Accel World - Volume 23 - Chapter 1

1

“Please… Would you stay with me tonight?”

It took a few seconds after the words reached his ears for them to mean something. Normally, at that moment, Haruyuki would have jumped like a frightened piglet and tried to run away, squeaking a string of nonsensical syllables. But now, two pale arms wrapped around him from behind and held him tightly in place. And even if Kuroyukihime hadn’t been holding him fast, the tremor in her voice told him she was keeping back tears, a thought that dug deep into his heart. He couldn’t breathe, much less move.

I knew it. She was only pretending to be okay.

His mind on the verge of whiting out completely, Haruyuki carefully expelled the air in his lungs, then he took a deep, slow breath. His heart beat faster with every passing second, and his hands were totally numb, but he still managed to turn his head to look back at his one and only swordmaster—the head of the Legion Nega Nebulus and his Brain Burst parent, Kuroyukihime.

“Yes, of course,” he said, putting his whole being into the words. “If there’s anything I can do for you… Anything…”

Now it was Kuroyukihime’s turn to fall silent, but when she did speak again after a few seconds, she sounded a bit more collected. “Thanks. I’m a little surprised, though. I assumed you would race home at a speed on par with Silver Crow.”

“O-oh.” He laughed. “I’m a little surprised myself.”

“I guess you’re not going to stay the person I first met forever, are you?” Moving her hands up to his shoulders, she turned him around. Above him, her black eyes glittered like crystals, with the faintest hint of wetness clinging to her long eyelashes. She smiled fondly.

“Well, then how about we dig into the dinner you were kind enough to bring me? I’ll warm up the soup, so why don’t you plate everything up?”

Eating alone at home, he wouldn’t have bothered putting things on separate plates. But when he piled everything up on the expensive-looking oval platter Kuroyukihime pulled out, the ready-made meal looked 50 percent more delicious.

The two of them set out the dishes on the small dining table and sat across from each other, just as they had when he’d visited the town house exactly a month earlier during the Armor of Catastrophe issue. The corners of their mouths turned up when their eyes met.

The last time he’d been here, Kuroyukihime had asked whether he preferred Japanese or Western-style food, and then they had feasted on a couple of the expensive dinners she kept stuffed in her freezer in paper boxes. The meal itself had been delicious—he’d had absolutely no complaints—but when he thought about her eating from those boxes by herself every day, he felt something tug at his chest.

Ever since, Haruyuki had held Nega Nebulus dinner parties in the living room of the Arita house under some pretext or another, with help from Chiyuri and Takumu. He was happy enough to see Kuroyukihime chat excitedly with Fuko, Utai, and Akira as she exhibited a surprising gluttonous streak, but, in the end, perhaps that was just his own self-satisfaction, because there was nothing he could do to help her with the complicated family situation that had put her in this town house by herself.

Haruyuki pushed back the lump in his chest and joined Kuroyukihime in expressing his appreciation for the dinner before them, and then reached a hand toward the steaming bowl of soup. As he sipped it, careful not to make a sound, the rich flavor of consommé filled his mouth.

“Oh, this is amazing,” he said.

Kuroyukihime blinked in surprise before giggling. “Is it? I’m glad. I just opened a can and heated it up in a pot, though.”

“Uh, um,” he said, fumbling for words. “Maybe it tastes so good because you used a pot instead of the microwave.”

“But it’s an induction stove, so it’s still heated with the electricity. Ohh, darn it. I should have said I warmed it up with the force of my will,” Kuroyukihime said, a rare joke, and Haruyuki laughed out loud.

He took another sip of his soup and was struck by a thought. “Maybe it’s impossible to physically raise the temperature like that. But I think that kind of thing does actually exist.”

“That kind of thing?” She raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You mean, willpower?”

“Yeah. Auntie Momoe—Chiyuri’s mom—used to say you can use the exact same ingredients and prepare two meals the exact same way, but the meal made with love is gonna taste better. I was pretty cynical as a kid—maybe I still am—but anyway, I had my doubts when she said that.”

Holding the soup cup in his hands, Haruyuki could feel the heat coming through the porcelain as he carefully put his thoughts into words.

“I guess cooking with love just means you’re thinking fondly of the person who’s going to eat your food. You wouldn’t be all robotic about it. So even if the cook wasn’t aware that that’s what they were doing, the sentiment might show itself in little ways, like adding more or less spice, or heating the food to the exact right temperature. It isn’t like the Accelerated World’s Incarnate System. You can’t make outrageous things happen with little more than a mental image. But if your feelings have an effect on how something turns out, maybe that’s Incarnate, too, in a way.”

“Mmm.” Kuroyukihime looked just a little surprised for some reason and dropped her gaze to her soup cup. “Now that you mention it, when I was heating this up, maybe I was thinking that I shouldn’t make it too hot… so that the careless Haruyuki wouldn’t burn his mouth.”

