10

The next day, January 12th, 12:50 PM: On the north end of the third floor of Building Two, Asuna sat in a chair in the computing room far from the lunchtime bustle, her back straight.

There was a small domed machine, about three inches across, fixed to the right shoulder of her school blazer with a thin harness. The base was made of plated aluminum, but the dome was clear acrylic with a video lens inside. Two cables ran out of the base’s socket, one traveling to Asuna’s cell phone in her jacket pocket and the other to a small desktop PC on the table next to her.

At the PC, Kazuto and two other students in the mechatronics class with him were huddled together, exchanging mysterious tech terminology that sounded like magic spells or sorcerers’ curses.

“I’m telling you, the gyros are too sensitive. If you’re going to prioritize eye tracking, you need to allow the parameters to go a little looser…”

“But won’t that cause major lag if there are any twitchy movements?”

“In that case, you’ll just have to trust the learning capabilities of the optimization program, Kazu.”

“Um, excuse me, Kirito? Lunchtime’s almost over…!” Asuna snapped, frustrated with being stuck motionless in the same position for more than thirty minutes. Kazuto looked up, letting out a thoughtful hum.

“Well, I think the initial settings should be okay now. Uh, can you hear me, Yuuki?” he asked, not to Asuna, but to the dome on her shoulder. Yuuki the Absolute Sword’s cheerful voice piped up out of the speakers on the machine.

“Yes, I can hear you!”

“Good. We’re going to initialize the lens area, so speak up when your field of vision becomes clear.”

“Okay, got it.”

The half-sphere piece of tech on Asuna’s shoulder was called an “AV Interactive Communications Probe,” and Kazuto’s team had been testing it out since the start of the year. It was essentially a tool that allowed a user to see and hear distant locations in the real world through the use of an AmuSphere network. The lens and mic inside the probe collected data that were sent to the Internet through Asuna’s phone, where they eventually reached Yuuki’s full-dive space through her Medicuboid at Yokohama Kohoku General Hospital. The lens could swivel freely within the dome, synchronizing the visual source with the movement of her eyes. From Yuuki’s end, it felt like she was a tenth of her original size, perched on Asuna’s shoulder like this.

When Yuuki mentioned that she wanted to go to school, Asuna recalled this device, especially when she’d heard so many complaints about this particular research theme.

The lens whirred as the motors fine-tuned its focus, and when Yuuki said, “There,” they stopped.

“That should do it. There’s a stabilizer on board, but try to avoid any sudden movements if you can, Asuna. And don’t shout too loudly. Even a whisper will still carry over just fine,” Kazuto explained.

“Got it, got it,” she responded, stretching at last, then getting slowly to her feet. Kazuto pulled out the cable connected to the PC. She spoke softly to the probe on her shoulder. “Sorry about that, Yuuki. I was hoping to show you around the school first, but now our lunch break is over.”

Yuuki’s voice emerged from the little speaker. “That’s okay. I’m really looking forward to sitting in on your class!”

“Okay. In that case, let’s go and say hello to the teacher for my next period.”

She waved to Kazuto’s team, who were all exhausted from their forced probe setup, and left the computing room. As she walked through the hall, descended the stairs, and crossed the bridge connecting the buildings, Yuuki exclaimed at each and every feature she noticed. But when they reached the door marked FACULTY ROOM, she fell silent.

“…What’s wrong?”

“Umm…I’ve never been very comfortable around faculty rooms…”

“Hee hee! Don’t worry, none of the teachers at this school are super teacher-y,” Asuna whispered, laughing. She thrust the door open. “Pardon me!”

“Pardon meee.”

With two echoing greetings, Asuna strode past the line of desks. The teacher in charge of fifth-period Japanese had been the vice principal of a middle school until retirement, and he volunteered to go back to work when this special, urgent education facility was arranged. He was in his late sixties but was adept at using the various network devices around the school, and he carried an intellectual bent that drew Asuna to like him.

She explained the situation, feeling relatively sure he would understand the circumstances, but felt a bit nervous all the same. The white-haired, white-bearded teacher listened with a large cup of tea in hand. When she finished the story, he nodded.

“Yes, that’s fine. And what did you say your name was?”

“Oh, er…Yuuki. My name is Yuuki Konno,” the probe responded instantly. This did seem to catch the teacher off guard, but his mouth crinkled into a grin soon after.

“Miss Konno, I would be delighted if you sat in on my class. We’re about to cover Akutagawa’s Rail Truck, and it doesn’t get good until the very end.”

“O-of course! Thank you, sir!”

Asuna thanked the teacher as well. The warning bell rang then, so she quickly stood up and bowed, then left the faculty room. The two girls breathed a sigh of relief. They shared a look and laughed, and Asuna rushed off to the classroom.

