12

Even after the three shadows descended the hill and melted into the darkness, their orange cursors remained, thanks to the Search skill.

I’d encountered and exchanged words with PoH, leader of Laughing Coffin, on a previous occasion, but his two confidants were new to me: the poison knife–wielder with the childish attitude and appearance and the eerie estoc fencer with the ragged clothes. Naturally, their names hadn’t appeared on their cursors, so I considered checking with Schmitt about them, then decided against it. The next time I faced them, it would turn into a fight for real. And I didn’t want to know the names of the people I’d cross blades with in a battle to the death.

Instead, I just watched the cursors as they began to blink at the limit of my Search range. As a flat rule, criminal players were not allowed to enter towns and settlements protected by the Anti-Criminal Code, the “safe havens” of Aincrad. The instant they did, powerful NPC guardians would appear and attack en masse. And the teleport gates were all located in the Code’s zones, so for the trio to move to other floors, they’d either have to designate tiny villages outside of the Code with their teleport crystals, use expensive corridor crystals, or climb and descend the labyrinth towers that had already been cleaned out—the long way.

It was probably the first of the three, but using six crystals for the round trip had to be a ridiculous expense for them. Despite my cocky parting statements, I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when the three cursors were gone from sight.

It was a much more dangerous group than I had been expecting. Somehow, the trio had known that Schmitt—front team leader for the Divine Dragon Alliance and the man with the highest defense and HP of any front-line player—would be at these coordinates.

The source of that info would be clear very soon.

I tore my gaze away from the dark landscape to look at my window and type up a quick message to Klein, who was approaching with his dozen-or-so friends, that “Laughing Coffin ran off, so wait in town.”

Next, I took an antidote potion from my waist pouch and put it in Schmitt’s left hand, watched to make sure the large man awkwardly drank it down, then looked at the other two people present.

When I spoke out to the would-be grim reapers in their black robes, I couldn’t keep the note of irony out of my voice.

“It’s nice to see you again, Yolko. And I guess…this is a ‘nice to meet you,’ Caynz.”

The woman who had vanished before my eyes into a cloud of polygons a few hours earlier looked up at me and put on a tiny smile.

“I was planning to give you a proper apology when all was said and done…but I don’t suppose you’d believe me now.”

“Whether I believe you or not depends on how good the meal you buy me tastes. And no fishy-looking ramen or unidentified fried food will do.”

Next to the stunned Yolko, the simpleminded-looking Caynz, original “victim” of the safe-haven murders, pulled off his robe and bowed his head.

“It’s actually not our first meeting, Kirito. Our eyes met for just an instant, if you recall,” he said in a deep, relaxed voice. Then it hit me.

“You know, that’s right. It was right as you died—er, as you teleported and your armor broke, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. When I saw you, I had a momentary feeling that you might see through our faked-death trick.”

“You thought too much of me. I was completely fooled.”

It was my turn to frown. With the atmosphere a bit looser now, Schmitt sat up, his armor clanking loudly. He turned on me, his voice still tense.

“Kirito…I must thank you for saving me…but how did you know that those men would attack us here?”

I looked back into his desperate, searching eyes and chose my words carefully.

“It wasn’t that I knew. I just thought it might be possible. If I’d known it was PoH from the start, I might have freaked out and run for safety.”

There was a reason I was playing this a bit aloof. What I was about to say was bound to deliver a huge shock to these three—particularly Yolko and Caynz. They had written their own scenario, engineered and starred in it to seeming perfection—but they didn’t realize that there was a hidden producer lurking in the shadows of the entire incident. I took a deep breath and tried to speak as quietly and calmly as I could.

“…I only noticed that something was wrong about thirty minutes ago…”

The incident was over. The rest was up to Yolko, Caynz, and Schmitt now—or so I told Asuna, leaning back in my chair on the second floor of the inn overlooking the little pub on the twentieth floor.

They wouldn’t kill one another. Let the players of the ring incident that had started this all take care of the business themselves, I said. Asuna nodded and agreed.

