1

Clak, clok.

The unfinished rocking chair rattled pleasantly on the porch.

Gentle late-autumn light filtered through the cypress branches. Off the distant lake blew a slight breeze.

She was dozing gently, her cheek resting on my chest. Her breath was slow.

Time passed drip by drip, golden with serenity.

Clak, clok.

As I set the chair to rock, I stroked her soft chestnut hair. Even in her sleep, a faint smile played across her lips.

A few juvenile squirrels frolicked in the front yard. A pot of stew was bubbling back in the kitchen. Life in this tiny house deep in the woods was so tranquil and easy. I wished it would last forever, but I knew it couldn’t.

Clak, clok.

With every creak of the rocking chair, another grain of time fell.

I clutched her tighter to my chest, trying to resist that inevitable passage.

My arms embraced nothing but empty air.

My eyes flew open with a start. An instant earlier, our bodies had been touching, but she’d disappeared like a lie. I rose and looked around.

The sunset was growing radically darker moment by moment, as though it were a stage effect in a theater. The creeping night turned the forest black.

I stood up into the wind, blowing colder than before, and called out her name.

There was no answer. She was not in the front yard, now devoid of any critters, nor was she in the kitchen.

Somehow, the house was completely surrounded in darkness now. Like a children’s pop-up book, the walls and furniture of the little cabin fell flat against the ground and vanished. Soon, the only things around me were the rocking chair and the night. The chair kept rocking back and forth, without anyone in it.

Clak, clok.

Clak, clok.

I shut my eyes, covered my ears, and screamed her name with every ounce of strength I had.

That scream was so powerful and real that even after I bolted awake, I couldn’t be sure if I’d screamed aloud or if it was only in my dream.

I closed my eyes again in the vain hope of returning to that dream’s happy beginning, but eventually I had to give up the dark and open my eyes.

It was not the white panels of a hospital room but walls with narrow wooden boards that came into my vision. The bed, too, wasn’t made of an advanced gel material, but a mattress with cotton sheets. There were no IV drips stuck into my arms.

This is my—This is Real World Kazuto Kirigaya’s bedroom.

I sat up and looked around. The room had authentic wood flooring, a rarity in this day and age. There were only three pieces of furniture: a simple computer desk, a wall rack, and my pipe-frame bed.

The rack was the kind that tilts to lean against the wall. Sitting on the middle shelf was a piece of headgear in a faded navy blue. A NerveGear.

This was the full-dive VR interface that had trapped me in a virtual world against my will for two whole years. It was only after a long and terrible battle that I was released to see, touch, and feel the real world again.

I was back.

But the girl who’d swung her sword at my side, who’d shared her heart with mine…

I squeezed my eyes shut, turning away from the NerveGear, and got to my feet. I looked in the mirror placed on the other side of the bed. The electroluminescent panel embedded in the mirror placed the date and time just above the reflection of my face.

Sunday, January 9th, 2025, 7:15 AM.

Two months had passed since I’d returned to the real world, but I still wasn’t used to my appearance. My old form as Kirito the swordsman and my real self, Kazuto Kirigaya, bore the same face. But I still hadn’t regained the weight I’d lost, and the bony body beneath my T-shirt was frail.

I noticed in the mirror two shining tear tracks on my cheeks, and I reached up to wipe them away.

“Look at me, Asuna. I’m such a crybaby now.”

Muttering, I walked to the south end of the room and the large window there. With both hands, I cast open the curtains and let the wan sun of a winter morning dye the room’s insides pale yellow.

Suguha Kirigaya strode across the frosty lawn making pleasant crunching sounds.

Yesterday’s snow had almost entirely disappeared, but the mid-January morning air was still cold enough to bite.

She stopped at the bank of the pond, frozen over with a thin film of ice, and let the shinai—her bamboo kendo sword—rest against the trunk of a black pine. Suguha inhaled deeply to banish the last remnants of sleep from her body, then put her hands on her knees to begin stretching.

She gently, slowly loosened the muscles resisting the call to wake. Toes, Achilles tendons, calves—the blood flowed faster into each in turn, bringing forth telltale prickling.

She put her hands together and stretched them straight down, and when her waist was fully bent over, she stopped dead still. As she arched over the pond, the smooth surface of the morning’s fresh ice reflected her figure.

Suguha had cut her hair straight across, just above the eyebrows and the shoulders. It was so black that it almost had a bluish tinge. The ice showed her a girl with brows equally black and thick and large, confident eyes that gave her a boyish air. Particularly when you considered her outfit: an old-fashioned white dogi with black hakama bottom.

It’s true…He and I really don’t look alike…

It was a thought that occurred to her often these days. It popped into her head every time she looked in the mirror in a bathroom or the foyer of their house. She didn’t hate the way she looked, and she wasn’t particularly disposed to caring about such things, but now that her brother, Kazuto, was living at home again, she couldn’t help but compare them.

No use thinking about this.

Suguha shook her head and resumed stretching.

When she was finished, she grabbed the bamboo sword off the pine tree. She gripped the old, familiar handle, letting it sink into her hands, and then straightened her back, hands at stomach height.

She held her breath and pose—and, with a sharp cry, swung the blade straight downward. Several sparrows took off from the branches over her head, startled by the disturbance of the morning air.

The Kirigaya home was an old-fashioned Japanese house in the southern region of Saitama Prefecture, a former castle town that still featured many of its archaic sights. Their family line could be traced back many generations, and Suguha’s late grandfather, who had died four years ago, was a strict man of the old ways.

He had served on the police force for many years and was said to be quite a kendo practitioner when he was young. He was hoping for the same from his only son—Suguha’s father. But her father only swung the shinai until high school before transferring to an American college. Once out of school, he went straight to work for a multinational securities company. He met her mother, Midori, after getting a transfer to the Japanese branch, but his work still took him back and forth over the Pacific constantly. As a result, her grandfather’s fierce passion was typically directed at herself and Kazuto.

Suguha and her brother were enrolled in a local kendo dojo at the same time they entered elementary school. Kazuto seemed to be influenced more by Midori’s job as the editor of a computing magazine—he loved the keyboard more than the sword, and he’d quit within two years. But Suguha, who was only placed in the dojo to keep her brother company, took to kendo quite easily, and she still practiced it now, even after her grandfather was gone.

Suguha was fifteen. Last year, she’d placed among the top in the country at her final middle school kendo meet, and she’d already earned a recommendation to one of the premier schools in the prefecture for kendo.

But…

Suguha had never struggled with her direction in the past. She loved kendo, and it made her happy to please others and meet their expectations.

But ever since the incident that shocked Japan and stole her brother two years ago, a seed of doubt had grown within her, one she could not remove. You might call it regret—regret that she had not tried harder to fill the deep, wide gap that grew between them when Kazuto quit kendo when she was seven.

After leaving kendo behind, her brother had taken to computers as though slaking an unquenchable thirst. As an elementary school student, he’d built his own machine out of spare parts, even doing some rudimentary programming with their mother’s guidance. To Suguha, he might as well have been speaking a different language.

Of course, she’d learned how to use a computer at school and even had one of her own in her room, but the most she used it for was e-mail and web browsing. She didn’t understand the world her brother lived in. The online RPGs he played were even more baffling. She couldn’t fathom ever wanting to wear a mask to hide herself and playing along with other masked people.