“Oh! R-really? Well, thank you for your consideration.” Haruyuki shrank into himself, while Kuroyukihime again smiled brightly.

“I see. It may well indeed be that just the tiniest bit of Incarnate power is at work in this soup as well. But then the same could be said about the food you brought, Haruyuki. It’s not as though you unthinkingly selected it at random, yes?”

“Huh?” The unexpected question forced him to look down at the table.

Cobb salad, squash croquettes, and salmon rillettes were portioned out on the oval platter, while the tortilla rolls and sandwiches on baguettes were arranged on another, smaller plate, and the lemon tart for dessert was chilling in the refrigerator. Naturally, he hadn’t just grabbed them off the shelf at random. Since he didn’t know what food Kuroyukihime liked, he’d thought about what sorts of things she might want before choosing these dishes. He still didn’t know whether he’d been right or wrong, though.

“Uh, um, well,” he stammered. “You seem like you usually eat a lot of vegetables, so I sort of went in that direction.”

“Thank you. Everything looks delicious. And I’ll take this opportunity to tell you that there’s no food I particularly dislike. If pressed, I would say I’m not the biggest fan of squid-ink pasta. As a child, I was scolded quite harshly if I was ever fussy about food. Maybe as a reaction to that, I also don’t have any real favorites, either.”

“Y-you don’t…?”

I figured I’d hit on at least one of her favorites if I bought this much stuff, though.

Perhaps reading his thoughts, Kuroyukihime smiled wryly. “I just said I don’t dislike anything, didn’t I? All right. As of today, the dishes here will be my favorites.”

“Wh-what?!”

“Now why don’t we dig in? You must be hungry, too.” She picked up her fork and brought some of the Cobb salad to her mouth.

The instant Haruyuki saw her do this, a gentle rumbling came from the vicinity of his stomach.

She was right—it had been a rough one. On this first day of summer break, July 21, Haruyuki had tackled a mountain of homework in the morning, and then moved to the Chiyoda Ward in Fuko’s car, where he had attended the year’s fourth meeting of the Seven Kings. There, they had pinned down Ivory Tower, the full proxy of the White King, and succeeded in making him admit the evil acts of Oscillatory Universe, just as they’d planned. Or so he’d thought for a fleeting moment before Wolfram Cerberus stepped out of the shadows of the stage and dragged everyone present into the Unlimited Neutral Field. Haruyuki had fought a fierce battle against Argon Array and Shadow Cloaker from the Acceleration Research Society, and then after all that…

He squeezed his eyes shut to cut off this train of thought. Grabbing his fork, he skewered a squash croquette and bit into it. The savory morsel still had a crunchy mouthfeel even though it had been cooked a while ago, likely because of the large bread crumbs that coated it. He delighted in the breading’s contrast with the smoothness of the squash puree. He polished one off in the blink of an eye and then lifted his face to meet Kuroyukihime’s cheerful eyes.

“Is it good?”

“Yes!” As he nodded, Haruyuki felt something rise up in his chest once more, and he took a gulp of soup from his cup.

“Hot!” he yelped, his throat suddenly burning. He cooled the inside of his mouth and esophagus with the ice that Kuroyukihime hurriedly proffered with a sigh.

“Honestly. Of course it’s going to be hot when you take a big swig like that. You’re as careless as ever, aren’t you?”

“Eh-heh-heh.” Laughing in embarrassment, he started in on the salmon rillette. Apparently, this was normally spread on a piece of baguette or a cracker, but the rillette Haruyuki bought was on bite-size pieces of chicory leaf, so it was a bit like eating a salad. Raw chicory was very bitter, but this wasn’t a concern paired with the rich rillette.

“Mmm. This is tasty, too. You know some pretty good shops, Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime commented as she took a bite of some rillette at the same time.

“No, this was actually my first time going to this place.” Haruyuki ducked his head. “I don’t normally get takeout like this.”

“Ha-ha! I suppose not.”

“Oh! But lately I’ve been wanting to learn to cook for myself, so I’m buying ingredients and things at the supermarket. I can only make simple dishes so far, though,” he added.

“… Oh-ho.” The smile disappeared from her face. “What sort of recipes can you make, for instance?”

“Hyah?!” He jumped in his seat. “Uh, um, recently, I made a vegetable stir-fry, chahan fried rice, spaghetti with tomato sauce… I was thinking maybe it was time for me to tackle curry, but peeling potatoes is surprisingly hard.”

“… Oh-ho-ho.” Her face serious, Kuroyukihime glanced at her hands for some reason before piling on another question. “Why on earth did you suddenly awaken to the delights of cooking? Do you have some specific reason?”

