Accel World - Volume 10 - Chapter 2.10

10

To go back approximately sixty minutes in Accelerated World time—or a few seconds in real-world time—the person who had watched Kuroyukihime, Ruka, and Mana heading up to the dive space on the second floor of the resort hotel, from the shadow of a pillar in a corner of the elevator lobby, had started chasing after them the second the three entered the booth.

The reception was automated online and set up so that users selected an empty spot from the booth layout displayed in their field of view. However, their pursuer confirmed the position of the sole four-person booth and headed that way without hesitation.

The door to the booth deep in the dive space was closed and locked, naturally. No voices could be heard from inside. The three users were likely already in full dives. The pursuer touched the door, and a dialog box appeared, requesting the input of the electronic key.

A pale finger popped out from the sleeve of the thin hoodie and pressed the OPEN button of the dialog. Normally, the door would not open, but now it was unlocked with a faint sound. That same finger pulled the sliding door open, and the slender body attached to it slipped into the booth. In the end, the door was soon closed and locked once more.

The electronic key to this dive space was the same as the key used for the rooms in the hotel. Thus, strictly speaking, there was only one person other than Kuroyukihime who possessed the same key: the Umesato Junior High student council secretary sharing her room, Megumi Wakamiya.

What Megumi saw after stepping into the booth was three girls, bodies totally relaxed, eyes closed, on the reclining sofas opposite each other. The one sitting alone on the left was, of course, Kuroyukihime. On the right were two girls who seemed a bit younger. She had never seen their deeply tanned faces before, and they were wearing an unfamiliar design of sailor uniform, so they were probably not Umesato students, but rather attended a local school in Henoko.

The instant she recognized this, Megumi’s face twisted up and she bit her lip hard. The Kuroyukihime that Megumi knew seemed sociable, but the walls around her heart were actually tall and thick. She never let her guard down around people on first meeting, so that the number of people who knew her true face, sarcastic and childish, hidden in the depths of her incredible beauty, was seriously limited.

And yet that very girl was on a full dive with local girls she had likely only just met, on a direct connection no less, albeit through a router. Megumi could come up with only one reason for that: the other world.

A different land, where half of Kuroyukihime lived, hiding on the other side of reality. These two girls were residents of that world, and most likely, at that moment, they were visiting that place with Kuroyukihime. A world Megumi had never seen, much less set foot in. A world whose name she wasn’t even permitted to know. And accessed using the time set aside for picking a souvenir for her.

Her left hand trembled and pulled itself up, moving toward Kuroyukihime’s Neurolinker. The tips of her fingers touched the XSB cable stretching out from the piano-black exterior shell and grabbed hold of it tightly.

If I pull this out, she’ll come home to me. She’ll probably lose something precious forever, but she’ll come back to this place where I can reach her.

“You can’t.” Abruptly, she heard someone’s voice echo inside her head.

She blinked with a gasp and looked at the three faces, but they were all still on their full dives. Their eyelids were shut tight, and their lips didn’t so much as twitch. The router built into the low table indicated that the three cables were all currently transmitting to the global net.

Megumi finally noticed it then. There weren’t three cables. A fourth XSB cable stretched out from the router, but the opposite end was still lying on the table.

“It’s a…door. A door to invite you just once more to a distant land. Now, then…”

Guided by the childlike yet strangely commanding voice, Megumi took her hand off Kuroyukihime’s cable and reached out to the coffee table. She picked up the fourth XSB cable and brought the plug to her own neck.

Directly connecting with an unknown circuit was, in terms of security, a deeply risky thing to do. Although Megumi knew as much, just that minute, she didn’t feel even a touch of hesitation. She connected the plug to her floral pink Neurolinker, and the wired connection warning popped up.

And then Megumi had a vision of a book appearing soundlessly on the table before her. There wasn’t a real book with physical substance or even a 3-D object, but it was definitely there.

“Oh.” A faint breath escaped her lips. This…this was it, the book she had loved so long ago. The book she had read over and over so many times, and yet couldn’t remember the story of at all. She had lost it at some point and never found it again, that precious book.

She sat down next to Kuroyukihime, and gently reached out to the large hardback book. There was no title on the cover. Just countless colors joined together in an arabesque pattern. Timidly, she opened it.

On the first page, there was only a single line of English text. Written in black ink was a spell. The magic word to visit the world of the book. Megumi took a deep breath and then uttered the two words of the phrase like a song, like a prayer:

“Unlimited Burst.”