Accel World - Volume 12 - Chapter 2

2

Even after the acceleration was released and he returned to the back seat of the EV bus racing down Oume Highway, Haruyuki simply stared at his own right hand for a while. He had succeeded in getting his revenge, but any exhilaration at his victory had been blown off somewhere.

Abruptly, he saw an index finger stretch out from his right and push the global-net disconnect button on the side of his Neurolinker. After the dialog box that popped up in his view to announce the loss of connection had disappeared, he saw Chiyuri’s face through his virtual desktop, eyebrows furrowed together.

“Hey, Haru, what’re you all spaced out for? This is Nakano, y’know? If you don’t disconnect right after the duel, you’ll get challenged again.”

“O-oh…Sorry, thanks…,” Haruyuki muttered, and his childhood friend changed the angle of her eyebrows, slightly cocking her head.

“…What’s up? I mean, seriously. You won, but you look like you ate pickled eggplant or something.”

His other childhood friend, Takumu, popped his face into Haruyuki’s view from around Chiyuri’s far side. “Once you pushed him to ten percent remaining, things seemed to take a fairly surprising turn,” he whispered. “Is that why, Haru?”

And then Utai Shinomiya, sitting to Haruyuki’s left, tapped at her holo keyboard in midair. UI> IT LOOKED TO ME AS THOUGH YOUR DUEL OPPONENT CHANGED MIDWAY. SYSTEM-WISE, THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE, BUT…

Haruyuki stared at the cherry-colored text in the ad hoc chat window sitting in the bottom of his field of view and then nodded deeply. Just loud enough for his friends in the back of the bus to hear, he offered, “It’s just like Shinomiya says. That’s what happened…I think. Cerberus also said he’d go home for today, so I’ll tell you the details once we get back to Suginami. Let’s change buses first.”

They got off at the next stop, crossed the street at a nearby light, and got on a bus going the opposite way that came minutes later. Soon, they had crossed the border between Nakano and Suginami, and once the four had reconnected their Neurolinkers to the global net, they got off the bus at the Koenjirikkyo intersection. It was still raining, so they quickly opened their umbrellas.

“So what are we doing?” Chiyuri asked. “Are we going to Haru’s?”

Haruyuki thought for a minute. If they were going to talk about Brain Burst, then the usual spot of the Arita living room was without a doubt the safest, but his condo was on the other side of the Chuo Line elevated bridge, in the exact opposite direction from Utai’s house. He couldn’t bring himself to make a fourth-grade girl walk two kilometers round-trip in this rain. Even if she was wearing those adorable red boots. “Um, maybe if there’s somewhere around here we can talk first…”

Once he had gotten that far, Chiyuri grinned. “Then it’s obviously Enjiya. The tatami rooms there are pretty secure, and Haru also promised to treat me and Taku.”

“Gah! Treating you at Enjiya is a matter of national politics—”

“Ah-ha-ha! Kidding! Kidding! Hold on a sec, I’ll just check.” After laughing for a moment, Chiyuri ran a finger across her virtual desktop. She was connecting with the shop online and getting information on the customer seating in real time. “Oh! We’re in luck! The inside room’s empty. I’ll reserve it.”

She pushed a button that only she could see and swiped away the window. Bouncing up and down behind him, she shouted, “Hurry! Come on! The quick reservation there gets canceled after five minutes!”

Enjiya was a café with Japanese-style sweets set up in a small storefront a little north of Oume Highway. The short noren curtains across the doorway were a deep red—enji—so it seemed natural to assume this was where the name came from. But it was actually a shortening of Koenji, a fact that only longtime regulars knew.

The café was run by the owner, a man in his thirties or forties or fifties—in other words, a man of indeterminate age—and a woman who was probably in her twenties. While they did have traditional sweets, like the sweat bean paste of anmitsu and the jelly of mamekan, they also had over a dozen other types of treats, from gelato and waffles to homemade cheesecake and even enormous parfaits, so it was hard to decide whether to stick with the basics or go all out. Last fall, when Takumu and Haruyuki had gone to apologize for the backdoor hacking incident, Chiyuri had insisted on all the parfaits she could eat at this café as a condition of peace and had nearly broken both of their banks, a memory that was both sad and sweet now.