“Um. It’s nothing in particular. I was just, like, ‘eating only frozen pizza can’t be good for me,’” he recalled, though the truth was that he actually did have a reason. But he couldn’t confess it to her of all people. Not until the day came when she could actually taste the fruits of his labor.

“I see. Well, it is true that cooking for yourself is usually healthier than eating packaged food all the time,” Kuroyukihime replied, accepting his words at face value, and cleared her throat before continuing. “The truth is, Haruyuki, I, too have recently…” She trailed off.

“You’ve recently what?” he asked.

“Unh, aah, no, it’s nothing.” She shook her head.

“Wh-whaaaat?!”

“Don’t concern yourself with it,” she told him. “Mmm. This burrito is delicious.”

The two of them chatted about this and that as they steadily emptied the plates. He thought he’d bought more than enough, but before he knew it, the large platter and the soup had been devoured. All that was left was a lone sandwich on the smaller plate.

“Haruyuki, you go ahead and eat that.” Kuroyukihime pushed the plate toward him.

“What? No, it’s yours.” He nudged it back in her direction.

“You’re a growing boy. Don’t be shy.”

“Y-you’re only a year older than me, though.” And then he had a sudden thought. “Oh! Then how about we do this? We’ll have a direct-duel, and the winner gets to eat the sandwich.”

Haruyuki came up with this strategy because Kuroyukihime wasn’t the sort to hold back in a duel, and so she would definitely get the last bite. He started to pull an XSB cable out of his pocket before it finally hit him.

She was in no mental state to casually duel. It had only been mere hours ago that Black Lotus’s avatar was caught in the White Legion’s trap. System-wise, this put absolutely no restrictions on her participation in normal duels, including direct duels, or in the Territories. The imprisonment would cause no real issues in her carrying out her duties as a Legion Master.

But just as Kuroyukihime herself had once said, the true nature and heart of Brain Burst 2039 was the Unlimited Neutral Field. That was the true Accelerated World. But if she uttered the Unlimited Burst command now, Black Lotus would appear inside of the Legend-class Enemy, the Sun God Inti, and die instantly due to the superheated flames, hot enough to melt even steel. It was a completely perfect Unlimited EK, surpassing even the altars of the Four Gods where Ardor Maiden and Aqua Current had been sealed away.

The reason he’d come over to her town house bearing provisions in the first place was because he was worried she might be depressed now that her duel avatar had been imprisoned. He’d felt like she wasn’t her usual self. When she’d come out to meet him, her eyes had been red, and she’d teared up just a little when he told her the reason for his sudden visit. She’d gotten back to normal while they sat across from each other eating, so he’d forgotten and accidentally brought up a direct duel. But even if it were possible system-wise, it was obvious that Kuroyukihime would not be in the mood for a duel at the moment.

“Um. I-I’m sorry. I just…” Haruyuki dropped his head and moved to shove the XSB cable back into his pocket.

But a pale hand stretched out to grab it.

“All right. I’ll accept that challenge.”

“Huh?” When he lifted his head, he found Kuroyukihime’s gentle—and slightly mischievous—smile as she sat on the other side of the table. He stared into her dark eyes and tried to see if she was forcing herself to act okay, but his limit for meeting her gaze was three seconds. He dropped his head once again.

He thought he should perhaps apologize and take back his request for a duel, but Kuroyukihime’s hand stayed firmly where it was on the table.

Who’s cheering up whom here? Haruyuki wondered as he plugged one end of the cable into his own Neurolinker and offered the plug at the opposite end to his host.

When she connected it to her Neurolinker, as black as a grand piano, a wired-connection warning popped up and then disappeared. Colors were automatically corrected in his field of view, so that only his connection partner appeared before his eyes.

“When we do this, I remember that day,” she murmured in neurospeak that echoed in his mind.

Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down. “Yes. It hasn’t even been a year since then but it already feels like ancient history.”

“That day” was, of course, October 24 of last year, the day Haruyuki became a Burst Linker. He’d gone to the lounge in the school cafeteria at the invitation of the black spangle butterfly who’d appeared in the squash game of the Umesato Junior High local net. He had very nearly fainted under the pressure of the collective gazes of all the other students there as he direct-linked with Kuroyukihime. And then she gave him the executable file marked, “BB2039.exe.”

He didn’t know why it had a filename extension used in an old computer OS or the reason why it worked on a Neurolinker. He simply tapped the icon as if in a trance, his field of view was enveloped in red flames, and then Haruyuki became a Burst Linker.

“For those of us who accelerate, a year is a long time. But, yes, right. When October twenty-fourth comes again this year, how about we celebrate Silver Crow’s first birthday? I’ll even make—No, never mind.” Kuroyukihime cleared her throat for real, and straightened up in her seat. “Well then, who should challenge whom?”

“Oh! O-of course, allow me to challenge you!” Haruyuki declared, then took a deep breath before he called in a hushed hiss, “Burst Link!”