When they were much, much younger, Suguha and Kazuto had been closer than friends. But when he’d ventured off to this strange world she didn’t understand, Suguha filled that sense of loss and loneliness with kendo. Yet the more she swung her sword, the less they talked and the further apart they grew, until that became the normal state of things.

But deep down, Suguha still felt that loneliness. She wanted to spend more time with her brother. She wanted to understand his world, and she wanted him to see her compete.

Before she could bring herself to talk to him, the Incident had happened.

The game of nightmares, Sword Art Online. The minds of ten thousand young Japanese had been trapped in an electronic prison, asleep to the outside world.

Kazuto had been taken to a large hospital in the city of Saitama. On the first day that Suguha went to see him, surrounded by cords in that hospital bed with the hateful apparatus stuck on his head, she’d cried uncontrollably for the first time in her life. She clung to her brother, wailing and bawling.

She might never talk to him again. Why hadn’t she tried to close the distance between them? It shouldn’t have been that hard. It should have been possible.

That was when she’d begun reconsidering in earnest her reasons for doing kendo. But no amount of agonized deliberation brought her an answer. She turned fourteen, then fifteen, without her brother. She moved on to high school, following the path others laid out for her, but she never once was certain that she was moving in the right direction.

If he came back, she would talk to him in earnest. She would reveal all her anxieties and indecision and ask for his advice. And two months ago, a miracle had occurred. He broke the shackles of his own accord and came back.

But much had changed between them by this time. Suguha’s mother had revealed that Kazuto was not actually her brother but her cousin.

Her father, Minetaka, was an only child, and Midori’s only sister had died at a young age, so Suguha had no concept of cousins. When she suddenly learned that Kazuto was the son of her mother’s sister, she couldn’t immediately grasp the distance of that distinction. Part of her felt he was infinitely more distant, and part of her thought there was no difference at all. She still couldn’t put her relationship with Kazuto into words.

But…no. There was one thing that had changed…

Suguha swung her sword sharper than before, trying to jolt herself away from that train of thought before it took root. She was afraid of where that would lead her, so she focused her mind on the sensations of her body and kept swinging.

By the time she finished her allotted number of swings, the angle of the morning sun was quite different. She wiped away the sweat on her brow as she put down the shinai, and then turned to see…

“Ah…”

Suguha froze the instant she looked back to the house.

At some point, Kazuto had sat down on the edge of the porch, clad in sweats, watching her. When their eyes met, he smiled and said, “Morning.”

He tossed her a small bottle of mineral water, and she caught it with her left hand.

“G-good morning. You should have said something if you were watching.”

“You looked so serious, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Trust me, it’s all automatic to me at this point…”

Suguha was secretly pleased that they’d been able to manage easy conversations like this naturally over the last two months, but she still sat at an awkward distance from him. She set down the shinai and twisted the cap off the bottle, feeling the cold water permeate her flushed body as it passed her lips.

“Yeah, I guess so. You’ve been doing it this entire time…”

Kazuto picked up her shinai and gave it a quick swing, still sitting down. He looked instantly perplexed.

“Too light…”

“Huh?” Suguha pulled away from the bottle to stare at him. “That’s a true bamboo blade, so it’s on the heavy side. The carbon fiber ones are almost two ounces lighter.”

“Oh, right. I meant, uh…comparatively speaking.”

He suddenly snatched the bottle of water from her hands and downed the rest of it in one mouthful.

“Hey…” She felt her cheeks burn and questioned him in order to hide it. “Compared to what?”

He didn’t answer, placing the bottle on the porch and getting to his feet. “Say, you wanna have a go?”

She looked up at him, dumbfounded. “Have a go? Like…a match?”

“Exactly.”

Kazuto never had much of an interest in kendo, but he spoke as though the idea were commonplace.

“With all the equipment and everything…?”

“Hmm, I guess we could try holding back at the last moment…but I’d hate to see you get hurt, Sugu. We still have Grandpa’s old gear, right? Let’s do it in the dojo.”

Suguha quickly forgot her confusion and trepidation over his sudden idea, and a grin crossed her lips.

“Are you sure? It’s been a while for you, hasn’t it? And you want to face one of the national quarterfinalists? Will there be any contest? Besides…” She looked concerned. “Can your body handle it? You shouldn’t push yourself…”

“Heh! I gotta show off the results of all that muscle-building rehab.”

He smirked and began trotting off to the building around the back of the house. Suguha hurried after him.

The Kirigaya family plot was larger than it had any right to be, and to the east of the main house was a small but cozy dojo. Their grandfather’s will had made it absolutely clear that the building was not to be torn down, so Suguha used it for her everyday practice, and it was therefore well maintained.

They stepped into the dojo barefooted, performed the customary bow, and started preparing for their duel. Fortunately, their late grandfather had been about Kazuto’s size, so he found a set of armor that, while dusty, was a good fit for him. They finished tightening the strings on their helmets at the same time and faced each other in the center of the room. Another bow.

Suguha rose from the formal kneeling position and held her beloved shinai at mid-level. Kazuto, meanwhile…

“What’s that supposed to be, big brother?”

The moment Suguha saw Kazuto’s stance, she burst out chuckling. It was absolutely bizarre. His left foot was extended forward, his right foot back. His waist was crouched, the tip of the shinai in his right hand nearly touching the floorboards, while his left hand was merely placed on the hilt.

“If there were a judge here, he’d totally chew you out!”

“Good thing there isn’t. This is my own personal style.”

Suguha resumed her position in disbelief. Kazuto spread his feet even farther, lowering his center of gravity.

Just as she steeled her back foot for a forward pounce that would easily catch his helpless helmet, Suguha hesitated. Kazuto’s stance was preposterous, but there was a kind of ease about it. His defense appeared full of easily exploitable holes, but she felt she couldn’t just charge forward without caution. It was as though he was utilizing a stance he’d practiced for years and years…

But that couldn’t be right. Kazuto had only practiced kendo for two years, from age seven to eight. He wouldn’t have learned anything but the very basics.

He suddenly sprang into motion, as though sensing her hesitation. Kazuto slid forward, still low, his shinai springing upward from the right. His speed itself wasn’t surprising, but the motion was, and Suguha was caught flat-footed. She could only act on reflex.

“Teya!!”

From her open right foot, she swung down at Kazuto’s left gauntlet. Her timing was perfect—or it would have been if she hadn’t hit empty air.

His dodge was impossible. Kazuto pulled his left hand off the hilt of the shinai and pulled it in close to his body. That shouldn’t be possible. Now his shinai shot forward at Suguha’s exposed helmet. She craned her neck hastily to avoid it.

They circled around and pulled back to allow a space between them. Suguha’s mind had switched to a different mode altogether. There was a pleasant, familiar tension present, all the blood in her body threatening to boil. This time it was her turn to attack. She unleashed her best, a “kote men” strike from gauntlet to helmet—

But Kazuto evaded it cleanly once again. He pulled back his arm, twisted his body, and avoided the point of her blade by the width of a hair. Secretly, Suguha was shocked. She was known on her team for the quickness of her strikes, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d missed on multiple attacks in such a spectacular manner.

Now she struck powerfully, in full attack mode. The tip of her sword flashed at breathless speed. But Kazuto dodged each and every strike. Glancing at his eyes through the helmet’s mask, Suguha thought that he saw every one with perfect precision.

