Accel World - Volume 10 - Chapter 1.2

2

Only after Haruyuki woke up after the thirty minutes of duel time did he realize the mistake he had made. As he lay in a daze on the recliner, in the reading booth at the Shinjuku Tsunohazu Library he had used for the dive, the door of the booth was opened from the outside, and a hand darted in to yank his aluminum silver Neurolinker off his neck. The virtual desktop displayed in his field of view vanished immediately.

Forcibly removing someone else’s Neurolinker was clearly a crime if done by a stranger, and even between the best of friends, it was the ultimate violation of manners. However, leaning forward into Haruyuki’s booth, Takumu Mayuzumi had no choice but to do so at that moment, and with good reason. Haruyuki understood that reason so well it hurt.

He had only eight burst points now. If someone challenged him and he was defeated, the moment he lost those ten points, it would be total point loss, and Brain Burst would do a forced uninstall.

Having finally acknowledged this fact, Haruyuki opened his stunned eyes and simply stared up at Takumu in his blue-gray school uniform, its pert stand-up collar still intact.

His friend’s lips trembled, and a hoarse voice escaped his throat. “I can’t believe it…Sorry, I’m sorry, Haru. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you the most important thing…Even if you get enough points to level up, you shouldn’t do it right away. I’m supposed to be your teacher…Even if I forgot everything else, this is the one thing that I absolutely had to remember to tell you…”

Right. Rather than being a phenomenon that happened automatically once a set number of experience points was reached, as in other games, leveling up in the game Brain Burst was paid for with the points a player had earned. The number of points required to go from level one to level two was three hundred. So if you selected the level-up operation with 308 points, you would obviously end up with only eight points left. Which was precisely why you couldn’t level up right away. Players needed to ensure a margin within the safe zone after spending those points. That was an absolute requirement for leveling up itself.

Haruyuki looked up at his friend, who was biting his lip. “Taku,” he said in a similarly hoarse voice. “I was an idiot. It’s obvious, if only I’d thought about it for a second. Just getting to three hundred points, I was so excited. God, I’m an idiot.”

Belatedly, he was keenly aware of the fact that his own life as a Burst Linker was now a flame in the face of a strong wind. In the two weeks since Kuroyukihime had given him the program, the lowest his points had been was seventy. And now they were at eight. If Takumu hadn’t forcibly removed his Neurolinker and he had been challenged by someone immediately after the previous duel and lost, Haruyuki would have already lost Brain Burst.

The hands gripping the arm rests of the mesh chair trembled. What am I going to do? What should I do? These words alone chased around in his brain. The world was different now. He had thought that she had changed his world for him, that from now on, he himself would be able to change, bit by bit. He had finally, almost believed that, and now…

“Haru.” A hand abruptly grabbed hold of Haruyuki’s. Takumu leaned in through the sliding door on the side of the small reading booth, his normally cool eyes glittering with fire. “It’s okay, Haru. It’s not over yet. There’s still a way to come back from this. First, let’s go to your place.”

“…Taku…”

After the battle at the hospital two weeks earlier, Takumu had left the Blue Legion and come to be Haruyuki’s teacher, but he hadn’t once visited Haruyuki’s apartment like he always used to. Although Haruyuki had invited him any number of times, Takumu just shook his head, a smile on his face. Almost like he was saying he didn’t have the right to say yes.

However, now, at the sudden turn into this state of emergency, all signs of that hesitation appeared to have vanished from Takumu’s head.

“Y-yeah. Let’s go. We can’t really talk here, after all.” Bobbing his head up and down, he grabbed his school regulation bag from the hook on the wall as he stood up.

The Tsunohazu Library, which they used for duels after school, was an enormous facility with more than two hundred seats in the electronic document reading booths alone, where full dives were possible. After school, students from the neighboring elementary, junior high, and high schools all crowded in, so there was no danger of being outed in the real just from your appearance position in the duel field, making it a convenient place for them. But obviously, having a discussion about Brain Burst in their real voices was simply too reckless. And he hesitated a little at directing with Takumu in a place where there were so many people their age all around them.

It’s not that I care what anyone thinks of me or whatever, but Taku stands out. And if his friends from school saw him and they started some weird rumor, it would be embarrassing for him and all.

These thoughts rolling through his mind, Haruyuki chased after his more fleet-footed friend walking ahead of him, and the cold sweat on his back felt like it was finally dry. Even if he did only have eight points left, as long as Takumu said it was okay, then things would work out somehow. Repeating this to himself, Haruyuki slipped through the automatic doors and took a deep lungful of the slightly chilly November air outside.