She was deluged with questions from her classmates as soon as she took her seat and they noticed the strange device on her shoulder, but an explanation of how Yuuki was in the hospital and a demonstration of its voice capabilities helped them understand how it worked right away. At that point, the other students started introducing themselves. Once it was finished, the bell rang again, and the teacher walked through the door.

At the prompting of the student on daily duty, the class was called to stand and bow—the little lens inside the probe whirred up and down—and the elderly teacher walked over next to the front desk, stroked his beard, and began the lesson, just like any other day.

“Ahem, please open your books to page ninety-eight, as we will be covering Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Rail Truck today. Akutagawa wrote this story when he was thirty years old…”

As the teacher spoke, Asuna brought up the appropriate section of the textbook on her tablet and held it up in front of her so Yuuki could see. But she nearly dropped it when she heard what the teacher said next.

“Now we’re going to start this from the beginning. Would you like to read, Miss Yuuki Konno?”

“Huh?!” Asuna blurted.

“Y-yes, sir!” Yuuki stammered at the same time. The classroom was filled with hushed murmurs.

“Is it too hard for you?” the teacher asked. But before Asuna could speak up, Yuuki blurted out, “I-I can read it!”

The speaker on the probe had a powerful enough amp that her voice reached the corners of the room. Asuna stood up with a start and held the tablet up to the lens with both hands. She twisted her head to the right and whispered, “Yuuki…c-can you read it?”

“Of course. I’m a bookworm, believe it or not!” Yuuki retorted. She paused, then clearly and enthusiastically began to read from the textbook: “…The construction of the light rail between Odawara and Atami began in…”

Asuna closed her eyes as she held up the text, concentrating solely on Yuuki’s voice as it read with rich inflection. On the screen of her mind, she could see Yuuki, wearing the same school uniform as her, standing at the adjacent desk. Asuna was certain that this scene would one day come true. Medical science was making leaps and bounds by the year. In the very near future, they would develop a solution that wiped out HIV altogether, and Yuuki would be able to return to normal life soon after. Then they could truly walk hand-in-hand around the school and the city. They’d stop to get fast food on the way home, chatting about nothing in particular with burgers in their hands.

Asuna wiped her eyes with her left hand so that Yuuki couldn’t see. The other girl was busy reading the century-old text with emotion and enthusiasm, and the teacher did not seem inclined to stop her. The post-lunch school was silent, as if the entire student population were listening to her read.

After that, they sat through sixth period as well, and when it was over, Asuna took Yuuki for a tour, as she promised. What she didn’t expect was that more than a dozen classmates would join them, each clamoring to point out this or that to Yuuki.

Once they were alone again at last and sitting on a courtyard bench, the sky above was already turning orange.

“Asuna…thank you so much for all of this. It was really fun…I’ll never forget this day,” Yuuki said out of the blue, suddenly serious.

Asuna automatically responded with cheer. “What do you mean? The teacher said you could come every day. Japanese class is third period tomorrow, so don’t be late! More important, is there anything else you’d like to see? It can be anywhere outside of the principal’s office.”

Yuuki giggled, then fell silent. Eventually, she offered hesitantly, “Um…there’s one place I’d like to go.”

“Where?”

“Can it be outside of school?”

“Uh…” Asuna mumbled, thinking it over. The probe’s battery would hold out for a while, and there was no reason she couldn’t travel with it, as long as her phone got Wi-Fi. “Yeah, it’s fine. I can go anywhere that I get signal!”

“Really?! Then…I know it’s far, but…do you think you could take me to a place called Tsukimidai, in the Hodogaya ward of Yokohama?”

From western Tokyo, where the school was, Asuna and Yuuki rode the Chuo, Yamanote, and Toyoko lines on their route to Hodogaya in Yokohama.

They limited themselves to whispers on the trains, of course, but out in the open, Asuna freely conversed with the probe on her shoulder, unconcerned with what anyone else thought. The neighborhood had apparently changed in the three years that Yuuki was hospitalized, and so they stopped here and there wherever her interest was caught, explaining this and that feature.

Given that pace, when they finally got off the train at their destination of Hoshikawa Station, the big clock at the center of the traffic rotary outside showed that it was after five thirty.

Asuna looked up to the sky, which was transitioning from deep red to purple, and took a deep breath. The cold air here seemed to carry a different flavor than what was found in Tokyo, perhaps because of the nearby rolling hills covered in trees.

“It’s a beautiful place, Yuuki. The sky’s so clear and open here,” Asuna said cheerfully, but the girl’s response sounded apologetic.

“Yes…I’m sorry, Asuna. I shouldn’t have forced you to come so far away…Will you be okay with your family?”

“Just fine! I’m always late to come back home,” she replied automatically, but in fact, Asuna hardly ever broke her evening curfew, and when it did happen, her mother was furious. But in this case, she didn’t care how much trouble she would be in for being out late. She would take Yuuki as far as she wanted to go, as long as the probe’s batteries held up.