Irritated, she came in close to catch hilt on hilt. The pressure of Suguha’s powerful legs and core pushed Kazuto off-balance. Without missing a beat, she unleashed a powerful overhead blow.

“Yaaah!!”

By the time she came to her senses, it was too late. The uncompromising swing caught Kazuto flush on the center of his mask. A high-pitched thwack echoed through the dojo.

He stumbled backward several steps until he managed to regain his balance.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” she cried, but he waved a hand in easy reassurance.

“Wow…I give. You’re really tough, Sugu. Heathcliff’s got nothing on you.”

“Are you sure you’re all right…?”

“Yeah. Let’s call it a day, though.”

Kazuto took several steps backward and did something even more bizarre. He whipped the shinai back and forth, then attempted to place it over his back. The next moment, he froze, then scratched the outside of his helmet. Now Suguha was really worried.

“Are you sure that blow to your head didn’t…?”

“N-no, no! It’s an old habit.” He slumped down to his knees and began untying his guards.

They left the dojo together and headed for the wash station outside the house, splashing water onto their faces to rinse away the sweat. The duel’s transition from good fun to deadly serious had left them both feeling plenty warm.

“You really caught me by surprise back there. When did you get to practice like that?”

“Well, my step is good, but the attack still isn’t up to snuff. It’s a lot harder to re-create those sword skills without system assistance,” he muttered cryptically. “Still, that was a lot of fun. Maybe I should pick up kendo again.”

“Really? Really, really?!”

Suguha hadn’t meant for it to sound that excited. She could tell her face had lost its composure.

“Can you teach me, Sugu?”

“O-of course! Let’s do kendo again!”

“Once I put more muscle back on.”

Kazuto ruffled her hair, and she grinned. Just the thought of them having practice together again nearly brought her to tears with joy.

“Um, hey, big brother, guess what?”

Suguha didn’t know why he had suddenly decided to pick up kendo again, but in her excitement, she was about to reveal her new hobby to him. But abruptly thought better of it and clammed up.

“What?”

“Um, never mind. It’s still a secret!”

“Whatever, weirdo.”

They walked in the back door of the house, drying their heads off with large towels. Their mother, Midori, always slept until noon-ish, so breakfast was usually Suguha’s job, though Kazuto helped alternate now.

“I’m gonna hop in the shower. What’re you up to today?”

“Oh…I’m going to…the hospital…”

“…”

She’d asked the question without thinking, and now Suguha’s buoyant spirits returned to earth a bit.

“Ah, right. You’re going to see her.”

“Yep…It’s the only thing I can do…”

It was about a month ago that Kazuto had told her he’d found his beloved in that other world. They’d been sitting against the wall, side by side, in his room, holding coffee mugs as he told the story in bits and pieces. In the past, Suguha would never have believed you could fall in love with someone in a virtual world. But now, she felt like she understood. What really struck her was the faint glimpse of tears she saw welling in his eyes as he spoke.

They’d been together until the very final moment, Kazuto said. They were supposed to return to the real world hand in hand. But only he came back. She was still sleeping. No one could explain what had happened to her—what was still happening to her. He had visited her in the hospital for three straight days.

Suguha tried to imagine Kazuto sitting at the bedside of his lover, holding her hand, silently calling her name, as she had done to him. Every time she did, she was struck with an indescribable emotion; it was a sharp twinge, striking deep in her heart. Her breathing grew painful. It made her want to hold herself and fall to the floor.

She wanted Kazuto to have a smile on his face forever. He was so changed after his return, so much brighter, that he might as well have been a different person. He talked to Suguha easily, he was shockingly kind, and he didn’t seem to be forcing himself to do it. It was as though they were back to their childhood ways. That was why seeing tears in his eyes was so painful to her, she told herself.

But I already know…

Suguha knew that when he hid his eyes while talking about Her, the pain that welled in her chest came from another, secret emotion.

She silently called out to him as she watched him drinking his cup of milk in the kitchen.

Big brother, I know the truth.

Suguha still wasn’t sure what had changed when he went from brother to cousin.

But she did know one thing: something she’d never considered before, but which now perpetually twinkled inside of her secretly.

It was the fact that maybe, just maybe, she was allowed to fall in love with her brother.

I took a quick shower, changed, and left the house on the mountain bike I’d bought a month ago. I pedaled slowly and easily to the south. It was a nine-mile trip to my destination, which was a long way to ride on a bike, but it made for good muscle-building rehabilitation.

I was heading for the city of Tokorozawa in Saitama Prefecture—a state-of-the-art general hospital on the outskirts of town. In a room on the top floor, she was quietly sleeping.

Two months earlier, I’d ended the game of death that was Sword Art Online by defeating its final boss, Heathcliff the Paladin, on the seventy-fifth floor of the floating castle Aincrad. Just after that, I awoke in an unfamiliar hospital room and realized that I’d returned to reality.

But she—my game partner, the woman I loved more than any other, Asuna the Flash—did not come with me.

It didn’t take long to look up her actual location. After waking in that Tokyo hospital room, I wandered the halls on uncertain legs until the nurses spotted me. In less than an hour, a man in a suit rushed in to see me. He claimed to be from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, SAO Incident Office.

That imposing-sounding organization had been formed soon after the SAO Incident began, but in those two years, they’d been able to accomplish very little. I couldn’t blame them. One wrong move attempting to interfere with the server and undo the mastermind Akihiko Kayaba’s programmed protection, and ten thousand minds could have been boiled in an instant. No one man could shoulder the responsibility to make that choice.

What they could do, however, was arrange for the victims to be taken to adequate hospitals—in itself a remarkable accomplishment of coordination—and monitor what little player data was available to the outside world.

Somehow, they knew my level, my coordinates, and even that I was high up among the “clearers” who were responsible for advancing progress in the game. Which was apparently why, when players held captive suddenly began waking up one day last November, they rushed to my hospital room to ask me what had happened.

I’d given the man in the black-rimmed glasses my conditions. I would tell him everything I knew. In return, he would tell me what I wanted to know.

What I wanted was Asuna’s location, naturally. After a few minutes of frantic phone calls, the man came back, clearly unnerved.

“Asuna Yuuki is being held at a medical facility in Tokorozawa. But she hasn’t awakened like the others…In fact, there are still three hundred victims around the country who haven’t come back yet.”

At the very beginning, simple server lag was the hypothesis, given the enormity of the process that had transpired within the game. But as the hours and days went on, no update came on the condition of Asuna and the three hundred like her.

The public was electrified, speculating that Akihiko Kayaba’s plot still continued. But I couldn’t agree. I’d been there in that world of endless sunset as Aincrad collapsed behind us. I’d talked to him for a few brief minutes, and I recalled the lucidity in his gaze.

Kayaba said that he would release all of the surviving players. At that late hour, he had no reason to lie about it. I took him at his word—that he was prepared to move on from that world and wipe everything clean.

But whether through an unforeseen accident or someone else’s design, the main SAO server was not reformatted entirely. It was still an impenetrable black box, working away. In the same way, Asuna’s NerveGear still held her spirit prisoner, attached to that server. There was no way for me to know what was going on in there. If only, one more time, I could return to that world…

Suguha would be furious if she knew, but one time I left a note, went into my room, and put my NerveGear back on. I tried loading up the Sword Art Online client, but before my eyes appeared only a simple error message: UNABLE TO CONNECT TO SERVER.

