Accel World - Volume 25 - Chapter 4

4

“—Gah!!”

A shiver of fear shook his body and woke him up. Still lying in bed, he blinked several times. The air conditioner, controlled by the home server, should have been keeping the room at the perfect temperature and humidity, but his face and chest were drenched in sweat.

As he waited for his pounding heart to calm, Haruyuki tried to remember the nightmare he’d had, but only lingering notes of terror, despair, and resignation drifted through his head like painful smoke, and even these soon disappeared.

He let out the breath he’d been holding and sat up. He’d left his Neurolinker off, so he looked at the clock on his desk and saw that the digital display showed 10:07 AM. He’d gone to bed around six AM, so he’d only slept for about four hours.

Even so, he felt like he had slept more than plenty. When he thought about it, there were also the four hours he’d gotten in before his training with Centaurea Sentry, so altogether, that was a full eight hours. Kuroyukihime had set the Legion meeting for three that afternoon, so that he could get some serious sleep. But since he’d woken up naturally in the morning, it seemed a waste to go back to sleep again.

Despite the bad dream, his panic over the Unlimited EK had grown weak enough to ignore, thanks to the solid sleep he’d had. Getting out of bed, he got a change of clothes and left his bedroom, thinking he should take a shower first.

As he walked down the dim hallway, he equipped his Neurolinker and launched his virtual desktop. Instantly, a flood of notifications about missed voice calls and mail poured in. When he hurried to check them, it wasn’t just his friends in Nega Nebulus; there were a lot of messages from members of other Legions connected with anonymous mail addresses. The last time they’d seen him, he was being abducted by Tezcatlipoca, so it was only natural that they would want to know what had happened.

Kuroyukihime, Fuko, or Chiyuri had probably replied to them on his behalf. Still, he opened his mail app as he stood in the hallway. He typed “I’M SORRY TO TAKE A WHILE TO ANSWER YOU. I’M FINE FOR NOW. I’LL LET YOU KNOW THE DETAILS LATER.” He sent it to all the Burst Linkers who had messaged him.

Walking toward the living room once more, he looked at the door of his mother’s bedroom on the left side of the hall and saw a holotag floating there that said she was in the room and sleeping. She must have come home while he was asleep. He quietly opened the door at the end of the hall so as not to make a sound.

The moment he entered the bright living room, a message window appeared above the table—a note from his mother. He moved over to it and read it.

“I HAD ONE OF THE WRAPS IN THE FRIDGE. I’LL BE AT HOME UNTIL TOMORROW AFTERNOON, SO IF YOUR SPEECH FOR THE STUDENT COUNCIL ELECTION IS DONE, YOU SHOULD LET ME SEE IT.”

“Aah.” He closed the window before moving into the kitchen. He drank a glass of chilled barley tea and went through the living room to the bathroom. As the hot shower poured down on him, he thought about the student council election.

Two weeks earlier, Mayu Ikuzawa, class representative of grade eight, class C, had invited Takumu and Haruyuki to put their names up together with hers for the next student council.

The student council at Umesato Junior High was somewhat peculiar. Normally, candidates for president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer stood on their own as individuals and received separate votes, but at Umesato, the four people stood together from the start as a team. In other words, the staffing abilities and management capabilities of the student who would be council president was tested from the election campaign stage. This was really no surprise for a school managed by a major educational company.

In that sense, he understood very well why Mayu had chosen Takumu. He was the eighth-grade kendo team ace, had excellent grades, and on top of that, he was super nice and good-looking. He didn’t have a single thing against him as a candidate. Meanwhile, Haruyuki’s grades were only so-so, sports were a no-go, and he stammered and stuttered, a real piece of work. When Mayu had asked him, he’d been surprised and skeptical that she would pick the least suitable person in their grade, but she’d apparently settled on him because of things like how he’d polished the AR mapping project on his own for the class display at the school festival and his work as president of the Animal Care Club.

That said, however, Haruyuki thought being a member of the student council was just too much for him. And more importantly, he thought that he would end up dragging everyone else down if he did stand for election, and cause the whole team to lose, so he’d been planning to say no initially. But he’d changed his thinking after discussing it with Takumu and Kuroyukihime.

The most direct reason was the question that Kuroyukihime had posed to him:

“Is there any meaning in work without results…? That’s what you’re thinking right now, yes?”