Perhaps she herself had long forgotten this—or perhaps she was merely pretending to have forgotten, for their sakes—but the instant she set herself down on a floor cushion in their reserved tatami room in back, she cried out, utterly carefree and without so much as glancing at the holo menu, “Let’s see! I’m having the kinako parfait with rice dumplings topped with sweet bean paste!”

“Are you sure you wanna eat something like that right before supper?” Haruyuki remarked unthinkingly, and he got a chuckle in return.

“I’ll thank you not to look down on athletes. My metabolism’s different from yours, you know.”

“I-I’m sorry. Um, I’m gonna have fresh chocolate gelato with nuts on top.”

“Whenever we come here, that’s all you ever order, Haru.” This time, it was Takumu who chuckled at him. “I’ll go with…mamekan.”

Haruyuki turned his face away—“Whatever, I like it”—and locked eyes with Utai, who was grinning at this little back-and-forth among the three childhood friends. The instant he saw her sitting in the seiza position on her own cushion—back straight, knees tucked under her—memories of the day before flashed through his mind.

After they had finished their club work, Utai had invited him to the Shinomiya house, where she had sat in the same formal position and told him about the world of Noh she had been born into and about the sad fate of Mirror Masker, the Burst Linker who had been her older brother and also her parent.

Perhaps intuiting his thoughts from the momentary look on his face, Utai smiled broadly and quickly typed, UI> I’VE NEVER BEEN TO THIS CAFé BEFORE. DO YOU HAVE ANY RECOMMENDATIONS?

Looking at the text displayed in the chat window, Haruyuki was more concerned with Utai’s self-possession, which was so unlike a fourth grader, than the content of her question. When he really thought about it, a rich girls’ school like Matsunogi likely prohibited its students from stopping to eat or drink on their way home. And yet Utai was calm and relaxed in this café, a place she was visiting for the first time, probably because even at that age, she was used to getting food and groceries by herself.

He had only learned of Utai’s home environment for the first time the previous day, and the details started to resurface in the back of his mind, but he pushed them away for now and grinned. “Um. If it’s your first time, then I guess maybe the anmitsu?”

Chiyuri was quick to agree. “Anmitsu’s the foundation of a Japanese-style sweetshop!”

UI> FOUNDATIONS ARE IMPORTANT. WELL THEN, I’LL HAVE THIS FRUIT ANMITSU. Utai touched the holo menu with a small finger and pushed the COMPLETE ORDER button.

A female employee appeared in Japanese-style clothing with a tray of waters and hand towels. She greeted Haruyuki and his friends amiably (they had been frequenting the place for more than five years now) and then welcomed the newcomer Utai more formally before returning to the kitchen.

The students in the neighborhood whispered that the Japanese-style desserts were prepared by the owner, while the Western-style ones were made by the female employee—they also whispered the converse. But the truth of it was unknown. There were also rumors that a robot pâtissier had been spotted in the kitchen and that the café’s sweets were all lies delivered to their brains via Neurolinker, but these were clearly jokes.

What was certain was that the uniform of the woman—a deep-red kimono with a snowy white apron—and her twenties-ish appearance had not changed in the slightest.

Once they had placed their orders and had all taken a drink of water, the eyes of the other three focused on Haruyuki.

“…So, Haru, what exactly happened? And why?” Inside the café, there were only two older customers at the counter and a group of three women who looked to be housewives at a table near the door. Age-wise, they couldn’t have been Burst Linkers, but just in case, Chiyuri lowered her voice.

“Ummm…” Haruyuki reflected on the earlier duel. “Until ninety percent of his health gauge was carved away, it was just like you guys saw. But…a little after he went down…the visor on his original head closed, and the armor on his left shoulder opened instead. And then…maybe you won’t believe this, but the left shoulder talked. It said, ‘So it’s finally my turn.’”

