Accel World - Volume 13 - Chapter 7

7

Haruyuki bathed in the refreshing morning light and the faint breeze, breathing it in. It was as though the rainy season had ended without waiting for the announcement from the meteorological agency.

Right outside his condo building was the sidewalk of Kannana Street. This was the time of day when, normally, the wave of people heading toward Koenji Station would have been unbroken, but today, it was deserted. Because it was Sunday, of course.

Instead, beside Haruyuki was a redheaded girl who appeared to be only yet half-awake. He watched her as she yawned spectacularly, charmed, and then was suddenly faced with her glare.

“Don’t just go starin’ at a lady yawning.”

“I-I’m sorry—”

See! Same old Red King! Haruyuki tucked his head back into himself.

“So then hand it over already.” Niko thrust out her right hand.

“H-huh?! A yawn-viewing fee?!”

“Nooooooot that! Obviously, the invite pass for your school festival!”

“Oh! R-right— Wh-whaaaaat?! You’re coming?!”

“I said that first thing yesterday! The reason I came to your place at all was one-third to apologize for the Territories, one third to ask about the attempted EK…”

“…So the last third was the school festival—?”

“Yes! C’mon, hurry up! Two passes!” Niko dexterously waggled the first two fingers of her thrust-out hand.

“Huh?” Haruyuki was forced to blink rapidly once more. “Two? You and who else?”

As if on cue, in the opposite lane of Kannana, an actually cool motor sound passed by, drawing a line between itself and the energy-saving EVs. He reflexively turned his gaze that way and saw a familiar deep red. The source of the sound disappeared from his field of view for a moment but then made a high-speed U-turn at the light just ahead and came north in the lane on this side of the road.

Vrrrruun. Stopping in front of Haruyuki and Niko, regenerative brake echoing through the air, was a large electric motorcycle Haruyuki had ridden before. The rider in a sports bike jacket and jeans was, of course, the deputy of the Red Legion, Blood Leopard.

Pard popped up the visor of her helmet with her left hand and waved her fingers at Haruyuki and Niko. “Hi.”

“G-good morning.”

“Morning, Pard. Sorry, I shoulda waited for you on the other side.”

“NP. It’s this country’s fault for still driving on the left.” After casually criticizing the system, Pard extended a hand to Haruyuki. But she didn’t mean for him to jump on the back, of course.

Each student was given three invitations for the Umesato Junior High festival. Haruyuki had already given one to Rin Kusakabe, but he still had the others, since he had no one to give them to. He had actually thought about inviting Niko and Pard, but then he’d heard about the attack on the festival at a school in Shimokitazawa in Setagaya Ward—naturally, in the Burst Linker sense—and he had put off making any decision until the very day was upon them.

But when he thought about it, the leader of the attack group, Magenta Scissor, had announced she would invade the east from Setagaya Area No. 2, and Umesato Junior High, being due north, was basically in a totally different direction. The possibility she’d be targeting the school festival that day was vanishingly small.

The remaining issue was what the reaction of the other Nega Nebulus members would be when they found out that, in addition to Rin, he had invited Niko and Pard. But it was possible they would be delighted at the unexpected faces visiting the school, wasn’t it?

No, no, thinking about it, he couldn’t say it was a certainty that the school festival would end with all of them meeting each other in the real. After all, Kuroyukihime, Chiyuri, and Takumu would have their hands full with the booths and presentations of their own groups.

The moment his wandering thoughts reached this place, Haruyuki nodded with a somewhat stiff smile and ran his fingers across his virtual desktop.

Since, legally, they couldn’t all three of them ride, no matter how big the motorcycle was, they decided to meet up again at the festival once it started, and Haruyuki went to school on foot.

Normally, there would still be a slight sleepiness left in the core of his head, but that day, his head was clear because he had gotten up early to tweak the class display files, and that early rising was topped off by the excitement of the festival itself. He walked slightly faster than usual, along a sidewalk that felt different from the usual weekday style, and once he crossed Oume Highway and proceeded a little farther, the front gates of his destination, Umesato Junior High, came into view.

The festival gates rose up immediately inside the pillars of the main gate, the painstaking work of the group that made them, composed mostly of the school festival committee. The theme that year was “time,” and to go along with that, the design took on a motif of an analogue clock face. Made out of gold synthetic paper, it looked spectacular, but the team that made it was probably breathing a sigh of relief that it was sunny that day.

As he approached the front gates, several groups of students were waiting for their turn to have memorial photos taken. Normally, saving screenshots of your field of view on school grounds was prohibited (naturally, Kuroyukihime managed to be exempt), but on that day, it was allowed in certain areas. Haruyuki walked along, carefully watching for the right moment to quickly slip through once the group of boys lined up inside the gate was done taking their pictures.

“Oh! Arita! You get in here, too!” someone shouted, and he very nearly tripped and fell.

When he looked, he saw a tall boy with a shaved head waving his right hand. It was a member of the basketball team from his class named Ishio. Around him were also the sporty guys from eighth-grade class C, and inwardly, Haruyuki screeched. But over these last few months, Haruyuki had gained the mental strength to not simply run away right then and there…he thought. Probably.

Bracing himself, Haruyuki shouted “S-sure!” as he ran toward the gate. Ishio and the others had apparently wholeheartedly embraced the festival feel at that early hour, and when Haruyuki joined their ranks, they shouted, “Yay!” and flashed peace signs. Somehow managing to produce a smile and the same pose, Haruyuki traded places with the picture taker and took a picture of his classmates, and then they exchanged images.

“The basketball team’s doing a free-throw game. Come by later!” Ishio shouted.

“I’ll be there!” Haruyuki replied, then he broke away. As he walked toward the entrance, he let out a long sigh.

His first task was to launch and do the final check of the class exhibit program in his classroom. The school festival started at nine thirty, so he’d go and meet Niko and Pard at the front gates then. Rin Kusakabe was supposed to arrive at the school by ten, so they’d meet up with her, and then he’d take them to the crepe booth that Chiyuri’s girls’ track-and-field team was running.

Here, Haruyuki finally realized that with this timetable, Rin and Niko and Pard would inevitably have their first meeting in the real. Naturally, he would have to introduce the two sides, but what exactly was he supposed to say? If he explained with something like “This is Ash Roller from GW. And these are Scarlet Rain and Blood Leopard from Promi,” the air would instantly freeze. And it wouldn’t stop at that. Most definitely not.

That said, it definitely wouldn’t fly for him to show one of them around and leave the others to their own devices. The only thing for him to do was come up with some way of introducing them so that each didn’t realize the other was a Burst Linker.

“…So then I guess all I can say is we’re friends. Saying ‘gaming friends’ might even be too risky. So then curry friends. No, no…” He considered the problem intently as he changed his shoes and started to walk down the hallway toward the first school building, and then someone tapped his back lightly from behind.

“What are you so troubled about on the day of the school festival, Haruyuki?”

“Um, it’s just I handed out invitations without actually thinking ahead.”