But in the silence that followed, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny little thorn in my chest that would not come out cleanly.

There was something I needed to consider. I knew it was there, but I didn’t know what it was or how to remember it.

The root of this sensation lay in something that Asuna said while we were in this room, staking out the pub. Before I realized it, I was calling out to her.

“…What is it?” the vice commander of the KoB said, looking at me. About 80 percent of my mind was fixated on the sensation of wrongness, so the thoughtlessness of the question that followed could be blamed on that.

“Asuna, have you ever been married?”

Her answer was an icy, murderous glare, a clenched fist, and a preparatory attack stance.

“No, I mean, not that, forget it!!” I cried before she could slug me. I shook my hands and head in defensive panic, quickly adding, “No, what I mean is…you were saying something about marriage before, right?”

“I did. What about it?” she asked, fixing me with a steely gaze.

I trembled even harder, desperately running my mouth. “Um, w-well…gosh, what was it—something about how it was romantic, or plastic, or something-tic…”

“Nobody said anything remotely resembling that!”

She kicked me in the shin just soft enough not to set off the Code, then filled in the blanks for me. “I said it was romantic and pragmatic! And in case you’ve never opened a dictionary, pragmatic means practical and sensible!”

“Practical…? Marriage in SAO?”

“Yes. I mean, it doesn’t get much more brutally faithful than shared inventory, right?”

“Shared…inventory…”

That was it.

That was the source of the thorn that was still stuck in my chest.

Married players completely shared all of their items. The carrying limit expanded to the total of both players’ strength combined, so while it was extremely convenient, it also came with the danger of marriage fraud, where a spouse stole all the best items and disappeared.

What was it about this system that stuck out to me?

Unable to reach the root of this overwhelming frustration, I asked, “Th-then…what happens to the items when you get divorced?”

“Huh…?”

Asuna looked at me in surprise, her eyes round. She inclined her head in wonderment, bringing her punching fist up to stroke her slender chin.

“Let’s see…I believe there are a few options. There’s automatic distribution, taking turns choosing an item at a time, and a few other methods that I don’t remember…”

“I want to know more. How do we find out? Oh hey, what if we—”

That I didn’t finish that question was either a brilliant decision or a stroke of good luck.

The Flash grinned at me, her left hand on the scabbard of her Lambent Light, several times the previous hint of murder in the air.

“What if we what?”

“…Wh-what if…weeee…write a question to Heathcliff right now?”

A minute later, he wrote back with a concise and accurate description of what happens to inventory space upon a divorce. The man was a walking game manual.

Asuna had already mentioned the automatic and by-turn methods of dividing items. It was also possible to set up an automated system that worked on designated percentages, rather than down the middle. That meant that alimony payments were essentially possible as well. Yes, very pragmatic.

As Asuna read off the message, my mind worked rapidly. These options had to be decided upon by both parties at the moment of divorce, of course. In other words, you could not legally divorce unless you both agreed to an asset-splitting scheme. But in reality, an amicable agreement couldn’t be reached in every case. So what would happen if you wanted to get divorced but couldn’t see eye to eye with your partner? There was no domestic affairs court in Aincrad.

The answer to that question was in the very last sentence of Heathcliff’s reply to Asuna.

“‘…Incidentally, an unconditional divorce is only possible if one sets their own item allotment to zero percent, with the partner receiving one hundred percent of the shared inventory. In that case, any items the partner cannot carry at the point of redistribution will be dropped at his or her feet. If Kirito is afraid of the imminent possibility of divorce, I would recommend staying in a private room at an inn’…he says.” Asuna finished reading, closing the window with an unpleasant expression.

As I idly gazed at her face, I repeated one phrase from the message over and over.

Zero for you, hundred for partner. Zero for you…hundred for partner…

“Ah…”

The thorn of suspicion that remained firmly jammed into my chest suddenly twinged sharply. It was a small thing, but it started to grow and grow, from hesitation to doubt, to conviction and then shock, then all the way to fear.

