Accel World - Volume 24 - Chapter 1

1

“Two-zero-three-two, zero-nine, three-zero.”

The eight numbers Haruyuki murmured sent the water just below his mouth rippling. Small concentric waves spread out, hit the edge of the tub, and disappeared. He’d slid his whole body down deep into the bath so that the water was right up to his nose, allowing him to blow bubbles as he sank into thought.

I’ll probably never forget those numbers.

He’d had them memorized for a while now, as September 30, 2032, was the birthdate of his Legion Master and parent, Kuroyukihime. But the previous evening, the meaning of those numbers had changed forever, in the moment the purple bar code printed on the nape of her pale neck had been revealed.

For Haruyuki, as an eighth-grade boy sound of both mind and body, having a bath with a girl a year older should have left him wrestling with the physical shock of it for a week or two. But carved deep into Haruyuki’s memory was not the elegant naked body he saw through the steam nor the smooth feel of the back he washed with the bath sponge, but rather Kuroyukihime’s shocking confession.

“I wasn’t born from my mother’s stomach. I was an embryo raised in an artificial womb after being fertilized outside the body—a so-called machine child.

“I was equipped with a Neurolinker while I was still in the artificial womb and soul duplication measures were implemented. The bar code on my neck is a vestige of that. Meaning that on the soul level, I have no connection with my parents whatsoever.”

Kuroyukihime had told Haruyuki all of this while they soaked in the bath, facing each other.

Her confession should have stunned him, but it also made certain things click into place. The recklessness Kuroyukihime demonstrated from time to time—for instance, whenever she acted with no consideration for her own safety, like when she saved Haruyuki from an out-of-control car—perhaps that came from knowing hers was an artificial birth. In which case, that was a very sad thing. Even if she had been born from an artificial womb, that didn’t devalue her existence and purpose as a human in the slightest…

…because she was the one and only Kuroyukihime, loved by so many in both the real world and the Accelerated World.

The previous day when she’d told him all of this, he had tried to get that message across with all the words at his disposal. But now that he was back at home and thinking about it alone, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he hadn’t said nearly enough. He should have told her more, should have repeated himself until he was blue in the face, should have insisted on how much he cherished her, how grateful he was to have met her.

He transformed another sigh into bubbles before plugging his ears with his fingers. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and sank down, his face turned toward the ceiling.

The Arita bathroom was large for a condo, and the bathtub itself was also quite big, allowing Haruyuki, who was fairly short, to be completely submerged if he just bent his legs slightly. He’d run the bath on the lukewarm side, so the boundary between the temperature of his skin and the bathwater grew ambiguous. The water silenced the noise of the air conditioner, so the only sound he heard was his own heartbeat.

Was this what it was like inside an artificial womb?

Naturally, even the great Kuroyukihime didn’t remember the time before her birth. But there was a theory that human beings maintained a so-called prenatal memory until they were two or three years old. If even just a hint of the memories of the artificial womb remained in the deepest recesses of her mind, then he wanted to try to understand them and share this with her.

He was running out of air, but he forced himself to stay underwater. Finally, when he felt like his chest might explode, he pushed his head up through the surface of the water and gasped for air.

I want to be stronger, Haruyuki wished fervently as he inhaled ragged breaths.

He’d been wishing for this since he became a Burst Linker—and maybe even long before that. But this longing that spurred him on was so deep and intense that he wanted to shout it out loud.

He didn’t only want to become stronger as a Burst Linker. He wanted to be stronger as a person. Strong enough that he could permanently dispel everything that tortured the heart of his beloved.

He thrust a fist up out of the bath, high into the air. He swung his clenched hand back down but then stopped himself on the verge of punching the water.

He wouldn’t get anywhere by rushing. He had to keep moving forward, keep persevering, one step at a time. Or if that was too much, a half step. Or even a finger inching along. He had so much to do. In the real world and in the Accelerated World.

“Kuroyukihime, I’m absolutely going to…”

He swallowed the rest of this declaration, stood up, and got out of the tub.