Accel World - Volume 23 - Chapter 4

4

“My, my… I do feel as though I fell right into your trap,” Kuroyukihime muttered after returning to the real world, as she removed the XSB cable from her neck and handed it back to Haruyuki.

“T-trap? It wasn’t…” Shaking his head back and forth, he shoved the cable into his pocket before pushing the plate in the center of the table toward Kuroyukihime. “But you won the duel, so please enjoy the sandwich!”

“Fine. I will.” She picked up the sun-dried tomato, mozzarella cheese, and arugula sandwich and bit into one end with a crunch. They still had the lemon tart waiting in the fridge for dessert, but even Haruyuki was full, so it looked like they would have to leave it until tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Meaning the day following today. In other words, unless they went to bed and woke up again, tomorrow would not come. The instant he thought about this matter-of-fact detail, what Kuroyukihime had said an hour earlier replayed over and over in his brain.

Please… Would you stay with me tonight?

Haruyuki had replied that of course he would, but it was unclear exactly what specific meaning “tonight” held in Kuroyukihime’s mind. Was it until some time that was a little late for a junior high schooler—for instance, around nine? Or was it around midnight, a time at which there was a possibility that a warning might come flying at him from a police officer if he were caught on the social cameras walking alone? Or even longer than that—until morning—which, while eliminating the risk of any legal issues, would generate an entirely different, extremely large problem?

Whichever it was, he needed to mail his mother as soon as possible, but the details of that message would also change depending on the time he expected to return home. If it was the middle of the night or the next morning, he might have to enlist Takumu’s help.

Haruyuki continued to examine these alternatives as quickly as his brain could process them, while Kuroyukihime finished the small sandwich and drank the soup left in her cup before letting out a sigh.

“Aah, I’m really full. I can’t remember the last time I pushed myself this far.”

“I-I-I-I’m sorry. I bought too much…” Haruyuki hurriedly bowed his head, and Kuroyukihime grinned.

“No need to apologize. What you said was simply the truth.”

“Hmm? What did I say?”

“That if I ate, I’d feel better.”

“Oh, r-right.” He nodded.

“I do indeed feel better,” she told him. “I guess eating really is important. And I got to duel with you again for the first time in a while. Plus, I went to the Highest Level, and we saw Metatron and Amaterasu. Though it is too bad we didn’t get to see Grumpy.”

“Yeah.” He nodded again slowly.

After hearing Haruyuki out in the Highest Level, the Saint Amaterasu had tried to contact Rose Milady, but unfortunately, she got no response. The link between Amaterasu and Rose Milady apparently didn’t reach the Lowest Level of the real world, so it was no wonder she couldn’t get ahold of the Burst Linker. In the Mean Level of the Unlimited Neutral Field, where time flowed a thousand times faster, the probability of someone you knew diving at the same time as you was extremely low.

But Amaterasu said she would give Rose Milady the message the next time she spoke with her, so Haruyuki told her the anonymous mail address—in this case, anonymous meant not tied to his Neurolinker—that he used for contact with any number of Burst Linkers. It was a rather novel and unsettling experience to speak the characters of that address out loud, but apparently, there was no fundamental difference in the Highest Level between speaking out loud and writing in text.

He had absolutely no idea when Rose would get his message or if she would actually contact him, assuming she did get it. If they heard nothing by the next day, they would move on the issue of Megumi Wakamiya without her help.

“Yesterday, you said that if you could, you wanted to get Rose out of Oscillatory, too, and have her join Nega Nebulus, right?” Haruyuki asked softly, and Kuroyukihime nodded. “Is that… actually possible? The people of the White Legion I’ve come into contact with—Behemoth, Fairy… even Platinum Cavalier who put you and the kings in the Unlimited EK—they’re not like the people in the Acceleration Research Society; I get the feeling they’re not bad guys… Oh! I-I’m sorry for saying something like that.”

“No, it’s fine.” She shook her head. “I understand what you’re trying to say. So?”

“Um, I don’t know, it’s like, those people, they know that what they’re doing is causing so much suffering in the Accelerated World, but they think they have to do it for whatever reason. I think Rose’s probably like that, too. On the Highest Level… she said that Oscillatory had its own reasons for fighting, and those reasons were totally incompatible with Negabu’s.”