“Ah…aaaah!!”

I stood up with a bolt, my chair rattling, and grabbed Asuna’s shoulders. The Flash pulled away in startled disbelief and gaped, “Wha…what are you…You’re not really expecting to…”

But I wasn’t taking in any information. I husked, “Hundred for you, zero for your partner. There’s only one way to ensure that happens.”

“…Huh…? What are you talking about…?”

I kept a firm grip on her shoulders, drawing her petite face closer to mine, and whispered, “Death. The moment your spouse dies, your inventory returns to its original size, and the items you can’t hold drop at your feet. Meaning…meaning…”

My throat convulsed and swallowed.

“Meaning…that in the instant of the murder of Griselda, leader of Golden Apple, that ultra-rare and powerful ring, which was kept in her item storage, went not to the killer…but into the inventory of her husband, Grimlock, or materialized and dropped at his feet.”

The hazel-brown eyes, just inches away, blinked once, then twice. The disbelief in her eyes suddenly turned into stark horror.

So the ring…wasn’t stolen…? she mouthed silently. But I couldn’t answer right away. I let go of her shoulders, straightened up, and leaned back heavily against the window frame.

“No…that’s not true. It was stolen. Grimlock stole a ring that was already in his inventory. He’s not the one responsible for this fake safe-haven murder case. He’s the mastermind of the ring incident from half a year ago.”

The rapier sheath fell out of Asuna’s hand and thudded heavily on the floor.

“…I only noticed that something was wrong about thirty minutes ago…Caynz, Yolko, how did you get these two weapons? The barbed short spear and dagger,” I asked.

Yolko and her partner shared a glance, then she said, “In order to pull off a fake safe-haven PK, we needed a piercing weapon that would cause damage over time. We looked through all the weapon shops we could find, but there were no specially designed weapons with that feature…And if we had a blacksmith make one for us, his name would stay on the weapon. Then anyone could ask him and he’d reveal that it was paid for by the victims of the case, and the mystery would be over.”

“So without a better option, we reached out to contact the leader’s husband, Grimlock, for the first time since the guild disbanded. We explained our plan so that he would make us the piercing weapons we needed. We didn’t know where to find him, but we were still registered as friends,” Caynz continued for Yolko. At the mention of that name, all of my nerves honed in on my ears to listen.

“At first, Grimlock didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it. His first response said to just let her memory sleep in peace. But we kept pleading with him, and he finally relented and made us two—no, three weapons. And we got them just three days before the moment of Kains’s ‘death.’”

This, at least, made it clear that Yolko and Caynz believed that Grimlock was the first and foremost victim in the murder of his wife. I took a deep breath, steeling myself to utter the words that I was certain would bring them much shock and pain.

“…I’m sorry to say that Grimlock wasn’t against your plan for Griselda’s sake. He was afraid that if you went to the trouble of an eye-catching PK inside the safe haven, someone was going to notice. Notice what happens to the items in a shared inventory when a marriage is dissolved because of death, rather than divorce.”

“Huh…?”

Yolko stared at me, totally baffled.

I couldn’t blame her. Even very close couples in Aincrad seldom made it to the stage of marriage, but divorces were even more rare, and couples split apart by death even more so. Both Asuna and I had totally believed that when Griselda died, the ring had dropped as loot for the one who killed her.

“Listen…everything in Griselda’s possession simultaneously belonged to Grimlock. You couldn’t steal that ring even by killing her. It would automatically teleport to Grimlock the instant she died. You got a reward of money for taking part in the scheme, right, Schmitt?” I asked. The big man sitting cross-legged on the ground shook his head in disbelief.

I continued. “It would have taken the sale of the ring to put together a fortune of that size in the first place. Only Grimlock could have done that once he got the ring, and he knew that Schmitt was an accomplice in the plan. Meaning…”

“Grimlock did this…? You’re saying he was the one who sent the note…and actually took Griselda out of the town to kill her?” Schmitt mumbled, his voice cracking. I considered this possibility.

