

That’s what they had said.

Jealous. Envious. In other words, Kuroyukihime wasn’t putting on a show or joking around, she really—

“No way,” Haruyuki muttered, his thoughts racing ahead. There’s no way. Maybe that could happen to someone else, but it could never happen to me, not to Haruyuki Arita. Don’t even think it. Don’t hope. You’re obviously just going to be squirming with double, no, triple the regret later.

Hitting the back of his head against the water tank, Haruyuki spoke aloud again. “No way…No way.” But the more he said it, the more the many things Kuroyukihime had said and done, the many faces she had shown him up to then broke into an infinite number of pieces and played back like a slide show in his mind.

That time…and that time, and that time, she was seriously—

“No way!!” He slammed his right hand against the stall wall and held his head.

Thinking about all this was just making him crazy; he needed to get even farther away. Just as he was about to give the command for a full dive, the insanely high score Kuroyukihime had managed jumped back at him from his memory.

He would never be able to beat that score. Which meant that he couldn’t use the game as an escape from reality anymore.

“…Why?” In a slightly louder voice, he shouted again, “Why?! Why me?!”

You have everything. Looks, ability, popularity. And even the one thing I was proud of—reaction time in a virtual game. And me, I’m nothing but a loser with a dumb face and a squishy, sweaty body. I lose to you in every single possible way.

“And yet despite all that…how am I supposed to believe…”

It’s true Haruyuki had the aptitude for Brain Burst that Kuroyukihime was looking for. But that didn’t mean anything other than there were only three such people at their school.

And Haruyuki’s Silver Crow was totally good for nothing, an enormous helmet head plopped onto a gangly wire body that could only punch, kick, and head butt. With a duel avatar like that, about the only thing he could do was help her unearth the true identity of her enemy, Cyan Pile. So he wished she would treat him that way. He wanted her to just give him cool, dispassionate orders, like she would any servant.

He didn’t want anything more than that. He was absolutely not deluding himself into thinking he could have anything else. And yet…why did Kuroyukihime take that attitude, get that expression on her face, look at him with those eyes?

Finally, wanting only to ease his mind, Haruyuki latched on to a single conclusion. He couldn’t come up with any other reason for her behavior.

Haruyuki missed lunch again even though he didn’t have anyone taking his lunch money anymore, but he wasn’t even aware of his empty stomach as he sat disinterestedly through afternoon classes.

In homeroom, their teacher had apparently said something to Araya and his gang, but he missed that, too, and when the last bell rang, he sluggishly stood, bag in hand, after his classmates had flown out of the classroom, full of anticipation for the weekend. He headed for the entrance slowly, changed to his outside shoes, and left the school.

Even though it was still only just after three, the late autumn sun was already fading and shone on the school gates at a steep angle. Seeing a black silhouette standing as if transformed into one of the pillars, Haruyuki dragged his feet as he approached.

“Hey.”

Kuroyukihime’s hands—which were busy typing on a holo keyboard—stopped, and she raised one hand slightly, a faint, hard smile on her face. She had probably deliberately come to stand out here in the cold even though what she was doing could’ve been taken care of in the student council office.

Haruyuki could only dip his head silently in response.

An awkward silence ensued. A chilly wind rustled the fallen leaves at their feet and then passed on.

He kept his head down, and Kuroyukihime started speaking after lightly clearing her throat. “Can we talk while we walk?”

“Yeah.” Haruyuki accompanied this brief reply with a nod.

She started to walk silently, and he took a position to her left and a step behind as they passed through the gates.

They had been walking silently for a couple minutes when Kuroyukihime cleared her throat again and began speaking. “Look. I’m sorry about this morning. I was being weird.”

“No, it’s fine. I wasn’t upset. I’m sorry I didn’t come during lunch.”

Kuroyukihime seemed to tilt her head slightly at this unusually smooth response but then nodded. “It’s fine. But. Even I wonder what I’m doing, but…when it comes to Cyan Pile, I just can’t seem to stay calm—”

Kuroyukihime sounded somewhat rushed, keeping her eyes forward as she spoke, and Haruyuki cut her off in a dry voice. “About that…I know the connection between Kurashima and Cyan Pile.”

“What? Oh…r-right. Then let’s talk about that over direct. It wouldn’t do to have someone overhear the names,” Kuroyukihime said quickly and reached into the bag hanging from her right hand instead of her pocket.

