Accel World - Volume 10 - Chapter 2.12

12

“Siiiiis! Come back to Uchina agaaaaaaain!!”

“Sister, taaaaaaake caaaare!”

The two girls waved their arms so wildly in front of the main gates of the resort hotel that they threatened to fly off, until they got themselves in unison with a “One, two.”

“Njichahbiraaaaaaa!! [Good-bye!!]” they yelled.

Kuroyukihime waved back at them from the window of the bus, then leaned back in her seat once they disappeared from sight. Hidden beyond the marbadigo trees, she let out a long sigh. She thought that perhaps the high school–aged boy tilting a can of flat lemon juice (probably) on a bench a little ways off from the girls had maybe been Crikin in the real, but she decided not to pursue it.

“Making such adorable fans like that on a trip—that’s so like you, Hime,” Megumi said, smiling in the seat next to her.

She cleared her throat and rebutted, “Th-they’re not fans or anything. I suppose you could call it an academic exchange—”

“Yeah, yeah. Then I’ll just make a note of that in the student council log.”

“Uh! No, that’s a little…”

Thursday, April 18, 10:00 AM.

The Umesato Junior High ninth graders had been split up onto two large EV buses and were heading from Henoko to Yoron Island. They were scheduled to return to Tokyo Saturday evening, so the school trip was at last in the final stages. The other students seemed to be even more excited, building toward the climax of the trip, but for Kuroyukihime, she was of a mind to spend that day at least relaxing lazily. She had, after all, taken part in the very unexpected optional tour of a battle with a Legend-class Enemy in the Henoko area.

Megumi Wakamiya sitting to her left should have been the same, but she was grinning the same as always and flipping through the Yoron Island virtual guide. Apparently, not only did Megumi not remember the events of the Unlimited Neutral Field, she had no memory of visiting the dive booth where Kuroyukihime, Ruka, and Mana had been.

The evening before, having fulfilled her objective and burst out, Kuroyukihime discovered that in the place of Ruka and Mana, who had disappeared, Megumi sat with her eyes closed on the sofa next to her. When Kuroyukihime shook her shoulders, Megumi opened her eyes right away and said curiously, with a baffled look on her face, “What am I doing here?”

After that, they went back to their room, changed their clothes, ate supper, got in the bath, and went to bed, and although Megumi didn’t say a single word about the Accelerated World, Kuroyukihime sensed a modest change had come over her. The shadow that had clouded her eyes ever since the previous night had disappeared.

When they went back to their room after supper, Kuroyukihime directed with Megumi’s Neurolinker under the pretext of syncing key student council files, and secretly checked her local memory. But the BB program was not there. In the end, she still didn’t know if Megumi had really been a Burst Linker in the past, or even if she had, through what logic she had managed to open the door to the Accelerated World once more.

However, Kuroyukihime felt like that was all right. That chance meeting was certainly a momentary miracle given to them by this mysterious island of Okinawa.

Breaking into this reverie was the text mail icon flashing in the upper part of her field of view. When she opened it, she saw that the sender was Crikin, and the message noted that he had found the object Kuroyukihime had given him information on, located in a desolate dive café on the outskirts of town.

A Neurolinker illegally modified so that it could start up and connect globally without being equipped—Sulfur Pot confessed that when he visited Henoko on a school trip in January, he had hidden the Neurolinker given to him by the upper echelons of his “organization” in a sofa at the dive café. Most likely, the Neurolinker was equipped with the backdoor program. The program was supposed to be unusable now that the BB central server had applied a patch, but assuming the patch checked if the BB program was in the Neurolinker, there was only one way to get around it.

That was to install the backdoor not only in the Neurolinker, but the real Brain Burst itself as well.

It was very daring, a method so terrible it sent chills up her spine. Because the only ways to get a Neurolinker with the BB program on it were to seize it in an attack in the real…or make a child without telling them anything and then immediately take their Neurolinker.

Despite the fact that Sulfur Pot had told her about the mechanism for the long-distance dive, he didn’t spill a word about the “organization” he belonged to. She thought briefly about continuing to kill him, but she also had the automatic disconnect safety set, so she let him go there.

Crikin’s mail also noted that the personless Neurolinker had been powered off when he found it, and the memory had physically self-destructed. It truly was a daring and deeply cautious organization. Someday, the time would likely come when they clashed head-on.

Well, when it does, we’ll beat them down without mercy, she thought, closing her mailer, when a steaming cup was offered from beside her. From the scent, it appeared to be tea with some kind of citrus flavor. She gratefully accepted and said, “Thanks, Megumi.”

“You’re welcome.” The smile on the face of her good friend changed slightly, and she continued in a quiet voice, “Hey, Hime?”

“Mmm?”

“When we get back to Tokyo, I’m thinking about writing a story set in Okinawa. A story about the ocean and a dinosaur and a mermaid…and a knight in black. Like yesterday? I had a dream about it.”

“You did?” Kuroyukihime smiled and gently placed her own hand on Megumi’s. “Naturally, you’ll let me be your first reader?”

“Ha-ha! Okay, be ready for it, then. Seems like it’s going to be a bit of a long one.”

“Mm-hmm, I’m looking forward to it. And also to the souvenir you got for me. I wonder what you picked out. Hmm, according to my cosmic instincts—”

“Ah! You can’t, Hime! What if you actually guess it?!”

“Mm-hmm-hmm. I can see it! Well, this—”

“I said, stop it! We’re going to have a real fight if you say anything else!”

On the luggage rack above the heads of the two girls as they play-fought and generally had fun, two small suitcases were lined up next to each other.

Inside Kuroyukihime’s bag was a necklace of pink shells arranged in the shape of cherry blossoms.

And in Megumi’s bag, there was a necklace of black-lip oyster pearls worked into a black spangle butterfly.

It was a few days later when they exchanged their presents in the student council office and they were greatly surprised at the wonderful match, grins spreading across both faces.