“Just let me send a quick message,” Asuna said lightly, taking out her phone. She opened the messaging app, taking care not to shut down the connection to the probe, and sent a message to her home computer explaining that she would be late returning. She was certain that her mother would send an angry message about breaking curfew, then a direct call, but if she kept her phone connected to the Net, it would automatically send the call to voice mail.

“That should do it. So, where do you want to go, Yuuki?”

“Well, um…turn left at the station, then right at the second light…”

“Got it.”

Asuna began to walk, passing through the small shopping district outside the station in accordance with Yuuki’s directions. With each bakery, fish market, post office, and shrine they passed, Yuuki made a wistful comment or two. Even into the following residential area, she was sighing and gasping at every house with an especially big dog or any tree with beautiful stretching branches.

It was easy for Asuna to understand that this was where Yuuki once lived, even without her saying so. No doubt the place they were heading at the moment was—

“…When you turn up ahead, stop in front of the white house…” Yuuki directed. Asuna noticed that her voice was faintly trembling. She turned right along a park lined with poplars bereft of their leaves and saw a house on the left side of the street with white tile walls.

She took a few more steps and came to a stop at the bronze front gate.

“…”

Yuuki let out a long sigh on Asuna’s shoulder. Asuna absently lifted her left hand to trace the aluminum base of the probe with a finger as she whispered, “This…is your home, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I didn’t think…I’d ever see it again…”

The white-walled and green-roofed house was a bit smaller than the others in the neighborhood, but it had a larger yard. There was a wood table and bench in the grass, and beyond that was a large flower bed surrounded by red bricks.

But the table was faded from the sun and rain, and the only thing in the flower bed was desiccated weeds. Warm orange light poured out of the windows of the houses on either side, but all the storm shutters were closed on the little white house. There was no sign of life coming from it.

That was to be expected. Of the father, mother, and two daughters who once lived here, there was only one person left—and she was sealed in a special room, surrounded by machines on a special bed, never to leave again.

Asuna and Yuuki stared at the house in silence, its appearance lilac in the dying light of the day. Eventually, Yuuki said, “Thank you, Asuna, for taking me all this way…”

“Want to go inside?” Asuna asked, even though she knew it wouldn’t look good to anyone on the street who might see her break in. But Yuuki sent the lens whirring left and right.

“No, this is enough. Well…let’s get going, Asuna. You’ll be late.”

“If…if you want to stay here a bit longer, I don’t mind,” Asuna said automatically, then turned to look behind her. There was the park, bordered by narrow streets, with hedges set in stone beds running around it.

Asuna crossed the street and sat on one of the stone retaining walls at knee height. She turned so the probe could look right across the street at the hibernating little house. Yuuki could see the entire place clearly.

But after a brief silence, her companion quietly said, “It wasn’t even for a year that I lived in this house, but…I do remember each and every day so vividly. We lived in an apartment before that, so having our own yard was just wonderful. Mama didn’t like it because she was worried about infections, but Big Sis and I would run around on the grass…We ate barbecue on that bench, built a bookcase with Papa…They were fun times…”

“That’s nice. I’ve never done anything like that.”

Asuna’s house had an enormous yard, of course. But she couldn’t ever remember playing in it with her parents or brother. She was always playing house or drawing on her own. So she felt a longing for the family memories that Yuuki described.

“We should have a barbecue party at your cabin on the twenty-second floor then, Asuna.”

“Yeah! It’s a promise. We’ll get my friends, and Siune and the others…”

“Oh boy, you’d better have plenty of meat ready, then. Jun and Talken will eat you out of house and home.”

“Really? They don’t seem the type to me.”

The girls laughed, but then returned to gazing at the home.

“Actually…this house is causing a big rift among my extended family right now,” Yuuki admitted with a tinge of sadness.

“A big rift…?”

“Everyone has their own ideas about what to do with it: tear it down and build a convenience store, sell the empty lot, or rent it out. In fact, Papa’s older sister actually came and full-dived to talk with me about it. Which is funny, because they all avoided me in real life when they found out about my illness. She wanted me…to write a will…”

“…”

Asuna stopped breathing.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to complain.”

“N…no. Go ahead. You go and get it all off your chest, if you want.” She barely managed to squeak it out, but Yuuki nonetheless made the lens nod on her shoulder.

“Okay. So…I told her, I can’t hold a pen or press a seal in real life, so how am I supposed to write a will? She had no idea what to say to that.” Yuuki giggled. Asuna cracked a brave grin.

“Instead, I told her that I wanted the house to stay as it is now. Papa’s trust has enough money to pay upkeep for about ten years. But…I don’t think it’ll work. I think they’re going to tear it down. That’s why I wanted to see it, one last time…”

Asuna could hear the fine servos buzzing as Yuuki zoomed in and out on various features of the home. It seemed to her that it was the sound of Yuuki’s memories being relived, and she felt her heart swelling to bursting, so she decided to just say what was on her mind.