She pulled out a small paper bag stamped with the name of the Umesato student shop. After tearing the tape off sharply, she pulled a brand-new XSB cable out of the bag. “I accidentally burnt out the one we’ve been using so far. And…they didn’t have much stock, so I had to buy this one.” She sounded almost as if she was making excuses as she pulled out the one-meter cable—the shortest they sold in the student shop—and Haruyuki tried not to think about what was going on in her head.

Without meeting her eyes, he silently accepted one of the plug ends and inserted it into his Neurolinker.

Kuroyukihime looked like she was waiting for him to say something, but finally, she put the other plug into her own Neurolinker. The wired-connection warning appeared, and as it disappeared, Haruyuki sent dry thoughts at the girl on the other end of the wire.

“Kurashima isn’t Cyan Pile. It looks like Cyan Pile actually set up a virus in her Neurolinker to make a back door. Which is why they show up from wherever Kurashima is in the school.”

Kuroyukihime didn’t immediately respond to Haruyuki’s torrent of words, but when she finally did, the voice in his brain sounded doubtful. Or just a little scared.

“What…what’s going on with you? Since before…you’ve been kind of weird.”

“Nothing. Nothing’s going on,” Haruyuki responded, obstinately refusing to turn and look at Kuroyukihime walking next to him, a meter away.

“But…are you maybe mad? Because I was weird this morning. And yesterday.”

“As if. There’s no way I could be angry with you. Don’t worry about me; we have more important things to talk about, don’t we?”

Once again, only silence passed along the thin cable.

On the road as dusk approached, because of the group of buildings standing along the left side of the path, people passing along it sank into black shadows in the dim light. No eyes fell on Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime walking together and directing, making it seem almost as if the two of them alone had somehow wandered into a country of flat shadows.

“Do you have proof?” Changing suddenly, the voice in his head was cold. “Did you get proof that Kurashima is not Cyan Pile?”

“No. If I reached out to the virus, Cyan Pile might have noticed, so I just looked.”

“I see. A calm decision, but at the same time, not very persuasive. Even I have never heard anything about a virus that connects you to the Brain Burst matching server through a back door. How exactly am I supposed to believe what you’re telling me?”

The sharpness in her thoughts seemed to swell with each word enunciated. Haruyuki clenched his teeth and sent an even flatter voice through the cable. “So you’re saying I made up the virus story. Are you actually trying to say I’ve gone over to Kurashima-slash-Cyan Pile’s side? If that’s the case, then proof or whatever doesn’t matter. You’re just going to have to decide what you believe.”

“I’m not saying that. You’re leaping to conclusions.”

Haruyuki stubbornly refused to respond to Kuroyukihime’s slightly shaken words.

“Are you saying this because you really believe it?” Her legs stopped in place suddenly, and her voice, which had gotten even colder, sounded hard. Haruyuki stopped, too, before the cable went taut. “The moment I conclude that you’ve aligned with Cyan Pile, I will hunt you. I will take your meager burst points, and I will press you toward a forceful uninstallation of Brain Burst. You will lose the ability to accelerate forever. Are you fully aware of this as you tell me this now?”

“I understand. You’re free to do what you will. I’m just a pawn, just a tool. Throw me away when you don’t need me anymore.”

“You.” She lightly took hold of Haruyuki’s left shoulder. When he lifted his eyes, Kuroyukihime’s face, strained like carved ice, was very near. However, her pitch-black eyes alone reflected the feelings inside, burning almost white hot.

“I knew you were angry. And it’s true, I’m to blame. I apologize. But…” Lips trembling almost imperceptibly, she pushed out a voice that sounded like she was forcing it under control. “It’s not as if I can freely control all of my emotions. I get annoyed, I get uneasy. And when it comes to you and…Kurashima…” Her gaze dropped momentarily, and, pale cheeks stiffening, Kuroyukihime continued. “Look, if you want me to tell you why, I will. I—”

Before that thought could travel down the cable, Haruyuki turned to the side and cut in. “It’s fine. Let’s just forget it.”

“Ah. Wh-what?”

“Watching this is hard, too. It’s just sad.”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

Fixing his gaze on a single paving stone to his lower right, Haruyuki finally gave voice to the “only conclusion” he was able to reach that afternoon. “You…you hate yourself, don’t you?”

The sound of a sharp intake of air.

Haruyuki was suddenly self-conscious about the words he had loosed, words he couldn’t take back. In the depths of his ears, the encouragement Chiyuri had given him the night before played like a refrain, but he could no longer stop the thoughts being uttered.