Exactly. Haruyuki had told himself this ever since he was little. Whatever it was, if he was going to fail and feel pathetic, then it was better to not even do it right from the start. But through his many encounters and experiences in the Accelerated World, this backward way of thinking had gradually changed bit by bit.

Trying for his own sake, for someone else’s sake. Trying simply because he wanted to try. That repeated effort definitely wasn’t nothing. So on the day before the closing ceremony for the semester, Haruyuki had said yes to Mayu Ikuzawa on the roof of Umesato Junior High.

Now that he’d accepted, he had to take it seriously. The election campaign would start with the beginning of the second term, but there were a lot of things to do before then. He wanted to finish the draft of his speech his mother’s note mentioned sooner rather than later, and more than anything else, they had to urgently decide on the fourth member of their team. Mayu was obviously looking for that person herself, but she’d told Haruyuki that if he thought of someone, he should tell her. He wanted to be able to offer up at least one name when she messaged him.

With these thoughts swirling around his mind, he washed himself, rinsed the suds off, and stepped out of the bathroom. He returned to his own room and checked the time before changing into his uniform. He left a message in the note app—“I’M AT SCHOOL FOR MY CLUB WORK. MY SPEECH MIGHT TAKE A LITTLE MORE TIME”—and headed for the kitchen once more. He opened the fridge and took one of the three remaining tortilla rolls from the plate.

While he was at it, he pulled out a small container from a corner of the top shelf and headed for the sink opposite the fridge. As he tucked into the tortilla, he opened the container.

“Aah!” he cried out, a bite of tortilla almost falling out of his mouth. He narrowly managed to clamp his jaw shut around it and hurriedly swallowed it as he stared at the interior of the container.

Pale brown elliptical shapes about seven millimeters long sitting on top of damp gauze—cherry pits. On the seventh of that month, Niko and Kuroyukihime had launched a surprise attack on the Arita house, leading to an impromptu slumber party, and for dessert after supper, he’d brought out the cherries that his mother’s father had sent. Niko had loved them and suggested that they grow the seeds.

Sweet cherry trees were generally grown through grafting, and it was fairly difficult to cultivate them from seeds. To get a seed to sprout required a low-temperature, humid environment, which was definitely impossible outside in July, so they’d lined up the twelve seeds that they’d washed and dried on top of damp gauze and stored them in the Arita refrigerator. Haruyuki had been careful to add water every day, but…

In the two weeks up to that day, the little seeds had been utterly silent, and now three of them had several very fine roots that at first glance looked like mold, poking their faces out the sides. Exposed to the cold of midwinter for two weeks, the seeds had awakened and germinated.

“Ooh, you did it,” he said quietly, but the truth was, he’d succeeded when he’d attempted the same thing several years earlier. Back then, he’d planted the sprouted seeds in a pot on the balcony, but maybe because the soil was too old or because he’d given them too much water, they hadn’t made it all the way to sprouts, sadly. He wondered how it would turn out this time.

He laid out a new piece of gauze in a separate container, gently moved the three germinated seeds, and pulled the gauze over top of them. He put the lid on and after thinking for a minute, put it into a small insulated bag with a cold pack. He filled his water bottle with ice and barley tea and headed for the front door, where he took a messenger bag from a hook on the wall and tucked the bag and the bottle inside. He slung it across his chest, put on a cap hanging from another hook, slipped on some mesh sneakers, and slowly opened the door.

Instantly, a wave of intense flames slammed up against his face, even though it was still early in the day. Normally, he would want to close the door again, but having just one thing to look forward to made him feel like he could deal with the summer heat somehow.

He stepped out into the hallway and listened to the click of the door locking behind him as he ran off to the elevator.

Although he’d walked in the shade as much as possible, by the time he arrived at the gates of Umesato Junior High, his shirt was drenched with sweat.

He stopped for a second inside the gates, pulled a towel from his bag, and wiped his face and neck. He waited until the sweat abated a little before heading toward the courtyard behind the second school building, also known as the old school.

When he walked down the path wedged between the school and the high enclosing wall, an open space suddenly appeared ahead of him. The central—or rather, rear—courtyard in a hidden corner of the Umesato premises. Despite the fact that it was closed in on two sides by concrete walls and on a third by the school building, it got surprisingly good light.