“No, he wouldn’t have dirtied his hands directly. She might wake from her sleep while being portal-ed out of her bedchamber. If she saw his face, he’d never be able to cover it up. He probably paid some red players to do the dirty work of the killing. That doesn’t decrease his crime in the slightest, of course…”

“…”

Schmitt simply gazed into empty space and said no more. Yolko and Caynz also looked as though their souls had temporarily left their bodies. A few seconds later, she shook her head, dark blue hair swaying, the motion growing fiercer over time.

“No…it’s not true. It can’t be! They were always together…Grimlock was always smiling happily at her side and…Besides! R-right?—If he was the true culprit, then why did he help us in our plan?! We couldn’t have done a thing if he hadn’t crafted those weapons for us, and the ring incident would never have been dug up again. Isn’t that right?”

“You explained the entirety of your idea to him, didn’t you?” I asked abruptly. She shut her mouth for a moment, then nodded. “Meaning that he knew what would happen in the end if your plan was successful. Wracked by guilt, Schmitt would visit Griselda’s grave, to be accosted by you and Caynz, dressed as the dead. That would make it possible to permanently bury the ring incident forever. He could eliminate his accomplice, Schmitt, and you two searching for resolution, all at once.”

“…I see. So…that’s why they were here…” Schmitt mumbled. I looked in his direction and nodded, feeling gloomy.

“That’s right. The top three members of Laughing Coffin showed up here because Grimlock fed them information. That a major officer of the DDA would be here without a security detail…He probably had connections to them ever since he paid them to kill off Griselda…”

“…I can’t believe it…”

Caynz had to hold out his hand to keep Yolko from falling straight to the ground. But his face, too, was obviously pale, even in the dim light of the moon.

As she clung to Caynz’s shoulder for support, Yolko whispered dully, “Grimlock was…trying to kill us? But…why…? And…why would he kill his own wife just to steal a ring…?”

“I can’t possibly conjecture about a motive. But I’m guessing that while he stayed in the guild base the night of the murder for the sake of an alibi, he couldn’t have helped coming to keep tabs on this one. Especially knowing that getting rid of you three would make the end of two criminal incidents. So…let’s ask him for the real scoop.”

At the end of my sentence, two sets of footsteps could be heard climbing the west face of the hill.

The first thing to come into sight was a knight’s uniform of brilliant white and red, clearly visible through the night. This was, obviously, Asuna the Flash. In her right hand hung a rapier with a crystal-pure platinum blade. It was the most graceful and beautiful sword that I knew in Aincrad and also one of the fiercest and most efficient at breaking through defenses.

Its fierce point and owner’s sharp gaze were keeping a man walking ahead of her. He was very tall, with a long-sleeve and loose-fitting leather jacket and a wide-brim hat. In the shadow beneath it, something occasionally reflected the moonlight—glasses, probably. He looked less like a blacksmith than a hit man from some Hong Kong movie. It was hard for me to avoid that preconception, for understandable reasons.

Both of their cursors were green. Realizing that if he tried to escape, Asuna might temporarily become an orange player in halting him, her green status was a relief to me—though I was prepared to undergo the annoying quests needed to restore one’s good alignment alongside her, if necessary. As the man approached, however, I steeled myself properly to face him.

Behind his round, silver-framed glasses was a face that looked gentle and soft, if anything. His face was thin, and his slightly drooping eyes were kindly. But there was something in his small black pupils behind the lenses that set off my sense of caution.

The man stopped about ten feet away and looked first at Schmitt, then Yolko and Caynz, and lastly, at the mossy grave marker.

“Well…hello again, everyone,” he said, cool and calm.

Several seconds later, Yolko responded, “Grimlock…Did…did you really…”

Kill Griselda and steal the ring? And try to erase three people here to ensure that the entire matter was covered up permanently?

The words were never spoken aloud, but everyone heard them. Grimlock the blacksmith, former sub-leader of Golden Apple, did not answer at once. When Asuna had returned her rapier to its sheath and moved to stand at my side, he smiled slightly.

