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Accel World - Volume 25 - Chapter 5




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5

“Now! We’ll give it a good tug around that tummy!”

His pudgy belly slapped, Haruyuki cried out “Heeah!” as his stomach muscles tensed. A rope wound around him from behind and was neatly tied below his belly button. The fabric that he held in his hands was yanked up and tucked in such a way as to hang down from his waist in front.

“And there we go! See? You’ve got the fighting spirit of the fundoshi now, hmm?” the woman said as she stood up.

She was Shiomi, the “nanny” of the Shinomiya house. In her mid-sixties or so, her slender, crane-like build was well suited to the silver-gray kimono she wore.

Haruyuki, on the other hand, was naked but for the fundoshi sumo underwear tied around him. When they’d gotten to the Shinomiya house in Omiya in Suginami, Utai had urged him to be the first in the bath. He’d said that he was fine going last, but naturally, he was the only one of the three of them dripping with sweat, so he hadn’t been able to refuse her offer in the end.

He’d happily washed the sweat away in the bathroom, which was wall-to-wall Japanese cypress, like a luxurious ryokan inn, but he’d found himself in trouble when he came out into the changing room. He’d been planning to head straight home after taking care of Hoo, so he hadn’t brought a change of clothes. So he’d been prepared to put his sweaty underpants and uniform back on, given that he had no other choice, but they had disappeared. As he descended into panic, a woman’s voice from outside the changing room instructed him to put on the change of clothes set out on the shelf.

The problem was that the change of clothes was a yukata. And the underclothes were a fundoshi, something he had never touched before in his life.

He used his Neurolinker to look up how to tie one, at any rate, and tried to equip it by following the instructions he’d found, but then Shiomi had come in with a breezy “Excuse me” and immediately found fault with his work—“It’s so baggy, too loose.” And then, without giving him the chance to say a word in protest, she had immediately set about retying it for him.

The situation exceeded his brain capacity, leaving him dumbfounded, while Shiomi deftly dressed him in an indigo yukata with a mustard obi belt.

“Th-thank you,” he said, and a bony hand patted his shoulder.

“You just keep having fun with Miss Utai,” she instructed. It looked like she was about to say something else, too, but then closed her mouth and smiled warmly before leaving the changing room.

He blew his hair dry and then walked down the long hallway back to Utai’s room, where Utai and Niko assessed his yukata self from every angle before going themselves to wash away the summer sweat. It was 2:23 PM. He felt like Chiyuri had once told him that girls take long baths, but presumably, they would be back before the meeting at three.

This was his second time in Utai’s bedroom. It was very much Japanese style with the tatami mats and the sand wall finish, but even this room had air conditioning. Expensive-looking cushions sat around a small floor table. The last time, he had given up after three minutes of seiza position, so this time when he sat down formally on his knees, he was determined to make a better go of it.

While they were on the way here, he’d sent a mail to his mother that he had a training camp with the Animal Care Club, but she was apparently still in bed; he’d gotten no response. Since she’d left a note saying she was going to be home until the following afternoon, unusual for her, he might actually get to see her. But it seemed impossible to have a draft of his speech for the student council election ready by then—or so he thought at first, and then quickly rethought his decision. She had offered to give him notes, and he didn’t want to make light of those feelings or waste the opportunity.

Still sitting on his knees, he launched the editor app on his virtual desktop. He set his fingertips on his holo keyboard and stared at the blinking cursor. But the first word wouldn’t come.

When he’d talked to her about the student council election speech, his mother had said that he should say whatever he wanted to say. When he replied that he couldn’t find what he wanted to say, she’d asked him why he wanted to be a member of the council. After considering various things at some length, Haruyuki simply expressed the feelings deep in his soul:

“I just…I wanted to do something. Something I haven’t been able to do before.”

Smiling faintly, his mother had admonished him, “Then you can just say that. The most important thing in a speech is how much of it reaches the hearts of the people listening. If you simply lay out some grand manifesto, it’ll go in one ear and out the other.”

“How much it reaches the hearts,” he muttered and moved his fingers. He touched the “I” key and hesitated slightly before pressing it. The next key. And the next. If it was a mail to a friend, he could touch-type at high speed, although he didn’t begin to compare to Utai, but his movement now was awkward, like he was wearing thick gloves. Even so, he managed to get a sentence out in ten seconds, and he stared at it intently.

I HATE MYSELF.

Instantly, the voices of the majority of the students hearing this saying “Well then, work so that you like yourself” echoed in the back of his mind, and his hand reached out for the backspace. But he resisted the urge just as he was on the verge of erasing the whole thing and typed the next sentence.

I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH THAT I DON’T WANT TO LOOK AT MYSELF OR THINK ABOUT MYSELF, AND I’VE ALWAYS AVERTED MY EYES. NO MATTER WHERE I WENT OR WHAT I WAS DOING, I WAS ONLY THINKING ABOUT HOW TO NOT STAND OUT, HOW TO KEEP ANYONE FROM TALKING TO ME.