In the northernmost part of the yard was a wooden hut. Four meters on each side, two and a half meters tall. Compared with the school, it was tiny, but it had a total floor space of sixteen square meters, so it was bigger than Haruyuki’s bedroom.

The student sweeping the leaves in front of the hut looked up at the sound of his footsteps. “Huh? Hey, Prez. Was today your day?”

Reina Izeki. She was one of the members of the Umesato Junior High Animal Care Club, of which Haruyuki was president. Whenever he caught sight of her inside the school, she was seriously on the made-up and done-up side of things, so it felt strange to see her now with her wavy hair pulled back, wearing the official white school cap and gym clothes.

“No.” He held up a hand in greeting as he drew nearer and came to a stop in front of her. “I was on duty yesterday, so my next day is tomorrow. But I had some free time, so I figured I’d stop by.”

It hadn’t been too long ago that he would stammer and stutter whenever he talked to her. I used to be so scared of her…He secretly basked in the memory, while Reina blinked twice before grinning like she’d just remembered something.

“Free time? Prez, if you got that many girls on you, you don’t got any free time over summer break!”

“Gi—?! I-I don’t have girls!!”

“Ha-ha-ha! Freaking out, that’s the prez I know.” Reina laughed, teasing him, and he heard a flapping noise from inside the hut.

When he peered through the wire mesh around the front of the hut, he could see Hoo, the northern white-faced owl, moving his wings on top of the perch that stood on the floor. Haruyuki had recently come to understand that this wasn’t because he was mad or upset. It was more like Hoo’s own particular way of greeting him.

The Umesato Junior High Animal Care Club had been launched only last month to take care of this very Hoo, and Haruyuki had become its president half by accident. Officially, in addition to Reina, Hamajima was also a club member, but he hadn’t been seen at the hutch since showing his face on the very first day. As president, Haruyuki really should have done something about this, but just imagining the scene where he went to Hamajima’s class and rebuked him for neglecting his duties made a cold sweat run down his back. So he decided they would go along as they were for the time being—whether that was forward- or backward-looking, he didn’t know.

“Dang, though.” Reina wiped the sweat from her forehead with a hand. “The heat this year’s brutal. Is Hoo really okay in this kind of furnace?”

“Mm-hmm. He’s from Africa originally, so I guess he’s good with heat. But I’m actually a little worried, too.”

They both looked into the hut at the same time. Hoo on his perch stopped flapping his wings, perhaps sensing their gazes on him, and looked back at them with his large orange eyes. The way he cocked his head to one side seemed to be a question about where his breakfast was, so Haruyuki sent him the mental message “Sorry, not yet” before turning back to Reina.

“The hutch is big and gets a nice breeze, and he has the big water area, so I think he’ll be okay as long as we check on him regularly. But let’s talk about it again when Shinomiya gets here. What time’s she supposed to come?”

“She said eleven thirty, so right about now?”

“Oh, yeah? Okay, I’ll help with the cleaning.”

“Thanks, Prez.” Reina grinned and, looking at the sweat popping up on her forehead once again, Haruyuki pulled his thermos from his bag and offered it to her.

“It’s barley tea. You can have some if you want. Oh! I haven’t used the cup yet, so it’s okay.”

“Ah-ha-ha! Indirect kissing doesn’t bother me none!” She slapped his shoulder and took the thermos with a “Thanks.” He hurriedly moved away to set his bag on the staircase of the back entrance to the old school that he always used as a place to keep his things. He opened up the nearby toolshed and brought out a deck brush and a multi-nozzle hose.

He connected the hose to the faucet on the side of the animal hutch and went into the hutch. He called out to Hoo, “I’m cleaning up!” before he began to peel away the thick waterproof sheets spread out around the perch. He took these, together with the large bird bath, outside and began to spray the floor with water. The sheets caught the large majority of his poop, so it wasn’t too dirty, and Utai had also said that cleaning the floor once a week was fine, but Haruyuki was sure Hoo would be more comfortable if it was always clean.

He pushed the water and dirt and feathers out of the hutch with the deck brush. The hutch didn’t look very big from the outside, but once you went inside, four meters squared was surprisingly spacious. With the brush in his right hand and the hose in his left, he made the return trip north-south over and over.

He focused on the work at hand, and right around the time the entire surface of the natural wood floor was a wet burnt brown, he heard Reina’s voice from outside.