“Oh? To whom?”

“Right, one to— Wait, waaah?!” He visually confirmed the figure of the student council vice president walking alongside him and jumped slightly before quickly bowing his head. “G-good morning, Kuroyukihime!”

“Mmm, morning. So then who did you invite to the festival, I wonder?” Kuroyukihime posed the question once more, grinning.

“Uh, um…,” Haruyuki replied, a fairly stiff smile spreading across his face. “I-I-I’ll introduce you later! A-a-anyway! Have you finished getting ready with the student council?”

“Mmm. Well, I suppose. We’ll be revealing our program at two, using the entire school grounds, so do come see it if you can. With your mysterious friends.”

“Y-yeah, we’ll definitely be there.” Haruyuki nodded, and it seemed like Kuroyukihime would be kind enough to put the matter of the invitations on hold for now.

She gave his back a little push to change directions before stopping in a corner of the hallway and then cleared her throat lightly. “I was going to notify the Legion members with a mail or something later,” she said in a slightly hushed voice. “But in the event that we’re attacked today by a new Burst Linker or an ISS kit user, don’t go out of your way to fight. All of us will be in the Gallery, so we can identify the enemy position from the guide cursor and crack them in the real. Naturally, if you’re in the Gallery, make sure you don’t forget to check the guide cursor.”

“Right, I understand. But will there be an attack?”

“Mmm. I think the probability is vanishingly small, but…Actually, at the festival last year and the year before, not only was there no attack, there wasn’t even anyone slipping into the local net. But the rumor is that yesterday…” Here, she closed her mouth briefly and leaned up against the hallway wall, turning her sharp eyes to the south—toward Setagaya.

They were down to one hour before the curtain went up on the school festival, and the air in the school was filled with an excitement that was a jumble of expectation and nervous tension. Alongside groups running around with frenzied looks on their faces, apparently still getting ready, fully finished, smiling students brought their heads together and peered at holowindows, planning out what they would see first.

As for Haruyuki, he had spent the whole day of the festival the previous year on tenterhooks, trying not to run into his bullies, so he naturally intended to enjoy it to the fullest this year. But Kuroyukihime’s words now concerned him, and his body stiffened up as he asked in reply, “Y-you can’t mean…an attack on a school near Shimokitazawa again yesterday?”

“No, according to my investigation, there were no schools holding their festivals yesterday. But it appears to be a fact that Magenta Scissor and her subordinates appeared frequently in the area. I can’t imagine they’d invade the territory of Great Wall for no reason.”

“So then it might be reconnaissance for their next attack?”

“That’s possible, but schools with their festivals at this time of year are fairly rare.”

“Normally, it’s in September or October, after all. I wonder why Umesato’s is in June?”

“That’s a mystery with a long history of being dissected at our fine school. One theory has it that the character for ‘ume’ is the same as the one in the word for ‘rainy season,’ but if that were the case, then that would mean they set the festival for the time of year with the most rainy days, which is utterly absurd. But on the other hand, although the festival is in June, the weather’s strangely sunny, so that’s another fairly illogical thing—though that’s not the point.”

She cleared her throat and got back on track before bringing her beautiful face close to Haruyuki’s. “Basically, what I’m trying to say is that, if there are very few schools holding their festivals at this time of year, then we must consider the possibility at least that Magenta and her group will bring their campaign to Umesato. And it appears that invitations were traded on the Net, albeit only a few.”

“What? But can’t they only be sent through an ad hoc connection?”

“You can get around a limit like that pretty easily. Every year, I write an opinion letter that we should introduce resident net authentication and restrict invitations to family and relatives of students, but every time, it’s rejected by the administration. Well, this year at least, thanks to the loose rules, we were able to invite Fuko, Utai, and Akira, so I suppose that’s good.”

“Oh, good! You invited Master and the others!”

“Hmm? That’s an excessively happy look on your face, isn’t it? I suppose I should ask now just who you invited,” Kuroyukihime said with a hard look in her eyes, so this time it was Haruyuki clearing his throat and getting the conversation back on track.

“Uh, um, at any rate, we should be careful of attacks, right! It might be better to register tag teams for all the Legion members in advance, huh? So I’ll be with y—”

“Me and Fuko, Akira and Utai should be good. We’ll have Takumu team up with Chiyuri, so you team up with one of the friends you invited.”

“R-right, understood.” He bobbed his head.

“Oh-ho.” Kuroyukihime’s gaze was icy. “So you did invite a Burst Linker, and a student from another school at that. I’m looking forward to being introduced to them.”

“Nngh! Oh, that, it’s—” Easily caught in the leading question, Haruyuki felt a cold sweat pop up all over when he was saved by the nine o’clock bell. “Oh! I—I—I have to go do the final check for the class exhibit! S-s-s-so then, I’ll be in contact with you later, Kuroyukihime!”

“That you’re able to run away like that now, you’ve grown, hmm?” Kuroyukihime evaluated him even more coolly, and then smiled with wry exasperation. “Then I’ll see you later. I’ll definitely stop by and see the exhibit in grade-eight class C.”

“I-it’s nothing amazing, but I’ll be waiting for you! All right, then!” Turning around after a final bow, Haruyuki dashed up to the second floor.

The hallway in front of his classroom was decorated with plastic garlands and synthetic paper tape, divorced from its everyday feel. Grade-eight class A was doing the school festival staple of the haunted house, while class B was handling the café, so it seemed like they’d have a lot of visitors with just that.

In contrast, Haruyuki’s class C was doing an exhibition entitled “Koenji Thirty Years Ago,” and the content and decorations were the very definition of subdued. Because there were only seven people left to take charge of the class exhibit, any kind of major plan had been impossible right from the get-go; Haruyuki felt sorry for the guests who would come to see such an unenthusiastic offering.

Thus, after getting the approval of the other members of the group, Haruyuki had added a few tricks to the exhibit. He hurried to the classroom and found that the other six had already gathered there, and he was about to shrink apologetically into himself when a voice came flying his way:

“Arita, you’re laaaate!” The shouter was Ikuzawa, the class C representative. She belonged to the Calligraphy Club, but she had also volunteered to help with the class exhibit, given how few people were on that team. She was a very serious, good person.

And now she shook her head, hair tied off to one side, and continued briskly, “You took the exhibit file home to make some adjustments, so you’re the only one who can launch it, you know! If we don’t hurry and check the operation, we won’t be in time for the start of the festival, now, will we?!”

“S-sor—” Haruyuki started to apologize at full power when someone patted his shoulder lightly. It was Oka, a boy with long hair bleached right up to the edge of school regulations, who proudly named himself a member of the Go Home Club.

“C’mon, Ikuzawa. I mean, he is late, but by thirty seconds. Arita’s been busy, too, y’know. I went by the shoe lockers before, an’ there he was with the student council vice pres—”

“Ah! L-let’s hurry and check the exhibit! Yes, let’s do that! I’ll get it ready right now!” Haruyuki interjected with panic, and then he looked around the classroom. All the desks and chairs had been carried out, and in their place, a path in the shape of a C had been laid out with large panels. The seven team members were near the entrance of the pathway.

