Accel World - Volume 7 - Chapter 7

7

As Haruyuki digested his four morning classes in the same way as always, the bizarre uneasiness just wouldn’t fade.

At the chime to signal the start of lunch, which sounded a tiny bit lighter for some reason, Haruyuki stood up. He considered his options, a crease popping up between his eyebrows—should he take care of things the cheap way with bread and a juice box, or dine in luxury in the cafeteria on katsu curry?

Regrettably, until the school festival at the end of June was over, lunch in the lounge with Kuroyukihime would have to wait. Given that it was the last big job of the current student council, even Kuroyukihime, who asserted that she’d only joined for the sake of Brain Burst, wouldn’t be able to neglect her duties.

When Kuroyukihime’s busy, I feel weird with luxury lunch by myself. I’ll hold off today, maybe just milk and a katsu sandwich—no, I could be forgiven for adding rusk at least…Seriously struggling with the issue, he moved toward the rear door.

Clatter! The door slid open with a fair bit of force, and a human shadow took a large step in from the hallway.

Nicely shaped, long legs wrapped in black tights. The skirt was the same gray as the other students’, but the short-sleeved shirt above it was jet-black. Even blacker lustrous hair flowed down on both sides of the dark red ribbon indicating that this was a ninth-grade student.

The Umesato school rules prescribed a uniform shirt that was “uncolored and in compliance with the style indicated by the school.” And when you put this “uncolored” into a dictionary app, the explanation “a color from white passing through gray to black” popped out. In other words, although it couldn’t be said that gray or black was against school rules in the strictest sense, because the manufacturers were given instructions and only white shirts were registered on the sales site, the students had no choice but to buy those in the end. Excluding the sole case where a special order was placed with the manufacturer for black fabric.

There had been only one person in the thirty-odd-year history of Umesato Junior High who had gone to all that trouble, and then coolly used the school rules as her shield against the natural requests from the teachers to fix the situation.

That very person was now standing two meters in front of Haruyuki, hands on hips, head tossed back resolutely, a lovely and yet stern expression on her face—Kuroyukihime.

As the students of class C fell silent, the vice president of the student council took a deep breath and let her dignified voice ring out. “The Animal Care Club president selected from this class is requested to present himself immediately in the student council office!”

A second later, together with a quiet chattering, the eyes of a dozen or so people focused on Haruyuki. By nobly standing and declaring his candidacy—in fact a mistake due to his own carelessness—he had been selected for the Animal Care Club, a fact which was still fresh in everyone’s memory. Immediately, the faces of the students around him were practically begging him to explain what was going on, but Haruyuki himself had absolutely no idea.

“Um…o-okay…”

Kuroyukihime shot a look at Haruyuki. “You, then? Fine, come with me.”

“You, then?” She already knows that I’m the Animal Care Club president and all that, and anyway, I’m her child and her Legion member and stuff…

Even as his thoughts raced, confusion reigning in his brain, Kuroyukihime whirled around, the hem of her skirt flipping up, and started marching down the hall at such a brisk pace that somehow her rubber-soled indoor shoes mysteriously clacked against the hard floor. After standing there stock-still for a second and a half or so, Haruyuki hurriedly chased after her.

As they went down the stairs and headed west in the hall on the first floor, Kuroyukihime did not look back once. They passed the ninth-grade classrooms and finally arrived at the student council office in the depths of the first school building. When Kuroyukihime waved a hand abruptly, he heard the weighty sound of a lock being released. The student council vice president opened the door and disappeared inside.

He gulped loudly before stepping over the door’s sliding track himself. The door closed on its own behind him and locked itself once more.

When he had come here the day before yesterday, the orange light of the setting sun had given the room a warm hue, but under the gray light spilling out from the cloudy sky, even the air itself felt cold. Having advanced to the center of the room with the lights dimmed, Kuroyukihime finally turned around and looked at Haruyuki with stern eyes.

“Uh, um,” he said in a very thin voice, as a weak smile started to grow on his face. But before it could, he pulled his lips down firmly.

After school was possibly a different story, but there was no way Kuroyukihime would mix work and her personal life by using the student council office for private business over the lunch break. In other words, this was an official request from the vice president of the student council to the president of the Animal Care Club to present himself. He knew it; without even being aware of it, he had messed up some part of his club duties.