“Super Prez, how you doing?”

Haruyuki couldn’t see said “Super Prez,” but a chat window opened in his field of view.

UI> HELLO, IZEKI.

Even though there was no way Hoo could have seen this text, he flapped his wings on his perch.

“This time, it is breakfast,” he said to the owl and left the hutch with the brush and hose.

Utai Shinomiya stood in front of Reina, wearing the white dress of her uniform. She attended the private Matsunogi Academy’s elementary division, a school affiliated with Umesato Junior High, and the reason that Reina Izeki called her “Super Prez” was because the Umesato Animal Care Club had been started at her request.

She lifted the edge of the white wide-brimmed hat she wore to prevent heatstroke, saw Haruyuki coming out of the hutch, and blinked her large eyes.

UI> OH! I THOUGHT YOU WERE ON DUTY TOMORROW, ARITA.

“Yeah, I am, but…”

Naturally, they had to continue to care for Hoo over summer break, but since there were only three people in the Animal Care Club, including Utai, who attended a different school, the duty day came around every third day. Or it should have, but while Haruyuki and Reina came every other day, Utai came every day because she was the only one who could feed Hoo at present. If she was nearby, the owl would also eat from Haruyuki’s hand, but that still meant Utai couldn’t have a break. Thus Haruyuki had decided to try and come in as much as possible over summer break, even when it wasn’t his turn on duty.

Hiding this thought, he said the same thing he had earlier: “I had nothing to do, so I came to help.”

UI> IS THAT SO? Utai typed in an instant, and then pulled her hands away from her holo keyboard to clasp them in front of her, her face clouding over ever so slightly.

It took him a couple seconds to guess the reason for this.

Utai—Ardor Maiden—had witnessed Silver Crow being spirited away by Tezcatlipoca in Kitanomaru Park in the Unlimited Neutral Field. She would have gotten the message from Kuroyukihime or Fuko that he’d managed an emergency disconnect, so he was in no danger for the time being. But she still didn’t know exactly what had happened to him.

He tossed aside the brush and the hose, took a few steps forward, and wrapped his own hands around Utai’s smaller ones. “Um, Mei—Shinomiya, I’m okay. Sorry to worry you. But I’m really okay.”

Her eyes widened for a second before she nodded, her cheeks reddening the slightest bit. Her lips trembled as if she were going to say something, but no voice came out. Since she suffered from expressive aphasia, Utai was unable to speak in the real world and conversed through chat by way of a brain implant chip, but because Haruyuki was clasping her hands, she couldn’t type.

“Oh! I-I’m sorry!” He released her hands and jumped back. He was about to heap on another apology, but Utai stopped him with both hands held out and smiled as she nodded. He didn’t even have a chance to sigh in relief before Reina’s voice was coming at him from behind.

“Whoa, whoa, Prez. You can’t go hittin’ on a little kid! That’s harassment!”

“Har—I-I wasn’t!” Haruyuki refuted the grinning Reina with his entire being and picked up the brush and hose. He looked at Utai once more, sent her the thought, I’ll explain everything at the meeting, and retreated to the hutch.

He carried the sheets and bird bath he’d taken out of the hutch over to the faucet, spread the sheets out on the ground, and set the multi-nozzle to a jet of water to wash away the dirt. The treatment-coated sheets were clean soon enough, so he set them out in the sun to dry. Then he neatly washed the bird bath with a sponge.

While he was doing this, Reina finished cleaning up the dead leaves and weeds. They put the tools away together and when they returned to the hutch, Utai was just putting the leather falcon glove on her left hand. Inside the hutch, Hoo flapped his wings enthusiastically, certain that this time was definitely breakfast.

Utai entered the hutch, followed by Reina carrying the large container with Hoo’s food, and Haruyuki holding the dried waterproof sheets. Hoo flew up from his perch, did three laps clockwise around the four-meter square hutch, and landed gently on Utai’s raised arm. The owl opened and closed its beak like it could hardly wait, and Utai gently stroked his head with the fingertips of her free hand.

Next to her, Reina opened the cooler and held it up at the level of Utai’s chest. Inside was reddish-black raw meat wrapped in plastic and a pair of plastic tweezers. Utai took the tweezers in her right hand, grabbed a piece of meat, and brought it up to Hoo’s mouth, and Hoo dug in, swallowing it whole.