“Okay…this is what we should do.”

“Huh…?”

“You’re fifteen, right? When you’re sixteen, you’re legally allowed to get married. Then you could have that person take care of the house for you…”

As soon as she said it, she saw the flaw. If Yuuki were in love with anyone, it would be one of the boys in the Sleeping Knights, but they were all dealing with fatal conditions of their own. Some of them had been given their final warning. So getting married wouldn’t change things for the better; if anything, it would just get more complicated. Not to mention that getting married required two people to be on the same page…

But after a brief silence, Yuuki burst into wild laughter.

“Aha-ha-ha-ha! Asuna, you come up with some crazy ideas! I see; I never considered that one. Hmm, maybe that’s not so bad. I bet I could try my hardest to fill out a marriage form! But sadly, I don’t think I have anyone to marry,” she said, still chuckling.

Asuna grimaced and said, “R-really…? You seemed to be awfully friendly with Jun.”

“Oh, no way, not a little kid like him! Let’s see…maybe…” She paused. Her voice grew mischievous. “Hey, Asuna…would you marry me?”

“Uh…”

“Oh, but you’ll have to be the bride and take my name. Otherwise I’d be Yuuki Yuuki!” she said, giggling, but Asuna panicked. It was true that Japan had followed America’s lead in engaging the same-sex-marriage debate—the topic arose in the media a few times a year—but no serious political proposals had emerged yet, as far as she knew.

Yuuki gleefully said, “Sorry, I’m just kidding. You already have a sweetheart of your own. It was him, right…? The one fiddling with the camera…”

“Er…uh…yes, that’s right…”

“You oughta be careful.”

“Oh…?”

“I have a feeling that he lives somewhere apart from reality, just not in the same way I do.”

“…”

Asuna tried to consider what Yuuki was saying, but her head was spinning too fast to make sense of it. She rubbed her heated cheeks and glanced over at the lens. Yuuki said kindly, “Thank you, Asuna. Really. I’m so happy to have seen my old house again. Even if the house disappears, the memories will be here. The happy memories of Mama, Papa, and Big Sis will always be here…”

Asuna understood that when she said “here”—it was referring not to the place where the house was but inside of Yuuki’s heart. She nodded firmly, sending the message that the gentle, peaceful air of the house was already imprinted upon herself, too.

Her companion continued. “When Big Sis and I complained and cried that it was too hard to take our medicine, Mama would always tell us about Jesus. She said that Jesus would never put us through pain that was so hard that we couldn’t bear it. Then Big Sis would pray with Mama, but I would still be a bit upset. I always wanted Mama to talk to us in her own words, not the Bible’s…”

There was a brief pause. One big red star was blinking in the navy blue sky.

“But looking at the house again, I understand now. Mama was always talking to me as herself. It just wasn’t in words…She was enveloping me in her feelings. She was praying for me so that I would keep walking forward, straight forward, without losing my way…I finally understand that now.”

Asuna could imagine a mother and her two daughters kneeling at the window of the white house, praying to the starry sky. Guided by Yuuki’s quiet voice, she felt herself putting feelings that had been lodged deep inside of her heart for years and years into words.

“You know…I, too…haven’t heard my mother’s voice in years. We sit and talk face-to-face, but I don’t hear her heart. My words don’t reach her, either. Remember what you said earlier, Yuuki? There are some things you can’t get across without confronting them. How can I do it the way you do, Yuuki? How can I be as strong as you…?”

Perhaps they were cruel questions to ask of a girl who had lost her parents. Normally, Asuna would have simply been agreeable and not gone to the effort. But now, with Yuuki’s strength and gentleness coming through the probe on her shoulder, Asuna felt the wall around her heart melting away.

Yuuki paused, answering her question haltingly. “I…I’m not strong…at all.”

“That’s not true. You’re not like me at all: You don’t base your actions on others, you don’t shy away, you don’t fall backward. You’re just so…so natural about everything.”

“Hmm…Actually, years ago, when I still lived in the outside world, I think I was always playing someone else. I could tell that Papa and Mama were secretly sorry that they had brought us into this world…So for their sake, I always had to be bright and energetic, to show them the sickness wasn’t getting me down. Maybe that’s why I can still only act that way in the Medicuboid. Maybe the real me would hate and blame everything, and spend all day crying about life.”

“…Yuuki…”

“But you know what I think? I don’t care if it’s an act…Even if I’m only pretending to be strong, I don’t mind at all, as long as it means more time that I’m smiling. You know I don’t have much time left…I can’t help but feel that whenever I interact with someone else, I’m wasting my time by holding back and trying to ascertain indirectly how they feel. It would be better to just throw myself directly at them. And if they decide they don’t like me, that’s fine. It won’t change the fact that I was able to get very close to their heart.”