They took a bus from Tochomae down the Oume Highway to their condo building in northern Koenji (in Suginami Ward), and by the time they were passing through the security gates that stood before the residential elevators, the sky had gotten quite dark.

Haruyuki had had his Neurolinker off the whole time, with Takumu even paying his bus fare for him, so he didn’t know the exact time. Of course, if he simply cut off the global connection before he put his Neurolinker on, he wouldn’t risk being challenged by other Burst Linkers. But when he thought about the worst-case scenario, he couldn’t muster up anywhere near enough courage to set the device on his neck again.

Normally, Takumu went home to the A wing on the other side, so it was the first time in years they had ridden the elevator together. They got off on the twenty-third floor of B wing, and Haruyuki unlocked the door to his deserted apartment with the emergency fingerprint and retina confirmation built into the intercom.

“Thanks for having me over,” Takumu said as he stepped up into the apartment after Haruyuki, and then he smiled just a little, as though he had only finally realized that he was visiting the Arita house for the first time in a while. “This takes me back. It’s been a year and a half or so, I guess.”

“Huh? Has it been that long already?” Haruyuki’s hand stopped, slippers half pulled out, and he followed his own memories back. The last time Takumu had been to his house—or more precisely, when he stopped coming over—had been not long after he had started going out with Chiyuri, so that would have been in the spring of sixth grade. It was the fall of seventh grade now, so a year and a half had indeed passed.

“We still have these slippers, though,” Haruyuki jested as he set the pale yellow slippers that were a little too small now in front of Takumu’s feet. On the top of each slipper, the cute face of an elephant was embroidered in green thread. Although he normally didn’t bother with them, Haruyuki got out his own matching set. Embroidered on them were blue bears. Still on the rack were the pink rabbit slippers for Chiyuri, although those hadn’t been used for a year and a half, either.

The slippers were from Christmas in fourth grade, when the three of them had bought three identical sets of slippers each and then given them to each other as presents. So it wasn’t just at Haruyuki’s house; a slipper squad of green elephants, blue bears, and pink rabbits were also at the ready at Chiyuri’s and Takumu’s.

They had confirmed that the Kurashima squad was in good health two weeks earlier when they went over to apologize for the backdoor program incident. Takumu smiled again at Haruyuki’s words, and then, gracious as ever, pushed his feet into the tight-fitting slippers.

“My mom just went and threw out the ones at my house without even asking. That was probably the last time I cried in front of my parents.”

“She did? Then how about we go buy this slipper set again for Christmas this year?” Haruyuki said with a straight face.

“Ha-ha!” Takumu briefly laughed out loud. “Size-wise, we’d have some trouble with these, you know. If we’re going to match, how about mugs or something?”

“Ooh, Professor Mayuzumi, you do always say the stylish thing.”

Takumu slapped him on the back at this, and he made a show of stumbling exaggeratedly as he opened the door to his bedroom.

Haruyuki’s room was ten square meters, facing the southern balcony. The room had been used as a study by his father, who left ages ago after his parents got divorced, and the eastern wall was a built-in bookshelf, rarely seen these days. His father had kept his collection of last-century hardcover books there, but Haruyuki didn’t have a single such volume, of course.

What occupied the expensive natural wood shelves instead was old gaming hardware from before full dives were practical and game packages full of the optical discs and memory cards for use with these various consoles. Since he had snuck in among these some games that were rated Z at the time—meaning they had an excess of gore or skin or both—he definitely could never let Chiyuri or Kuroyukihime into this room. Chiyuri was one thing, but no matter how he looked at it, there was never going to be a situation in which Kuroyukihime would need to visit the Arita house.

Takumu approached the shelves with a fond look and traced out the spines of the game packages one by one with a fingertip. “On rainy days when we couldn’t play outside, we used to totally lose ourselves in these games, huh? Like this racing game…Oh! And this fighting game. Even though you were the best at pretty much all of them, for some reason, Chii was a total monster in this one. Even two against one, we could never manage to beat her.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. If she became a Burst Linker, she’d probably be super strong or something.”

The pair looked at each other and grinned, as if to say, That’ll never happen.

Naturally, three or four years earlier, back when they all had played together every day, visual field projection or full dives using the Neurolinker were the norm when it came to games. But the content rating standards for things like anime, comics, and games had grown increasingly strict over the years, so that the new games elementary school kids were allowed to play were, almost without exception, educational or puzzle types, or maybe, if they were lucky, pastoral graphic adventures. Even if a child asked an adult to buy a game card for them, the game wouldn’t load onto a child’s Neurolinker.