Hoo’s food was the raw meat of mice, chicks, or quail. Utai bought the animals frozen and cut them up herself. From the color and shape, today’s meal appeared to be quail. Haruyuki had come to understand that much at least, but he still had zero interest in cutting the meat up. Utai had showed him how to fillet a frozen mouse with a small knife, but it had taken everything he had in him not to avert his eyes. He did have to get to the point where he could do that work and the feeding, though, so that Utai could have a day off.

“So, like, Super Prez,” Reina said, suddenly, in a low voice. “Utaicchi. You think I could give it a go?”

Utai stopped moving and looked up at Reina. A warm smile soon spread across her face and she nodded firmly.

Taking the offered tweezers, Reina grabbed a smallish piece of meat and brought it to Hoo’s mouth with a careful hand.

Hoo had shown off a vigorous appetite up to that point, but now he curtly turned his face away. He looked up at Reina with large eyes and puffed up all his feathers as if to threaten her.

The owl had once been someone’s pet, but they had been irresponsible and abandoned him. Utai had found him curled up in the yard of Matsunogi Academy. He hadn’t run away, though—he had a crater carved out of his flesh with a knife of some kind, in the spot where the individual identification chip mandated by the reformed animal welfare laws lay under his skin.

Ever since, Hoo had trusted no humans other than Utai, who had rescued him when he was on the verge of dying. Recently, he’d also started accepting food from Haruyuki’s hand, but only when he was sitting on Utai’s arm.

Seeing Hoo in this threatening posture, Reina muttered, “So that’s a ‘no,’ then” as she moved to return the food to the cooler. But Utai quickly touched Reina’s back as if to encourage her. She looked at Hoo on her arm and her lips trembled faintly.

Once again, Haruyuki thought about how frustrating it must have been. At a time like this, Utai couldn’t say a word to Hoo or to Reina. She couldn’t even move her mouth in the shape of the words. About the only possible exception was when she silently chanted the acceleration command.

He wanted to say something to Hoo on her behalf, but he kept his mouth shut. Utai was earnestly trying to communicate with the owl without speaking. He shouldn’t go butting in.

Finally, Hoo’s puffed-up feathers slowly began to fall back down, and he gradually straightened up. Blinking several times, he looked up at Reina’s face as if inspecting it. Utai’s hand was still touching Reina’s back and now she moved it as if giving a signal. Hesitantly, Reina raised her hand and brought the piece of meat toward Hoo once more.

This time, he didn’t turn his face away or try to threaten her, but he also didn’t eat it right away. He kept rocking back and forth almost like he was testing Reina, or rather himself. This movement stopped abruptly, and when he cocked his head slightly to one side, he snatched the meat and swallowed it.

Utai moved her hand again. Reina straightened up with a gasp and reached out for another piece of meat with the tweezers. With no sign of lingering hesitation, Hoo took the meat into his beak.

Haruyuki could see small droplets running from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks. There was no mistake, the way they caught the light—Reina was crying as she smiled. As he watched this, unable to say anything, he had a sudden thought.

We should ask Izeki.

The fourth, as yet undecided, member of their student council team. He would have to talk to Mayu Ikuzawa first, and it wasn’t clear whether or not Reina would accept, but even so, Haruyuki wanted to fight this election campaign with Reina. And serve with her on the student council if they won.

When he’d talked with Mayu before about what to do about the fourth person, she’d said that “someone with a sharpness like you and Mayuzumi’d be good.” Surprised, Haruyuki had replied, “Taku is one thing, but that doesn’t fit me at all,” and Mayu had digested this with a serious face.

The truth is, I think that everyone has something different from other people, something that’s just theirs. But it’s hard to express that to the outside world. What’s important is whether or not you actually do the things you like, the things you’re able to.

Reina Izeki was a person who didn’t lie to herself. It had only been a month since they’d started working together in the Animal Care Club, and they’d basically never talked about anything that wasn’t club-related, but he was sure of this.

Finally, his stomach full, Hoo flew up from Utai’s arm and around the hutch—this time, counterclockwise—before returning to his perch. Reina, perhaps finally realizing that she was crying, wiped her eyes with a hand as she looked at Utai and Haruyuki and laughed, embarrassed.

One PM. Their work completed, they finished off Haruyuki’s cold barley tea and said good-bye in the rear courtyard.