Having confirmed all this, Haruyuki reached a hand out to his virtual desktop. He first uploaded to the local school net the file he had just finished working on at seven that morning. He then ran the AR display program, and a dialogue box popped up in his field of view, asking him if he wanted to accept the connection.

The other six members of the group moved their fingers at the same time as Haruyuki to push the YES button. There was a whooshing sound effect, and then the look of the entire classroom was overwritten.

The plastic tiles of the floor became gray asphalt road, the ceiling a bright and clear sunny sky. The walls to the east and west disappeared and, along with the windows on the south side, were transformed into a low guardrail. On the other side of that, a wide road was depicted, and ancient buildings were generated in the distance.

“Wh-whoa?!” Oka cried out, and ran over to the guardrail.

“Oh, don’t!” Haruyuki hurriedly called out. “That’s really just the wall!”

He had made a warning window above the guardrail that said THERE IS A WALL HERE to keep people from colliding with it, but Oka pushed it aside like it was in the way, and cried out with delight, “Whoa! Cars’re driving! And they’re basically all gasoline cars. Whoa! Isn’t that a 35 GT-R?! Sounds so cool!!”

When Haruyuki yanked earnestly at Oka’s shirt, since he was still on the verge of colliding with an invisible wall, he heard the voice of the class rep Ikuzawa behind him.

“I get it! You mapped 3-D graphics onto the walls and the floor.”

“Y-yeah. If we’re gonna show old photos, I figured the background should be like that, too.”

“So then this is scenery from the 2010s?”

“It’s a mix from around 2010, yeah. I made it by putting all the photos from the time you all collected into three-dimensional software. The car noises are real data— Oh! You can also look at the photos, of course.”

He let go of Oka and turned back toward the wall opposite the guardrail. The large panels were also overwritten, changing into a wall of weathered brick. When he touched the surface and operated the window, countless photos appeared in poster form—scenes from the Koenji neighborhood from thirty years ago that the members of the group had collected from their own homes or from acquaintances.

Their initial plan had simply been to share an exhibition of these photos with AR display on the white panel surface, but that was a little dull, and Haruyuki had come up with the idea of overwriting the entire classroom. But when he actually executed the idea, it was somehow…

“…It’s like the photos are the bit player and the background’s the star now.” Ikuzawa put into words exactly what he was feeling.

“S-sorry for just doing this.” Haruyuki reflexively shrank into himself. “If it’s in the way of the photos, I can put the background back the way it was…”

“What’re you talking about? This is super-good!” It was Oka who cheered now, still clinging to the guardrail. “I’ve driven old cars in full-dive games, but seeing them driving along Oume Highway, it’s so real! Cool! Hey, Arita, that’s an AE 86, isn’t it?!”

“Huh…? Which one?”

“The first one, obviously! I’ve never seen the actual thing, and I mean, I know this isn’t real, either, but you could drive it!”

“G-got it. I’ll take a look in the data. But, before that, Ikuzawa—” He turned back with the thought that he should talk to her, but the class rep was no longer there. Together with the other members of the group, she had moved over to the guardrail on the south wall and was looking up at the town they could “see” on the other side of the road.

He walked up alongside them and was timidly moving to start a conversation when Ikuzawa raised her left hand and pointed to the southeast. “Can you see it? That twelve-story condo over there?”

“Huh?” He turned his eyes in that direction and saw an old mixed-use building sticking its head up over the rest of the buildings, which were overall slightly lower than they were currently. “Y-yeah. I can’t see the bottom, so I don’t know how many floors there are, though…”

“It’s a twelve-story building. I lived on the tenth floor before. We moved a long time ago, though, and they built a new condo there.”

“Wow, you did?” Frozen in place, he could do nothing more than offer this reply.

Ikuzawa turned her whole body toward Haruyuki. “Thanks, Arita. I used the lack of people as an excuse and figured that if we were going to do something for the class, then this’d probably do. But like this, I just know visitors are going to be delighted.”

“Oh…S-so then it’s okay to use it like this?”

“Of course. Right, guys?” Ikuzawa asked everyone, and the other members of the team showed their agreement verbally. Oka alone remained pressed to the guardrail, crying out in delight each time an old sports car passed with an explosive noise.

The tension drained out of Haruyuki’s shoulders, and with a “Phew,” he turned toward Ikuzawa and the others and bowed his head.

The opening time of nine thirty approached, and Haruyuki stepped briskly out into the hallway to return to the front gates. He finally had to tackle the difficult task of bringing together Niko and Pard with Rin Kusakabe, but a different thought was in his head.

What if he were a female Burst Linker? Even though he felt like Oka was a pretty good guy, when he’d approached him, with his slightly bad-boy air and his love of old cars, would he have been afraid?

Haruyuki was thinking about this thanks to, of course, Niko’s confession the night before: the idea that F-type Burst Linkers who spent a long time in the Accelerated World were always dogged by a sense of helplessness and, because of that, a very real fear when they returned to the real world.

It wasn’t an idea he couldn’t relate to. Before, Kuroyukihime had had a bristliness to her that kept people from coming over to her, even when she was in the school lounge or the VR space on the local net. Maybe the reason for that was a built-up fear due to sealing away her duel avatar for a long time.

Niko had said that Haruyuki melted away that fear. Of course, he was absolutely not aware he could do that. In fact, he felt like he always had his hands full with just himself, and he did nothing but fail at that, unable to pay attention to the people near him. But he could swear this at least:

I’m not going to hurt Kuroyukihime or Master or the Legion veterans or Chiyu or Taku, or Niko or Pard, and of course not Rin Kusakabe, either. No way. I’m not going to be the reason for their sadness. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure everyone can have a smile on their face all the time. First and foremost, I’ll make sure they have a super-good time at the festival today.

Telling himself this as he changed his shoes, Haruyuki trotted across the front yard and approached the main gates. There, he spotted the two members of Prominence, both in street clothes with a keynote of red, to one side of the golden festival gates shining in the morning sun. He raised his right hand—and then froze. Because a mere meter away from the two in red, he spotted a girl in green coordinates.

He didn’t need to see the fluffy short hair or the pouch slung across her body to know that it was Rin Kusakabe. The beloved little sister of the Burst Linker belonging to Great Wall, Ash Roller, and in a certain sense, Ash Roller himself.

Naturally, the Red Legion Promi and the Green Legion GW had the mutual nonaggression pact between them. So the girls wouldn’t have a relationship of open hostility, but that was based precisely on a shared awareness of the fact that they were members of the six Great Legions. Currently, they didn’t actually know that right beside them was another Burst Linker, did they? In which case, the moment they found that out, it wouldn’t have been at all strange if they started to duel.

I have to avoid that somehow, at least! Like a text or some kind of message, get one of them to move away or something…The instant he had this thought, Niko and Rin, who had been looking around at the spectacle in the area, both locked onto Haruyuki at the same time.

