7

In Haruyuki’s fragmented consciousness, his memories of the events that followed existed only as three-color images.

Black—the slender figure twisted unnaturally on the paving stones of the sidewalk.

Red—the terrifyingly large amount of blood spreading out underneath her.

White—closed eyelids, cheeks that had lost all color.

In the blink of an eye, his own hands and the necktie he used to stop the bleeding were also dyed red.

Araya’s clothing was red too as he crawled, laughing loudly, out from the driver’s seat of the white car, which had smashed into the wall of a shop.

Police cars rushed to the scene, red lights flashing, and someone shoved the still-laughing Araya into a backseat.

Then the white ambulance arrived, rotating light on top the same bright red, and the men in white who got out fixed Kuroyukihime to a stretcher. Haruyuki also got in the ambulance at their prompting, and the vehicle started moving at high speed.

And now, he was staring up at the ER’s red surgery lamp in the corner of an entirely white hallway.

He had no room in his brain to think about what was going to happen now. He could only replay every single moment of the last four days since he’d met Kuroyukihime.

That time. And that time, that time, too…Haruyuki should’ve done something different. If he had, then they wouldn’t be here now.

Why couldn’t he just trust the hand Kuroyukihime offered him, the feelings she had for him? If he had just accepted it, if he hadn’t fought it, if he hadn’t so obstinately turned his face away, they wouldn’t have had a quarrel like that on the road, and they would’ve noticed the car approaching.

Of all the many mistakes I’ve made in my life up to now, this is the biggest one of all, and I can’t ever take it back.

In each and every one of the shards of his fragmented consciousness, Haruyuki went back to all of the branching points and tried to move forward into a different future, but even Brain Burst couldn’t change the past.

How long had he been thinking like this and staring at that lamp?

It was still on, indicating that surgery was in progress, but the door slid open unexpectedly, and a single female nurse stepped out. Haruyuki simply stared at the white-clad figure approaching him.

She was young, as if she had only recently finished nursing school. The expression on the face under her neatly arranged bangs was strained as Haruyuki turned to her, words coming out of his mouth essentially on their own.

“How…how is she?”

“The doctors and everyone in there are doing absolutely everything they can.” The nurse’s voice was slightly husky and tense. “But…she suffered a lot of damage to her internal organs. To treat her injuries, we’ve done a full insertion of nanomachines, and we’ve managed to prevent her condition from worsening. And…well, we’d like to contact her family, but she didn’t have any emergency contact information in her Neurolinker.”

“What…” Haruyuki didn’t know what to say.

The nurse sat down next to him, crouched forward, and continued. “I was wondering if you knew her telephone number. You’re…her…?”

She let the end trail off as if to ask a question, but Haruyuki didn’t have any answers.

I’m her what? Pawn, servant. I don’t want to use words like that anymore. But friend, classmate—that’s not right, either.

Mumbling to himself, Haruyuki lifted his head involuntarily at the nurse’s next words. “Her boyfriend, aren’t you?”

“Uh! Wh-why?”

Just going by Kuroyukihime’s beautiful face, miraculously unscathed, and Haruyuki’s physical appearance, there should have been nothing to even suggest such an idea.

He shrank his body reflexively as she gently handed him a small notebook. It was an Umesato Junior High student agenda, the blue synthetic leather embossed with an emblem in gold.

“When I was checking her personal effects for a telephone number, I found this. I’m sorry.” The slightest of smiles crossed her tense face, and the nurse opened the student notebook to the last page.

In the clear pocket on the left was Kuroyukihime’s student ID with her picture. And on the right was a familiar round face.

Taking the notebook with trembling hands, Haruyuki gazed at the photo of himself wearing a stupid expression. That time, there was no doubt. The photo was a printout of the view capture she had taken when she first told him that she liked him in the lounge. A drop of water fell with a plop on the front of the notebook.

It took Haruyuki a while to realize it was overflow from his own eyes.

“She…Kuroyukihime.” His hushed voice trembled with emotion. It didn’t take long for the tremble to explode into the heavy sobbing of a child. “Unh…aaah! Aaahaaaaah!!”

Clutching the notebook to his chest, bending over, Haruyuki cried.

The tears poured out of his eyes and slid over his cheeks, falling to the floor. In the pain hollowing out his chest, Haruyuki finally and for the first time understood what his own true feelings were.

The surgery took nearly five hours.

