8

“So irritating—”

Thunk.

“—that guy!”

Shino Asada seethed, kicking the steel support beam of the swing set with the toe of her sneaker. She was in a small playground fairly close to her apartment. The navy-blue sky above stretched over a single sandbox and two pieces of equipment; it was a lonely little place, especially without any children on a weekend as it was.

Next to Shino, Kyouji Shinkawa was sitting on one of the swings, his eyes wide.

“I-it’s strange to hear you speaking so…forcefully.”

“Well, I mean…”

She shoved her hands into the pockets of her denim skirt and leaned back against the sloped beam, pouting.

“He was such an arrogant, harassing, show-off loser…I mean, who goes into GGO just to fight with a sword?”

With each grumbled insult, she kicked a little pebble at her feet. “On top of that, he pretended to be a girl at first, and convinced me to guide him to the best shop and pick out his equipment for him! I almost lent him money, even! Ugh, and I even gave him my personal card…‘Would you mind resigning,’ indeed!”

She had to stop grousing when there were no more stones of the right size to kick. When she glanced over, Kyouji was staring at her with an odd expression, somewhere between surprise and concern.

“…What, Shinkawa?”

“Nothing… I’ve just never seen you talking about someone else like that…”

“Oh…really?”

“Yeah. Most of the time you don’t seem to have any interest in other people, period.”

“…”

Perhaps he was right. On any given day, she made no proactive effort to interact with others. When people came to contact her, such as Endou and her gang of bullies, Shino found it irritating, but didn’t think anything more of it. She believed it would be a waste of her emotional energy.

In fact, Shino already had her hands full with her own problems, so she didn’t spend any time worrying about others. And yet somehow, that one guy had gotten under her skin. Even now, over twenty-four hours after their first contact on Saturday afternoon, he ruled over a significant portion of her mind.

But that was only natural.

It had been half a year since Shino started playing the VRMMORPG Gun Gale Online. But not a single player there had approached her as directly as he had. And that wasn’t all. When he clutched her hand in his vulnerable state after the first round of the tournament, she was so shocked that she missed two easy shots at medium range in the second round.

“You might be surprised to learn that I get angry easily.”

She stretched out a leg to scrape more pebbles into range so that she could kick them toward the planter.

“Oh…is that so?” Kyouji murmured, examining Shino. Eventually he thought of something and hopped up off the swing. “So…will you camp out in an open area and hunt him? If you want to snipe, I can be a decoy. But if it’s for revenge, you’d probably prefer a direct battle. I can get us two or three good machine gunners. Or you could use a beam stunner to arrange an MPK…”

Shino blinked in surprise. She eventually raised her right hand to interrupt Kyouji’s fanatical PK planning.

“Um…hang on, it’s not like that. He’s irritating, but he fights very honestly. I want to crush him in a fair fight. I might have lost yesterday…but now I know his style, and I’ll get a chance for a rematch.”

She pushed up the bridge of her noncorrective glasses and pulled her cell phone out of her skirt pocket to check the time.

“The BoB final starts in just three and a half hours. I’m going to blow a giant hole in that misleading avatar while everyone’s watching.”

She pointed a finger into the eastern sky. The red rising moon was right in her sights.

The preliminary tournament for the third Bullet of Bullets, GGO’s championship tournament, began on the evening of December 13.

As Sinon, Shino had easily advanced through Block F until a supposed beginner appeared before her—and yet, despite “that man” being a beginner, it was a confrontation she felt had been inevitable, somewhere deep in her heart.

His name was Kirito. He was a player who had used the Seed platform’s unique conversion function to transfer from an unfamiliar VRMMO over to GGO.

On her way through the city of SBC Glocken to the regent’s office to enter the preliminary tourney, Sinon had run into Kirito the moment after his initial dive. When he had asked the location of a gear shop, she had rather surprisingly offered a personal tour, instead of her typical style—an unfriendly point in the right direction.

The only reason she did that was because she had thought Kirito was a girl.