Kuroyukihime remained silent for a while and stared at the cup of soup in her hands. Finally, she put the cup down and looked at him. Her clear, black eyes narrowed as though she were in some kind of pain.

“My sister… my parent the White King manipulated me with false information and maneuvered so that I would drive the former Red King to total point loss. I’ve told you that before, yes?”

“Y-yes…,” he said.

The first Legion Master of Prominence, Red Rider, had created and distributed seven guns with his Arms Creation ability as a sign of the friendship of the Seven Kings. These guns, named the Seven Roads, were revolvers, and the seven-round magazine was loaded with bullets of seven different colors, but the guns were set so that the bullets wouldn’t be fired even if the trigger was pulled.

But the White King fed Kuroyukihime the false information that the guns were weapons of mutually assured destruction with explosive force akin to a nuclear missile, and that by distributing these, the Red King was trying to make the mutual nonaggression pact of the seven great Legions absolute and eternal. This had been three years earlier, when Kuroyukihime was in grade six.

At the time, Kuroyukihime had insisted that all Burst Linkers should fight to reach level ten, but even so, she had a friendly rivalry with the other kings—at the very least, they had mutual respect for one another as comrades. However, the incredible power of the Road the White King had test-fired before her was so great that it ripped the buildings of the field out by their foundations, and backed Kuroyukihime up against a wall. Convinced that she would never become level ten if the guns were there to function as deterrents, she launched a surprise attack on Red Rider at the meeting of the Seven Kings and drove him to total point loss through the sudden-death rule.

“I’ve always thought about it like this,” Kuroyukihime said. “Cosmos needed Rider out of the picture for some reason, so she got me to do the dirty work. In fact, Cosmos manipulated the regenerated Rider and forced him to make the ISS kits, but… lately, I’ve sort of wondered…”

Haruyuki forgot to breathe as he stared at her face. He felt a kind of ephemerality from her, like if he blinked even once, she’d vanish before his eyes. He braced himself.

“Am I not still being manipulated by Cosmos even now? Perhaps my role wasn’t finished at driving Rider to total point loss; perhaps it was just part of the process… The present situation, the hostility with Cosmos, Oscillatory in more or less of a tight spot—am I still just being made to dance in Cosmos’s palm?”

“That’s…” Haruyuki shook his head as hard as he could. “There’s no way! In the Territories yesterday, Oscillatory—Black Vise definitely planned to drive us all to total point loss. And at the meeting of the Seven Kings today, too, the strategy of pushing you and the other kings into Unlimited EK was basically an act of desperation. The White King’s been painted into a corner, too… The fact that the ISS kit main body was destroyed, the fact that the true nature of the Acceleration Research Society was exposed—No, even before that, there was no way the White King was expecting you to bring Nega Nebulus back to life!”

In his ardor, Haruyuki leaned too far forward and lost his balance, almost falling out of his chair before catching himself on the table. Watching him, Kuroyukihime chuckled.

“I suppose,” she offered. “You’re working so hard, and yet I’m so uncertain. I can’t stand before the Legion like this. You and Fuko both saw right through me—I am more than a little shaken up by my first Unlimited EK, but now that I think about it, Utai and Akira both endured the same situation for two years. Graph alone managed something under his own power, apparently.”

“K-Kuroyukihime, please stop,” he begged. “I mean, it’s not like Graph managed to entirely escape from the domain of the God Genbu. He fled inside the Castle and now he’s stuck there.”

“Hee-hee, I know,” she said. “We’ll likely end up discussing an escape strategy at the Legion meeting tonight, but I’m not in a hurry anymore. It has no effect on the Territories or normal duels, and I think we could take care of it once the general attack on Oscillatory is finished.”

“… Right,” Haruyuki agreed, resisting the urge to tell her that he would rescue her as soon as he could.

He had already personally experienced the terror of the Sun God Inti. Even the metal-color Silver Crow would be vaporized in less than a minute if he charged in recklessly. When Haruyuki asked Amaterasu, also a Sun God, about an attack strategy for Inti, she’d simply said with a grim look, “We do not wish to be involved with that fireball. Apologies.” So if he wanted to rescue Kuroyukihime, it would take more than a reckless suicide attack; he needed to hammer out a serious plan with his comrades.