So, as soon as my physical rehab was finished and I was able to get around again, I started visiting Asuna’s hospital room as regularly as I could.

The time I spent with her was always painful. Knowing that someone so important to me was spirited away by something cruel and unfeeling left my soul wounded. I could feel it oozing blood. But there was nothing else I could do. As I am now, powerless and minuscule, I was helpless.

After forty minutes of slow, measured pedaling, I turned off the major thoroughfare and onto a smaller road, which wound its way up some hills until a massive building came into view. It was a high-tech medical facility, operated by a private corporation.

I waved at the now-familiar security guard as I passed through the front gate, then parked my bicycle in a corner of the large lot. I got my guest pass from the luxurious first-floor lobby that looked more hotel than hospital and clipped it to my shirt pocket as I strode into the elevator.

The doors opened smoothly, just a few seconds later, on the eighteenth, and highest, floor. An empty hallway continued south. This floor was largely reserved for long-term patients, so it was rare to pass anyone in the halls. Eventually, I reached the end, and a pale green door came into view. There was a dully glowing nameplate on the wall next to the door.

Yuuki, Asuna. Beneath the name, a single slot. I took the pass off my chest and slid it through the reader. A chime sounded, and the door automatically retracted.

One step inside and I was surrounded by the cool scent of flowers. Despite the midwinter season, the room was positively exploding with real, fresh flowers. Farther inside the spacious room, a curtain was drawn, and I approached it slowly.

Please let her be awake in there. I put my hand on the curtain, praying for a miracle. Silently, it parted.

It was a state-of-the-art bed designed for full patient care. The surface was a gel material, the same as mine had been. A clean white comforter was glowing softly in the sunlight. She was underneath it, sleeping.

The first time I’d visited this place, I was struck by the sudden thought that she might not want me to see her real-life body while she was unconscious. But that concern was completely banished from my mind when I saw how beautiful she looked.

Her rich, lustrous chestnut hair was splayed softly across the support cushions. Her skin was so pale, you could nearly see through it, but the hospital’s gentle care kept it from having a sickly tinge. There was even a hint of rose color in her cheeks.

She didn’t seem to have lost as much weight as I had. The slender line from her neck to collarbone was just as I remembered it in the virtual world. Light pink lips. Long eyelashes. It almost seemed like they might tremble and pop open at any moment—if not for the navy blue headgear that covered her skull.

All three indicator lights on the NerveGear were shining blue. The occasional starlike twinkle was proof that the connection was functioning. Even now, her soul was held captive in another world.

I took her fragile hand in both of mine. There was a slight warmth to it. It was no different from the hand I remembered—the one that clung to mine, that touched my body, that slipped around my back. My breath caught, and I desperately held back the tears.

“Asuna…”

The faint alarm of the bedside clock brought me back to my senses. My eyes snapped to it and I was surprised to find it was already noon.

“I’ve got to go now, Asuna. I’ll be back soon…”

As I stood to leave, the door opened behind me. I turned around to see two men entering the room.

“Ahh, you’re here, Kirigaya. As always, I appreciate your concern.”

A smile split the face of the solid middle-aged man in front. He wore a well-tailored three-piece brown suit, and the tightness of his face despite his stocky build suggested the vitality of a very successful man. Only the silver in his slicked-back hair revealed the mental toll that the last two years had taken.

He was Shouzou Yuuki, Asuna’s father. She had mentioned once or twice that he was an entrepreneur, but even then, I couldn’t hide my shock when I learned that he was actually the CEO of the electronics manufacturer RCT.

I gave him a polite bow and said, “Good afternoon. Sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Yuuki.”

“Not at all. Come any time you like. I’m sure she’s happy.”

He approached Asuna’s bedside and tenderly stroked her hair. All was quiet for a moment, then he looked up and motioned to the other man with him.

“You haven’t met, have you? This is Sugou, the manager of our lab.”

My first impression was that he seemed quite nice. He was tall, clad in a dark gray suit, with frameless glasses resting on his long face. The eyes behind the thin lenses were narrow lines, which made it seem as though he were smiling all the time. He was quite young—not yet thirty, by my estimation.

Sugou extended a hand to me and said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Nobuyuki Sugou. So you’re the hero, Kirito.”

“…Kazuto Kirigaya. Nice to meet you.”

I glanced at Shouzou as I shook Sugou’s hand. He inclined his head slightly as he stroked his chin.

“Oops, sorry ’bout that. I know, stuff that happened in the SAO servers is all confidential. But it was such a dramatic tale that it’s hard not to talk about it. He’s the son of a very good friend of mine. Our families have been close for years.”

“About that, sir.” Sugou turned to Shouzou, releasing my hand. “I was hoping we could get everything official by the end of next month.”

“I see…and you’re sure about this? You’re still so young; there’s plenty of time to start a new life.”

“My heart has been set on this for years. I’d like to be able to put Asuna in that dress…while she’s still so beautiful.”

“…Indeed. It might be time to make a hard decision.”

I listened to their conversation, unsure of what they were discussing. Shouzou looked back to me.

“Well, it’s time I ought to be going. I’ll see you again later, Kirigaya.”

With a brisk nod, Shouzou Yuuki turned his imposing bulk around and walked to the door. It opened and shut again. Only the man named Sugou was left.

He slowly paced around the foot of the bed to stand on the other side, then picked up a lock of her hair and started rubbing it audibly with his fingers. Something about the gesture filled me with revulsion.

“I hear you lived together with Asuna inside the game,” he said softly, still looking at her.

“…Yes.”

“That makes things…complicated…between us, then.”

He raised his head and stared into my eyes. In that instant, I understood that my first impression of this man could not have been more wrong.

Those narrow eyes featured beady pupils that gave him a wicked glare. Both corners of his mouth curled upward into a grin that could not be described with any word other than devious. A chill ran up my spine.

“You see, the matter I mentioned a moment ago…” He gloated. “It regards my marriage to Asuna.”

I was struck speechless. What in the world was he talking about? The meaning of his words only slowly penetrated my skin, like freezing air. After several seconds of silence, I haltingly found my voice.

“You can’t…possibly…”

“True. Legally, we cannot be married because Asuna is not conscious and cannot give consent. On paper, the Yuuki family is simply taking me in as a foster son. As a matter of fact, she’s always hated me.”

He traced a finger along Asuna’s cheek.

“Her parents never seemed to have a clue. But I always knew that if the topic of marriage came up, there was a high likelihood she’d reject it. Which is exactly why this situation suits my ends so well. I hope she sleeps for a while yet.”

His finger got closer and closer to her lips.

“Stop it!”

I grabbed his hand without thinking and pulled it away from her face. My voice was hoarse with anger.

“Are you saying…you’re taking advantage of Asuna’s coma?”

Sugou leered again as he snatched his hand away. “Advantage? Actually, it’s entirely within my legal right. Kirigaya, are you aware of what happened to Argus, the developers of SAO?”

“I heard they were dissolved.”

“Yes. In addition to the development costs, the astronomical reparations for the Incident drove them bankrupt. Maintaining the SAO server was consigned to RCT’s full-dive engineering team: my department.”

Sugou circled around the headboard of the bed to face me. He stuck his face up close to mine, still wearing that demonic smirk.