From what she learned later, GGO’s male avatars contained a series called the M-9000s that on first glance looked like F-models instead. They were very rare, so many people who won them sold their entire accounts for huge sums. At any rate, Kirito’s avatar was quite beautiful, with lustrous black hair, big eyes like the night sky, wintry smooth skin, and a delicate build. He looked much more feminine than Sinon’s actually female avatar.

Through her six months of GGO, Sinon had never met a true female beginner to the game. She knew other women in the game, of course, but they were all veterans with more experience than she had. She’d traded more gunfire with them than words.

So when Sinon saw the lonely, confused girl—secretly a man—she remembered the girl she had been when she started, and she volunteered to act as a guide.

She had outfitted him with weapons and armor at a major shop, had taught him about bullet lines and other GGO features, and had even explained how the tournament worked at the regent’s office. Then they had gone into the underground waiting area beneath the tower and had entered a changing room to put on their battle gear. Just at the moment Sinon had unequipped all of her gear except for underwear, Kirito finally, and extremely belatedly, revealed his name and gender.

In her shame and rage, Sinon had slapped him across the face and made an ultimatum: Win your way through the prelims and face me. The last thing I will teach you is the taste of the bullet that spells your defeat.

But at the time, she hadn’t thought it would actually happen that way.

Kirito was a newbie who had just converted to GGO. For whatever reason, he didn’t choose a rifle or machine gun for his main weapon, but the ultra-close-range lightsword.

But a sword couldn’t possibly beat a gun, Sinon sensed. She had been on the verge of forgetting all about Kirito.

But somehow, he had kept his word to her. He had made his way through the sixty-four-player Block F from the first to fifth round with nothing but his lightsword and a small-caliber handgun, proceeding toward the block final against Sinon.

On the sunset highway that served as their stage, Sinon had witnessed Kirito’s terrifying ability for herself. He had blocked her Ultima Ratio Hecate II’s deadly .50-caliber bullet—an antimateriel sniper rifle round—with his narrow energy blade; he had cut the round in half, in fact.

Kirito had charged through the trajectories of the two halves of the bullet and pressed the blade of the lightsword to Sinon’s throat.

“Would you mind resigning, then? I’d prefer not to slash a girl in two.”

“~~~~!!”

Just remembering it brought the humiliation back as fresh as when it happened. She swung her fist down away from the direction of the moon. Shino looked around on the ground for more rocks to kick, but she’d already booted all of them toward the planter. She smacked the metal pole behind her with her heel instead.

“Just you wait. I’ll pay you back twice over for this,” she vowed. Kyouji stood up from the swing and examined her, an even more concerned look wrinkling his brows.

“…Wh-what?”

“Is everything…okay? That isn’t going to, y’know…”

Kyouji looked down at her hand. She noticed that her clenched fist had the index and thumb extended to form the shape of a gun.

“Ah…”

She quickly straightened out her hand and shook it. Normally, the action would have recalled the image of a gun in her head and caused a panic attack. For some reason, that didn’t happen this time.

“Uh, yeah. I guess…I was fine because I was so mad.”

“Oh…”

Kyouji raised his head and looked Shino right in the eyes. He reached out and grabbed her right hand in both of his. She automatically looked down at his warm, slightly sweaty palms.

“Wh…what’s this about, Shinkawa?”

“I’m just…worried. You’re not acting like the usual you…If there’s anything I can do to help, I want to do it. I can’t do anything but cheer for you on the monitor tonight, but if there’s anything else…just say the word…”

For just a moment, she glanced back at Kyouji. While his face was delicate and naïve, the eyes in the center of it burned with smoldering emotion.

“I…I don’t know what you mean by the ‘usual me,’” Shino mumbled. She couldn’t even picture what her ordinary self was like.

Kyouji squeezed harder, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “You’re always very cool and reserved…and in control, and never fazed by anything…You’ve suffered the same things I have, but you didn’t stay home and refuse to go to school. You’re strong; really strong. I’ve always admired that about you. You’re…you’re my ideal.”

Alarmed by Kyouji’s enthusiasm, Shino tried to pull back, but the solid metal support of the swing set blocked her way.