“…You have the wrong idea. I was only on the way here under the belief that I had a responsibility to see this series of events to its conclusion. The reason I obeyed that scary woman’s commands was because I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding.”

He’s going to deny it? I thought, closing my eyes. Sure, we had no proof that he’d passed the information to PoH, but when it came to the ring incident, there was no way for him to weasel out of the systematic evidence.

“Liar!” snapped Asuna. “You were hiding in the bushes. If I hadn’t been able to reveal you with my Search skill, you’d have stayed put the whole time!”

“That’s not my fault. I’m just a blacksmith. As you can see, I am unarmed. Can you blame me for not jumping out into the open with those terrifying orange players out and about?” he replied pleasantly, spreading his gloved hands.

Schmitt, Caynz, and Yolko listened to Grimlock’s words in silence. They were still having trouble believing it. Accepting that your former sub-leader had paid bloodthirsty killers to knock you off was a huge leap, and one they didn’t consciously want to make.

Asuna started to retort again, but I stilled her with a hand and spoke at last.

“Hello there, Grimlock. My name is Kirito and…well, I’m an outsider in this matter. I’ll be honest: I don’t have evidence linking your presence here to the attack by Laughing Coffin. They certainly won’t be offering testimony to us.”

Of course, if we had Grimlock make his menu window visible so we could check his friend list or sent messages, we would certainly find the name of whatever player handled the assassination business for Laughing Coffin. I just didn’t know what that name was.

But while the matter of the attempted murders here might not be solvable, I knew that the other matter was undeniable.

“But the ring incident last fall that caused the breakup of Golden Apple…You are absolutely involved with that—you orchestrated it, in fact. Because whoever actually killed Griselda, the ring would have stayed in your possession, thanks to your shared inventory. You hid that fact, secretly liquidated the ring, then gave half of the amount to Schmitt. Only the culprit could have done this. So your only motive for getting involved in this safe-haven incident was to silence the people involved with the past and cover it up. Am I wrong?”

A heavy silence filled the open air on the hill. The pale moonlight falling upon the scene cast Grimlock’s face into shadowy contrast. Eventually his mouth twisted in an odd way and he spoke again, slightly cooler this time.

“This is a very fascinating line of logic, Detective…But sadly, you have missed one thing.”

“What?” I asked automatically. Grimlock reached up with a black glove and pulled the brim of his wide hat lower.

“It’s true that Griselda and I had a shared inventory. So your assertion that when she was killed, all of the items within her storage remained with me is true. However…”

The tall blacksmith’s sharp gaze traveled through the moonlight-reflecting glasses to pierce me. In a flat voice, he continued. “What if the ring wasn’t being kept in her inventory? What if it was materialized as a physical object, equipped on her finger…?”

“Ah…” Asuna gasped.

I was just as taken aback. I had completely failed to take that possibility into account.

Materialized items always dropped at the spot of a player’s death, if killed by a monster or another player. So if Griselda were equipping the ring in question, it would fall into the murderer’s hands rather than staying in Grimlock’s possession.

Realizing that he now held the advantage, Grimlock’s mouth curled into a grin. But that smile vanished as he put his fingertips to his forehead and shook his head in a display of mourning.

“…Griselda was a speed-type swordsman. Surely it’s not that surprising that she’d want to just get a little taste of the massive agility boost from wearing the ring before it got auctioned off, right? Yes, when she was killed, all of the items that were in our shared inventory stayed with me. But the ring was not among them. It’s the truth, Detective.”

I suddenly realized I was clenching my teeth. I tried searching for some means of tearing apart his argument, but the only person who could testify as to whether she was wearing the ring in question at the moment of her death was the killer—most likely, a member of Laughing Coffin.

As I held my silence, Grimlock lifted up the brim of his hat. He swung a look over the other four and gave a sanctimonious bow.

“And now, I will be on my way. It’s a shame that the ringleader in Griselda’s murder wasn’t caught, but I believe that Schmitt’s repentance will surely soothe her soul.”