“Meaning that Asuna’s life is now entirely under my supervision and control. And doesn’t that entitle me to just the tiniest amount of compensation?” he whispered into my ear, and I knew.

He was using Asuna’s helpless predicament, her very life, for his own selfish ends.

As I stood, petrified in shock, Sugou finally shed the leer he’d been wearing and spoke icily.

“I have no idea what kind of promises you two made while you were inside the game, but I’d appreciate it if you stopped visiting the hospital. And please keep your distance from the Yuuki family.”

I clenched my fists, but there was nothing I could do. Several glacial seconds passed. Eventually, Sugou pulled away, his cheek dimpling as though he were about to burst into laughter.

“We’ll have the ceremony here at the hospital next month. Tell you what: I’ll shoot you an invitation. I’ve got to be off, so get the most out of your final meeting—hero.”

I wish I had my swords, I thought desperately. I’d run him through the heart with one and cut off his head with the other. Cognizant of my rage or not, Sugou patted me on the shoulder and left the room.

I had no memory of the trip home. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on my bed, staring at the wall.

My marriage to Asuna.

Asuna’s life is now entirely under my supervision and control.

His words echoed through my head, over and over. Each time they did, I was pierced with hatred as sharp and hot as molten metal.

But…maybe my ego was getting the best of me.

Sugou had been close to the Yuuki family for years and was essentially Asuna’s fiancé. He had earned Shouzou Yuuki’s trust and was in a position of great responsibility at RCT. It had been decided years ago that he would one day marry Asuna, and I was just some kid who she met in an online game. Perhaps the rage I felt, the indignation at losing Asuna, was nothing more than the frustration of a child who had been deprived of his toys.

To us, the floating castle Aincrad was the only world that existed. That’s what we believed. The words we traded, the promises we made, all those memories were like shining jewels in my mind.

But the harsh whetstone of reality was grinding them down to size. It chipped away at those jewels.

I want to be with you forever, Kirito, she had said with a smile—a smile that was slowly but surely fading away.

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry, Asuna. I…can’t do anything…”

This time, the tears that I’d been struggling to hold back finally fell, dripping onto my clenched fists.

“The bath’s open, big brother,” Suguha called out to the door of Kazuto’s second-floor bedroom. There was no answer.

He’d returned from the hospital in the evening but immediately shut himself in his room, and he did not emerge for dinner.

Suguha put her hand on the doorknob, then hesitated. But she told herself that if he was napping untended, he might catch a cold, and so she pushed the knob.

It swiveled and clicked, and the door inched open. It was black inside. She thought he must be sleeping, until a wave of frigid air trickled over her, and she shivered. Kazuto must have left the window open.

Suguha snuck into the room, shaking her head. She closed the door and approached the window on the south side of the room, and she was startled to discover that Kazuto was not lying down asleep but was sitting on the edge of his bed, head slumped.

“Oh, um…sorry, I thought you were sleeping.”

After a few moments, Kazuto spoke, his voice ragged and weak.

“Can I just…be alone for a while?”

“B-but it’s so cold in here…” Suguha reached out and touched his arm. It was cold as ice. “Oh my gosh, you’re freezing! You’ll catch a chill. Come on, you need a bath.”

It was then that Suguha noticed the nighttime lights coming through the window, shining on Kazuto’s cheeks.

“Wh…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he muttered damply.

“But…”

Kazuto suddenly put his hands to his forehead, as if to block her uncomprehending stare. When he spoke again, it was hard and derisive.

“I’m hopeless…I swore to myself that I wouldn’t complain in front of you.”

In that instant, Suguha instinctively knew. Softly and hesitantly, she spoke.

“Did something happen…with Asuna?”

His body stiffened. It sounded like he wrung the voice out of his throat.

“Asuna…is going…far away. Far beyond…my grasp…”

That didn’t tell her anything specific. But the sight of him curled over, shedding tears like a child, shook Suguha deeply.

She closed the window, drew the curtains, and turned on the heater before sitting next to him on the bed. After a moment’s hesitation, she put her arms around his chilly body. She could feel the tension drain out of him.

Suguha whispered into his ear. “C’mon, hang in there. Don’t just give up on the one you truly love…”

It took all of her being to find those words, and when they left her mouth and echoed in her ears, the pain threatened to rip her apart. It was the pain of something coming to life within her breast. Suguha was keenly aware of how much she truly loved him at that moment.

I can’t keep lying to myself.

She leaned back and softly rolled Kazuto onto the bed, then pulled the covers up. Under their warmth, she put her arm around his back again.

As she gently rubbed his back, his racking sobs transitioned to the peaceful breath of sleep. She closed her eyes and told herself, I have to give up. I need to bury this deep, deep within me.

Kazuto’s heart belongs to her, not me.

A single tear of her own dripped down Suguha’s cheek and landed on the sheets.

I drifted through a sweet and pleasant warmth.

It was the wonderful sensation of floating just before waking up. The sunlight trickling through the forest branches gently caressed my cheek.

I leaned closer to embrace her as she slept next to me. Her breath was steady with sleep, and I opened my eyes to see…

“Wha—?”

I caught the yelp in my throat and leaped back a foot or two, still on my back. The next second, I sprung up to a sitting position and looked around wildly.

It wasn’t the same old forest on the twenty-second floor of Aincrad I always dreamed about. I was in my actual room, in my actual bed…but I wasn’t alone.

I carefully lifted the blanket, still shocked, but I put it back down just as quickly, so that I could shake my head to clear the cobwebs of sleep. I pulled the cover back again: short black hair. Vivid eyebrows.

Suguha was fast asleep, wearing her pajamas, face buried in my pillow.

“Wh-what the hell’s going on here…?”

I desperately tried to remember what had happened last night. Right—I seemed to remember having a conversation with Suguha after coming home from the hospital. I’d been lost in angst, and Suguha had done her best to console me. After that, I must have fallen asleep…

“What am I, a little kid…?”

After a brief bout of utter mortification, I looked back at Suguha’s innocent, sleeping face. Surely she didn’t need to sleep in the same bed to comfort me…

Thinking back, a similar thing had happened to me in Aincrad. There was the beast-tamer I met around the fortieth floor. She’d reminded me of Suguha. She’d also fallen asleep in my bed, and I had been just as confused about what to do then.

I couldn’t help but smile. Asuna and Sugou were still weighing heavily on my mind, but the chest-rending ache had somehow melted away overnight.

All the memories of what had happened in Aincrad were like precious jewels to me, whether happy or sad. The important thing was that they were all true memories. I couldn’t disparage them myself. I swore to Asuna that we would meet again in the real world. There must still be something I could do about this.

Suddenly, Suguha’s last words before I fell asleep echoed in my ears.

Don’t just give up…

“Yeah…you’re right,” I muttered, leaning forward to poke Suguha’s cheek. “Get up, Sugu, it’s morning.”

“Nng,” she grunted unhappily, trying to pull the blanket over her head. This time, I pinched her cheek and pulled it.

“Wake up. You’re wasting valuable morning practice time.”

“Muhh…”

Suguha finally open a bleary eye.

“Oh…good morning, big brother,” she murmured, sitting upright.

She peered at me quizzically for a moment, then began looking around the room. Eventually, her tired eyes bulged wide. Her cheeks grew redder and redder.

“Ah—! Um—! I didn’t—!”

Suguha was red to the ears, her mouth working soundlessly. She finally leaped to her feet and exploded out of the room with a massive crash.