“B-but…I’m not strong. You know that. I have panic attacks just from looking at guns…”

“But Sinon doesn’t.” He took a half step closer. “Sinon uses an enormous gun without a problem…She’s one of the greatest players in GGO. I think that’s your true self, Asada. Someday, you’ll be like that in real life. Which is why this worries me, when I see you raging and losing composure about this guy. I…I can help you…”

The problem is, Shinkawa, she thought to herself, looking away from him, even I laughed and cried like a normal person years ago. I didn’t turn the way I am now because I wanted to.

Yes, it was Shino’s deepest wish to be as strong as Sinon in real life. But that was only in the sense of overcoming her fear of guns. She didn’t actually want to eliminate all of her emotions.

Maybe, deep down in her heart, she just wanted to talk and laugh with friends, like anyone else. Maybe that was why she felt such a strong connection to the unfamiliar girl who needed a helping hand in SBC Glocken, and was so angry when it turned out to be a man instead.

Kyouji’s confession made her happy. But she couldn’t help but feel that something was slightly out of focus within her heart.

What…what I really want is…

“Asada,” came a sudden whisper in her ear. Shino’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t noticed that he had wrapped his arms around her and the steel pole behind her.

The empty park was almost completely dark now, but there were people passing in the street on the other side of the barren trees. Anyone who saw Shino and Kyouji in the park like this would assume they were young lovers.

She instantly, instinctively pushed Kyouji back.

“…”

He looked at her, hurt in his eyes. She came to her senses and apologized.

“I-I’m sorry. It’s very nice of you to say these things…and I think you’re the only person in this city who actually understands me and who I can share these things with. But…it’s not like that for me, not yet. This is a problem that I have to overcome on my own…”

“…Oh…”

He slumped sadly, and guilt filled her breast.

Kyouji must have known about her past, and the incident that shaped her present. Before Kyouji had stopped attending school, Endou’s group had informed the entire campus of Shino’s background. It occurred to her that if Kyouji knew that and still opened himself up to her, she ought to accept his affection and return it. If he grew disheartened and left her…that would make her very lonely, indeed.

But for some reason, the face of Kirito crossed a corner of her mind. His extreme confidence. His utter belief in his own strength. She wanted to fight him and beat him, to wring out every last ounce of her own power in the process.

She wanted to break out of the thick dark shell of her terrible memories so that she could be free. That was all she wanted. And she would fight in the sunset wasteland and win for that sake.

“So…will you wait until then?” she asked timidly. Kyouji stared back at her with silent eyes swirling with emotion. Eventually, he nodded and smiled. He mouthed a word of thanks, and Shino smiled, too.

She left Kyouji at the entrance of the park and rushed home, stopping at a convenience store on the way for some mineral water and the aloe yogurt she would eat for dinner. Normally she cooked for herself, trying to keep her meals balanced, but for a variety of reasons, it wasn’t a good idea to stuff herself before a long dive of three hours or more.

Shino trotted up the steps, plastic bags rustling, and entered her apartment. She impatiently relocked the electronic lock, crossed the kitchen, and headed for the back room, checking the clock on the wall.

There was still plenty of time before the BoB final at eight o’clock, but she wanted to log in soon so she could check her equipment and ammo, and get in plenty of meditation to focus her instincts.

She ripped off the denim skirt and cotton shirt she was wearing, placing them on hangers. She hurled her underwear top into the hamper in the corner and changed into a more comfortable tank top, a loose sweater, and short pants, shivering at the chill in the room.

Shino set the AC to a reasonable temperature and switched on the humidifier before leaning back onto the bed with a sigh. She grabbed the plastic bottle out of the grocery bag, twisted the cap and downed a small gulp of its cold water.

Through experience, she had learned that while the AmuSphere’s sensory interruption feature shut out 99 percent of real stimuli, there were still things a user could do to maintain a comfortable dive for optimum game play. One needed to hold off on big meals and take care of the bathroom before the dive, of course, but also manage the temperature and humidity, and wear comfortable, loose clothing. She once drank a huge cup of freezing water in midsummer, and found herself afflicted with terrible stomach pain in the midst of battle. The AmuSphere picked up abnormal signals and engaged in an emergency extraction. Once she had settled her stomach and logged back in, her avatar had died in battle and spawned back in town.