With another tip of his hat, the blacksmith turned around. Amid the silence, Yolko’s voice over his shoulder was full of something fiery.

“Please wait…No—stop.”

He came to an abrupt halt and turned back just a bit. Those kindly looking eyes behind the glasses glimmered with something dangerous.

“Is there more? Please don’t bother me with your emotional, unfounded accusations. This is a holy place to me,” he said smoothly and haughtily. Yolko took a step farther. For some reason, she raised her hands in front of her and glanced down at them for an instant. When her dark eyes faced forward again, there was a fierce power in them that I hadn’t seen in her before.

“Grimlock, you’re claiming that the leader was wearing the ring at the time. So the killer stole it without you having it. But…that’s impossible.”

“…Oh? Based on what evidence?” Grimlock asked, turning smoothly.

Yolko tore into him. “You remember when the guild had that meeting to decide what to do with the ring? Me, Caynz, and Schmitt said that we should use it to strengthen the guild, rather than sell it. Caynz actually wanted to use it himself, but he decided to stick with the leader. He said she was the strongest fighter in Golden Apple, so she ought to equip it.”

Next to Yolko, Caynz looked somewhat guilty. But she merely gestured and continued. “I still remember every last word of her response. She smiled and said, ‘You can only wear one ring on each hand in SAO. On my right hand is the guild leader’s sigil…and on the left is my wedding ring. So I can’t use this.’ Understand? There’s no way she would secretly take off either of those rings to try out that new one’s bonus!”

When her harsh shriek died out, everyone present held their breath.

It was true that there was only one ring slot for each hand on the equipment mannequin in the menu. If both were already full, a new ring could not be equipped. But…it was still weak.

No sooner had the thought entered my mind than Grimlock quietly pounced. “What do you mean? She would never do that? If you’re going to use that logic, I would never kill Griselda—she was my wife! You are leveling unfounded accusations against me, nothing more.”

“No,” Yolko whispered. I held my breath as the petite woman slowly, firmly shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. There is proof…Whoever actually killed her left behind every item they judged to be worthless, right out in the open where they did the act. Fortunately, the player who discovered them knew the leader’s name and delivered her leftover articles to the guild home. That’s how, when we chose to make this grave marker her resting place, we were able to leave her sword here, until it eventually disintegrated. But…that wasn’t all. I didn’t tell anyone…but there was another memento of hers that I buried here on my own.”

Suddenly, she spun around, knelt behind the little grave nearby, and began to dig in the dirt with her bare hands as everyone else watched and waited. When Yolko stood up again, she held out her hand to show what she was holding. Despite being freshly dug up from the soil, the little box shone silver in the moonlight.

“Oh…a Permanent Storage Trinket!” Asuna gasped. As she noted, it was the box of permanence that only master-class craftsmen could fashion. At maximum, they could be about four inches to a side, so they couldn’t hold large items, but a few small accessories could fit inside. Even if left out in the open, no item inside here would ever suffer the natural degradation of its durability.

Yolko reached out with her left hand and pulled up the lid of the silver box.

Sitting on the white silk liner were two gleaming rings. She picked up one, a larger silver ring. On its flat tip was a carving of an apple.

“This is the Golden Apple sigil, which she always wore on her right hand. I still have my own, so it will be very easy to compare and confirm.”

She put that ring back and picked up the other one—a narrow golden band.

“And this is the ring that she never took off the ring finger of her left hand—your wedding ring, Grimlock! It has your name carved on the inside! The fact that these rings are here is unshakeable proof that at the moment she was taken through a portal outside of town and murdered, she was wearing them! Am I wrong?! If I am, then explain it to me!!” she finished in a tearful scream. She thrust the glittering golden ring right at Grimlock, large teardrops rolling down her cheeks.

No one spoke for several moments. Caynz, Schmitt, Asuna, and I held our breath, eyes wide, watching the confrontation.

The tall blacksmith, his lips pursed, stood frozen in place for over ten seconds. Eventually, one corner of his mouth twitched, then tensed.