During the time the clock display in the corner of his vision moved from evening to the middle of the night, Haruyuki sent a single text message to his mother, saying that a friend had been in an accident, so he was going to be late that night or he might not come home at all. Then he simply continued to sit resolutely in his chair.

Apparently, the hospital had gotten in touch with Kuroyukihime’s family through the school, but surprisingly, rather than anyone from her family, a man calling himself the family lawyer appeared on his own.

The middle-aged lawyer, equipped with a large Neurolinker and looking like a machine himself, simply took care of the paperwork in a businesslike fashion and departed a mere fifteen minutes later without even glancing at Haruyuki.

A long, long time passed, and it was approaching ten when the red lamp finally went off.

A young doctor emerged looking exhausted and seemed slightly confused at finding Haruyuki alone in the hallway but still sat down and carefully explained Kuroyukihime’s condition.

Explained that they had succeeded in stopping the bleeding, but as there was extensive damage to her organs, she could drop into a state of shock at any time. That the synthetic protein nanomachines were doing everything they could to repair and assimilate the tissues, but in the end, it depended on the strength of the patient herself.

“All said and done, I have to tell you she’s currently in serious condition. The next twelve hours are going to be the worst of it. Please keep that in mind.” Finishing with a severe expression, the doctor headed off down the white hallway with the rest of the operating team.

The only person left was the female nurse from before.

Glancing at the student agenda Haruyuki still clutched, the nurse spoke to him in a kind voice. “You, too. You should go home and get some rest. Someone from her family is supposed to come tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow…that’s too late,” Haruyuki answered stubbornly. He had no desire to move even a step from this spot. “The doctor said the next twelve hours are going to be the worst. And no one here with her even though she’s in there fighting…It’s too awful.”

“…Right. I guess you’re right. Did you call home and let your family know where you are?”

“Yes. And anyway, my mom won’t get home until one or so.”

“All right. Well, I’ll bring you a blanket, then. Just hold on a minute.” She marched to the nurses’ station at the end of the hallway and returned quickly, handing Haruyuki a thin blanket and nodding firmly. “It’ll be fine. I’m sure she’ll pull through. She’s so pretty. And she has such a wonderful boyfriend. The two of you still have a lot of fun ahead, I’m sure.”

We do. Much more than you think; everything’s still ahead of us. We’re going to defeat Cyan Pile, destroy the kings’ Legions one by one, and get to where she’s been working so hard to go. I’ll be with her every step of the way.

Thoughts like these flitting through his mind, Haruyuki said, “Th-thank you. Um…when can I see her?”

“Not right now. The nanomachine operation room has an air seal. But you can see video of her at least, via the hospital net. Just right now, special for you.”

The nurse smiled and made a finger dance in the air. At the same time she flicked at something, an access gate was displayed in Haruyuki’s vision.

He was a bit surprised to be getting a wireless transmission from the nurse’s Neurolinker, since he was disconnected from the global net, but he quickly realized that it must have come over the hospital’s local net.

He clicked for access, and a video window opened. The image was dim and hazy, but when he strained his eyes, he saw a strangely shaped bed in the center.

It was like a capsule with only the top half open. The inside was filled with a semitransparent fluid, and he could make out the white body immersed in it to somewhere just below the shoulders. The tubes connected to both arms and her mouth were painful to look at. Her closed eyelids didn’t even twitch.

“Kuroyukihime…” Haruyuki unconsciously murmured her name, calling out to her.

Right now inside that slender body, countless nanites were allying with her own will to live to battle her severe injuries. And in this battle alone, Haruyuki could offer no assistance. All he could do was pray.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll make it,” the nurse repeated, patting Haruyuki’s head before getting up. “We’re monitoring her condition very closely. I’ll come let you know if anything changes. You just try and get a little rest.”

“Okay. Uh, um, thank you.” Haruyuki thanked the nurse standing before him and bowed his head.

That was when he unexpectedly remembered something strange in the window displayed in the right of his field of view. His instincts, honed through his enormous experience with virtual games, whispered to him about things he should notice, things he should consider.

What? What did I see just now?

Kuroyukihime’s naked body, exposed to the shoulders. But there was something on her. He couldn’t really make it out, given that she was immersed in semitransparent fluid, but finally he saw it, a black thing around the back of her neck. Her Neurolinker. A single thin cable stretched out from the bed in line with the oxygen tube and connected it to a large machine beside her.

“O-oh, um, excuse me.”

Stopped by his hurried call, the nurse turned, head tilted to the side. “Yes? ”

“No, it’s just…You left her Neurolinker on?”