Some wealthy, hardcore MMO gamers set up their own isolation tanks to completely remove all outside stimuli from their experience. The luxury net cafés equipped with relaxation facilities were already offering tanks as part of their service. Kyouji had even treated Shino to a visit to one of them last month.

They had their own private chambers where you logged in. It had its own shower, after which the user stripped naked and entered a capsule that took up half the room. The interior of the capsule was surprisingly spacious, and it was filled with about sixteen inches of a dense, slimy liquid.

Once she was lying down, her body floating in the liquid and her neck supported by the gel-based headrest, there was almost no skin sensation. She put on the AmuSphere connected to the wall and closed the heavy hatch. The interior of the tank was filled with dark silence.

In truth, just that experience alone was extremely fascinating to her, but she was supposed to be meeting up with Kyouji in GGO, so she had to log in to its VR space.

Upon diving, she was surprised to find that the VR signals she received did seem clearer than usual. Because there was an absolute minimum of bodily feedback going on, Kyouji claimed that the experience blocked out the signal noise that occasionally leaked through the interrupter. In any case, it was such a pristine experience Shino felt like she could even hear the fine scraping of enemy boots in the sand. Maybe it was worth its high cost, after all.

But at the same time, Shino felt an unease that she couldn’t quite put into words.

Being completely removed from her real flesh made her worry about her body on the other side. Going inside a VR world carried a faint feeling of danger, knowing that one’s actual body was a helpless rag doll at that moment—and the tank only amplified that sensation.

Compared to the NerveGear, the “tool of the devil,” the AmuSphere was almost absurdly safe. That the isolation tank method had any effect at all was a result of the AmuSphere disallowing real-world signals to dampen at a full 100 percent. It was built with safety systems that could easily pull the user back to reality if a level of light, sound, or vibration was reached.

Still, a diver’s body was defenseless. It wasn’t far off from being asleep, but when Shino was in the isolation tank, she couldn’t shake the prickling fear in the back of her neck. In the end, she decided that even if the signal noise was higher, the best place to dive was in her own room, the place where she felt safest in the world.

The spoon dipped repeatedly into the yogurt while her mind mulled over these concepts, until she realized the carton was empty. She washed it out in the sink and tossed the container in the recycling bin. After a quick teeth brushing, she washed her hands and face and returned to her room.

“Here we go!”

She smacked her cheeks and rolled onto the bed. Her cell phone was set to blink-only mode, she’d locked the door and windows, and she’d already finished Monday’s homework earlier in the day. She was ready to purge all thoughts of her real life from her brain.

Her AmuSphere was on and the lights were dimmed. The faces of the players she would defeat flashed against the darkened ceiling before disappearing.

The last one to appear was the lightsword user with the shiny black hair and red lips: Kirito. He had a handgun on his left side and a photon sword on his right, and a cocky smirk on his face as he stared at her.

The flame of competition grew within Shino. This had to be the ultimate foe, the one whom she crawled the deadly wasteland to find. The one who would grant her the power to destroy that awful past—in a way, the one who was her final hope.

She would fight with all of her being. And she would crush him.

A deep breath in, then out. Shino shut her eyes. When she said the phrase that shifted her soul into gear, her voice was stronger and clearer than ever.

“Link start!!”

The gravity that tugged her body downward disappeared, replaced by a floating sensation. Next the world rotated forward ninety degrees so that she was no longer lying down. Like descending from a soft slide, her toes touched down on hard floor. Sinon waited for all of her senses to adjust before opening her eyelids.

The first thing she saw was an enormous neon holo-sign floating under a starless night sky. The crimson letters read BULLET OF BULLETS 3, burning down through the gaps between buildings.

She was in the square before the regent’s office, at the north end of the main street that ran through the center of Glocken. It was normally a rather secluded area, but players were packed cheek by jowl today, carrying on with food and drink. This was only natural, as, thanks to the excitement around the BoB, a majority of the currency in GGO was actively being wagered on the tournament results.

The oddsmaker, with his flashy holo-window displaying the current odds (who was, surprisingly, not a player but an official system-controlled NPC), and the shady information venders selling hot tips were both swarmed with eager visitors. She wandered over to the NPC bookie and checked out the window to see that her own odds were quite low. That defeat in the preliminary final yesterday must have done it. But when she looked for Kirito’s name, he was also considered quite a long shot.