He watched Reina head off to the changing room and then looked up at the sky, at last the clear blue of midsummer. While he was reveling at the vastness of it—

UI> ARITA, ARE YOU REALLY OKAY?

This text popped up before his eyes, and he hurriedly looked to his side to find Utai staring up at him from beneath her wide-brimmed hat. Her black eyes held a worried light.

“I-I’m okay. Really. As of the moment, I haven’t lost a single point,” he told her, but her face didn’t clear.

The fingers of both hands tapped quickly at the air. UI> BUT THE FACT THAT IT WAS AN EMERGENCY DISCONNECT MEANS THAT YOU DIDN’T ESCAPE FROM YOUR CONFINED STATE, YES? Her fingers stopped as though she were uncertain, before starting to type again. UI> FU TOLD ME THAT WE’D GET THE DETAILS AT THE THREE O’CLOCK MEETING. I KNOW IT WOULD BE TWICE THE TROUBLE FOR YOU IF I ASKED YOU TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME NOW, BUT TO BE HONEST, I’M JUST SO WORRIED, I CAN HARDLY STAND IT. I FEEL LIKE EVEN AS WE’RE HERE LIKE THIS, SOMETHING’S HAPPENING SOMEWHERE INVISIBLE TO US, SOMETHING WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO COME BACK FROM…

“…”

Unable to respond immediately, Haruyuki bit his lip. The issue definitely wasn’t “twice the trouble.” If it would reassure Utai, he’d gladly explain everything now. But in truth, he also wasn’t entirely certain of the situation into which he’d been placed himself.

An Unlimited EK, for all intents and purposes—that much was certain. But the issue was why the White King had abducted him and told him all those things. Whatever he had learned or would learn, Haruyuki would never betray Nega Nebulus or the Black King, so there was no advantage for her in doing this. If she wanted to push him to total point loss, she could have simply killed him on the spot rather than sitting him down for a chat.

He shook his head slightly. “Shinomiya, I’m sorry to worry you. But the White King only took me to Tokyo Grand Castle. She didn’t do anything to me there. I don’t know if I can escape or not, but there’s definitely no immediate danger.”

Utai furrowed her brow. UI> TOKYO GRAND CASTLE? WHY THERE?

“No idea,” he replied, and tried to remember the overall view of the theme park he’d seen from the air. “It seemed like the whole place is Oscillatory’s base now.”

He heard footsteps trotting up from behind, so he looked over his shoulder, wondering if Reina had forgotten something.

Wham! A shock rippled through his midsection, and he groaned. He managed to get his feet under him somehow just as he was about to fall onto his backside and looked down at a small head with marvelously red hair tied up in pigtails with black ribbons, currently embedded in his stomach. There was no mistaking who it belonged to.

“N-Niko?!”

The head jerked upward forcefully, and eyes that looked green or reddish-brown, depending on the light, were covered with a thin veil of tears. “Big Bro…I was super worried, okay!”

“Huh? Oh! Uh.” It had been a while since she’d hit him with angel mode, and his brain promptly ceased operation.

Niko, aka Yuniko Kozuki, kept her wet gaze on him for another three seconds or so before a totally different kind of grin spread across her face. She took a step back, set her hands on her hips, and said, in a voice pitched so much lower it was like she was another person, “Huh. Looking way better than I expected.”

“Haah…” Haruyuki let out a long sigh. “I’m fine. My avatar’s safe, too. And like, Niko, why are you here?”

“Why? ’Cause you messaged me.” Niko shrugged and walked over to Utai. “’Sup, Maiden. Nice work this morning!”

UI> YES, YOU DID VERY WELL YOURSELF, NIKO.

“You manage to get some real sleep after that? I’m totally half-dead.”

UI> ACTUALLY, SO AM I. IT’S BASICALLY ALL C’S FAULT, THOUGH.

“Totes. Sure, he says he’s safe, but you wanna know, y’know?”

Haruyuki watched them absently as they conversed in chat and voice.

Just like Utai, Niko was in her school uniform. Short-sleeved white blouse, navy overall skirt. When he thought about it, the two of them had all kinds of things in common. They went to different schools, but they were both elementary school Burst Linkers and long-distance reds with high saturation. He figured it would end up being a precision marksmanship battle if they dueled, but he had never seen Niko and Utai go one-on-one in a normal duel.