“Sheesh.” I scratched my head, getting to my feet. I opened my window and took a deep breath, letting the cold air flow over my lethargic limbs.

I was laying out a fresh outfit to change into after an impending quick shower when I received The Notice.

An electronic ding sounded behind me, and I turned to my desk. The e-mail indicator on the upper frame of my panel PC was blinking. I sat down in the chair and brushed the mouse to activate the monitor.

Computers had changed quite a bit in the two years I’d been “away.” The final nail had been driven into the coffin of classic hard-drive storage, and even its successor, the solid-state drive, had been phased out for high-speed MRAM. This meant that there was no longer any discernible lag time of any kind while computing. The instant I activated the mail program, my inbox was fully refreshed, descending in chronological order. The sender of the latest message at the bottom of the screen was someone familiar: Agil.

Agil the ax warrior had run a general store in Algade, the main town of the fiftieth floor of Aincrad. I’d met up with him in Tokyo about three weeks earlier. We’d traded e-mail contacts at the time, but this was the first message I’d actually received from him. It was titled, “Look at this.” Perhaps he’d been in a hurry when he sent it, because there wasn’t a single word in the body of the message, only a picture attachment.

Curious, I opened the picture in the viewer. The next instant, I rose from the chair and craned closer to the screen to get a better look.

It was a mysterious image. The bold coloring and lighting told me it was not a photograph but a screenshot of a virtual, polygonal world. In the foreground were blurry, unfocused golden bars. Behind them was a white table and chair. Sitting in the chair was a woman wearing a dress in the same shade of white. But the glimpse of her side profile through the bars looked just like—

“Asuna…?”

The resolution was rough; it seemed to be a section of a much larger picture zoomed in considerably. But I would recognize that long chestnut hair anywhere. Her hands were folded on top of the table, and her face looked lost in grief. Upon closer examination, she seemed to have translucent wings sprouting from her back.

I grabbed my portable terminal off the desk and scrolled through my phone listings impatiently. The few seconds of dial tone seemed interminable. After a click, I heard Agil’s deep voice.

“Hel—”

“What is this picture?!”

“…Normally it’s good manners to say who’s calling first, Kirito.”

“No time! Just tell me!”

“Look, it’s a long story. Can you come to my place?”

“I’ll be there. I’m leaving now.”

I hung up without waiting for a response and picked up my clothes. After the world’s fastest shower, I slipped on my shoes and hopped onto my bike, hair still dripping. The familiar route to the train station had never felt so long.

Agil’s café-and-bar was located in a crowded alley in the neighborhood of Okachi, in the Taito ward of Tokyo. The storefront was made of sooty black wood, and only a small metallic sign affixed over the doorway indicated that there was a business there at all. The sign was decorated in the shape of two dice, reading DICEY CAFÉ.

A dry chime sounded when I pushed open the door. The large bald man behind the counter looked up and grinned at my entrance. There was no one else inside.

“Hey, that was quick.”

“This place is as empty as the last time I visited. I’m amazed it stayed open for the last two years.”

“Shut up, we do a brisk night business.”

Our lighthearted ribbing was just as it had been in the other world.

I’d tried reaching out to Agil late the previous month. An agent from the Ministry of Internal Affairs had succeeded in getting me a list of the names and addresses of as many in-game friends as I could remember. No doubt plenty of players were seeking to reunite with Klein, Nishida, Silica, and Lisbeth, but I’d decided to give them more time to get back to regular life before contacting them. When I’d brought up the topic on my first visit, Agil had retorted, “Oh, so I don’t merit that kind of consideration?”

When I learned that Agil—real name Andrew Gilbert Mills—also ran a business in real life, it made perfect sense. He was pure African-American but also a second-generation native of Tokyo, and he’d opened his combination café-and-bar in the familiar neighborhood of Okachi when he was twenty-five. He had been blessed with a steady clientele and a beautiful wife, and just when everything seemed poised to take off, he fell prisoner to Sword Art Online. When he finally returned after those two years in the game, he’d expected the business to be gone, but his wife had rolled up her sleeves and kept the store running the entire time. The story warmed my heart.

It was the type of place with plenty of regulars. The wood fixtures had the deep luster of polish and care, and the cozy intimacy of the interior, with only four tables and a counter, made it a comfortable visit.

I pulled up a leather-seated stool, impatiently called for a coffee, and launched into the topic at hand.

“What did that mean?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached under the counter and pulled out a rectangular package that he slid over to me. I stopped it with a finger.

The package fit in the palm of my hand, clearly a video-game box. I scanned it for a platform and noticed a logo in the upper right corner that said AMUSPHERE.

“Never heard of this console…”

“That’s because the AmuSphere was released while we were on the other side. It’s a successor to the NerveGear.”

“…”

Agil gave me a quick explanation as I eyed with suspicion the logo of two interlocking rings.

After the disaster it had caused, the NerveGear was vilified far and wide, a demonic machine of enslavement. But apparently the market had spoken, and there was still a demand for full-dive VR gaming. Barely half a year into the SAO Incident, a different hardware company unveiled its own model, “but safe this time,” to such resounding success that traditional TV consoles were now a minority share of the game industry. This AmuSphere was a major force in gaming, thanks in part to many titles in the same genre as SAO.

It all made sense to me, but I was in no rush to learn more. I didn’t ever want to relive that particular experience.

“So this is another VRMMO, then?”

I took another look at the case. The front cover was an illustration of a large full moon rising above a deep, deep forest. A boy and girl holding swords were caught in silhouette, flying across the golden disk. They were dressed in typical fantasy garb, and large, translucent wings sprang from their backs. An ornate logo adorned the bottom of the cover: ALFHEIM ONLINE.

“ALf…heim…Online? What does it mean?”

“It’s actually pronounced more like Alv-heym. Means ‘land of the fairies,’ apparently.”

“Fairies, huh…? Sounds pretty laid-back. One of those casual MMOs?”

“Believe it or not, just the opposite. It’s actually pretty hard-core.”

Agil placed a steaming cup in front of me and grinned. I lifted it up and breathed in the scent before inquiring further.

“What makes it hard-core?”

“Totally skill-based. Player skill is rewarded, PK-ing is encouraged.”

“Meaning…?”

“You don’t have a ‘level.’ You can only power up skills through use, and your HP barely increases as you play through the game. Battle depends on the player’s actual athletic ability. It’s like SAO with magic and no sword skills. People say the graphics and animation are almost on par with SAO, too.”

“Wow…sounds impressive.”

I puckered my lips into a soundless whistle. The floating castle Aincrad was the creation of the genius Akihiko Kayaba’s fanatic obsession. It was hard to imagine that another developer could create a VR world with the same fidelity.

“How is PK-ing encouraged?”

“When you create your character, you choose from a number of fairy species, and you’re allowed to kill the other kinds.”

“Wow, that does sound hard-core. But a game like that won’t sell big, even with great production values. Not if it’s designed for such a niche market,” I opined critically, but Agil’s wide mouth grinned again.

“That’s what I thought, too, but it’s been selling like gangbusters. The thing is, you can fly in the game.”

“Fly…?”

“Everyone’s a fairy, so they have wings. It’s got some kind of in-game flight engine, and once you get used to it, you can fly around freely without a controller.”