“…You’re right…It’s because of that idea that we were able to grow so close in just a few days, Yuuki…”

“No, that wasn’t me. It was because you kept chasing, even when I ran away. When I saw and heard you in the monitoring room yesterday, I understood exactly how you felt about me. I knew that even after you learned about my sickness, you would want to see me again. I was…I was so happy, I could have cried.”

Her voice hitched for a second, and there was a pause before she proceeded again. “So…maybe you should try talking to your mother the way you did back then. I think that if you really try to make your feelings heard, you’ll get them across. You’ll do fine; you’re much stronger than I am. You are. If you don’t confront her, you won’t get your feelings across…And it was because you confronted me with your feelings that I felt safe in letting you know everything about me.”

“…Thanks. Thank you, Yuuki,” Asuna said, and tilted her head upward so the tears couldn’t pool up and drip down her cheeks. The night sky, which never got truly black in the city, was full of stars that twinkled bravely through mankind’s light.

Back at the train station, the battery alarm on the probe beeped. Asuna made a promise to Yuuki to take her to class again tomorrow, and then disconnected her phone.

By the time she had finished riding all the necessary trains back and was walking up to her home in Setagaya, it was after nine o’clock. The sound of the door unlocking echoed especially loudly in the chilly entryway.

Asuna took a deep breath. She could still feel the weight of Yuuki sitting on her right shoulder; she brushed it with her left hand to hold in the warmth, then took off her shoes and quickly headed for her bedroom.

As soon as she had changed out of her uniform, she exited into the hallway and walked to her brother Kouichirou’s room. Like her father, Kouichirou was almost never home, but despite this assumption, she knocked anyway. There was no response. Just as she had done on the day that SAO launched, she opened the door without permission.

In the center of the fairly empty bedroom was a large business desk. She found what she was looking for on the left side: the AmuSphere Kouichirou used for attending VR meetings.

Asuna grabbed the headgear, which was quite a bit newer than hers, and took it back to her room. She inserted a memory card with the ALO client installed on it into a slot on the side of the unit. Once the headgear was adjusted to fit her head, she put on Kouichirou’s AmuSphere and lay down on the bed.

After flipping on the power, the connection sequence booted up and took her to the login space for ALO. But Asuna chose to dive into ALfheim Online not with her usual account but a subaccount that she reserved for when she wanted to be somebody else.

She emerged in the living room of her forest cabin on the twenty-second floor. But this time she was not the familiar undine Asuna, but a sylph named Erika. She checked over her outfit, removing the double daggers she kept on her waist and stashing them in a storage chest. With that complete, she opened the menu and hit the temporary log-out button.

Just seconds after starting her dive, Asuna was back in her bedroom in the real world. She took off the AmuSphere, but the blue connection light was still blinking. This indicated that the connection to the VR world was in a suspended state, and if she hit the power switch with it on her head, she could return to the game without needing to log in again.

Asuna stood up with her brother’s AmuSphere in hand. Thanks to their high-powered home Wi-Fi router, she could keep a solid connection from one end of the house to the other. She opened the door and went back into the hallway, descending the stairs with a heavier heart this time.

She peered into the living room and dining room, but the table was perfectly clean already, and her mother was nowhere to be seen. Farther down, around a turn in the hallway, light was peeking through the crack of the door at the end of the hall: her mother’s study.

She stopped in front of the door and raised her hand, ready to knock, but hesitated multiple times before she could go through with it. Since when had it been so difficult for her to visit her mother’s room? The truth was, it probably had as much to do with Asuna as it did with her mother. Her feelings weren’t getting across because she wasn’t trying to relate them. Yuuki had helped her realize that.

She thought she felt a small hand push her on the right shoulder, along with a voice.

It’s all right, Asuna. I know you can do it…

Asuna nodded in agreement, sucked in a deep breath, and rapped on the door. She heard a faint voice beckon her in. She turned the knob, pushed her way through the doorway, and closed the door behind her.

Kyouko was sitting at her heavy teak desk, typing on the keyboard of a desktop PC. She continued tapping away for a time, then crisply smacked the return key and leaned back in her chair at last. When she pushed up her glasses and looked at Asuna, there was irritation there to a degree Asuna had never seen.

“…You came home late,” she said simply. Asuna lowered her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“I already cleaned up dinner. If you want to eat, you’ll need to get something out of the refrigerator. And the deadline for that transfer school I told you about is tomorrow. Fill out that form by the morning.”

She returned to the keyboard, signaling that the conversation was over, but Asuna had her statement ready.

“Actually, about that…I have something to say, Mother.”

“Say it, then.”

“It’s hard to explain here.”

“Then where can you explain it?”

Asuna walked up next to Kyouko rather than answering right away and handed her what she was carrying behind her back: the suspended AmuSphere.

“It’s a VR world…I just want you to come with me somewhere.”