Well, Mei’s level seven and Niko’s nine. They wouldn’t have any reason to have a normal duel at this stage.

Niko looked at him. “So then, let’s do it!”

“Huh? Do what?”

“Whoa, hey there. I told you, you’re the one who messaged me!”

“Huh? Uh. Well, I guess.”

Haruyuki had indeed sent Niko the message, “THE CHERRY SEEDS SPROUTED, SO I’M GOING TO TRY PLANTING THEM AT SCHOOL,” while he was walking to school. But he didn’t mean…“I was just reporting a fact to you. It’s not like I asked you to come—”

“Uh?! I was the one who said we should keep the cherry pits an’ try an’ grow ’em! Meaning nothing starts until I get here!”

“I-I guess,” he said, looking at Utai, but the youngest member of Nega Nebulus, the most sensible of all of them, smiled and typed in the air.

UI> I DON’T KNOW THE EXACT SEQUENCE OF EVENTS, BUT EVERYTHING IS MORE FUN TOGETHER.

“Right?! C’mon! We gotta pick a place to plant those seeds!” Niko shoved his plump stomach, and Haruyuki had no choice but to nod.

“Ooh! They got roots!” Niko cried out in delight, seeing the three seeds lined up in the cooler, while Haruyuki looked for a place to plant them.

According to what he’d found online, the general process for making seeds sprout was to use cell trays, panels with many little wells lined up alongside each other, and potting soil with a careful balance for this purpose. But he wasn’t trying to mass-produce seedlings here, and he didn’t know if potting soil for vegetables would be good for cherry seeds. He would just have to do a test run—or rather, a test plant—and see how they fared. He stared at the ground, and a chat window popped up in his view.

UI> ARITA, HOW ABOUT HERE?

When he lifted his face, he saw Utai pointing at a spot at the base of the concrete wall on the southwestern side of the animal hutch. He trotted over and found several pot-type structures made of natural rock blocks that he’d never noticed before. Each was about eighty centimeters across and fifty centimeters deep. They were covered in weeds, however, which would explain why he’d never seen them even though they were fairly large.

He stood in front of the pots and looked up at the sky. Immediately to the west was the wall, so the afternoon sun would be blocked, but the area would get good sun from morning until noon. When he thought about it, he felt like the ground temperature would be too hot if the area was exposed to the sun all day in this season.

“Yeah, this could maybe be good. We’ll have to clear away the weeds, though.”

“We can do that in no time flat if we split the job!” Niko shouted, and then crouched and began yanking up weeds with both hands.

Even more impatient than me, huh? he thought as he joined in. Utai also began to deftly pull them up from the roots on the other side of Niko.

In a few minutes, the flower bed revealed its dark earth. The moisture and structure of the soil looked pretty good, so he dug three holes about fifteen centimeters apart and looked to his right. “Okay, you plant them, Niko.”

“There’s three of us, though. Let’s each plant one.” Niko grinned, took a seed from the cooler, and gently dropped it into the hole on the right. Haruyuki planted one in the middle, and Utai planted one on the left, and they each covered their seeds gently with soil.

He went and got a watering can from the toolshed and thoroughly watered the entire flower bed. The scent of earth and water grew thick in the air. In the Accelerated World, there were a number of tree-affinity stages like the Primeval Forest or the Grassland stage, but none of them went so far as to recreate this smell, like the life of the planet itself.

Haruyuki glanced at Niko as she stared down at the damp earth silently. “Niko,” he said softly. “I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but it really is hard to get cherry seeds to grow. Only three of the twelve even sprouted, so it’s better to think of this as a test.”

“I know,” she said, as if to stop him.

UI> SO IN THAT CASE, LET’S IMBUE THEM WITH OUR WILL, INCARNATE POWER.

Surprised, he looked to his left, and Utai grinned as she moved her fingers.

UI> I’M SURE THEY WILL GROW WITH THE COMBINED INCARNATES OF THREE HIGH RANKERS.

“O-oh, but I’m only level six,” he protested.

“Don’t get all humble,” Niko said, laughter in her voice, and shoved an elbow in his gut. “Your Incarnate power’s already King-class. Actually, maybe King’s an exaggeration. Executive-of-a-huge-Legion class, then.”

Executive—so Prominence’s Triplex or Great Wall’s Six Armors, or Nega Nebulus’s Four Elements. They were all a world apart from Haruyuki. He didn’t even feel like he could give them a real run for their money in a normal duel, much less with Incarnate power.