They smiled in tandem and then raised their right hands in sync as well, turning toward Haruyuki. And when they both moved their faces at the same time, they stared for about two seconds at the person who was standing right next to them doing the same action as they were.

Right then, Haruyuki was overcome with a super-sized desire to flee, but he barely succeeded in fighting it back and braced himself as he stepped forward. Now that it had come to this, his only choice was to put the situation in order before something happened between Niko and Rin. And wasn’t Kuroyukihime always saying, “Let the dogs beat a clever retreat”? Although, well, she did occasionally mean a banzai attack with the premise of dying in battle.

Aaaaaah! A powerfully cool battle cry surging up in his heart, Haruyuki dashed over to the three girls and spoke with a broad smile. Or more precisely, he tried to speak. “S-sorry to make you wait! You’re ear—”

“Hey, Haruyuki, who’s this girl?”

“Um, Arita? Who. Might I ask. Is this?”

Showered in cross fire from Niko’s glare, infused with a deep intensity, and Rin’s eyes, watery and trembling, Haruyuki stiffened up once more.

Standing in front of him, Pard murmured with a straight face, “GL.” Good luck.

Now that it had come to this, all he could do was jump right into it. In line with this decisive resolution, Haruyuki introduced Niko and Rin as his “gamer friends,” just like he’d initially thought he would.

The one who reacted first, who had visited the Arita house frequently, and who knew very well that there was only one game Haruyuki was currently pouring his heart and soul into, was Niko. Turning to face Rin, she snagged the thumbs of both hands on the pockets of her cutoff jeans and jerked her chin out.

“Which is it?”

With just that, Rin also seemed to understand the true identity of her interlocutor. Or maybe the two of them had sensed something right from the start. Either way, clutching the hem of her light-green chiffon tunic, Rin replied in a tiny voice, “Um. Green. And you?”

“Red. Hey, Haruyuki, lemme ask you, just in case.”

“Y-yes.” Her glaring eyes turned on him, Haruyuki nodded without even the time to wonder at the fact that Niko was calling him by name now. “What is it?”

“She’s not the head, right?”

“H-head?” He cocked his own head to one side before finally understanding the meaning of the question as, “She’s not the head of Great Wall, i.e., the Green King, Green Grandé, right?”

“N-n-n-n-n-n-no way! Sh-sh-she’s not! Totally not!”

“Hmm. Well, fine then— Nah, it’s not fine, but we’ll say it is for the festival at least. You’ll be hearing about it from me later, though, Haruyuki.”

“…Yes, I’ll happily accept that…” It was true that introducing Burst Linkers from different Legions at a school festival and having them wait for him in the same place on top of that, forcing them to be cracked in the real, was the height of carelessness. Thinking he should apologize to all three once more, Haruyuki looked at each of them in turn before bowing his head. “I’m really sorry I didn’t think this through. If something bad happens because of this, I’ll take full responsibilit—”

But here a small hand reached out from his right and grabbed hold of the material of his shirt. When he lifted his face, Rin’s gentle smile was right in front of him. “You don’t. Have to. Apologize. I’m happy, too. To have more friends.”

“Whoa! Hey! What’re you doing there, Greenie?!” Niko shouted and, of course, grabbed his shirt from the left and yanked on it.

Pard, watching from a little ways off as Haruyuki moved from side to side in confusion, laughed a rare laugh.

Once the introductions were over—Niko was “Niko,” Rin was “Rin,” and for some reason, Pard gave her name as “Myah” after thinking about it for a second—and they had assembled into a peaceful four-person party, it was nine thirty, and the action committee chief announced, via a school-wide broadcast, that that school festival was officially open.

Cheers and applause rose up throughout the school, and once these had died down, the girls’ division of the AV club began the live public broadcast, backed by some up-tempo music. The broadcast was streaming via the local net rather than through any speakers, so Haruyuki lowered the volume a bit with a control on his virtual desktop and turned back to the three girls.

“Okay then, starting over. Welcome to the Umesato Junior High school festival. I’ll be showing you around today. Is there anything you’d particularly like to see first?”

“Crepes!” Niko, of course, shouted immediately.

“That’s not something to see, but something to eat…”

“Shut up! I didn’t have breakfast this morning, so I’m starving! You’re the one who went and ran out of milk for cereal—”

“O-o-okay! Right, first stop, the track-and-field team’s crepe stand!”

“I. Agree.”

“’Kay.”

So with that, Haruyuki first led his group toward the cafeteria on the east side of the first school building. In the large space, the long tables were all pushed up against one wall that day, and in their place were several multicolored booths. There was also a refreshment area on the grounds outside, and that was the best spot, but Chiyuri and her team had lost the lottery for spaces there.

Still, despite the fact that the festival had only just begun, the cafeteria was fairly crowded, and there were already several people waiting in line at the crepe stand his group had their eye on. When Haruyuki and his charges queued at the back of it, a girl wearing rabbit ears said, “Welcome!” and offered them a homemade menu with pictures, so he unconsciously turned serious eyes on it.

Surprisingly, they had over ten types of toppings, but the prices were all the same, so showing off his natural indecisiveness, Haruyuki set his eyes racing around the menu.

“Seriously, Haru? I know I said to come to the booth, but you didn’t have to rush over here as soon as the festival started,” he heard a voice say. Jerking his head up, he saw Chiyuri grinning with fond exasperation on the other side of the griddle, a small ladle in one hand. But just as Haruyuki anticipated, that expression vanished in about three seconds. Naturally, this was because she had noticed Haruyuki’s companions. “Ohhh, huh, hmm. I see.”

“No, it’s, that’s— It’s to build friendship between Leg…groups.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. So. Are you ready to order?” Fortunately, Chiyuri, also in rabbit ears, along with a white apron, quickly took on her professional attitude again, so Haruyuki hurried to order a chocolate banana crepe.

While Niko, Rin, and Pard chatted happily, Chiyuri fried the crepe, and then the girl who was her partner piled toppings on and handed the dish to Haruyuki, at which point he paid with the allowance charged onto his Neurolinker. Once all four of them had food, he checked to make sure there were no customers waiting and then went around to the side of the booth to ask Chiyuri in a quiet voice, “Chiyu, what time are you done here?”

“Um, at eleven, I guess.”

“Eleven? Okay then, let’s all go see the kendo team performance at eleven fifteen.”

And then his childhood friend of more than ten years glanced in the direction of Niko and the others before smiling with the sense of “no choice, I guess” and nodded.

Taking advantage of the special privilege from being first to the cafeteria, the foursome settled in at one of the round tables in the lounge and dug into their crepes. Now that he thought about it, Pard was a semi-pro pastry chef, and Niko was her apprentice, so their bar for evaluating Western-style sweets would be pretty high.

Haruyuki waited for them each to take a bite before asking timidly, “How is it?”