It took about five minutes to explain how it all had gone down, and just as Haruyuki finished, their orders arrived with perfect timing. The woman had no sooner placed the dishes on the table and urged them to take their time than the four Burst Linkers were reaching for their spoons.

Simultaneously scooping up rice dumplings and cream and anko beans in a miraculous balance on her spoon, Chiyuri opened her mouth and filled her cheeks. Pure bliss overtook her for about five seconds before she could get herself together again. “Mmm, mmmmm…It’s like, the more I hear, the more this is, like, for serious, you know? If he’s switching between personality extremes, I guess we have Niko for precedent.”

“No matter how you look at it, Niko’s angel mode is a performance.” Haruyuki grinned wryly around a mouthful of chocolaty gelato. “The way Cerberus switched was definitely not on that level. And the way he talked—he’s Cerberus because there are three of him. I mean, he was named after that mythological dog, so it’s kinda like that, I guess? And actually, when it was his left shoulder, the abilities he used changed, too.”

“So then, on top of the Cerberus I that you fought first and the Cerberus II of the left shoulder, there’s a III, too?” Takumu asked as he scooped up mamekan with a lacquerware spoon.

Haruyuki thought a minute and then nodded. “When you think about it, the right shoulder’s probably Cerberus III, huh? Cerberus I talks politely, II is rougher. No clue what III will sound like.”

“My vote’s for old-school style,” Chiyuri remarked.

“L-like a grandpa character? That’ll be hard to fight.”

“So then his ability’ll definitely be Drunken Fists,” Takumu asserted. “The traditions of the fighting game.”

The three of them kept talking, wandering further off track, and Utai followed along, eating her fruit anmitsu with a serious look on her face until she carefully set down her spoon before typing on her holo keyboard. UI> IT IS INDEED SURPRISING TO HEAR ABOUT A SINGLE DUEL AVATAR HAVING THREE PERSONALITIES, BUT THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE THAT IS OF MORE CONCERN TO ME.

She turned wide eyes on Haruyuki and his friends as she continued. UI> THAT CERBERUS REFERRED TO SOMETHING C HAD SEALED AWAY. I BELIEVE THERE IS ONLY ONE THING THAT FITS THAT DESCRIPTION.

“…Yeah, I think so, too…,” Haruyuki said, looking at the slightly dark silver of the spoon he held in his right hand. “…The Armor of Catastrophe…The Disaster. If what Cerberus II said is true, then he was born to equip that armor.”

“Just thinking about what would happen if he were able to do that sends chills up my spine,” Takumu said. “If he had the multiple defensive capabilities of the Armor on top of his own hard tungsten armor, it would be a bigger deal than just Physical Immune.”

“It was a giga GJ you guys did in purifying the armor, Ui, Haru,” Chiyuri said, mixing Ash-speak with Pard-speak, and the other three laughed involuntarily.

Haruyuki was getting absolutely nowhere with obtaining the Theoretical Mirror ability, the key to the attack on the Legend-class enemy Archangel Metatron guarding the Tokyo Midtown Tower, but the reason he could deal with all this without getting too serious, even as the situation grew more chaotic, was that he had his Legion comrades by his side. Haruyuki was silently grateful.

However, immediately after this, he thought that maybe that wasn’t the whole story. The way his mysterious and powerful enemy had managed to reproduce his flight ability, albeit for a short time, was very much like when the “marauder” Dusk Taker had appeared three months earlier. But this time, Haruyuki hadn’t felt that same heavy pressure crushing him, like he couldn’t breathe. The reason for that had to be…

“…I think Cerberus is definitely an opponent to be on guard against, given that he switches personalities and knows about the Armor and stuff. But…I dunno. I don’t hate him. Not Cerberus I…and probably not II either.”

“Even though he ate one of your arms?” Chiyuri blinked rapidly. “It looked like that seriously hurt, though?”

“Well, it did hurt, but I mean…it’s a proper ability. It’s not like he has a BIC, like Dusk Taker or Rust Jigsaw. When he destroyed me yesterday, I hated it so much, I wanted to cry. But I didn’t hate him. And I’m sure Cerberus feels the same after losing to me today. I mean, at the end, he said it was fun.”