“We did. It’s monitoring her brain waves.”

“Then, um, the machine the cable’s connected to, it’s not a stand-alone…”

“Oh no, it’s connected to the hospital net.”

What?!

Haruyuki swallowed hard, and watching him with a doubtful look, the nurse smiled reassuringly. “What’s wrong? Are you worried about security? It’s fine. The treatment level of the hospital net is behind a very thorough wall. There isn’t a hacker out there who could hurt her.”

Waving a hand in farewell, the nurse disappeared into the nurses’ station, and Haruyuki replied in his head, almost groaning, That’s probably true normally. But this isn’t normal. It can sneak into the social camera net and steal images in real time with zero trouble, and that net’s supposed to have the nation’s strongest walls.

Brain Burst.

Alone in the hallway, Haruyuki set himself down on the bench with a thud, holding the blanket in his left hand.

Kuroyukihime’s Neurolinker was completely disconnected from the global net. But it was connected to the hospital net via direct so she could be treated. Which meant…

Haruyuki murmured in a trembling voice, “Burst link.”

Immediately, the world froze, accompanied by the usual thunder.

Haruyuki, in his pig avatar, staggered to his feet and, with a feeling akin to prayer, clicked on the flaring B mark among the icons lined up on the left side of his virtual desktop, launching the Brain Burst console. He opened the matching list.

After a moment of searching, the name Silver Crow was displayed at the top of the list.

And then, barely a beat later, “Black Lotus.”

“N-no way,” Haruyuki moaned.

If he clicked around in his Neurolinker and disconnected from the hospital net, he could make himself disappear from the matching list. But Kuroyukihime, currently having her brain waves monitored, could not.

Obviously she wasn’t connected to the global net, so there wouldn’t be endless trespassing from outside. But if there was a Burst Linker in this hospital, and if that person launched Brain Burst, and if they found Black Lotus and challenged her to a fight…

Unconscious, Kuroyukihime would simply be hunted.

No, that was too perfect. There was no way another Burst Linker would be in the same hospital at the same time. And this late at night, there really shouldn’t have been anyone coming or going. If any Burst Linkers other than Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime connected to the hospital net, their names would have to show up on the list.

So there was no need to panic.

Haruyuki tried to calm himself. But the sensation of sweat soaking the round hands of his avatar didn’t go anywhere.

That’s not it. Not yet. I’m missing something.

What if…what if there’s some Burst Linker in a position to find out that Black Lotus—the biggest bounty in the accelerated world—was seriously injured and in the hospital, and even which hospital she was in?

He tried to force his thoughts to conclude, There’s no way someone like that exists, but his eyes widened with a fearful shudder.

There is, though. Just one person, one enemy like that. Cyan Pile.

The mysterious enemy who had gone so far as to infect Chiyuri’s Neurolinker with a virus, whose real identity they hadn’t been able to figure out. At this stage, all he could say was that it was someone at Umesato.

And the school had already been informed of Kuroyukihime’s accident. Adding in the fact that the cause of the accident was Araya driving without a license and assaulting her with a car immediately after making bail, it was sure to be big news already. Right about now, it was no doubt spreading like wildfire through the students at Umesato.

The hospital itself probably hadn’t been identified yet. If one of the girls who worshipped her in the lower grades or a member of her fan club had found out the name of the hospital, there would already have been hundreds of them pushing through the doors.

But…the teachers would know already. In which case, it was only a matter of time before it got out to the students. Tons of visitors would show up, and if Cyan Pile happened to be among them, he or she would be nearly impossible to pick out.

So…that’s that, then.

He slumped crestfallen and sat down next to his frozen, blue real-life self.

Kuroyukihime was fighting for her life. No matter how you looked at it, it was a fact that this was not the time for a Duel.

Fortunately, the same opponent could only challenge you to one Duel per day. Until Kuroyukihime’s condition improved, she’d just have to get beaten by Cyan Pile a couple times and lose some points.

No! I’m an idiot!! What did Kuroyukihime say before the accident?! Haruyuki clenched both fists and stood up abruptly.

The final command she had used to save Haruyuki: physical full dive.

That the price for this transcendental effect of accelerating not just your consciousness but your physical body as well was losing 99 percent of your burst points.

Kuroyukihime’s points were currently on the verge of being wiped out. So depleted, in fact, that if she were to lose even once to the much-lower-ranking Cyan Pile, her points would no doubt drop to zero quickly enough. And in that instant, her Brain Burst would forcefully uninstall.