“You hate yourself, the you who’s too perfect in every single way. Which is why you’re trying to lower yourself. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Kuroyukihime’s fingers, resting on his left shoulder, stiffened, turned to steel. Thinking that would likely be the last time she ever touched him, Haruyuki unleashed his final words, which were sure to destroy everything. “You, me…Talking to me, a fat, clumsy loser, touching me, showing me something like…something like kindness—it’s just you trying to dirty yourself. You don’t need to do all that; I’ll still do what you want. I don’t want anything. I don’t need any compensation. I’m just a sacrificial pawn, a tool to be ordered around. A guy like me, you should know exactly what the proper way to handle me is!!”

The pale hand slipped slowly, slowly from his shoulder.

This was how it had to be.

Never touching him again, never meeting his eyes.

As long as you make me your tool, we don’t even ever have to meet in the real world. Haruyuki didn’t know if this thought reached her as neurospeak or not.

Good-bye.

As he went to murmur this final word, a sharp sensation snapped across his left cheek. Haruyuki lifted his face in shock, cheek burning.

“Idiot!” The voice burst forth with real sound from the light-colored lips.

Haruyuki stared baffled at the waterfall of tears flowing down that beautiful face, distorted to the point of violence.

Her right hand still high in the air, Kuroyukihime’s entire demeanor crumpled like a child’s, and tears streamed down her face.

“You idiot…idiot…” The word repeated now sounded almost entirely different from the fool paired with a wry grown-up smile that he had gotten from her so many times before.

Kuroyukihime cursed Haruyuki over and over and over, age-appropriately, like a fourteen-year-old girl.

And Haruyuki simply stood, eyes wide open, unable to think of a single one of the several reactions he should have had as a thirteen-year-old boy. With his words, he had deeply hurt the person before him. That much he understood.

But when it came to Kuroyukihime, when it came to this person who was so perfect in every way, who had an ability to think and reason greater than any adult, he thought she was just disgusted with Haruyuki. She had exhausted her social graces; her heart was just being pulled away.

But crying this much. And she looks so fragile. This—this isn’t how it was supposed to…

Haruyuki opened his mouth as if to speak.

Kuroyukihime wiped away flowing tears with both hands.

For a moment, only the wind passed over them as they stood there stationary together on the road in the deepening twilight.

And then a terrible sound like metal scraping against metal hit Haruyuki’s ears.

At first, he thought it was a quantum noise through his Neurolinker, the sound was that strange. Baffled and heart pounding, he swiveled his head and torso around to the right.

And had a terrifying spectacle leap into his field of view.

A white passenger car was plunging straight at them, removing in the process the guardrail separating the sidewalk from the road with the right front fender.

An accident?! No! There’s no brake noise. The series of ideas flashed through his mind in less than one tenth of a second.

His mouth moved basically on automatic, and a single phrase surged out. And at the same time, the exact same words echoed in the back of his brain in a different voice via the direct cable.

“Burst link!!”

With a cracking noise like lightning, the world stopped.

Blue.

The landscape frozen, clear and blue as far as the eye could see.

But Haruyuki quickly understood that this didn’t mean everything had stopped completely.

The tires of the large sedan filling his view were turning bit by tiny bit as if fighting the freezing, biting into the road surface and closing the distance.

“Wha?!” Haruyuki cried out finally, and jumped out of the way. Instantly, the car disappeared. Hiding it was his own round back clad in the uniform of Umesato Junior High.

This blue world was just the real landscape, recreated as a polygonal pseudo-reality by the Brain Burst program hacking into the images from the social security cameras, placed in great numbers around the city. Dropping his gaze, he saw his body had changed into the pink pig. He moved the familiar virtual avatar to cut around his own real-world back and looked again at the white sedan.

The vehicle, charging diagonally from the lane and aiming for the gap in the guardrail, was not even three meters away from him. Roughly calculating the speed that allowed it to keep moving forward, however gradually, he realized they would come into contact in less than ten minutes, even in this accelerated world.

This is—Why?! Confused, Haruyuki tried desperately to think.

Normally, a car could not leave its lane. The second an abnormal route was detected, the AI controlling the vehicle would take control from the driver and automatically correct the vehicle’s course, decelerate, and stop.

Which meant either the control AI in this car was broken or that it had been temporarily turned off by the driver.

He quickly deduced that it was most likely the latter, because he had heard nothing like the screeching of tires skidding against the road surface during full braking. The driver wasn’t stepping on the brakes. On the contrary, he was pushing forward with the accelerator all the way to the floor.