While Haruyuki earnestly searched for the right words as he spoke, his chocolate gelato got fairly soft, so he hurriedly scraped the rest of it together with his spoon.

Chiyuri abruptly slapped him on the back.

“Pwah! Wh-what’re you doing?! You made a piece of almond go flying!”

“I’m giving you a compliment, so don’t be so stingy!”

“Normally, you don’t compliment people by slapping them on the back.”

“Then you want me to bop you on the head?”

“N-no thanks!”

Listening to their exchange, Takumu and Utai erupted simultaneously in laughter. Soon enough, Chiyuri and Haruyuki got on board, too, and the back room at Enjiya was filled with gentle merriment.

I just know that Wolfram Cerberus has more secrets. And I still can’t decide if he’s the artificial metal color Kuroyukihime was talking about. But if I just keep fighting. If I go up against him in duel after duel where we smash up against each other, whatever plan he has’ll burn up into nothing. I mean, above all else, we’re Burst Linkers, after all.

Haruyuki digested this thought together with the last bite of gelato. Just as the last of the bittersweet flavor was disappearing, he turned toward his friends and announced, “At the very least, it seems like the Metatron operation is not moving this week. I’m going to go to Nakano Area Number Two after school tomorrow, too. Whether he challenges me or I go and challenge him, I’m fighting Cerberus again. I probably won’t be able to win again like I did today, though. But I’m fine with losing. Winning and losing—that’s the nature of the duel, after all.”

Chiyuri and Takumu grinned and nodded, while Utai alone had a slightly worried look on her face as she set her fingers into motion across the tabletop.

UI> I ADMIRE YOUR MINDSET, ARITA. BUT ARE YOU SURE? CONSIDERING THE LEVEL DIFFERENCE, THE SAME NUMBER OF WINS AND LOSSES WILL MEAN A SERIOUS EXPENDITURE OF POINTS.

“Ugh!” When she put it like that, it really hit home. Haruyuki realized that the basic rules of Brain Burst had completely flown out of his head, and he stiffened up.

Chiyuri slapped his back one more time. “…Just let us know when you’re going to go hunting Enemies to replenish your points. If we’re free and full of energy, we’ll come along with you, ’kay?”

“If it’s a day when my kendo practice ends early,” Takumu said.

UI> ME TOO. IF YOU’RE OKAY WITH GOING AFTER I’VE DONE MY HOMEWORK.

“…Thanks, guys.”

This was all that was left to Haruyuki to say.

After they departed Enjiya with Utai, Haruyuki left Takumu in the entrance hall of their condo and got on the high-speed elevator with Chiyuri.

“That reminds me. What’s going on with the Theoretical Mirror?”

Suddenly faced with the question, Haruyuki unconsciously let his gaze drift. “Y-yeah…I guess I’ve gotten a hint, if you could call it that. Or maybe I haven’t quite gotten it…”

“What? You’re not making sense. I know you’re concerned about Cerberus, but, like, isn’t the Mirror a higher priority for you, Haru?”

“…I mean, when you say priority, it’s, like, a priority,” he mumbled, and two fingers stretched out from beside him to yank on his right cheek. “H-hut’re you hooin’?”

“I hate leaving a bunch of conditions to pile up unresolved,” she said. “When I get more than five items on my to-do list or something like that, I get really annoyed.”

“Really…? I basically never get it under ten items.”

As he spoke, Haruyuki casually opened the to-do list app on his virtual desktop and found twelve items clearly listed. Items one through three were the homework they had been given that day, but number four—request tickets, if needed, for guests to the school festival—had been languishing there since the previous week. But, well, it was precisely because he hadn’t immediately replied that he lacked guests to invite that he had been able to invite Rin Kusakabe the previous day—

“…What’re you getting all dreamy about?” Chiyuri yanked even harder on his right cheek.

Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head back and forth. “N-nohhing!”

Fortunately, the elevator had reached the twenty-first floor at that point, and the door in front of them slid open.