“That ring…You asked me about this on the day of her funeral, Yolko—if I wanted to keep Griselda’s wedding ring. And I told you to let it fade away, like her sword. If you’d just said you wanted it…”

Grimlock’s head was downcast, his face hidden behind his wide-brim hat. He fell to his knees, as though the string holding him upright had snapped.

Yolko put the golden ring back into the box, closed the lid, and clenched it to her chest. She looked skyward, her damp face scrunched up, and whispered, in a voice now dull and soft, “Why…why, Grimlock? Why would you kill the leader…your own wife, just to turn the ring into money?”

“…Money? Money, you say?” Grimlock rasped from his knees, chuckling. He brought up his left hand to open the menu. With a few short operations, he produced a large leather bag. He lifted it up, then hurled it onto the ground. The heavy thud contained the clear sound of many metal items scraping. Just the sound alone made it clear to me how much col was contained within.

“This is half of the money I got from liquidating the ring. I haven’t spent a single coin.”

“Huh…?” Yolko said, her eyebrows crossed in confusion.

Grimlock looked up at her, then the rest of us, and said in a dry voice, “It wasn’t for money. I…I just had to kill her. While she was still my wife.”

The round glasses turned to the mossy grave for a moment, then came back. The blacksmith continued his confession.

“Griselda. Grimlock. It’s no coincidence that our names sound similar. We always had the same names, going back to the games we played before SAO. And if the game featured it, we were always married. After all…after all, she was my wife in the real world, too.”

My mouth fell open in shock. Asuna sucked in a sharp breath, and the others’ faces were portraits of stunned surprise.

“She was the ideal wife for me; I had no complaints. She was the very picture of the sidekick wife: cute, sweet, obedient. We never once had a fight. But…once we got stuck in this world…she changed…”

He shook his head, hidden beneath the hat, and let out a low breath.

“I was the only one who quaked and shivered in fear at being trapped in here. Where did she hide all of that talent? In fighting ability, decision-making, and everything else, Griselda—no, Yuuko—was greater than me. And more than that, she overrode my complaints to create the guild, recruit members, and start training. She was far more alive here than even in real life…and more fulfilled…Watching her up close, I had to admit that the Yuuko I loved was gone. Even if we someday beat the game and got back to reality, the well-behaved, subservient wife I knew would not return.”

The shoulders of his long-sleeve jacket trembled. Whether it was in self-mocking laughter or sobs of distress, I couldn’t tell.

His whispering continued. “Can you understand my fears? If we got back to the real world…and Yuuko asked for a divorce…I couldn’t bear that disgrace. So…so it was best to act while I was still her husband. While I was still here, with a legal method of murder at my disposal. Can anyone blame me…for wishing to keep my memories of Yuuko pure and pristine?”

After his long and ghastly confession had finished, no one spoke.

I heard the hoarse voice emerge from my throat, though I wasn’t even aware I was doing it at first.

“Disgrace…disgrace? Your wife wouldn’t listen to you…and that’s why you killed her? She was strengthening herself and your friends to help escape from here…and might have one day stood among the ranks of those advancing us through the game…And just for that…?”

I had to use my left hand to hold down my right to keep it from instinctually drawing the blade on my back.

Grimlock looked up lazily, the lower frame of his glasses glinting, and whispered, “Just for that? It was plenty enough for what I did. Someday you will understand, Detective, once you have found love and are about to lose it.”

“No, Grimlock. You’re wrong about that.”

It was not me who bit back at him, but Asuna. Her beautiful features were cast in an expression I couldn’t read as she quietly stated, “What you felt for Griselda wasn’t love. It was possession. If you still love her, then take off your left glove. But I’m sure that you’ve already cast aside the wedding ring that Griselda never removed even to the moment of her murder.”

Grimlock’s shoulders trembled, and in a mirror image of what I had done moments before, grabbed his left hand with his right.

But he stopped there. The blacksmith silently held his grip, not removing the glove. The silence that followed was broken by Schmitt, who spoke up at last.