Did he really want the entire student body to hear this? If he was going to make everyone uncomfortable with a painful confession, then maybe it would be better to lay out a manifesto that was easier to listen to. But the words spilled out of him one after another.

I HAD FRIENDS WHO WERE CONCERNED ABOUT ME. BUT I COULDN’T EVEN BELIEVE IN THEM. I’VE PUSHED AWAY THE HANDS THEY’VE OFFERED ME, I’VE SAID TERRIBLE THINGS AND FLED. TO BE HONEST, EVEN AS I STAND HERE IN FRONT OF ALL OF YOU NOW, THE CORE PART OF ME HASN’T CHANGED AT ALL. I WANT TO RUN AWAY, AND I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT I COULD BE A PART OF THE STUDENT COUNCIL. EVEN STILL…


Even still.

Even still, I wanted to change. And I was able to.

It wasn’t clear where the crossroads for him had lain. The moment he received the BB program from Kuroyukihime, the moment he flew for the first time in the Accelerated World, the moment he was victorious in the fierce battle against Dusk Taker, the moment he broke free of the control of the Armor of Catastrophe, the moment he carried out the cleaning of the animal hutch, the moment he fixed the class display, or the moment when he accepted the invitation to run for student council…

There probably wasn’t anything like a clear moment when everything changed. His many encounters, those many events, the many sadnesses and joys, they had changed him bit by bit by bit. The desire to face himself, to believe in himself, had slowly grown like a hard, frozen seed opening, and straightened his hunched back.

Even if, for instance, he couldn’t escape from the Unlimited EK with Tezcatlipoca. Even if he lost all his points at Tokyo Grand Castle and was no longer a Burst Linker. He wouldn’t lose this feeling, at least. Even if he lost his memories of the Accelerated World and returned to being plain old Haruyuki Arita, he absolutely would not walk around with his head hanging.

At some point, he had clenched his hands above his keyboard and started to reflect not on his candidacy for student council but on his mental readiness as a Burst Linker.

“Sorry to take so long!”

The sliding door was yanked open, and Haruyuki jumped, his hands in the air.

Naturally, it was Niko and Utai barging in, and like Haruyuki, they were both in yukata now. Niko’s was red with a white peony pattern, while Utai’s was white with blue morning glories. When Haruyuki stared at them, wowed, Niko pursed her lips, her hair pulled up into buns on either side of her head.

“Hey, Haruyuki, you could say something?”

“Huh? Oh. Y-you both look great in yukata.”

“If only you could say it without stammering.” Niko shook her head in exasperation, while beside her, Utai moved her fingers, a smile on her face.

UI> I THINK THAT’S A GOOD THING ABOUT ARITA.

“You can’t go spoiling this guy, Maiden—I mean, Ui.”

Apparently, while they were bathing, Niko had started calling Utai “Ui.” It’s great that they’re getting to be friends, he thought.

Niko tugged on his hair. “Quit yer grinning. We gotta get ready to dive.”

“Huh? Oh, only three minutes left?” He saved the editor app that the girls couldn’t see and looked at Utai. “Shinomiya, did we decide whose VR we’re meeting in?”

UI> YES, SACCHI MESSAGED AND SAID THAT FU WOULD BE THE HOST, AS SHE WAS WITH THE INTI STRATEGY MEETING.

“Huh. Oh, really?” At some point, the message icon in the notifications area of his virtual desktop had started flashing. He’d apparently been so focused on his speech that he had missed the arrival of the message from Kuroyukihime. He looked it over, at any rate, and then turned his eyes down at the cushion he was sitting on. “Um. It’s not an accelerated meeting, so if we dive while sitting, we might fall over.”

UI> THAT’S TRUE. PLEASE WAIT A MOMENT, Utai typed before opening the closet and pulling out something that looked like a blanket. UI> I’M SORRY TO ASK YOU TO USE THE CUSHIONS AS PILLOWS, BUT LET’S PUSH THE TABLE ASIDE AND ALL LIE DOWN.

“Huh?”

“No point in getting all weird about it at this stage of the game. ’Sides, we got no time!”

Niko yanked on his hair again, and Haruyuki hurriedly got to his feet. He lifted the table and moved it to the spot near the wall that Utai had indicated. All three of them lay down in the now-open space, spread the blanket across their stomachs, and they were ready to go with just ten seconds left.

“Hey, Haru,” Niko called out from the other side of Utai, and Haruyuki looked to his right. “Whatever the sitch, we’re totes gonna get you outta it. No worries, just tell it like it is.”

“…Right” was all he had time to say in response. Two seconds before three o’clock, Haruyuki and Niko threw their minds into a virtual world through voice commands, while Utai tapped at her desktop.

““Direct Link!””



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