Faced with this, Haruyuki took over his father’s account, still open on the Arita home server—although the money was his own, saved up by making the most of what his mother gave him to buy lunch—and the older-generation games he bought and collected through mail order had wonderful specifications: Crashes and explosions were par for the course in racing games; in a fighter, you could punch, you could kick, you had laser beams; and when it came to RPGs, you slaughtered innocent creatures and divested them of their money and items. Even if the screen was 2-D, even if his fingers on the controller started to hurt, it didn’t take much thought to see which was more fun—these old games, or the modern ones for kids.

Naturally, now that he was in junior high, he could play any number of Neurolinker games rated twelve and up where you could shoot and slash. He had actually vented the stress of school in brutal FPSs or thrilling racing games until two or so weeks earlier. But the launch icons for those games were gone from his virtual desktop now. He’d gotten a taste of the ultimate fighting game, a game that used another reality as its setting. And now that he had experienced the overwhelming amount of information of that world, the tactics of the almost painful battles, he could never go back. He had absolutely no desire to go back.

His thoughts finally caught up to his current critical situation, and Haruyuki sat heavily on the edge of his bed, heaving a sigh.

Noticing his dejection, Takumu turned his back to the bookshelves and walked over. He set his bag down and gracefully sat next to Haruyuki.

“Taku,” Haruyuki said, ever so timidly, glancing at his friend’s face in profile, “before, you said there was still a way to recover from this. Is there really a way other than fighting for my life in duels? I mean, I only have eight points left.”

“Yeah, you’ll be fine. I’m not going to let you lose all your points.” Nodding deeply, Takumu asked, rather unexpectedly, “Haru, you have an XSB cable for directing, right?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah.” He nodded and pulled out a bundled silver cord from the drawer in the desk to his left.

Takumu accepted the two-meter-long cable, and as he inserted one end into his own blue Neurolinker, he said something even more surprising: “Right now, in a direct duel, I’m going to transfer half my reserve points to you. With this, you’ll at least be out of immediate danger. And then we’ll choose the time and place, fight each duel like our lives are on the line, and win some matches. We’ll get enough points to somehow get back into the safe zone.”

Unconsciously, Haruyuki held his breath. With a direct duel, there wasn’t the restriction of challenging the same opponent only once a day. So the idea was that if they dueled over and over, they could transfer as many points as they wanted. It was such a simple and immediately effective strategy to evade the crisis.

Haruyuki sat dumbfounded, and Takumu pushed the other end of the cable into his hand. “C’mon, Haru.”

Urged on by his friend, Haruyuki moved to insert the plug into the direct terminal on his Neurolinker. Immediately before he did, however, his hand froze.

Takumu, sitting only half a meter or so away, twisted up his face slightly, and then a smile like he was enduring something painful spread across his face. “Oh. Of course, this method assumes you can trust me. If I caught you off guard and defeated you, in that instance, you’d lose Brain Burst—”

“N-no. That’s not it. That’s not it at all, Taku.” Unconsciously, Haruyuki grabbed hold of Takumu’s shoulder. Beneath the fabric of his school uniform, Haruyuki could feel the strong muscles tensing as he continued earnestly, “I didn’t even think for a second that you would betray me. It’s not that; it’s the opposite. I just…I’m not sure if even I have the right to ask you to do something like this.”

“Wh-what are you even saying, Haru?!” Instantly, Takumu had turned his whole body to face him, and he reached out to grab Haruyuki’s shoulder. A single-minded determination came over his intellectual face. “Now isn’t the time to be worrying about something like that! The next time you lose to an opponent at the same level as you and have those ten points taken from you, you’ll end up having a forced uninstall of Brain Burst! And it’ll be because I forgot to tell you something important! Which is why it’s only natural for me to share my points with you right now.”

“But you still don’t really have the points to spare!” Haruyuki shouted back, with a force that, if seen from the outside, would resemble nothing other than a fight.

The original reason that Takumu had been relying on a cheat tool like a backdoor program was because he had overused acceleration and backed himself into a corner points-wise. He had recovered to some degree from this unstable position through the tag-team matches with Haruyuki over the previous two weeks, but even so, he had probably only just barely gotten back into the safe zone himself. If he handed over half his points to Haruyuki now, there was no doubt that he’d drop back down to the danger level once more.

But Takumu shot back in a tone that brooked no argument, “You don’t need to worry about that. Once you have a little wiggle room, you can just give them back in a direct duel again. This is simply an emergency remedy. And have you thought about what an enormous shock it would be for Master in the hospital if you were to lose everything now?”