Pard, aka Myah, nodded with a serious look and offered the brief “GJ.” Niko just gave a thumbs-up with her left hand and continued chomping away.

Relieved that the crepes had apparently passed, Haruyuki looked at Rin to his right, who, in contrast with Niko, was bringing her simple strawberry crepe to her mouth bit by bit at a slow pace.

A little worried, Haruyuki brought his face closer and said, “Um, if you don’t like it, feel free to say so.” I can eat it for you, he started to follow up, but then he would just seem like a glutton. That said, he was afraid to ask Chiyuri to remake it for her, and his mouth was frozen half-open.

“Oh! No. It’s not that. It’s. Very, very. Good,” Rin answered with her usual gentle smile, and then turned her gaze back on her crepe, more than 70 percent of it remaining, and continued regretfully, “…I actually had too much. For breakfast. I thought I’d be okay, but I guess. I’m pretty full. If you want, Arita, you can have it…”

Rin offered the crepe with downcast eyes, and he reflexively started to reach for it before falling into the nth freeze state of that morning. The crepes weren’t plated, but rather rolled up into cones, so Rin’s adorable teeth marks were cut into the golden-fried batter. He wasn’t sure whether there was a logical or moral issue with overwriting that with his own large mouth.

Perhaps sensing this conflict, Rin opened her eyes wide before saying in a vanishing voice, “Oh! I-I’m sorry. I didn’t. Think. But you wouldn’t. Want to have something half-eaten.”

“Th-that’s not it at all! I’m totally fine with it, but I just wondered if it bothered you.”

“I-it. Doesn’t bother me. No, um, not in a bad way. So…here…” Cheeks turning red, Rin proffered the crepe once more, and right before Haruyuki could accept it, Niko’s hand snaked in from the side and grabbed it.

“If you’re gonna do this little tedious dance, I’ll take it!” Niko announced with a piercing look, and all Haruyuki could do was say, “Go ahead.”

Niko snorted lightly and then annihilated the strawberry crepe in a mere three bites, gulped down some water, and then shouted as though she had just hit on the idea, “I’ll just say this now. It’s not ’cos I’m the glutton character or anything!”

“So then which character are you?” Haruyuki sniped, enduring the sadness of having been robbed of the treat.

It was Pard who answered, rather than Niko. “The jealous character.” Face completely expressionless as always, the look in her eyes softened. “And I’m the thickheaded character.”

“Wh-what are you talking about, Pa—I mean, Myah?! And just how long are we gonna sit here anyway? Show us something already!” Niko stomped off, and Haruyuki and the others exchanged glances before going after her.

Having fortified themselves, the four of them decided to first attack the exhibitions of the seventh-grade classes on the third floor of the first school building and climbed the stairs in the middle of the hallway. All three classes were actually quite serious, without a shred of playfulness to their festival offerings, so the group took a quick look around, mentally apologizing, before heading to the second floor.

In the haunted house of class A, Niko, positioned to Haruyuki’s left, burst out laughing. Meanwhile, Rin, to his right, clung to him with teary eyes. So, unsure of how to react, Haruyuki slipped past the blackout curtain to the outside.

He couldn’t deny that class B’s cosplay café did tug at him a little, but they’d just eaten those crepes, so they passed by the café and headed for eighth-grade class C. They stopped at the doorway, and Haruyuki struggled with how to broach the fact that this was his own class—and not only that, but he was also part of the team who’d put together this exhibit.

“This is your class, yeah?” Niko said smoothly.

“Y-yeah.” He wondered how she knew. “I helped put the exhibit together, but to be honest, it’s no big deal, so don’t expect too much.”

“Goodness! Is that so?” He had heard the gentle voice before, but it was a fact that this was not one of his party members, so Haruyuki whirled around.

There, he found three people approaching from behind them. The girl in a sky-blue dress with long hair was unmistakably Sky Raker, aka Fuko Kurasaki. The girl whose hand she was holding tightly—or maybe the girl whom she had captured—wearing the uniform of the elementary division of Matsunogi Academy was Ardor Maiden, aka Utai Shinomiya. And beside the two of them, a girl in red-framed glasses stood quietly, wearing, as always, neutral clothing—this time, skinny jeans with a jersey shirt. That was Aqua Current, who had only just formally returned to the Legion the previous day…Akira Himi.

Seeing her strict but gentle parent Fuko, Rin clutched Haruyuki’s shirt with her left hand. The Red King, Niko, shook her head in exasperation at another close encounter with a foreign Legion, while Pard appeared to be staring at one of Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements, while still standing tall next to Niko.

Haruyuki was curious about Pard’s reaction, but their unbalanced group of six bewitching girls and one round boy was drawing stares from the people around them, so he bowed his head first at Fuko, with Rin still hanging from him. “Good morning! Thank you for coming, Master! And welcome to you both as well!”

“I’d go anywhere for you, of course, Corvus.” Fuko said these disturbing words with a smile and then shifted her gaze slightly. “But I had no idea Rin would be coming. To keep secrets even from me—” Cutting herself off here, Fuko’s smile faded and her brow furrowed. “Rin, you actually look a little pale.”

“Uh, um. I’m okay! I just. Ate too much with. Breakfast and crepes.” Rin’s face in profile as she answered did actually look a tiny bit too pale to be fine. But she was pale to begin with, and the extra paleness could have been the hue of the white LED lights they were standing under.

Perhaps Fuko came to that same conclusion. “Well then, we’ll be in the way if we just stand here in such a large group. So why don’t we first go in and view Corvus’s class exhibit.”

To start at the end, the guests—first three, then six—all seemed to enjoy grade-eight class C’s “Koenji Thirty Years Ago.”

At first, just as class rep Ikuzawa had worried, 70 percent of the time they spent inside was devoted not to the star of the show, the photographs, but to viewing the 3-D graphics of the background; however, even in this, there was an unexpected joy. Rin and Pard stood alongside each other and played at naming the type of vehicle every time an old motorcycle went by. If this turned into a stepping-stone to bridging the distance between these two—meeting for the first time, and belonging to different Legions on top of that—then it was worth the work he had put into customizing the exhibit file.

When the group of six left the classroom after taking their time to fully experience the simple time travel, they all turned to Haruyuki and clapped for a second. Caught off guard, he teared up a little, and Niko mercilessly teased him about that, but he was sure that even this would be a good memory once the festival was over—probably.

Thinking about this, he stood at the head of the group and tried to move through the hallway down the stairs. At that moment…

“Oh! Prez! Hey!”

There was only one student at the school who called Haruyuki by this job title. Turning around, Haruyuki returned the greeting from this student whom he felt like he’d only very recently finally become comfortable talking to: Reina Izeki.

“H-hey. Oh right, Izeki, you’re doing the class B—”

He had gotten that far when Reina’s hands clapped together loudly to interrupt him. With her hands pressed together in front of her face, Reina uttered, unexpectedly, “Prez, I’m seriously sorry for skipping out on taking care of Hoo! Starting next week, I’m totes gonna be there with bells on!” Reina bowed low, and her long hair, with 50 percent more ringlets than usual, swung forcefully.