At this, I couldn’t help but exclaim in fascination. Plenty of flying games had come to market after the release of the NerveGear, but all of them were flight simulators that involved manipulating a device of some kind. The reason no games offered players the ability to fly directly was simple: Human beings don’t have wings.

In a virtual world, players’ actions are faithfully translated to mirror their real bodies. But this meant that what was impossible in life was still impossible in the game. The developer might slap some wings onto your model, but what human muscles are supposed to work a pair of wings?

By the end of SAO, Asuna and I had raised our jumping power high enough that we could mimic “flying” in a way, but this was simply an extension of a jump trajectory, not true flight.

“That sounds incredible. How do you control the wings?”

“Dunno, but it’s apparently pretty hard. They say new players have to control it with a flight stick in one hand.”

“…”

For an instant, I was actually eager for the chance to try it out. I quickly downed a hot swig of coffee to extinguish that fire.

“Okay, so that’s the game. But more to the point, what was that picture?”

Agil reached under the counter again and pulled out a sheet of paper that he placed on the bar. It was glossy with printing film. The same picture.

“What do you think?” Agil asked. I stared at it for several moments.

“She looks…like Asuna.”

“So you agree. It’s a screenshot from the game, so I can’t blow it up any larger, unfortunately.”

“Just tell me, where was it taken?”

“In there. Inside ALfheim Online.”

Agil took the game box from me and flipped it over. In the center of the back cover, surrounded by the game description and screenshots, was an illustration of what appeared to be the game world. The round map was split into territories for each of the fairy races, extending radially outward from a massive tree in the middle.

“They call it the World Tree,” Agil said, tapping the image. “The player’s goal is to reach the land atop the tree before the other races can get there.”

“Don’t they just fly?”

“Seems there’s a limit on your flight time. You can’t fly forever. In fact, you can’t even reach the lowest branch of the tree that way. But there’s always some idiot who wants to try. I heard about a group of five who stood on one another’s shoulders, lightest to heaviest, and tried to reach the branches like a rocket with fuel tanks.”

“Ha-ha! I see…That’s pretty smart, for being so stupid.”

“Well, their plan was good, and they got real close to the branches. They didn’t quite reach the lowest one, but the fifth and final person took some screens as proof of the altitude. One of the shots showed something strange: an enormous birdcage hanging from one of the branches.”

“A birdcage…”

My eyebrows knitted at the ominous implications of that word. Trapped in a birdcage.

“And after the screenshot was zoomed in as far as it could go, that’s what was left.”

“But this is a legitimate game, right? Why would Asuna be in there?”

I grabbed the box and took another look. I scanned the bottom of the rectangular case. The name of the developer was RCT Progress.

“Kirito, what’s with the glare?”

“Nothin’. Got any other pictures, Agil? Anything that might show others like Asuna, who never returned from SAO, held captive within this ALfheim Online game?”

The shopkeeper’s heavy brow furrowed as he shook his head. “Haven’t heard of anything. But we’d know for sure if I did—you bet your ass I’d have called the police instead of you.”

“Yeah…I’m sure you would have…”

But as I nodded, my mind was racing back to Nobuyuki Sugou’s words.

The SAO servers are currently under my control, he had said. But “under control” was a misleading description. The server itself was still a black box, impervious to any outside interference, as I understood it.

It suited his ends to have Asuna asleep inside the machine. And now a girl who looks like Asuna was sighted in another VRMMO, run by the publishing arm of RCT…Could it truly just be a coincidence?

For an instant, I thought I might contact the rescue team in the Ministry, until I realized just how little proof I had to show them.

I looked up, into the face of the burly café owner.

“Agil, can I have this game?”

“Be my guest. You going in?”

“Yeah. I need to see it for myself.”

Agil briefly looked concerned. I understood how he felt. Part of me felt it was crazy, but there was no denying the tendrils of fear I could sense licking at my feet— there was something going on here.

I shook off the foreboding and gave him a grin.

“A game where death isn’t permanent? People these days are spoiled. Guess I’m in the market for a new game console.”

“Don’t worry, AmuSphere games will run on a NerveGear. It’s basically just the same unit with strengthened security.”

“Great, that saves me some money,” I quipped. This time it was Agil’s turn to give me a wry grin.

“If you’ve got the guts to put on that helmet again, that is.”

“I’ve done it a dozen times already.”

That was the truth. I had put on the NerveGear multiple times, just with a net connection, not booted into a game. My vain hope was that Asuna would have sent me a message of some kind. There was nothing, of course. No voice, no text.

But I was done with waiting. I downed the last of my coffee and stood up. The establishment wasn’t fancy enough for any kind of electronic money-exchanging systems, so I had to reach into my pocket for some coins to slap on the counter.

“Well, I’m off. Thanks for the coffee—and let me know if you learn anything else.”

“I’ll put that tip on your tab. Just make sure you rescue Asuna. Otherwise our fight isn’t over.”

“Yeah…we need to have an offline meet-up here someday.”

We bumped fists, and I turned to head out the door.

Suguha was lying facedown on her own bed, face buried in her pillow, as she kicked her legs in anguish for minutes at a time.

It was nearly noon, but she was still wearing her pajamas. It was Monday, January 20th, well past the end of winter vacation, but Suguha’s middle school made attendance optional just before the end of the school year for graduating students. They were all busy with entrance exams for high school, and if she went to campus, it would only be to pop her head into the kendo club.

She replayed the memory inside her mind for the umpteenth time.

She’d curled up beneath Kazuto’s covers with him last night, trying to warm up his freezing body by snuggling close, and then fell asleep. It was the first time she’d ever truly cursed her ability to zonk out ten seconds after lying down.

I’m so stupid, stupid, stupid! she wailed soundlessly, beating her pillow with both hands.

If she’d just woken up before Kazuto, she could have made a silent escape before he noticed. Instead, he had to wake her up and point out that she was in his bed. There was no way she could look at him again.

Embarrassment, shyness, and an undeniable feeling of his sweetness raced around inside of her, gripping her chest so painfully she couldn’t breathe. If she folded her arms around her head, she thought she could smell her brother on her pajamas. That only made things worse.

I need to swing my shinai and clear my head, she decided, and finally got to her feet. Suguha liked practicing in the dojo because it put her mind in the right state, but she decided the most important thing was to get outside as soon as possible, so she slipped into her tracksuit.

Kazuto was off on some personal business, her mother, Midori, always left for work in the morning, and her father, Minetaka, went back to America after the holidays, so she was alone in the house. She grabbed a cheese muffin from the basket on the dining table downstairs, stuffed it crudely into her mouth, and grabbed a box of orange juice on her way out to the backyard.

Just when she had taken her first big bite, Kazuto walked his bike around the side of the house. Their eyes met.

“Mmfg!”

A piece of muffin caught in her throat, and she coughed. She scrambled to take a swig of orange juice and wash it down, then realized she hadn’t popped the straw through the foil on top yet.

“Mmp, mllp!”

“Oh, come on.”

Kazuto strode over and snatched the juice box. He stuck one of the ends of the straw into the lid and the other into Suguha’s mouth. She desperately sucked down the cold liquid until she could finally swallow the morsel.

“Pwah! I…I thought I was gonna choke to death…”

“Man, you’re so clumsy. You don’t have to wolf it down all at once.”

“Ugh,” she muttered. Kazuto sat down next to her and started untying his shoes. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she took another bite of muffin.