“’K-kay, Chiyu, see you tomorr—”

“We’re not done talking,” she said with a frown as she stepped out into the hall, Haruyuki’s cheek still pinched between her fingers. He was forced to follow her.

“H-hey, I’m on twenty-thr—”

“I know that! Another thing I hate is ending a conversation in the middle of it. We’ll finish up in my room.”

“Wh-what?!”

Haruyuki reeled as the elevator door closed behind him.

Since the hands of the clock had moved around to six PM, the instant they set foot in the entryway of the Kurashima home, captivating sounds and smells crashed into his senses.

And what makes this mellow and yet invigorating sour smell is—yeah, sweet-and-sour pork! he guessed, when the door on the left side of the hallway opened and Chiyuri’s mother, Momoe, popped her head out.

“Welcome hom— Oh! Haru!” she cried, clutching a ladle in her hands.

“Th-thanks for having me.” Haruyuki bowed his head.

A smile split her face in half, and her words came fast and furious, like machine-gun fire. “Thank goodness! I cooked too much food, and I was just worrying about what to do with it all. It’s always like this with sweet-and-sour pork and chop suey. I just know it’s because the wok is so big. Right, you’re okay with pineapple in the sweet-and-sour pork, aren’t you, Haru? It’s not Chii’s favorite these days, but I’m the cook, so she doesn’t get a say.”

“I’m glad to be home…Mom, you keepin’ an eye on the stove?”

Chiyuri asked the question quietly, and a hand flew to her mother’s mouth. She ducked back into the kitchen with an “Oh, shoot!”

Letting out a sigh, Chiyuri stepped up from the entryway, grabbed some slippers with a blue bear appliqué, and set them before Haruyuki. She slipped pink rabbit slippers on her own feet and took a step forward to make space for him.

“…Eat the pineapples in mine, okay, Haru?”

“……Okay.” He put on the slightly too-small slippers and followed Chiyuri to the room at the end of the hall.

The furnishings were simple, and the room was basically unchanged from the last time he’d visited—there were several large cushions of various colors on the floor and bed.

After setting her bag down next to her desk, Chiyuri undid the ribbon at her throat and sighed again. “Aaah. It’s so humid. I get tired of being so damp every day.”

“Well, it’s the rainy season, after all. If you think about a Primeval Forest stage…” Haruyuki said, settling himself down on a starfish cushion on the floor.

“I hate that stage,” Chiyuri said curtly, and then she peeled back the thin terry-cloth blanket on her bed as if having thought of something. She abruptly tossed this over Haruyuki’s head and announced, “If you move an inch, I’ll feed you to a giant snail in the Primeval Forest stage.”

“Huh? Wh-what’re you doing?”

“Come on! Don’t move!”

His field of view closed off by the creamy white fabric, Haruyuki had no choice but to freeze. Soon, he heard the soft sound of fabric rubbing against fabric. This went on for about five seconds before he realized finally that Chiyuri was changing out of her uniform.

Wh-what are you thinking?!

And then:

Just you? No fair! I want to change, too!

While he was struggling to decide which of these he should shout, the blanket covering his head, through some deviation in weight, began to slip forward bit by bit. If it had been sliding backward, he could have grabbed onto the fabric in front of him to stop it, but given that it was sliding forward, his task was hard to accomplish with only small movements at his disposal. On the other hand, if he made any significant movements, it would fall completely and he would be dinner for an enormous snail.

Sounds like snap, snap continued to come from the outside world, and he had no idea what exactly was going on. The edge of the blanket finally reached the back of his head; it was only a matter of time before it passed the top of his head.

It’s not my fault. It’s Chiyu’s for not balancing it properly when she threw it on me! Crying out in his heart, Haruyuki waited for the final moment. After about five seconds, the fabric flopped to the ground with a loud fwup, and waiting on the other side of it was Chiyuri in white shorts, with a green T-shirt pulled down to just above her stomach.

His childhood friend’s arms snapped to a stop, and she looked at his exposed face with cold eyes. “I’m looking forward to the next Primeval Forest stage,” she announced, yanking down her shirt.