“Y-you don’t have to apologize,” Haruyuki said hurriedly. “You had a lot to do getting ready for your class’s thing, right?”

“Yeah, but Hoo gets hungry every day, y’know? Just ’cos I gotta do the festival thing doesn’t mean it’s okay to skip out. I’ve been popping in to see Hoo’s face anyway on my way home, but like, I just feel super-bad, you know?”

UI> PUTTING THAT KIND OF HEART IN IT, YOU’RE A WONDERFUL ANIMAL CARE COMMITTEE MEMBER, IZEKI.

This text was displayed in the bottom of their fields of view, so they turned around to find Utai smiling, both hands raised.

“Super Prez, you’re here, too! I’m def gonna take care of Hoo next week—” She was about to apologize once more when she snapped her mouth shut. She sent her gaze on a small tour, and then looked at Haruyuki with an indescribable expression. “Preeeez, all your guests are girls from other schools? Like, seriously, what’s up?”

“N-nothing’s up! Uh, um, so then, let’s give it our all with the Animal Care Club next week.” Babbling, Haruyuki plotted out an emergency escape.

But Reina smirked for some reason and cut him off. “You came all this way and all, how about stopping in at our café?”

“N-no, uh, we just had crepes, so…” It was when he started to say this, feeling that he should politely decline, that Haruyuki realized it: Class B’s project was supposedly a cosplay café, but Reina was only wearing an apron that said “Café Animal Kingdom” over her Umesato uniform, which didn’t seem very much in the way of costumery at all.

“You’re curious, yeah?” Reina grinned broadly, perhaps reading this thought on his face. She indicated the entrance to the classroom with her left hand. Pushed this far, he couldn’t walk away, and his interest was indeed piqued as to how exactly it was cosplay. He looked back ever so timidly.

“I figured it’d end up like this,” Niko said, her whole body radiating exasperation. “So then, should we go?”

“’Kay.” The reason Pard immediately agreed was that she was curious about class B’s café, given that she worked every day in a maid costume. Or maybe not; it wasn’t clear.

The instant they slipped through the entrance—pushed onward by Reina’s “Table for seven!”—Haruyuki blinked his eyes several times. The other waitresses also wore aprons over their uniforms, and the neatly decorated classroom did have a fairly real café atmosphere to it. And unlike class C and its reliance entirely on AR displays, the brick walls and wooden window frames were printouts on synthetic paper pasted up, which must have taken a fair bit of time. The four tables—student desks pushed together—also had tablecloths neatly laid over them. The reason the café was named Animal Kingdom was apparently the stuffed animals of various sizes decorating the room.

Shown to a table big enough for eight, Haruyuki turned to Reina and inadvertently offered an ill-advised comment. “The decorations are amazing, but you couldn’t use AR textures for this?”

“We thought that, too, right? But we basically used up all our class resources, you know?”

“Huh? A-are you using AR somewhere?” He whirled his head around, looking at the shop, but he couldn’t spot anything that looked like it. If he had to describe his surroundings, he’d say it felt like the back of the class was raised like a stage, and the student customers there were striking poses in groups of four and taking pictures, but the background was just the brick wall, and they were wearing Umesato uniforms. Reina and all the other waitresses were also in uniforms with aprons.

But Fuko, also looking at the stage, nodded as if it had all come together for her. “Oh, I see. Is that it, then? That’s why it’s a cosplay café. That’s quite the interesting idea, hmm?”

“So, that’s like, you can take as many pics as you want with one drink! Um, hmm, so what, what will you have?”

This conversation was incomprehensible to Haruyuki, but unable to question Reina further now that she was in full waitress mode, he looked down at the menu on the table. He had no sooner thought that it would be full of nothing but ready-made soft drinks when he froze at the names alongside them. “Kitty Prank,” “Lunchtime Lion.” According to the names, they were original nonalcoholic drinks made from fresh juice and flavored syrups.

After a bit of a commotion about this and that, they completed their order—Haruyuki forced to get the Dusk Crow, Pard voluntarily choosing the Leopard in the Tree—and after a few minutes, their drinks arrived from the kitchen set up in one corner of the classroom.

Just when they were chattering and finishing their drinks of various colors—the Dusk Crow was pretty good: black tapioca pearls floating in mango juice—the photo stage emptied out, so urged on by Reina, they stood up from their seats.

Apparently, the six girls had all figured out the mystery of the cosplay café already, and they walked with certain steps, but Haruyuki was still unsure. Although he stuck with everyone else and moved to the stage at the end of the line, he cocked his head from side to side, and his shirt was yanked on hard from behind. When he turned around, Reina’s voice was quiet in his ear.

“Prez-wise, might be more fun to take pics than to have your pic taken, yeah?”

“Huh? Oh…um, yeah.” It was true that rather than get up onstage alongside six girls, it suited him much more to figure out the composition as the photographer. They could take a group photo later, once they met up with Kuroyukihime, Chiyuri, and Takumu. Haruyuki nodded and turned to Fuko and the others. “Okay, so I’ll take the pictures! Get a little closer to each other in the middle. Kusakabe, a little to the right. Okay, that’s good!”

He launched his field of view screenshot app, and in the moment when he was ready to shoot, a window appeared in the center of his virtual desktop with the words IT’S MAGIC TIME! At the bottom was a YES/NO button asking for permission to add an AR display. He furrowed his brow, wondering what the magic could have been, but it seemed that the six onstage had expected this development, and they all moved their fingers as one.

Given that, Haruyuki also raised his right hand and pushed the YES button.

Pwaaan! With a loud noise, the stage was blanketed in rainbow-colored smoke. Naturally, it wasn’t real, but reflexively, he threw his head back. After a few seconds, the smoke disappeared, and the familiar faces of the lady Burst Linkers emerged from it once more. But.

“Whaa—?!” Haruyuki threw his head back once more with a shout. Because the appearance of all six had changed completely, except for their faces, hair, and physiques. Instead of the street clothes they had been wearing, their bodies were wrapped in fur and feathers, and they had large ears on their heads and tails sprouting from their backsides. To express it one phrase, it was as though they had transformed with “animal magic.”

“…Oh, ohhh, so this is the magic time, then.” Finally understanding just half of the situation, Haruyuki focused on the six people on stage once more. They had all transformed into different animals. From the left, Rin was a gray fawn, Fuko a blue sea eagle, Utai a white ermine, Niko a pink rabbit, Akira a light-brown beaver, and Pard a yellow leopard with black spots.

Staring blankly at the troop of girls happily assessing one another’s transformations, Haruyuki was visited by yet another abrupt realization, and he cried out once more. “Oh! Did you all maybe turn into the animals of the drinks we had before?”

“That’s exactly it. But I mean, that was written pretty clearly on the menu,” Reina commented, rolling her eyes, and added as though the thought had just struck her, “Prez, you’re like that, yeah? One of those people who doesn’t read the manual when you DL the game.”