She snorted and wondered if she should place all of her money on herself, then changed her mind when she realized that this would tarnish the purity of her goal. She left the crowd. Naturally, people recognized her as a regular BoB finalist, so the stares followed her as she went. No one bothered to approach her, however. Sinon was known as a wildcat girl, someone who would mercilessly rip anyone to shreds once she’d identified them as a foe.

She started toward the regent’s office, planning to get into the waiting dome early and hone her mind, when a voice called out to her from behind.

“Sinon!”

There was only one player in GGO who dared to address her this way. Just as she expected, when she turned around she saw Spiegel, the avatar of Kyouji Shinkawa, whom she’d just left minutes ago in the real world, waving and racing up to her. His tall male avatar, clad top to bottom in urban camo, was red-faced with excitement.

“Took you long enough, Sinon. I was worried. Is…something up?” he asked, noting the faint smile on her face.

“No, nothing. Just thinking, it’s weird to run into someone here that you just saw in real life less than an hour ago.”

“Yeah, sure…I’m not as cool as this in real life. More important, how’s your plan coming along? Got any good strategies?”

“Strategies? Nothing aside from doing my best…It’ll probably just end up being a cycle of searching, sniping, and moving.”

“Ah, good point. But still…I believe that you’ll win.”

“Uh, thanks. What are you going to do now?”

“Hmm…I figure I’ll watch the match from a pub nearby…”

“Then after it’s done, you can buy me a round there in celebration or commiseration,” she said with another weak grin. Spiegel looked down for a brief moment. Suddenly, he grabbed her arm and dragged her away to the corner of the plaza. Just when they were out of sight of all the other players, Spiegel faced her in a huff, his face desperate. She blinked.

“Sinon…I mean, Asada.”

She was stunned. He’d been playing MMOs long enough to know what a taboo it was to refer to a player by their real name.

“Wh…what?”

“Can I trust what you said earlier?”

“ ‘Earlier’ meaning…?”

“You said to wait, didn’t you? If you manage to confirm your own strength, will you…y’know…”

“Wh-what are you asking?!”

She felt her cheeks growing hot, and buried her face in her muffler. But Spiegel took another step forward and clutched Sinon’s wrist again.

“I…I really mean it when I say that I lo—”

“Stop it, not now,” she said, firmly this time, and shook her head. “I want to focus on the tournament. This isn’t a battle I can win unless I wring out every last ounce of strength I have…”

“…Oh. Good point.” His hand pulled away. “But I believe in you. And I’ll be waiting.”

“Th-thanks. Well…I should be getting ready now. Bye.”

She pulled away, thinking that if she spent any more time around him, that confusion would carry over into the event.

“Good luck. I’m rooting for you,” he returned fervently. She smiled awkwardly and turned away, leaving the shadow of the building and hurrying over to the entrance of the regent’s office. All the way, she felt his gaze burning into her back.

Only when she passed through the glass doors and into the suddenly empty, quiet interior did she finally feel the tension leave. She leaned back against a large stone pillar and wondered if she’d been leading him on too much.

She did like Kyouji, she thought. But she was too busy handling her own matters for now.

Due to the accident that took his life, Shino had no memories of her late father. The most memorable male face inside her mind was the culprit of the post office shooting from five years ago that still caused her to go into panic attacks when she relived it. Those lightless eyes so like bottomless swamps lurked everywhere in the darkness around, watching her.

She was like any other girl—she wanted to have a boyfriend that she could talk to on the phone every night and visit on the weekends. But if she went out with Kyouji, she might one day find those eyes within him. That terrified her.

What if it wasn’t just guns that triggered her panic attacks? What if she started feeling fear of men in general? That would make it almost impossible for her to live, period.

She had to fight. That was all she could do for now.

Sinon strode across the entrance hall to the elevators, her boots smacking against the floor. But once again, someone called out to her. Not Spiegel’s smooth baritone, but a cool, husky voice that called her name. She closed her eyes.

When she reluctantly turned around, she saw the hated man himself.