Kyouko’s brow furrowed with disgust the instant she caught sight of the silver headgear. She waved her hand to say that there was no room for discussion. “Absolutely not. I have no interest in hearing you say something that you cannot do me the respect of saying to my face.”

“Please, Mother. I have to show you something. It will only take five minutes…”

Normally this was the point where Asuna would apologize and leave the scene, but this time she took a step forward, looking into Kyouko’s eyes up close and repeating, “I’m asking you. I can’t explain to you what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking while we’re here. Please, just this once…I want you to see my world.”

“…”

Kyouko glared at Asuna even harder, her lips tightly pursed. A few seconds later, she let out a long, deep breath.

“No more than five minutes. And no matter what you’re going to tell me, I will not have you attending that school another year. When we’re done, you will fill out that form.”

“…Yes, Mother.” Asuna obeyed, and held out the AmuSphere. Kyouko grimaced as she touched it and awkwardly placed it on her head.

“What do I do with this, now?”

Asuna quickly readjusted the fit for her and said, “When I turn it on, it will automatically connect you. Once you’re inside, just wait until I show up.”

Kyouko nodded her understanding and leaned back in the desk chair, and Asuna hit the power switch on the right side of the AmuSphere. The net connection light turned on, and the brain connection light began to blink irregularly. All of the tension went out of Kyouko’s body.

Asuna rushed out of the study and ran up the hallway and the stairs back to her room. She plopped onto the bed and put on her own AmuSphere. When she touched the power switch, an array of light appeared before her eyes, ripping her mind from the physical world.

When she materialized in the wood-themed living room as her usual Asuna the undine, she looked around for Erika. Very quickly, she spotted the sylph girl with the short greenish hair standing next to the tableware cabinet, looking over her own appearance.

As Asuna approached, Erika/Kyouko glanced over her shoulder, glaring in the exact same way that she did in real life.

“It’s all rather strange, that this unfamiliar face moves exactly the way I want it to. Plus…” She bounced up and down on her toes. “My body feels too light.”

“Of course it does. That avatar’s body weight is less than ninety pounds. It should feel different,” Asuna said with a grin. Kyouko glared unhappily again.

“How rude. I’m not that heavy. Speaking of which…you seem to have the same face in here.”

“Well…yes.”

“But your real face is just a bit puffier in its outline.”

“Now who’s being rude, Mother? It’s exactly the same in every way.”

Asuna wondered how long it had been since she had a meaningless chat like this with her mother. She wanted to keep going for a bit longer, but Kyouko had her arms crossed in front of her chest, and meant business.

“All right, you’re running out of time. What do you want to show me?”

“…Come this way,” Asuna said, stifling a sigh as she crossed the living room toward the door to the little storage room that she used as an item repository. Once Kyouko had awkwardly tottered over, she showed her to a small window inside.

From the south-facing living room, there was a view of the large yard and the little path that traveled over hills and bumps until it reached the beautiful lake—a pastoral scene if there ever was one. But the only things visible from the north-facing storage room were the thick grasses around back, a little brook, and the close-hanging pine trees. During this season they were all covered in snow, leaving “cold” as the only apt description for the image.

But that was exactly what Asuna wanted to show Kyouko. She threw open the window and looked out at the deep forest.

“What do you think? Does it look familiar?”

Kyouko frowned again, then shook her head. “Familiar how? It’s just an ordinary cedar fores…”

The words disappeared from her tongue. She stared out the window with her mouth open, but she was looking somewhere else, not at the scene before her eyes. At her side, Asuna whispered, “Doesn’t it remind you…of Grandma and Grandpa’s house?”

Asuna’s maternal grandparents, Kyouko’s parents, ran a farm in the mountains of Miyagi Prefecture. The house was in a small village nestled in a steep valley, and the rice paddies were carved right out of the mountainside, with no room for mechanization. It was mostly rice that they harvested, but even that was barely enough for the single family to live on for a year.

It was thanks to the forested mountain they inherited that the family was able to put Kyouko through college despite their humble income. The old wooden house was built up against the foot of the mountain, and when sitting on the back porch, the only things you could see were a small yard, a brook, and the cedar woods beyond them.

But more than the Yuuki mansion in Kyoto, Asuna had always preferred to visit her Grandpa and Grandma’s house in Miyagi. She would throw tantrums in summer and winter vacation until they finally took her, so she could lie under the same blanket as her grandparents and hear stories about the old times. She had many memories, from eating hand-shaved ice out back in the summer, to pickling plums with her grandmother in the fall, but what she remembered most vividly of all was plopping under the covered table in the wintertime, eating mandarin oranges and staring at the cedar trees through the window.

Her grandparents wondered what she found so entertaining about the woods, but something about the way the tall black trunks split the white of the snow in an endless pattern made her mind seem to float away. When she looked at the trees, she felt like a baby mouse in its burrow under the snow, waiting for spring—a strange sensation that was somehow both lonely and warm at the same time.