“Th-that’s totally me,” he replied with an embarrassed smile, and was reassured in his heart. The animal magic apparently happened only onstage, so photographer Haruyuki was still in his uniform, but if he had drunk a hippo something or an elephant whatever and gotten up onstage with everyone, right about now he would have been looking pretty pathetic. “But this is a seriously amazing AR program, huh? I mean, I think it’s pretty tough to perfectly match up a texture on a moving body without using markers.”

Getting over his surprise at the transformation, Haruyuki was now curious about the technology. It was a fair bit more difficult to do this than turn the walls and windows into the moving images he had revealed in the class C exhibit.

“I don’t really get the tough stuff either, but my brother’s a buyer for this pretty big shop, right?” Reina said, half-bragging and half-embarrassed. “So he borrowed this test program they developed. And the stuffed animal data along with it.”

“R-right…” The word before “shop” that Reina had omitted was probably not “video game” or “computer,” but something along the lines of fashion. Haruyuki guessed this much and bobbed his head up and down.

“Heeey, Prez. I don’t mean to interrupt your little chat, but maybe you could get around to taking the picture already?”

At Niko’s voice, Haruyuki hurriedly returned his gaze to the stage. “Oh! S-sorry! I’ll take it right now. So just stay like that, and I’ll take three pics in a row!” he called back. Haruyuki promptly pressed the shutter button on his camera app. A large countdown from three was displayed in his field of view, and when it hit zero, they heard a fake shutter sound.

Although it was a screenshot of his field of view, the Neurolinker in its current form didn’t have an eyeball sensor—it couldn’t record what your naked eye was seeing as is, but rather recorded the scene with small lenses built into the front and back of the Linker. Thus, during successive shots, the cameraperson had to remain as still as possible.

But when he had taken the first shot, he realized something and very nearly dropped his head. Hurrying to fix his neck in place again, he moved just his eyes to confirm it. In the window of the dress-up AR program displayed at the bottom of his virtual desktop, there appeared to be a button to deploy the options menu. He touched on it casually, and a selection menu appeared.

Most of the choices had names like MILANO COLLECTION SPRING/SUMMER 2047 or LONDON COLLECTION FALL/WINTER 2047, and the whole thing did have the air of the fashion world about it, which was incomprehensible to Haruyuki. Scrolling down to the very bottom of the list, he found at item called ANIMAL FUR SUITS with a check mark next to it to indicate the current selection. He understood that it probably meant “stuffed animals,” so he gave a mental nod of satisfaction before noticing that there was one other item at the bottom of the list. The name was ANIMAL FUR SUITS S.

…Super? Special? Strong? he wondered, furrowing his brow, but this alone was impossible to hazard a guess at. The camera finished taking the three pictures at that point, so he decided to give this one a go, too, and lifted his finger to touch the item that was maybe strong stuffed animals. A confirmation window popped up, asking if he wanted to switch directly from the current outfit data, so he moved to press the YES button.

“Ah! Prez! Don’t!” Reina shouted at the same time as he pushed the button.

A second later, a magnificent scream came from the stage—actually, the only one who screamed a scream-like scream was Niko.

When Haruyuki lifted his face, he discovered that over 80 percent of the fur and feathers of the animal costumes had vanished, and in their place, a bare skin texture had been pasted over the figures of the six girls. This was nothing other than “animal-ish swimsuits” or maybe “beautiful girls in beast-person mode in a video game.”

“C-c’mon! Put it back!! I’ll knock your teeth out!!” Niko shrieked with a furious look on her face.

“This. Is a little. Embarrassing.” Rin’s eyes filled with tears.

Akira and Pard stared at him silently with icy glares.

“…” “…”

“Oh my goodness! I’ll have to give you a teeeensy punishment later, hmm?” Fuko commented with a smile, while Utai hid behind her, her face beet-red.

Seeing this situation on the stage, Haruyuki went into full panic mode. Wheezing, he tried to put the outfit data set back to what it was. But he was so flustered that he ended up waving both hands around, and his left hand hit a different window on his desktop before his right hand could get there.

After a count of 3, 2, 1 was displayed in his vision, the snap of the shutter rang out.

It was only once everything was all over that Reina informed him that the S in ANIMAL FUR SUITS S stood for Sexy.

Once the process of full-power apology and forcible photo deletion had been completed, it was exactly eleven o’clock.

They hurried back to the cafeteria to meet up with Chiyuri, who had removed her apron but was still wearing the rabbit ears. Thinking that he should be glad, very glad, that she and Kuroyukihime hadn’t been at the Animal Kingdom, Haruyuki led the group, now eight people large, toward the kendo dojo.

On a sign hanging at the entrance, the words SAMURAI X DANCE twirled and pranced around, fanning anticipation and concern, but when they went inside, the standing-room-only seats were basically full. They somehow managed to carve out space for the eight of them and waited for the start of the performance in five minutes.

During that time, Haruyuki glanced any number of times at Rin’s face in profile next to him. Although she had seemed like she was having fun when they were at the cosplay café, she did actually seem to be talking less than usual. But the windows were all covered with blackout curtains, and the lighting was lowered, so it was dim inside the dojo, and he couldn’t tell if she looked pale or not.

“…Um, Kusakabe. If you’re still not feeling good, just say so and I can take you to the nurse’s office…,” he murmured on impulse.

Rin turned her face toward him and smiled. “Thank you. But. I’m okay.”

“You are?” Haruyuki replied, but then felt the slightest sense that something was off with Rin’s figure as she stood there.

Huh? He blinked hard, but at that moment, the lights in the dojo were turned off completely. He could hear the low, heavy sound of drums coming from somewhere. The volume gradually increased, hit a climax, and then stopped abruptly.

An intense spotlight cut through the silence. At some point, the dozen or so members of the boys’ kendo team, wearing kimonos, had lined up in bold poses with their arms crossed in front of their chests in the center of the dojo. And the traditional clothes were not the team kendo uniforms—they were the warrior-style navy hakama pants under the light-blue kamishimo sleeveless jacket from the Edo era. They hadn’t gone quite so far as to shave their heads save for a chonmage topknot, but they did all have the traditional white hachimaki sweatbands tied around their foreheads.

Standing in the center position of the front row was none other than Takumu. For today only, he had taken off his glasses and pushed his hair back, so there wasn’t a speck of the usual professorial air about him. A shrill voice called “Mayuzumiiii!” and Haruyuki unconsciously peered at Chiyuri to his left, but she was apparently too worried about whether the performance would go well to be calling out to Takumu.

Silence fell once more, and Takumu slowly uncrossed his arms and brought his right hand to his left hip. Hanging there was neither a bamboo sword nor a wooden sword. He grabbed the hilt stretching out from a black sheath and yanked it out with a shannk to make a dazzling silver light dance through the air.

Naturally, it was not actually metal, but an imitation sword made of plastic with metallic paint. But the way Takumu moved gave it a sense of weight, so it looked like nothing other than the real thing. Clutching the sword in both hands, he slowly raised it up high above his head.