“There’s no way. None, but…” He shook his head from side to side. “But I’d be happy if they grew, too. So I’ll put all of my Incarnate into them.”

“A’right!” Niko stuck out the hand she’d removed from his side. He gripped it with his right and then clasped the hand Utai offered with his left.

As they stood there in front of the flower bed, holding hands, Haruyuki closed his eyes and prayed intently. From the bottom of his heart, he wished for the little seeds to become seedlings, to grow quick and strong, and turn into magnificent cherry trees. And for the three of them to be together like this until the day they bore fruit.

While Niko was saying hello to Hoo, Haruyuki opened the Animal Care Club log file and entered the details of their work—although naturally, he didn’t touch on the surprise attack from Niko—and uploaded it to the in-school net. They got their things together and moved to the front yard. The time was 1:40 PM, an hour and twenty minutes until the Legion general meeting.

“That reminds me. How did you get here, Niko? Pard’s motorbike?” Haruyuki asked.

The Red King bobbed her shoulders up and down. “Nah, bus. Pard’s at the shop. Said she’d take her break in time for the Legion meeting.”

“Yeah?”

The Red Legion’s second-in-command, Blood Leopard, the Bloody Kitty, aka Mihaya Kakei, was an apprentice pâtissier and waitress at the famed Western sweets shop Patisserie la Plage in Nerima Ward’s Sakuradai. Even if the high school she attended was on summer break, the shop was only closed one day a week. Mihaya had once given Haruyuki a ride on her motorbike while still in her maid-style uniform, but in general, she couldn’t slip out of the shop so easily, even on her break.

“So you’re taking the bus home, too,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”

“Huh?” She turned an unhappy face toward him. “I can’t come to your house? That’s what I was gonna do. I got an overnight pass from the dorm.”

“Whoa?! Again, you don’t say anything and just…My mom’s home until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Ohhh.” Niko fell silent, a strange look on her face. It was probably too much of a hurdle to jump when his mother was home, given that they’d never met. And Haruyuki didn’t know how he would explain his relationship to Niko, either.

When the two of them fell into thought, Utai cocked her head to one side before typing at the air. UI> IN THAT CASE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO STAY AT MY HOUSE, NIKO?

““Huh?””

The same interjection of doubt came from both Niko’s and Haruyuki’s mouths.

Niko blinked rapidly and pulled into herself as she asked, “B-but don’t you have parents at your place, too, Maiden?”

UI> NO, MY GRANDFATHER, PARENTS, AND OLDER BROTHER ARE ON TOUR AND WON’T BE BACK FOR A WHILE. THE ONLY PERSON AT HOME IS NANNY. IF I TELL HER I’M HAVING A FRIEND STAY OVER, IT WILL BE FINE.

“O-oh yeah?”

They’d had several opportunities to talk in the real, so Niko already knew that Utai was from a family of Noh actors. But even so, her hesitation had not been erased entirely, it seemed, given how she stammered awkwardly.

Utai watched over her for a moment, but then finally looked up at Haruyuki. UI> SINCE WE’RE ALL TOGETHER, ANYWAY, WHY DON’T YOU COME, TOO, ARITA?

“Pwah?! M-me?!”

UI> HOW ABOUT YOU TELL YOUR MOTHER IT’S A TRAINING CAMP FOR THE ANIMAL CARE CLUB? I DO ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING ABOUT HOO I WANT TO DISCUSS.

Looking at the smoothly scrolling text, Haruyuki was sincerely impressed. It was true that he wouldn’t be lying that way, and with this pretext, it made the whole venture feel a lot less like he was just going to hang out. He’d expect nothing less from the partner of Master Fuko, who constantly played it by ear, the power of life and death in her hands.

“Okay. In that case, it should be all right. But are you sure?”

UI>OF COURSE. I’M SURE NIKO WOULD ALSO PREFER IT THIS WAY.

Niko whapped Haruyuki on the back for some reason. “Th-that’s totes not it! I just figured the more the merrier, y’know? Wohkay. It’s settled. Let’s get goin’ already!”

After adjusting her red backpack, Niko started toward the school gates at a brisk pace. Haruyuki exchanged a brief smile with Utai before chasing after the bouncing pigtails.