Her grandparents passed away one after the other when she was in her second year of middle school. The paddies and mountain were sold off, and without anyone to live in it, the home was torn down.

Which was why, in this house on the twenty-second floor of Aincrad, both physically and conceptually far removed from that little village in the mountains of Miyagi, Asuna felt a tear-jerking sense of longing whenever she stared out of the north window through the snowy conifers.

She understood that for her part, Kyouko did not look back on her poor rural upbringing with fondness. But Asuna still wanted to show her mother the view from this window—the view that she had once seen every day and was trying desperately to forget.

At some point, they passed the predetermined five-minute mark, but Kyouko was still gazing at the cedar trees. Asuna moved up next to her and said, “Do you remember the Obon holiday when I was in seventh grade? The time that you and Father and Brother went to Kyoto, but I was insistent on going to Miyagi instead, and so I ended up traveling on my own?”

“…I do remember.”

“Well, I went so that I could apologize to Grandpa and Grandma. So I could apologize that you weren’t able to come visit the family grave for the holiday.”

“There was…a Yuuki family matter that I simply couldn’t be absent from…”

“No, I’m not blaming you. You see…when I apologized, they brought out a thick album from the tea cabinet. I was amazed when I saw what was inside. It started with your first thesis, then all of the writings you submitted to various magazines, your interviews, all filed away. They even printed out the stuff on the Internet and stuck in it there. And I’m sure they didn’t know the first thing about computers…”

“…”

“As he was showing me the things in the album, Grandpa said that you were their greatest treasure. You left the village and went to college, became a scholar, had your articles in fancy magazines, and were making a great name for yourself. He said you were so busy with your theses and meetings that it made sense you couldn’t go back home for Obon to honor the dead, and they never once were upset about it…”

Kyouko was listening to Asuna’s words in silence, staring out at the woods. There was no expression on her face, at least from the side. But Asuna kept pushing onward.

“And then he added, ‘There might come a time when she gets tired and comes to a stop. She might want to turn back and see just how far she’s come. And we’ll always be here at this house, so she can find us…We’ve been keeping this little mountain home all this time, just so she knows that if she needs a source of support, she’s always got a place to come back to.’”

As she spoke, Asuna saw her grandparents’ old home, which no longer existed, in her mind’s eye. And overlapping that, she saw Yuuki’s little white house, from just a few hours earlier. A place for the heart to return. Even if they were physically gone, someone would always treasure them in their heart. And for Asuna, that place was this virtual cabin in the woods.

This home, too, would probably be obliterated someday. But in the truest sense, it would never be lost. A home wasn’t a place to hold things, it was a word referring to the heart, feelings, way of life—the way that her grandparents had done.

“Back then, I didn’t understand all of what he said. But recently, I feel like it finally makes sense to me. Running and running for your own sake isn’t all there is to life…There must be a way of life that can make someone else’s happiness into your own happiness.”

She envisioned the faces of Kirito, Liz, Leafa, Silica, Yuuki, Siune, and the rest of the Sleeping Knights.

“I want to lead a life where I keep smiles on the faces of everyone around me. I want to lead a life where I can support those who are tired. And to do that, I want to strive for my best with studies and everything else at that special school I love so much,” she finished at last, finding her words along the way.

But Kyouko only stared at the forest, her mouth shut tight. Her deep green eyes were looking far away, and it was impossible to gauge her true emotions at that moment.

For several minutes, the little room was silent. Two little animals that looked like rabbits frolicked and leaped in the snow beneath the large trees. They distracted Asuna for a moment, and when she looked back at Kyouko, she gasped.

A tear track was running down Kyouko’s porcelain white cheek, dripping off her chin. Her lips budged, but no audible words came out. After a few moments, Kyouko realized that she was crying, and hastily rubbed at her face.

“What…Why is it…? I’m not crying…”

“…You can’t hide your tears here, Mother. Nobody can stop from crying when they feel like crying.”

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” Kyouko snapped, rubbing her eyes, then gave up and covered her face with both hands. Eventually, faint sobs emerged. Asuna hesitated several times, then finally reached out and placed a hand on Kyouko’s trembling shoulder.

At breakfast the next morning, Kyouko was back to her normal self, reading the news on her tablet. The meal proceeded in silence after the morning greetings, and Asuna steeled herself for another demand for the transfer school form. Instead, Kyouko glared at Asuna with slightly less danger than usual and said, “So are you claiming that you’re prepared to support someone else for your entire life?”

She nodded, surprised. “Y…yes.”

“But if you want to support others, you need to be stronger yourself. You must go to college. And that means getting better marks than you have already, in the third term and next year.”

“…Are you saying…I don’t have to…”

“What did I say? It depends on your grades. So get on it.”

With that, Kyouko got up and left the dining room. Asuna watched the door shut behind her, then lowered her head and thanked her.