“…That’s…”

It was true. It was just like Takumu said: Kuroyukihime, aka “Master,” had been seriously injured two weeks earlier and was now undergoing micromachine treatment in the HCU. She looked forward every day to the growth of her “child,” Haruyuki. If she learned that he had lost all his points immediately after going up to level two, her condition might even worsen from the shock of it.

“You said it yourself, didn’t you, Haru?!” Takumu leaned forward and continued in an even more urgent tone. “Once you’re level two, we’d announce that Suginami, a blank space all this time, was going to be the territory of Nega Nebulus! You’re the one who said that even after Master was out of the hospital, we’d make it so that she could connect to the global net safely!”

“Ngh!” Haruyuki clenched his teeth as he debated which course of action to take.

Finally, his voice slipped brokenly through trembling lips. “Taku. But…but, like— Brain Burst might have a ‘draw’ command, but there’s no ‘resign’ command. So if we want to make one of us win, we’ll either have to hit each other and then wait for thirty minutes to pass, or just keep up a one-sided attack until your HP gauge runs out. Or inflict mortal blows on our own selves. That…I don’t want to do that.”

“It’s okay.” Takumu loosened his grip on Haruyuki’s shoulder and smiled slightly. “I’m not worried about that at all. It’s to help a comrade—a friend. It’s no big deal to take a blow in the Normal Duel Field. So come on—put the plug in, Haru.”

There was nothing but simple compassion in Takumu’s face and voice, which was exactly why Haruyuki couldn’t reach out for the XSB cable on his knees.

Even now, two weeks after they had become comrades in the same Legion, Haruyuki could see Takumu’s own desire to punish himself in everything he said. And given what his friend had done, it was no small wonder. But in the final battle at the hospital, he had gotten out all the feelings that had been building up in the depths of his heart all these years and exchanged blows with Haruyuki with all his might. After the fight, he had apologized to Chiyuri and Kuroyukihime, and left the Blue Legion. Takumu’s crimes had been washed away now. Haruyuki believed that.

That was exactly why he couldn’t cling to Takumu now. He and Takumu had to be forever equal friends and comrades. At the end of their battle, Haruyuki had been the one to declare that. If he let himself be babied now by Takumu’s kindness only to drag his friend down with him into the danger zone, his own words would be a lie. And more than that, Haruyuki’s gamer spirit simply would not allow a unilateral attack on an unresisting friend to accept—no, take—his points, whatever the circumstances.

“But…Kuroyukihime. I mean, the Black King, Black Lotus, like…” Haruyuki stared into Takumu’s light-colored eyes. “She saved me from the out-of-control car by using the ‘physical full burst’ command. Her points balance must be pretty precarious, too. But she never once told me to share my points with her. And even if I had said we should, I know she would’ve gotten super angry. When it comes to level, strength, or experience, I can’t even begin to compare to her. But at least as a Burst Linker, I want to live like her.”

Takumu said nothing for a few seconds. Then, finally, a smile stretched across his pale face, as if accepting surrender. “As always, you’re so stubborn once you’ve decided something, Haru.”

His grip on Haruyuki’s shoulder slackening, he pulled his hand away and patted his friend’s shoulder. Takumu pulled the plug from his own Neurolinker, and as he bundled the cord back up, he resumed his cool expression.

“It’s true that even if I did transfer just the barest minimum of points, it wouldn’t resolve the basic problem. The issue is that when your point balance is in danger, the pressure calls up an unconscious panic. If you panic, your field of view in duels gets narrower. Panic takes away your ability to deal with the situation. Before, I said we’ll fight each and every duel like our lives were on the line, but that’s really incredibly hard to do. The desire to win is important, but it’s sort of a false friend to the desire not to lose your points. Like, honestly? When my point balance hit a hundred at the beginning of the fall, my average duel win rate was at thirty percent.”

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying. Even if I did take a huge gamble and duel right now, I have faith that I wouldn’t be able to really move properly and I’d lose.”

“That’s a weird kind of faith.” Takumu smiled wryly, and then his face grew serious again. “As for how to get out of this mess, there’s only one other way.”

“What?! There’s still another way?!” Haruyuki’s eyes flew open.

Takumu hesitated a moment before responding in a quiet voice, “Yeah. It’s fairly risky. And there’s a greater-than-zero possibility of having more than your points taken. But it’s the only other thing I can think of.”

Haruyuki continued to hold his breath. Takumu looked at him and uttered something entirely unexpected.

“Hire the bouncer. Until your points are back in the safe range again.”