For her, that would be…For Kuroyukihime, who had been fighting all this time to reach level ten, it would basically be the same as dying. That couldn’t happen; that absolutely could not happen. He couldn’t let Cyan Pile go up against Kuroyukihime even once.

Kuroyukihime risked her life to save me.

So now I have to save her. That half of her.

I will monitor the hospital entrance. I will not sleep a wink. I will be ready to spend every one of my points and accelerate each time a student from Umesato shows up. I will find and challenge Cyan Pile. And then I will defeat him or her. I will beat Cyan Pile over and over until my enemy’s points are nearly exhausted and I will banish Cyan Pile from the accelerated world.

“I’ll protect you. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.” Haruyuki spoke out loud, the sole inhabitant of the blue world around him. “Because…I—I have something I have to tell you. When I see you again. So I’ll fight,” he declared firmly, turning his eyes toward Kuroyukihime, supposedly lying down on the other side of the blue wall.

Returning to reality with the “burst out” command, Haruyuki wrapped his arms around his knees, faced sideways on the bench, wrapped the blanket around his body, and fixed his gaze on the entrance to the left down the hall.

There were other ways into the hospital, but to connect to the hospital net, you had to authenticate your Neurolinker at the entrance. So Cyan Pile would have to come in there.

The time was ten thirty.

It wasn’t very likely that Cyan Pile would show up at this time of night when visiting hours were long over, but his enemy was also cornered. If Cyan Pile was going to target Kuroyukihime while she was known to be unconscious, it was possible he or she would come and attack after finding out the name of the hospital.

Haruyuki set the alarm in his Neurolinker to the loudest volume. This way, if he got sleepy, a bell so noisy it would practically ring the life out of him would force him back awake.

Time had never in his life moved as slowly as it did that night. However, he didn’t feel bored, much less sleepy. For the most part, he continued to face the dim entrance with eyes wide open, once in a while glancing over at the minimized ER video window.

Kuroyukihime’s white body in the capsule bed didn’t move in the slightest, but Haruyuki felt keenly that a desperate battle was currently playing out there.

Fight. Fight, he pleaded each time he looked at the video. They were connected through their Neurolinkers and the hospital net, and through the Brain Burst program. So these pleas of encouragement had to be getting to her. Haruyuki believed this firmly; there was no room for doubt.

Around two in the morning, the worried-looking nurse came to check on him, a paper cup of coffee in one hand. He refused the milk and sugar, and his first-ever cup of black coffee tasted so bitter, it nearly pierced his tongue.

At five in the morning, the first light of dawn pushed faintly through the entrance. After hesitating briefly, Haruyuki dashed to the washroom and, taking care of business faster than he ever had in his life, rushed back out to curl up on the bench again.

Six AM. The number of employees coming and going in twos and threes started to increase, and Haruyuki pushed his vigilance up a level.

Seven AM. The night staff, having finished their work, started trickling out, the nurse along with them. She handed Haruyuki a second cup of coffee and a sandwich and spoke to him encouragingly before she, too, departed.

Eight thirty AM.

The automatic doors of the hospital’s main entrance were opened, taking over from the night reception. As if waiting for that moment, several people, mostly older patients, came in. Haruyuki, feeling even more alert, opened both eyes wide and stared intently at the flow of people.

Given that it had only been six months since he’d started at the school, there was no way he could actually remember the face of every student at Umesato Junior High, no matter how small the school might be, with just three classes for each grade. When he saw the face of a young person he wasn’t sure about, he had to instantly accelerate and check the matching list.

He had strained his powers of concentration very close to their limit, but the digital clock display in the corner of his vision changed numbers slowly, so slowly it was as if the display were laughing at him.

Thirty-five minutes. Forty minutes.

Kuroyukihime probably still wasn’t out of the woods yet. Of the twelve hours the doctor had cited, more than ten had already passed.

Hurry and wake up. And then cut off the brain monitoring, Haruyuki prayed with all his heart.

One more time. Once more. He wanted to meet her in the accelerated world, just the two of them.

And this time he would tell her how he felt. He would hold nothing back.

Eight forty-five.

Haruyuki finally saw the first familiar face appear in his alert eyes. He caught his breath for an instant, and then expelled it in a long sigh.

It wasn’t just familiar. It was one of the two faces he knew best in this world. The tall, slender form was packaged in a grown-up velour jacket and chino pants. The airy hair shone brown, catching the morning light.