This was deliberate. It was the attack by a Burst Linker on the real side that Kuroyukihime had hinted at before.

Coming to these conclusions more or less instantaneously, Haruyuki took another few steps forward and tried to make out the face of the driver behind the windscreen. Was their assailant an unknown Burst Linker belonging to one of the king’s Legions? Or Cyan Pile, possibly someone at Umesato?

The majority of the social cameras in the area were apparently not capturing images from inside the car as he couldn’t really see through the window. Haruyuki changed his angle, strained his eyes, and finally found a position that allowed him to see inside. Stretching out his short pig avatar as far as possible to finally reach up over the hood, he saw the driver—

“Wha…?!” Haruyuki let slip another surprised, scream-like cry the moment he saw the driver. It was the face of a classmate he was utterly familiar with, a face he had hoped never to see again.

“A…Araya…?! Wh…why…”

Why is he here?

Hadn’t he just been arrested—no question, no fight—after hurting us at school? And then they found out pretty quickly from his Neurolinker that he had the social camera evasion app installed, along with a bunch of illegally copied games and images, and then on top of that, digital drugs? He should’ve been tossed in juvie or reform school. For the time being, at least—he shouldn’t be back at school while I’m still there!

Unable to believe his own eyes, Haruyuki blinked over and over, staring at the face of the icy blue driver. But the hair pointed straight up like the needles on a flower-arranging stand; the thin, arched eyebrows; the pinhole pupils; the lips twisted in cruel excitement; the feeling of terror these features elicited in Haruyuki whether he liked it or not, all these things told him that the boy in front of his eyes was Araya in the flesh.

“He was bailed out this morning,” a grave voice noted beside him abruptly, and Haruyuki quickly whirled around.

Standing there was Kuroyukihime, wrapped in her black swallowtail, fairy-princess avatar, biting hard on her lip. “I heard he was sentenced in family court at the beginning of the week and that he’d be locked up for at least a year. So I thought there was no need to trouble myself about him anymore. But…I can’t believe he’d…” Having murmured this much in a strangled voice, Kuroyukihime lowered her eyelashes and shook her head slowly. “No, I should’ve had an idea, been on guard. For one person to assault another, you don’t need the power of acceleration, after all. I thought I knew that as long as you have a knife, a car, it’s more than enough, but it seems that I hadn’t truly understood.”

As she related this information in her usual tone, Haruyuki could see no trace of the childlike weeping from moments ago. No, that’s just what I want to think, Haruyuki immediately corrected himself. He could clearly see the keen regret and something like resolve in eyes that should have been nothing more than a creation of the avatar.

Kuroyukihime slowly closed those eyes, took a deep breath, and said in a near whisper, “This…this is payback, then. For me. Not knowing how people might feel, not even trying to know, and yet, I play with those feelings however I want.”

“Wh-what…what are you talking about?” Haruyuki finally managed.

Not responding immediately, Kuroyukihime turned to Haruyuki and had her avatar, nearly twice as tall as his, kneel down soundlessly. The black dress spread out, and the eyes, lowered to the same height as Haruyuki’s, met his straight on. “Arita…Haruyuki.”

This voice calling to him caressed his ears more gently, more calmly than any other sound in his memory.

“I’m sorry. I’m the one who brought this on. But I won’t let you get hurt. I will do whatever it takes to protect you.”

“Huh? Wh-what—” Dumbfounded, Haruyuki could only repeat himself.

There was nothing they could at this point do once the acceleration was released. The moment they returned to reality, the sedan in front of them would cover the remaining distance at an incredible speed and send first Haruyuki himself and then Kuroyukihime behind him flying.

He was glad it would be in that order. If he acted as a cushion, there was a chance, although slight, that Kuroyukihime would get out of this without major injuries. This thought had already occurred to Haruyuki earlier.

However, Kuroyukihime surprised him, declaring in a tone that hid a strong resolve, “I will save you at least. I still haven’t told you about it: Brain Burst’s…the best and final power of acceleration.”

“Huh?!”

Save…? You, the hero; me, nothing more than a tool…?

Haruyuki swallowed hard and shook his head violently from side to side. “N-no!! You can’t do that! If that kind of power exists, I should be the one to use it! And then I can protect you! I’m your servant, after all. I’m the one who has to protect you!!” he shouted desperately, stretching both of his short arms out. “Please tell me! What is this final power? What command do I need to use it?!”