“Getting back to the matter at hand,” Kuroyukihime started, her tone relaxed, “I also feel that the members of Oscillatory and the executive branch of the Seven Dwarves are moving based on a particular mindset, a mental readiness, just as you said before. If Rose also shares that mindset, then she won’t be able to leave the Legion so easily. And Cosmos would not hesitate to use the Judgment Blow on any subordinates who went over to the enemy’s side. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a slim possibility.”

“Wh-what kind of possibility?” he asked.

“If her feelings for Orchid Oracle and Saffron Blossom are greater than the weight of this mental preparation…”

Her words gave Haruyuki’s memory a powerful jolt. He heard Rose’s voice played back deep in his mind.

“‘I’ll do what has to be done for Orchid Oracle’s sake, and for Saffron Blossom’s,’” he recited. “That’s what Rose said before she vanished from the Highest Level. Did… Did she mean that she would betray the White King?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She picked up her soup cup, but then realized it was empty and set it back down. “Let’s have some tea. Is iced all right?”

“Yes, of course,” Haruyuki hurried to reply as Kuroyukihime stood up. “Um, I’ll clear the table.”

“All right. How about we do that together?”

They put the empty plates into the dishwasher, tossed the bioplastic packages into the disposal, and waited for the water to boil. Haruyuki thought this would be the right moment to confirm the nuance of “tonight,” but the high-tech kettle boiled the half liter of water in the blink of an eye, and he lost his chance.

Kuroyukihime made the tea a little on the strong side with black tea leaves from a can. She carried the tea to the table together with glasses of ice. The moment the tea finished steeping, she poured the ruby liquid from the pot into the glasses, and the light sound of crackling filled the air.

Haruyuki was not the biggest fan of straight black tea, but it smelled so good that he brought it to his lips as is, and though it was a little bitter, it was still refreshing and he tasted a hazy sweetness, even though she hadn’t added any sugar. The fragrance that spread throughout his nose after he took a sip was florid like wine grapes.

“This is really good.”

The instant he gave her his impressions with his limited vocabulary, Kuroyukihime put on a smile.

“It was a present from Megumi. Second-flush Darjeeling. That’s what they call tea leaves picked in the region from May through June.”

“Huh. Wait.” He paused. “I thought black tea had a whole fermentation process? It’s still only July, but you can already get this in Japan?”

“You’re very perceptive.” She smiled. “It’s apparently the first second-flush shipment they received this year at the tea shop Megumi always goes to. She gave it to me on the day of our last student council meeting of the first term…”

Once more, a smile crossed her face, this time tinged with a slight sadness, and Kuroyukihime picked up her glass. For a moment, she focused on enjoying the tea, and then she began to speak again.

“On the same day, I gave her a teaspoon I found in a shop in Koenji. We stopped at a café after school and chatted endlessly. I thought we’d have many more days like that. But I didn’t know anything about Megumi—no, I didn’t even try to learn more about her.”

“Then you can just find out.” Haruyuki’s mouth moved more smoothly than normal, perhaps thanks to the cold tea. “I mean, I think there’s still a ton of things I don’t know about you, Kuroyukihime. And it’s not like you know everything about me, right? We could spend decades learning about each other and still never know it all… That’s exactly why other people are interesting. And that’s why it’s fun to be with them, right?”

Kuroyukihime blinked carefully twice, and her face loosened into a smile. “It surprises me, to hear words like that from you. Even though I told you back when we met that I wished for nothing more than that.”

“Gah… I-I’m sorry.” He squirmed in his chair. She had indeed said something like that.

“No need to apologize.” She laughed merrily. “You’re exactly right. I can learn about her little by little from now on. Another reason I have to get Megumi back.”

“Right!” He nodded forcefully, and the ice clinked against his glass, as if in agreement.

By the time they finished their iced tea, the clock had struck eight. The Legion meeting was at 8:30 PM, but he needed to message his mother before that. Except how could he find out what Kuroyukihime really meant by the word “tonight”? Maybe he could say he should be getting home soon? But even assuming this made her sad or disappointed her, she wouldn’t say anything. And all of this was pointless if he couldn’t be with her when she was going through her hardest times.

“That reminds me, Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime said, as he sat on his chair agonizing. “Don’t you need to message your mother?”