Abruptly, he said, “About last night, Sugu…”

She took another hasty drink of juice before she could start coughing again.

“Y-yes?”

“Well, um…thanks.”

“Huh…?”

Suguha was not expecting this. She peered at him curiously.

“Thanks for cheering me up yesterday. It really helped. I’m not going to give up. I’ll keep going until I’ve rescued Asuna.”

She smiled to cover up the throb of pain in her chest.

“Good. Keep at it. I’ve always wanted to meet her.”

“I’m sure you’ll be great friends.” He scrunched her hair and stood up. “Well, see you later.”

Suguha turned and watched him go up the stairs, then popped the last bite of muffin into her mouth.

And am I allowed to keep at it, too…?

She headed through the yard to do her stretches at the side of the pond. Once she was nice and warmed up, she picked up the shinai and started swinging.

Normally, the steady pattern of thorough swiping would clear her head of all distractions, but this time, the thoughts stayed put.

Am I really allowed to fall in love with him?

She thought she was ready, for a moment, to forget last night—cradling him in bed. Asuna was the only person in Kazuto’s heart, a fact of which she was painfully aware.

But…I don’t think that matters to me.

She didn’t know why Kazuto was weighing so heavily on her mind these days. But her feelings had become as clear as day to her.

When the hospital had called two months ago, Suguha had raced out of the house without waiting for her mother. Kazuto had smiled at her on his hospital bed when he saw her, tears in his eyes. He’d reached out and said, “Sugu,” in that familiar voice…and that was when these feelings had been born inside of her. She wanted to be with him always. She wanted to talk with him more. But forcing that on him…She couldn’t.

I’m fine just watching him, she told herself as she swung the wooden blade through empty space. She stopped briefly to check the clock in the living room. It was past noon.

“Ah, crap. I forgot my promise,” she muttered. She put down the sword and wiped off her sweat with the towel hanging on the pine branch. Up in the sky, the first glimpse of blue was peeking through the clouds.

Back in my room, I changed into street clothes, set my phone to away mode, and sat on my bed. I zipped open my backpack and pulled out the game Agil gave me. ALfheim Online.

From what he’d said, it sounded like a pretty serious endeavor. No level system was a big plus for me, though, as it suggested I wouldn’t be too inconvenienced by having started it later than everyone else in the game.

Normally with an MMORPG, before starting I’d want to read up on as much information as I could find on the net or in magazines, but I was in no mood for that. I opened the package, pulled out a tiny ROM card, and slid it into a small slot on the NerveGear. After a few seconds, the LED on the front stopped blinking and went solid.

I lay back on the bed and held the device right over my face. It had once been a gleaming navy blue marvel, but now the paint was chipping off here and there. This was the set of shackles that had held me prisoner for two years—but it was also an old friend that had been through hell with me without ever malfunctioning.

Lend me your strength just one more time, I pleaded silently and lowered the NerveGear onto my head. Next came the chin harness, then the visor shield. I shut my eyes.

My heart racing with excitement and unease, I gave the command to begin the game.

“Link start!”

The murky light shining through my closed eyelids abruptly vanished. The signals coming from my optic nerves were canceled, and true darkness enveloped me.

But just as abruptly, a rainbow of color danced before my view. The amorphous light fashioned itself into the NerveGear logo. It was dim and hazy at first but then grew sharper as the device’s connection to the visual center of my brain became more solid. Eventually, a small message beneath the logo appeared, signaling that visual connection had been established.

Next came an eerie echoing noise from nowhere in particular. It seemed to be rushing closer, and the warped sound changed pitch until it formed a pleasing harmony. The solemn start-up jingle played and abruptly finished. Audio connection established.

Now the setup moved on to physical sensation, then gravity. The feeling of the bed on my back and the weight of my body disappeared. As each one of my senses was calibrated and tested, the check marks piled up. In time, full-dive tech would no doubt shorten this process considerably, but at this point there was nothing I could do but wait for the headgear to perform its little handshake with each section of my brain in turn.

When the final OK message appeared at last, I was plunged down into darkness. Eventually, a glowing circle of rainbow light appeared from below, and after passing through it, my virtual feet landed in a different world.

Technically, it was just a stage for account creation, still shrouded in darkness. The ALfheim Online logo hung overhead, and a gentle female voice welcomed me to the game.

I followed the computerized voice’s instructions and initiated the account and character creation process. A pale blue holo-keyboard materialized at chest height and asked me to input a user ID and password. I typed in the familiar string of letters that I’d used at the start of SAO. If this were an all-digital MMO, I’d be greeted with payment options at this point, but the retail version of ALO came with a free month of play.

Next came my character name. I started to type “Kirito” but hesitated. Very few people knew that Kazuto Kirigaya in the real world went by Kirito online. Only the rescue team from the Ministry of Internal Affairs; Shouzou Yuuki, the president of RCT, who had been closely involved with that team; and Sugou. After that, it was Agil and the still-sleeping Asuna. Even Suguha and my parents didn’t know.

Nothing about what had happened in SAO had been made public, especially not character names. There had been countless battles between characters within the game, battles that led to a shocking number of actual deaths in the real world. If stories of who had murdered whom became public, it would no doubt set off a tangle of endless court cases.

For the moment, all charges of murder related to the SAO Incident were laid solely at the feet of the still-missing Akihiko Kayaba. All damages claimed by the families of the victims were levied from Argus, the developer of the game, and it wasn’t long until Argus had gone bankrupt. Kayaba had built up Argus into one of the premier development houses and then leveled it to the ground. But as far as the government was concerned, they didn’t want the ugly possibility of players suing one another.

I was concerned about Nobuyuki Sugou finding me, but the name itself wasn’t that remarkable, so I decided to go ahead and call myself “Kirito.” I chose male for my gender, of course.

Next, the female voice instructed me to create my character. Yet, my only choice was player race. All of my cosmetic parameters would be chosen at random, and if I didn’t like what I was given, I’d have to pay an in-game fee to re-create the looks I wanted. In this case, I didn’t particularly care what I looked like.

I had a choice of nine different fairy-themed races for my character. Each one had its own advantages and disadvantages, the voice said. Some of the names, like salamander, sylph, and gnome, were familiar RPG terms, while others—cait sith, leprechaun—were less so.

The choice didn’t matter to me, as I had no intention of playing the game seriously. But I liked the all-black motif of the spriggan starting equipment, so I chose that one and hit OK.

With all the customization complete, the computerized voice wished me luck, and another vortex of light surrounded me. According to the explanation, each race was teleported to its own starting city. The sensation of ground beneath my feet vanished, and I was weightless for a moment before gravity pulled me down. A new world began to take shape from the light. I was in the air, over a small town shrouded in darkness.

I could feel my first sensations of full-dive gameplay in two months sharpening every virtual nerve that had once been so honed by my last experience. The narrow steeples of the castle at the center of town grew closer.

When, suddenly—

The image froze solid. Tiny shards of polygonal material splintered away, and digital noise crawled over my vision like lightning. The level of detail in the game grew cruder and cruder until it resembled a digital mosaic. The world melted and crumbled away.

“Wh-what is this?” I wailed and abruptly felt myself plunging again. I fell down and down, endless blackness beneath me.

“What the hell’s going on heeere—”

My helpless scream was swallowed by the void and snuffed into silence.