You came…

Haruyuki relaxed his shoulders, and his face split into a smile. “Heeey, Taku! Over here!”

The moment Haruyuki’s salutation, a little too loud for inside a hospital, reached the entrance from the hallway, Takumu—Takumu Mayuzumi—froze in midstep. He didn’t seem to have spotted Haruyuki. Scanning left to right, he finally turned straight toward the hallway farthest from the entrance, leading to the emergency room.

Haruyuki got up from the bench and waved again. Meeting his eyes, Takumu tilted his head slightly and blinked rapidly several times before his usual relaxed and bright smile spread out across his face. After tossing his navy-blue-jacketed right arm up in a wave, he poked at his blue Neurolinker with a fingertip.

Haruyuki quickly understood that he had to wait until he was authenticated on the hospital net and smiled slightly wryly at Takumu’s usual methodical style.

Regardless of whether you were at the hospital for a checkup or to visit someone, to go past the entrance, the common rule at all hospitals across the country was to either sign in to the hospital net with your Neurolinker or to show your ID at the reception desk to get a visitor’s pass.

However, it didn’t really matter if you stood and waited in the entrance for the mere thirty seconds it took for the strict authentication or moved while it was authenticating to save time. When Haruyuki had come last night, he’d run straight to the ER without stopping for even a second, so the authentication had finished after Kuroyukihime had disappeared onto the other side of those doors.

However, Takumu was apparently not interested in committing even this trivial violation of the rules. He turned his eyes toward Haruyuki, and with an irritated look on his face, he stood in the middle of the entrance hall and waited for the sign-in to be complete. Then, suddenly, as if noticing something, Takumu turned to the side. His eyes ran off in the direction of the automatic doors, and he brought his left hand to his mouth, the way you do when you call out to someone in a loud voice.

Haruyuki wondered if maybe Chiyuri had come and tried to see beyond the front entrance himself.

The moment his eyes left Takumu, it hit him: a faint sense of wrongness.

Would the irreproachable (unlike Haruyuki) Takumu shout in a hospital?

Cupping his mouth like a megaphone. Almost as if he were trying to hide from Haruyuki the words being uttered.

In an instant, his feeling of wrongness turned to shivers, and an arrow of ice pierced Haruyuki’s spinal cord. Opening his eyes, standing stiff as a board, several thoughts flashed simultaneously through his brain.

I—Why did I assume Cyan Pile had to be someone at Umesato?

Obviously because Chiyuri’s Neurolinker was infected with that virus. Because someone was using Chiyuri as a stepping-stone to attack Kuroyukihime from somewhere in the school net like a ghost.

But. If that back door was made for access from the global net? In that case, the suspect didn’t have to be at Umesato Junior High; he or she could be anywhere in the country.

As his brain worked in overdrive, his thoughts were overlaid with a new filter to narrow things down.

Why Chiyuri? Because she was easy to contact.

Someone outside school, closer to Chiyuri than anyone else. Someone with her, so close they could direct. Only one person met these conditions. And he was standing a mere twenty meters away from Haruyuki at this very moment.

The instant his thoughts reached this point, Haruyuki’s mouth moved automatically and the command surged out.

“Burst link!!”

The boy who was Chiyuri’s childhood friend and boyfriend. Takumu.

Boooom!

The cold, dry thunder froze the world. The Takumu before his eyes was frozen in blue, left hand still raised to his mouth.

But he wasn’t frozen, in fact. Takumu had shouted the command into that hand at the same time. And his consciousness was accelerated in a different frozen space from Haruyuki’s.

You. It was you. I can’t believe it. No way. Why? Why?

Confused screams echoing in the back of Haruyuki’s mind, the right arm of his avatar began flashing over his virtual desktop as fast as possible.

Right now, Takumu would be doing the exact same thing. Launching the Brain Burst console, waiting for the matching list to update. And then clicking on the name Black Lotus when it drops down in the results and requesting a Duel.

Haruyuki had to get Cyan Pile into a Duel before that.

He clenched his teeth, opened his eyes wide, and stared at the matching list search display.

Pop! His own name at the top of the list. Silver Crow.

Then the person he loved, the person he had to protect. Black Lotus.

And finally, the name of the enemy he had to defeat appeared before Haruyuki’s eyes for the first time. Cyan Pile.

Be in time!!

Screaming with every fiber of his being, Haruyuki clicked on the name impossibly quickly and hit the “duel” command in the window that popped up.