“Hieh?!” He practically jumped into the air.

“Not ‘hieh.’” She frowned. “You’re still in junior high; you have to do these things right.”

“R-r-r-right. I am gravely aware of that.”

But what am I supposed to tell her?!

Unable to ask this question, he moved an awkward hand and launched the messaging app on his virtual desktop. Staring at the blank window, he earnestly racked his brain and finally sent his mother the short message “I’m doing summer homework at a friend’s, so I’ll be home late. Or I might stay over.” A few seconds later, he received the reply “Make sure you don’t overstay your welcome,” so he let out a sigh of relief and closed the app.

“What did your mother say?” Kuroyukihime asked immediately.

“Um, not to impose,” Haruyuki told her.

“Oh?” She also seemed to be relieved.

“Actually,” he added timidly, “I told her we were doing summer homework, so…”

“Ha-ha! I see. In that case, we can’t let that be a lie. After the meeting, I’ll take a serious look at your homework for you.”

“P-please and thank you,” he replied, but he couldn’t help but shout in his head, How many hours will a “serious look” take?!

After they cleared away the glasses, they moved from the dining table to the living room. It was sparsely furnished with nothing but a circular beanbag chair, a wall shelf, and a ninety-centimeter aquarium in the southeast corner, which drew the eye. Haruyuki trotted over to it and peeked inside.

The only animals were twenty or so small tropical fish; the stars of the tank were the artfully arranged sea plants. The most spectacular of these was a tropical water lily that stretched up from the soil toward the water’s surface, where a circular leaf rested. The last time he’d seen it, it had been just the stalk and the leaf, but now a round bud protruded from the center.

“Oh! It has a bud!” Haruyuki cried.

“Mmm, finally.” Kuroyukihime peered into the tank alongside him. “I thought it would come a little sooner, but it sure took its sweet time.”

“I can’t wait for it to bloom.”

“Mmm. Because it’s the lily you gave me,” she murmured and touched a hand to his back.

Haruyuki had brought her this water lily the previous fall. He had gone to visit Kuroyukihime in the hospital—following a car accident that had left her seriously injured—on the day she was moved from the ICU to the general ward. Or more precisely, it was the child of that plant. Haruyuki hadn’t even known the name of the plant—Lindsey Woods—but it turned out that this species of water lily produced propagules at the base of its leaves, and when a propagule was turned upside down and left to float on the water surface, it would grow roots and a new leaf, if you were lucky. Kuroyukihime had carefully germinated the lone propagule attached to the leaf and grown it into this beautiful plant. When the bud finally opened, the flower that bloomed would be a bluish-purple color that closely resembled that of Black Lotus’s overlay.

“Please tell me when it blooms. I’ll come and see it.”

“I promise I will,” she said. “Now, it’s almost time.”

He glanced down and to the right and saw that the time was 8:27 PM.

Kuroyukihime gave him a push on the back to sit him down on the beanbag chair in the middle of the living room before seating herself next to him. The microbeads must have been high quality; the cushion changed shape almost like a viscous liquid and enveloped his body.

“Th-this chair’s as comfortable as ever, huh?” he said, but if he were being honest, the majority of his senses were focused on Kuroyukihime’s body and where his arm was touching her. Although he wanted to move a little farther away, it was an impossible task given the structure of the chair.

Meanwhile, Kuroyukihime appeared not to give a second thought to their close proximity, but rather leaned into Haruyuki and said with a laugh, “This chair corrupts people. If you’re not careful, you’ll fall asleep. Don’t go yawning or anything during the meeting.”

“H-hyah. Th-that reminds me. Who’s the host for today’s meeting?”

“Fuko. You might want to brace yourself.”

“Huh?” He cocked his head. “For what?”

“You’ll know when you see her. All right. Here we go…”

Kuroyukihime took a deep breath, and he felt her slender chest expanding, which made his heart pound even harder. But he somehow managed to take in the bare minimum of air required, and—

““Direct link!””

—they spoke the voice command in unison.

First, the softness of the beanbag chair disappeared, followed by the hardness of the floor, and then his field of view whited out. Aware only of the heat of Kuroyukihime’s body lingering against his arm, Haruyuki plummeted into the virtual darkness.