“…So to get back to what we were talking about,” Chiyuri said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “You think you can get the ability?”

Haruyuki, sitting on the starfish cushion formally for some reason, started to offer up the same ambiguous answer as he had in the elevator. But he stopped himself and cocked his head slightly instead. “I-it’s like…I’m surprised you’re asking about this. You’re that interested in the Metatron mission?”

“What? I am a member of Nega Nebulus, you know.”

“I know, but, like, it’s not Dusk Taker and the Armor of Catastrophe. This isn’t just about Negabu, you know? From your usual thinking, I thought you’d actually get mad at the Six Kings for pushing this on us…”

For a moment, Chiyuri seemed to be deciding whether or not to get angry at this, but then, for some reason, her cheeks turned red. “Qu-quit it. I mean, talking like you’ve seen right through me…But, well, you’re right.”

“Huh?”

“When I heard about the meeting of the Seven Kings, I was actually a little annoyed. You worked so hard and had just finished purifying the Armor, and here they were pushing you to take on this serious role in the vanguard of a mission to take down a Legend-class Enemy! But, like, I…I saw it with you, and Taku too, and all.”

Rather unusually, Haruyuki immediately understood what the pronoun “it” meant: the main body of the ISS kits they had seen in the Brain Burst central server, also known as the main visualizer. The jet-black brain eating into a corner of a beautiful galaxy. Even if he tried, he could never forget the way it reached out with countless blood vessel–like circuits to connect with all the kit users, including Takumu, to carry out its abominable parallel processing.

“It hasn’t even been three months since I became a Burst Linker,” Chiyuri said. “And there’ve been all kinds of hard things, but I like the Accelerated World. The duels are fun, and I’ve made lots of friends. So…I hate that something evil is eating away at that world. If you want to get rid of the ISS kits of your own will, then I’m rooting for you. And I’m sure there’ll be something I can do. Although I can’t use light techniques.”

“…Chiyu…” Something abruptly pushed up in his heart, and Haruyuki desperately swallowed it back. Blinking both eyes rapidly, he took a deep breath before bowing his head. “…Thanks. I…I love the Accelerated World, too. And yeah, I’m scared of Metatron, but I figure if I’ve got a chance at defending against that laser, then I’ve got to give it a try.” He lifted his head and grinned.

“I mentioned this before, but I’ve got kind of a hint at least. I learned some stuff from Izeki and Shinomiya. And even in the duel with Cerberus, I feel like I realized something important. It’s probably no good to think only about repelling the laser. The ultimate mirror can’t just be a slab with a high reflectance.”

Speaking as though in a dream, Haruyuki didn’t notice Chiyuri’s gaze cooling sharply halfway through.

“Hey, Haru?”

“Rather than a physical presence, it’s actually a passage— Huh? What?”

“Ui’s one thing. But why is Izeki coming up here? You’re just in the Animal Care Club together, right?”

“Huh? Oh, well, um. Sh-she showed me a mirror. She’s got this hand mirror that seems super expensive, you know? It’s so different from the ones they sell at the canteen, I was actually surprised. Ha-ha-ha!”

“If you’re looking for a proper mirror, I have one, you know!”

“I—I guess you would.” Haruyuki twisted his index fingers together, and Chiyuri suddenly stood up from the bed, stomped past him, and left the room. She’s not actually going to get a mirror from somewhere, is she? But there’s a huge full-length mirror in the room already, he mused, before she returned less than a mere minute later.

In her hands was not a mirror, but glasses of barley tea set on a tray. She placed one in front of Haruyuki. “Mom says it’s another fifteen minutes until supper. That should be plenty of time.”

“S-sorry? Plenty of time for what?”

“I was thinking about stuff yesterday, like maybe there was some other way to practice repelling a laser. I mean, you can’t just get Niko to hit you with her guns every time, right? And I thought up something good.”

I’ve got a bad feeling somehow! Although the thought filled his head, he didn’t let it out of his mouth. Clutching the cold barley tea in both hands, Haruyuki swallowed hard and waited for what she would say next.