Then he froze, and just as the nervous excitement in the room was about to snap, Takumu brought his sword down sharply, in time with the booming of a large drum. After a pause, the other members of the team also unsheathed their swords, brandished them, and sliced through the air in perfect unison.

The group dance that followed was, in a word, stunning. Riding the beat of the large drum, the samurai stepped forward with a battle cry, waved their swords, jumped, and turned. At times, they were in perfect unison; at others, they staggered slightly as they danced their hearts out.

At some point, the music turned into Japanese-style rock with a good beat, and people in the audience started clapping along. Haruyuki clapped his hands together along with them as he stared at Takumu moving around and scattering drops of sweat. He had probably gotten the center position because of his height and good looks, but it might also have been because the rumors were true and he would be the next team captain once the summer tournament was over.

Behind Takumu to the left, a small-statured samurai danced with a very serious look on his face. Never taking his eyes off Takumu, the boy seemed to be following his movements very intently. Seiji Nomi, formerly the Twilight Marauder, Dusk Taker. He had been defeated in a sudden-death match in the Unlimited Neutral Field and lost both the Brain Burst program and his memory of the Accelerated World—he was no longer a Burst Linker.

The urge to plunder that had almost violently haunted him had disappeared, and now, as a serious, junior member of the kendo team, he apparently adored Takumu. The overwhelming strength he’d had back when he was using the Physical Burst command was gone now, but he had absolutely had talent to begin with. For instance, even here, the sharpness and certainty of each of his dance moves was better than most of the other team members’. And more than anything else, there wasn’t a hint of hatred or anything twisted on his still-cherubic face. For Nomi, Brain Burst had definitely been something like a curse.

No, I’m sure that’s just what I want to think, Haruyuki thought in a corner of his brain as he clapped hard in time with the music that was growing ever more frenzied as it approached the climax.

Brain Burst was both a salvation and a curse for all Burst Linkers. It could even be said that this dual nature was the true essence of the Accelerated World. Good and evil existed in that place in equal measure. If Haruyuki had been guided by malice, he probably would have ended up as a Burst Linker possessed by hatred, the way Nomi had been. On the other hand, by pushing Dusk Taker to total point loss, Haruyuki had stolen the good that Nomi found and that he might have been able to find in the future in that world.

If only Brain Burst could be installed a second time.

Even knowing this thought was just selfish sentimentality, Haruyuki couldn’t help thinking it. Although, of course, the Nomi of now wouldn’t agree to a copy/install of a suspicious program at Haruyuki’s invitation, what with them being basically strangers at this point. And more importantly, the Nomi of now didn’t need the salvation of the Accelerated World. Even so, the thought that there could have been a different way wouldn’t leave Haruyuki.

He couldn’t have done anything about Nomi’s parent, but if he had at least met Nomi before the Acceleration Research Society…If only they’d been able to simply and earnestly duel without the intervention of the BIC or the video trap. He and Nomi, with his enormous hunger, could have come to understand each other at some point. Haruyuki wanted to believe that.

On the stage, the samurai paired off and faced one another, slamming their swords together at a slightly frightening speed. The clanking of metal was naturally a sound effect coming over the speakers, but it perfectly matched the swords as they came together before his eyes. The fierce mock fighting continued, the samurai switching partners one after another, and just as it started to take on a chaotic aspect, they all lined up and raised their swords above their heads. The music and the choreography all stopped, and the people clapping along stopped soon after.

Yaaaaah! With a mighty roar, all the dancers brought their swords slicing through the air, and the samurai dance was over.

Staring at Takumu and Nomi smiling under the spotlight, Haruyuki clapped as hard as he could along with everyone else in the audience.

“That was seriously amazing, Taku. How long did you guys practice for?” Haruyuki asked, immediately after they joined up with Takumu—now in a tracksuit.

“Aah,” his childhood friend, who had impressively handled the important role of dance captain, replied with a bashful look. “It’s more like we did the thing without any real rehearsal. We have the main tournament at the end of next month, so we couldn’t exactly take that much time to practice the routine or anything.”

“Still, it turned out pretty great, huh? And the costumes and lighting were solid, too,” Chiyuri remarked.

Takumu pulled his head back, looking even more embarrassed. “That’s ’cos the girls’ team worked super-hard for us. On everything from the choreography to the costumes—all of it. Although I was actually kinda embarrassed with that look.”

“Nah, not at all, Professor. If you could fight in kamishimo over there, too, your win rate’d prob’ly go up a little more,” Niko said, giggling.

“I-is that supposed to be a compliment?” Takumu responded, and the whole group burst out laughing. Even Pard, who normally didn’t laugh out loud, and Aqua Current, who somehow resembled her, were grinning along with the rest of them, and Haruyuki was glad.

Since it was almost lunchtime, they decided to wander around the refreshment booths outside this time and have lunch there, so the group, now nine people, stepped outside. If Kuroyukihime had been able to join them, they would have been a party of ten, but apparently, the student council project was going to take a little more time. Haruyuki got a mail from her to the effect that she would be able to come in another fifteen minutes, so he replied with where to meet them.

Then he suddenly remembered what she had said to him before the festival started, and he moved over to Fuko’s side. “Um, Master. Have you seen any movement that looks like an attack so far?”

“Oh, yes, right. I checked the matching list twice, but there was nothing unusual. Although we still can’t let our guard down.”

“Right. But I think that even a kit user would take one look at the Umesato list right now and run away with their tail between their legs…”

On top of the fact that the names of ten Burst Linkers were on the list, enough to rival the total for a smallish area list, there was one each of level six, seven, and eight, plus two level-nine kings to finish it off. He couldn’t believe that even Magenta Scissor would come barging into that.

Hearing Haruyuki’s optimism, Akira, who was situated in front of Fuko, touched her glasses as she replied, “Put another way, it would also be a change to attack two kings at the same time. If their objective is simply to spread the kit infection, it’s quite possible they would try a suicide attack, completely prepared for defeat.”

“…U-understood. I’ll make sure to check the list frequently, too, to find them as soon as possible so we can attack first.”

“That’s a nice sentiment, but be careful not to waste your points.” When Akira—Aqua Current—said this to him, it carried real weight, and Haruyuki nodded silently.

Although he was discussing this with the Four Elements, Haruyuki expected that there wouldn’t be an attack that day after all. There was some distance between them and Magenta’s base in Setagaya, and in this situation, the list of attackers was too large. If they made a wrong step, not only would they be counterattacked, but they might end up cracked in the real. Given how extremely rational Magenta was, even while having an ISS kit, he couldn’t believe she would carry out a reckless attack.

But.

Haruyuki had forgotten the tiny misgiving he’d felt three days earlier.

In fact, Magenta Scissor had attacked. And she’d already finished it before the school festival had even started.

Haruyuki understood this after Rin Kusakabe, walking behind him, fell forward without a sound as if to lean up against him.