She managed to maintain a somber mood as she dressed in her uniform and went to the door with her school bag, but as soon as she left the front gate, she started running down the gleaming, icy street. She couldn’t keep the smile from breaking out over her face.

She wanted to tell Kazuto that she would still be at their school for the next year. She wanted to tell Yuuki that she’d finally had a real talk with her mother.

Asuna couldn’t keep the grin off her lips as she raced through the crowds and toward the train station.

Three days later, as planned, they held a huge barbecue out front at the cabin.

In addition to Kirito, Lisbeth, Klein, Leafa, and Silica—the usual suspects—there was Yuuki, Siune, and the rest of the Sleeping Knights, and the racial leaders Sakuya, Alicia, and Eugene and their associates. They actually had to put together a food-hunting party to acquire enough ingredients to feed the thirty-strong guests.

Before they raised a toast, Asuna introduced the Sleeping Knights. She did not mention their conditions, but with Yuuki’s blessing, she explained that they were a veteran band that traveled from VRMMO to VRMMO, engaging in a memorable finish here in ALO before they disbanded.

The stories about the mysterious seven-man guild that defeated the twenty-seventh-floor boss on their own and the Absolute Sword who bested more than sixty consecutive dueling foes had spread far and wide throughout the game. Sakuya and Eugene immediately commenced with their recruiting speeches. Yuuki politely refused, which was a good thing—if all of the Sleeping Knights joined a particular race’s side as mercenaries, it could overthrow the current power balance of the nine fairy peoples. That would have a huge effect on the current progress of the Second Grand Quest, which was ongoing at the moment.

After the rousing toast, a storm of gluttony commenced, and Asuna ate, drank, and spoke with Yuuki the whole while. Over the course of the party, they decided that they should just go ahead and shoot for the twenty-eighth-floor boss as well, and the afterparty turned into a conquering tour of the twenty-eighth-floor labyrinth. They even piled into the top floor of the tower and dispatched the large crustacean boss, which would be funny if it didn’t sound like such a tall tale.

Unfortunately, the only names carved into the Monument of Swordsmen belonged to Yuuki, Kirito, and the few others who were party leaders, but the team made a pact to try the twenty-ninth-floor boss with just the Sleeping Knights again, and they called it a day.

Even as they continued their adventures in Alfheim, Yuuki participated in classes at school using the interactive probe. She visited the Kirigaya home in Kawagoe and also made a trip to Agil’s café in Okachimachi.

Yuuki had been cautious of Kazuto at first, due to his eerie intuition, but as a fellow swordsman, they actually got along quite well once she finally talked to him. After that, they traded barbs over Sword Skill usage in ALO and even the different ways that the probe could be improved in real life; at times, this got on Asuna’s nerves. The other Sleeping Knights got right along with Leafa, Lisbeth, and the others, and they had great fun planning big events as a group.

In February, Asuna and the Sleeping Knights defeated the twenty-ninth-floor boss as a single party, cementing their fame within all corners of Alfheim. In the middle of the month, there was a unified dueling tournament. Kirito blasted through the eastern block while Yuuki dominated the western, and the final match was broadcast on the Internet TV station MMO Stream to tremendous fanfare.

As countless players watched breathlessly, Yuuki and Kirito delivered a ferocious, stunning duel with endless major Sword Skills, including their own OSSs, for more than ten minutes. When Yuuki finally dispatched Kirito with her divine eleven-part skill, it caused a cheer that practically vibrated the entire planet.

For defeating the legendary Kirito—even without his dual blades—Yuuki was named the fourth champion of the dueling tournament, and the tale of the Absolute Sword surpassed the bounds of ALO to ricochet around the Seed Nexus.

In March, Asuna kept her promise to her mother by passing her final exams. With the probe on her shoulder, she joined Rika, Keiko, Suguha, and phone-based Yui on a four-day vacation to Kyoto. By this time, they had made the probe capable of handling multiple client streams at once, so Siune, Jun, and the others joined Yuuki in getting a tour of the city, which made the tour guide experience quite fulfilling.

The group was allowed to stay at the Yuuki family’s vast mansion, and the money they saved by doing this allowed them to splurge on delectable Kyoto cooking. Unfortunately, flavor was one thing the probe could not transmit, so they heard plenty of cheeky complaints from their remote audience. Asuna had to promise them that she’d recreate the cooking in VR when she got back, and paid the price with some truly humbling practice experiences in her VR cooking program.

It all passed like a dream. Asuna and Yuuki shared a long, long journey, through the virtual and real world. There were so many more places to go, and Asuna believed that she would have plenty of time for all of it.

One day, close to April, a sudden cold front coming across the Sea of Okhotsk blanketed central Japan in an unseasonal snow. The thick carpet seemed to cover the hints of spring in the air, and the weak sunlight took its time melting the layer of snow.

That was when Dr. Kurahashi sent Asuna a message saying that Yuuki’s condition had taken a turn for the worse.