“…Kirito. Can you allow us to determine his fate? We will not execute him ourselves, of course. But he must pay for his crimes.”

His calm voice contained none of the terror that had gripped him until just minutes earlier. I looked up at the tall man in his clanking armor and nodded.

“Okay. He’s all yours.”

He nodded back and grabbed Grimlock’s right arm, pulling him to his feet. With the slumping blacksmith firmly under control, he said to me, “I appreciate this,” and descended the hill.

Next to leave were Yolko and Caynz, after she had buried the silver box back where it belonged. They passed by us, bowing deeply, then shared a look.

Yolko offered, “Asuna, Kirito. I don’t know how to apologize to you…or to thank you. If you hadn’t come to our aid, we would have died tonight…and never succeeded in exposing Grimlock’s crimes.”

“No…it’s thanks to you for remembering about the two rings at the end. It was a brilliant closing argument. You should be a lawyer or a prosecutor if we ever get back to reality.”

She chuckled and shrugged. “No…You might not believe me, but at that very moment, I swear I heard her voice, telling me to remember the rings.”

“…I see…”

They bowed again and descended the hill after Schmitt as Asuna and I watched. Eventually all four cursors had vanished in the direction of the town, leaving only the blue moonlight and gentle breeze on the lonely hilltop.

“…Hey, Kirito,” Asuna said abruptly. “If you were married to someone…and later on, you found out she had a side you never knew about, what would you think?”

“Uh…”

I hadn’t expected this question and didn’t have a quick answer. I had only been alive for fifteen and a half years. I had no way to understand a life like that. But after giving it some good, desperate thought, I came up with an answer, shallow though it was.

“I guess I’d think I was lucky.”

“Huh?”

“I…I mean, being married means you already love the sides of her you’ve already seen, right? So if you find a new side of her and fall in love with that…it’s t-twice as much to love.”

It was hardly worthy of being called intelligent, but Asuna thought it over, tilted her head, and grinned a bit.

“Hmm. That’s weird.”

“Uh…weird…?”

“Whatever. More importantly…all this activity has got me starving. Let’s get something to eat.”

“G-good idea. Then…let’s go get that Algade specialty, the one that looks like a fried pancake, only without the savory sauce it’s supposed to have…”

“Rejected,” she stated flatly. I started to trudge along, when she suddenly grabbed my shoulder from behind.

I turned around with a start and witnessed an inexplicable sight for the nth time since the safe-haven incident occurred.

In Aincrad, all sensory information was nothing more than coded digital data. That meant that ghostly phenomena could not exist.

So what I was seeing was either a bug in the server or an illusion that my biological brain was producing.

On the north face of the hill, a slight distance away, next to the grave marker that stood solitary next to the foot of the gnarled tree, stood a female player, translucent and glowing a pale gold.

Her skinny body was wrapped in the minimum of metal armor. There was a narrow longsword at her waist and a shield on her back. Her hair was short, and her face was stately and beautiful, but her eyes were brimming with a strong light that I recognized from several other players I knew.

They were the eyes of a conqueror, of one with a strong will to bring this game of death to an end with her own sword. The woman watched Asuna and me silently with a smile on her lips, then, as though offering something, stretched out her open right hand.

I, like Asuna, held out my right hand in return and, when I felt something warm in the palm of my hand, clenched it tight. The warmth passed through my body and lit a fire in my chest, only to leave through my lips in the form of words.

“We will carry on…your will. One day, we’ll beat this game and free everyone.”

“Yes, we promise. So please…watch over us, Griselda,” Asuna continued, the whisper reaching the lady warrior on the night breeze. Her translucent face split in a wide grin.

And in the next moment, there was no one there.

We let our hands drop and stood in place. Eventually Asuna squeezed my hand and grinned.

“C’mon, let’s go. We’ve got a lot of work tomorrow.”

“…That’s right. Gotta clear this floor before the week is over.”

We turned and walked down the little hill in the direction of town.