Three lights, deep blue, arranged like a whispering constellation.

Suguha Kirigaya reached out to trace those lights with her fingertips.

The LEDs on the front rim of the NerveGear VR headgear indicated its current status.

From right to left, they represented power, network connection, and brain interface. If that leftmost light ever switched to red, it meant that the user’s brain had been rendered nonfunctioning.

The NerveGear’s wearer was resting on a large, soft gel bed in the midst of an off-white hospital room, deep in an un-waking sleep. But no, that wasn’t quite right. His soul was actually in a far-off world, battling day and night. Battling to free himself and thousands of other players held prisoner.

“Big brother…” Suguha softly called out to Kazuto. “It’s been two years already. I’m going to be in high school soon…If you don’t come back to us, I’ll shoot past you…”

She dropped her fingers down to trace his cheek. His flesh had sunk over the long course of this comatose state, as though it had been carved out. Kazuto’s facial profile was already soft and androgynous to begin with, and now it looked more feminine than ever. Their mother had even jokingly called him “our Sleeping Beauty.”

It wasn’t just his face that was gaunt; his entire body was painfully thin. Athletic Suguha, who had been actively training in kendo from a young age, almost certainly outweighed him at this point. Lately, she was gripped with the terrible thought that he might just wither away into nothing.

But for the past year, she’d made certain not to cry while in his hospital room with him. Not since she’d heard the news from the member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs team in charge of handling the “SAO Incident.” The man with long bangs and black-framed glasses spoke with a note of respect in his voice: Her brother was currently among the very top players within the game when measured by level—one of the capable few pushing the forward progress of the game, despite considerable personal danger.

Even now, he was probably facing death within the other world. Which meant that Suguha couldn’t sit here crying over him. She had to take his hand and give him her full support.

“Hang in there…You can do it, big brother.”

She clasped Kazuto’s bony hand in both of hers, praying fervently, when a voice from behind caught her by surprise.

“Oh, you’re already here, Suguha.”

She hastily spun around. “M-Mom…”

It was their mother, Midori. The sliding doors on the hospital room were so quiet that she hadn’t noticed they were no longer alone.

Midori put the bouquet of cosmos into the vase at the side of the bed and took the seat next to Suguha. She must have come on the commute home from work, as she was wearing a rough leather blouse over a cotton shirt and slim jeans. Her light cosmetics and carelessly tied ponytail did not suggest a woman who would be in her forties next year. She had the energy of a much younger woman, perhaps due to her job as the editor of a tech magazine. Suguha often thought of her more as an elder sister than a mother.

“I’m surprised you had time to visit, Mom. Isn’t the print deadline coming up?”

Midori flashed her a grin in response.

“I pushed my way free this one time. I don’t usually manage to visit, so I wanted to make time today.”

“That’s right. Today’s his…birthday…”

The two stared in silence at the bed and its sleeping Kazuto. The sunset breeze pushed the curtains and sent the smell of the cosmos wafting under her nose.

“Kazuto’s already sixteen,” Midori murmured. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Minetaka and I were watching a movie in the living room, and Kazuto snuck up on us and said, ‘Tell me about my parents.’”

Suguha saw a brief, nostalgic smile play across her lightly rouged lips.

“He caught me completely by surprise. He was only ten. We were going to keep the secret until you were in high school, Suguha…another seven years. But somehow he realized that certain parts of his citizen record were deleted.”

She’d never heard this story before. Suguha’s initial reaction was not shock, however, but the same wry smile on her mother’s face.

“Geez…that’s so him.”

“He caught us so flat-footed that we weren’t able to deny it very convincingly. That must have been by design. Minetaka even agreed that he got us good.”

They laughed aloud together, only to return to watching the sleeping Kazuto in silence.

Suguha’s brother, Kazuto Kirigaya, had been living with her for as long as she could remember, but in reality he was not her brother—he was her cousin.

Midori and Minetaka Kirigaya were Suguha’s parents, but Kazuto was the son of Midori’s sister, Suguha’s aunt. Kazuto’s parents died in a tragic accident when he was not even a year old. He survived, though with significant injuries. Midori then took in her nephew as her own.

Suguha had only known the truth for the past two years—since the winter after Kazuto had been taken prisoner by the virtual world called Sword Art Online. Already traumatized by the awful circumstances, she turned on her mother, demanding to know why the truth had been kept from her for so long.

Even now, two years later, she still felt a deep, simmering discontent that she’d been the only one excluded from the knowledge. It was only recently that she’d finally begun to understand her parents’ line of thinking.

The reason they’d sped up their schedule and told Suguha the truth before she entered high school was a bitter one: They wanted to ensure she knew while Kazuto was still alive. The SAO Incident resulted in an alarming number of deaths—more than two thousand in the first month alone. Under those circumstances, her parents had no choice but to face the very likely possibility that Kazuto would die. They wanted to ensure that Suguha wouldn’t regret something she’d never known until it was too late.

Suguha visited Kazuto’s hospital room often, searching for some kind of answer, conflicted by an array of clashing emotions. If her brother wasn’t really her brother, what was it she was losing?

The answer she arrived at was: nothing.

Nothing was changing. Nothing was damaged or lost. Before and after the truth, Suguha’s only course of action was to pray for Kazuto’s life and safe return.

Two years later, one of those two prayers was still working.

“Hey, Mom,” Suguha said softly, still watching his face.

“Yessum?”

“Do you think that has anything to do…with why he got really into online games right around the time he started middle school?”

She didn’t say the stuff about not being a real member of the family, but Midori understood and shook her head immediately.

“No, that had nothing to do with it. He built his own rig from some spare parts I’d left around the place when he was six. Did you know that? If anything, he managed to remotely inherit my computer obsession.”

Suguha giggled and elbowed her mother’s arm. “Grandma told me once that you were addicted to video games when you were a kid.”

“That’s right. I was playing games online when I was in elementary school. Kazuto had nothing on me.”

They laughed together once again, and Midori cast a loving glance at the figure on the bed.

“But I was never one of the top players in any of the games I played. I didn’t have the force of will or patience for it. That’s the part he shares with you, not me. Kazuto’s alive now because he has the same blood of yours that’s kept you in kendo classes for the last eight years. He’ll be back one day, mark my words.”

Midori patted her daughter on the head and stood up. “I’m going to head on home now. Don’t stay too late.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she replied.

Midori took another look at Kazuto and murmured, “Happy birthday.” After a few rapid blinks, she turned and swiftly left the hospital room.

Suguha placed her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, and stared at the LEDs on the surface of the headgear that covered her brother’s head.

The blue stars that represented the network connection and brain status were blinking rapidly. Somewhere beyond that connection, Kazuto’s mind was within the world of SAO, sending and receiving countless tiny signals through the NerveGear.

Where was he now? Wandering through a dim dungeon with map in hand? Browsing items at a shop? Or swinging his sword bravely at some horrible monster?

She reached out and held his pale white hand again.

The NerveGear blocked the sensations on Kazuto’s actual skin at the spine, and the feelings did not reach his brain. But Suguha believed that the fervent support she sent him through their skin would find its way to him.

She could feel it. Her brother’s soul—her cousin’s soul—was emitting a powerful heat. A sign of absolute will to survive and return to the real world.

The golden light filtering through the white curtains turned to deep red, then purple. The hospital room sank into the gloom of night, but Suguha did not budge. She sat perfectly still, listening to each and every fragile breath her brother took.

She received word from the hospital that Kazuto had awakened one month later, on November 7th, 2024.