“Impossible. You can’t use the command unless you’re at least level nine, and it uses ninety-nine percent of your accumulated points. And more importantly, I’m your ‘parent.’ And what would the world be like if parents didn’t protect their children?”

“B-b-b-but!!”

“Don’t make that face. I…In this situation, there’s only one saving grace.”

“S-saving grace?”

“Mm. Given that these are my last words to you, you’ll believe me, won’t you?”

Kuroyukihime raised both hands gently and placed her open palms against each other, bringing them to her chest. Her eyes closed, and a smile like flowers blooming appeared on her lips. “Haruyuki. I like you.” From below the raised eyebrows, her black eyes stared at Haruyuki, concealing an infinite radiance. “This is the first time in my life I’ve felt like this. Unable to control it, totally confused. At school, at home in bed, I’m always thinking of you, and I’m happy and I’m sad. So this is love…It’s wonderful. It’s a miracle.” She gripped her hands together tightly in front of her chest and grinned.

That smile was warm, gentle, good. But it pierced Haruyuki’s chest as if ripping him apart. I want to believe. I want to believe.

I want to believe—

The effect of the tears welling up in his avatar’s eyes was too strong, distorting Haruyuki’s vision. Wiping them away roughly, he stared back at her eyes so close to his own and asked hoarsely, “Why…? Why me? Me…A guy like me, why?”

“Mm. The reason? I can’t even count all the reasons. But, no, I don’t think love needs a reason. So I’ll just tell how it happened.” Smiling, Kuroyukihime stretched out her hands and placed them on Haruyuki’s shoulders. “Haruyuki. Do you remember the first time we met?”

“Yeah. Of course, of course I remember. On the local net…you said to me in the virtual squash room, ‘Don’t you want to go further?’ ”

“I did. The high score I got in that game…” Her smile changed into something slightly mischievous. “I used acceleration.”

“Wh-what?!”

“I could never have gotten a score like that if I hadn’t. I thought it would pique your interest and make it easier to persuade you; I felt like I had to beat your score. I—” Kuroyukihime cut herself off and turned her gaze up to the sky of the accelerated world. “I became a Burst Linker six years ago, when I was just eight. Ever since then, I’ve craved nothing but strength and speed, cutting down countless enemies to become level nine, and still not satisfied with that—these hands are stained with the blood of friends. Even someone like me couldn’t possibly beat that high score you recorded.”

She recomposed her expression and directed her strong eyes straight at Haruyuki before continuing. “Listen, Haruyuki. You’re fast. You can become faster than anyone else. Faster even than me, faster than the other kings. And speed is a Burst Linker’s greatest strength. One day, your name will be known far and wide as the fastest Linker in the accelerated world. You’ll defeat the kings, beat the other levels, and reach the source of Brain Burst. Then you’ll know. The ultimate potential hidden in a person’s…in our brains and souls.”

Nodding slowly, Kuroyukihime went on. “I…I shook when I saw you playing that game. I shivered in a way I never had before. I was moved. At the fact that a person could become that fast. In my heart, I shouted, ‘Eureka! I finally found him, the true king to accelerate against a stagnant world.’ ”

Haruyuki was so dumbfounded all he could do was let her words wash over him. Me, faster than anyone…?

It was too incredible all of a sudden. But given the situation, Kuroyukihime’s words did not permit even a shred of doubt. He could not doubt her; that was the one thing he couldn’t do.

“But although you conceal such strength and potential, in reality, you are very fragile…so pitiful it’s sad. It was like my heart was being ripped apart. I want to kneel before the future king. But at the same time, I want to protect you, wrap you up and keep you safe. These conflicting feelings rapidly swelled up in me, and before I knew it, you were the only thing I could see. I fell in love with you. I finally realized it yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Mm. When you were talking about Kurashima. How can I say it? It was the first time in my life I had ever been jealous; I couldn’t control myself. Which is why I took that attitude with you. And this morning as well. I was too slow to realize it…Well, I was slow, but not too slow, I suppose. Here, like this.”

Tightening her grip on Haruyuki’s shoulders ever so slightly, Kuroyukihime brought her face closer and smiled broadly. “I got to tell you everything. Although if I had had my way, I would’ve liked to have faced you properly and told you in the real world.” Tears like jewels welled up in her sparkling jet-black eyes, forming drops and collecting in the corners of her eyes. “So…it’s about time to say good-bye.”