“It’s not just Burst Linkers who use light techniques, right? I mean, you’ve got the problem itself to disprove that: Metatron. So then, if there was a reasonable Enemy who attacked with lasers, you could practice as much as you like with it, and then bang! Right?”

“G-giga wait!” he hurriedly interjected. “You can call it ‘reasonable,’ but even the small Enemies are seriously strong!”

Chiyuri shrugged lightly. “But the Wild-class one we hunted on the way back from special training the day before yesterday was a pretty easy victory?”

“Th-there were eight people hunting, and two of them were kings! And to start with, we’re not going to be able to find a small Enemy that attacks with lasers that easily.”

“And yet, wouldn’t you know, there was one livin’ real close.” A catlike smile spread across Chiyuri’s lips, and she snapped the fingers of her right hand. “Setagaya Area Number Two. With your wings, we can just zoom over.”

“Huh. Y-you already found one? How…Did someone tell you about it?” Haruyuki asked in reply, baffled.

“I told you.” Chiyuri’s smile took on a bashful note. “If there was something I could do, I wanted to do it. I figured I should try finding it myself before turning to other people, so last night, I did some wandering in the Unlimited Neutral Field. And luckily, I found a teeny Enemy that shoots lasers.”

“Bu— You…” After holding his breath for a second, Haruyuki shouted, at a volume that would just barely not leak outside the room, “A-are you crazy?! Diving alone, and on top of that messing with Enemies?! I mean, you could’ve run into some dangerous Burst Linkers or been targeted by a Beast class and ended up in unlimited EK!”

“It’s fine. I made sure to set an automatic disconnect timer, and you know how hard Lime Bell is, right? On top of that, I have healing abilities, so I’m not going to end up in unlimited EK that easy.”

“So you say—,” he began, intending to argue even more vehemently, but then pinched his mouth closed.

Chiyuri—the Chiyuri Kurashima he’d known since he was born—was exactly this person. Moody, quick to anger, and more hardworking than anyone. She made incredible efforts when no one was looking, and no matter how hard it was for her, she never let it show on the surface; she always smiled sunnily.

She said she did special training to improve her reaction speed in a full-dive environment in order to succeed in installing the Brain Burst program. Back then, she couldn’t accelerate, of course, so she must have sacrificed her life in the real and devoted herself to serious special training, the kind that makes you bleed, over tens—no, hundreds—of hours.

“Chiyu, how long did it take you to find that Enemy?” Haruyuki asked.

After looking a little undecided, Chiyuri clucked her tongue. “Um. A little over three days of inside time.”

Honest-to-goodness absurdity. But Haruyuki couldn’t reproach her at this stage. Instead, he sat formally on the cushion and bowed his head deeply. “…Thank you, Chiyu.”

“Hey! Wh-what are you getting all serious for?! Ah! Yikes! We only have ten minutes until Mom calls us. Come on! Hurry up and dive!” Chiyuri shouted, her face red, and took a sip of her barley tea before pulling a small hub and three XSB cables out from her desk drawer. She connected the home server connector on the wall and the hub with the longest cable and then sat down again on the bed, gesturing to Haruyuki to join her. “Come on! Hurry up!”

“Huh?! Um, what—?”

“I don’t have a sofa or anything in here, so our only choice is to lie back here! Hurry up!”

“O-o-okay!” Haruyuki stood up as he was told and sat down next to Chiyuri. Instantly, the palm of her hand was pressing down on his forehead, and he fell back onto the bed. He stiffened up as one end of a cable stretching out from the hub was plunged into his own Neurolinker, and then Chiyuri immediately connected her own before lying down next to him.

A sweet smell wafted up from his childhood friend, who had only just changed clothes—but leaving him no time to even be conscious of this, a sharp voice flew at him:

“We dive on the count of three! Here we go. Three, two, one…”

““Unlimited Burst!””

Lucky I didn’t get the command wrong, Haruyuki thought as he fell toward the rainbow-colored ring.