“Wh-what are you going to do? I don’t—Good-bye, it’s not…”

Facing Haruyuki, swallowing hard and shaking his head, Kuroyukihime spoke her final words like a warning. “Please. Become strong. And become fast. Defeat the kings on my behalf, climb to the top, and see for me what I wanted to see.”

“No…no!!” Haruyuki shouted in a voice that resembled a wail. “That’s not how it is! That’s—You can’t be the only one to go!! I’ll protect you! And if I can’t, we’ll both go together! Please don’t leave me…I—I still haven’t…For you…I…”

A voice mixed with sobs surged out of Haruyuki’s open mouth.

Leaning in softly, Kuroyukihime’s lips closed it.

Even though they were both virtual avatars, the sensation was softer than anything, warmer than anything, gentler than anything.

After a kiss lasting a few thousandths of a second in the real world, and essentially an eternity from Haruyuki’s perspective, Kuroyukihime slowly pulled her lips away and whispered, “Another time…We’ll definitely meet again.” Her tears falling joined together in a silver radiance following the lines of her body as she stood up.

There was an almost-terrifying purpose in Kuroyukihime’s back as she faced the approaching car with her legs out resolutely, and Haruyuki couldn’t even speak, much less move.

Spreading her arms out wide, she straightened her back with a snap and called out in a clear voice: “Physical Full Burst!!”

Kuroyukihime’s avatar disappeared, enveloped in a blinding white light.

What the—? What happened?

Caught in an explosion of confusion and uneasiness and an emotion overwhelming both of these he couldn’t put a name to, Haruyuki screamed at the top of his lungs. “Kuroyukihime!!” His tears spilled over onto his cheeks, distorting his vision, and he lost his sense of balance, staggering a few steps backward.

And then Haruyuki saw something incredible.

Kuroyukihime—the body of Kuroyukihime in the real world, transparent and blue—was moving.

Kuroyukihime, who should’ve been standing back, with Haruyuki wedged in between her and the passenger vehicle barreling down on them, was definitely moving in the real world, albeit at a speed about one-tenth that of the car, successively putting one foot in front of the other, kicking the ground and moving forward.

This can’t—There’s no way this can be happening!!

The Brain Burst program overclocked the quantum signal generated by the heart rate a thousand times and accelerated only the user’s consciousness. In other words, the process had absolutely no effect on the physical body. Thus, even accelerated, the body was unable to even shift its gaze. That was why the program sent the user’s consciousness into a full dive at the same time as it accelerated, cutting it off from the physical body and connecting it to a copy of reality produced by the social cameras.

And yet, right now, the real-life Kuroyukihime was moving her physical body at a speed that accelerated Haruyuki could clearly see. Was the occasional blurring here and there on her ice-blue body because she was exceeding the filming speed of the social cameras? Which meant she was dashing around in the real world at the super speed of more than a hundred times that of a normal person!

Was this the best and final power of Brain Burst? A forbidden command to overclock not just the consciousness but the entire body?

There was no way the body could come out of something like that okay.

As she charged ahead, Kuroyukihime’s expression was full of firm determination and something else, a stiffness like she was enduring something with every fiber of her being.

A something that was probably intense pain. She would no doubt have been unable to stop the screaming of muscles and joints being driven at a speed that was essentially impossible. But she herself did not stop. In one, two, three steps, she was standing to the left of the real-world Haruyuki.

The front bumper of the car Araya was driving was already a scant eighty centimeters from Haruyuki.

Kuroyukihime raised both hands and placed them gently on Haruyuki’s body, as if she were about to embrace him. She applied the smallest amount of force onto his side, and his body began to move.

At the same time, he felt an incredible impact in every part of his body, and his vision faded to black.

Kuroyukihime had been gentle, but her push was equivalent to being slammed into at high speed in the real world. The impact activated the safety on his Neurolinker, which automatically canceled the full dive. As the center of his vision sank into darkness, the original colors of the real world stretched out radially.

Instantly, Haruyuki returned from his avatar to his flesh-and-blood body. He hit the pavement with his back and started choking. Forgetting to even breathe again, he opened his eyes and saw in front of him Kuroyukihime, both hands still stretched out, smiling somehow.

Immediately, the white car plunging savagely onto the sidewalk caught Kuroyukihime’s slim body, lifting her up onto the hood, both legs flying up as if saved somehow by the bumper. She hit the front windscreen and flew even higher.

Her long black hair flowed through the air, tracing an arc.

Shining orange in the evening sun.

On one side, the disconnected direct cable danced whitely.