In which case, he could at least accept any reprimands seriously. Having resolved this in his heart, Haruyuki waited for Kuroyukihime to speak.

A few seconds later, she pursed her lips and puffed out her cheeks. At the same time came her voice, peevish. “I heard about it, you know, Haruyuki. This morning, you rode up to the school gates on a motorcycle with a beautiful, cool older woman, didn’t you?”

“…Huh?” Haruyuki asked in response, his eyes, mouth, and even nostrils opened up into wide circles.

The look on Kuroyukihime’s face grew even more fiercely sulky. “What, are you planning to lie to me even now? Let me just tell you, I am able to reference a video recording of the period of time in question. And you! I don’t want to watch such a thing, and you—”

“Oh! No, that’s—um, j-j-j-just hang on a minute!” Haruyuki earnestly interjected, alternately shaking his head and waving his hands. He followed this with a timid question. “Um, so the ‘official request to the president of the Animal Care Club’…?”

A faint red rose up in Kuroyukihime’s cheeks, and she jerked her head to one side. “That was just an excuse to call you here.”

Whoa! This is super mixing business and personal. He staggered but somehow managed to get his footing before opening his mouth once more.

“Uh, umm, so this is about the motorcycle. Maybe you haven’t met her in the real, but that was one of Promi’s senior members, Blood Leopard.”

“…Oh?” She twitched a single eyebrow.

“This morning, on my way to school, she came to warn—or, I guess, give me some information,” he explained, intently glancing at her face to check in with her mood. “And then we ran out of time, so she just gave me a ride. And, uh, I tried to say no, but she’s, like, super impatient.”

As Haruyuki continued speaking, the look on Kuroyukihime’s face changed microscopically, but in the end, she pursed her lips once more and uttered something entirely unexpected. “No fair.”

“…Huh?”

“Haruyuki, the last time you and I met as just the two of us was already ten days ago! With all the student council things and what have you, I’ve been patient all this time, while you go taking care of animals and exploring the Castle with Uiui, and now a girl from another Legion.”

“I-I’m sorry.” It wasn’t entirely clear to him at that moment what exactly he was apologizing for, but even still, Haruyuki reflexively bowed his head.

Kuroyukihime stepped over to him, dissatisfied look still on her face, and stopped right in front of him. “If that’s how you feel, then give me one burst point and 1.8 seconds of real time as a present.”

“What? O-okay.” He nodded, puzzled.

Kuroyukihime flashed both hands with a whirl, and the plugs of the black XSB cable she had picked up at some point were inserted into the direct terminals of each of their Neurolinkers at lightning speed. For the second time that day, a wired connection warning flashed before his eyes, and he unconsciously traced the lustrous lips on the other side of that warning to shout the command.

“Burst link.”

Skreeeeee!! The familiar sound that accompanied the world freezing blue around him came on quickly.

Haruyuki, in the form of his pink pig avatar, smaller even than his real-world self, took a heavy step forward. He raised his eyes, and a fairy princess avatar with a black spangle butterfly motif stood silently before him, essentially the same height as she was in the real world. The nature of it might have been different, but the beauty of that face was unchanged. A hue of dissatisfaction drifted across it somewhere even now, but as he raised his face, heart pounding, that hue disappeared into a faint smile.

The relief he felt as he sighed was fleeting. Approaching him silently, Kuroyukihime leaned over and stretched out hands encased in long gloves and slid them under Haruyuki’s avatar’s arms.

Gah?! He barely had time to think before he was raised up and pulled in tightly against her chest.

“Uh, uh, um um um, K-K-K-K-Kuroyukihime!” he cried shrilly.

A smiling murmur reached his ears. “If I did something like this in the VR space of the local net, much less the student council office in the real world, it would be a clear violation of school rules, but those foolish laws don’t apply in this world. Or would it be better if we were both our duel avatars?”

He imagined it for a moment and then immediately shook his plump head. When the Black King had previously embraced Silver Crow in a way very similar to this, he had ended up in some serious trouble when, two seconds later, her level-eight special attack Death By Embracing had ripped into him.

“Ha-ha!” Laughing once more, Kuroyukihime squeezed him even harder. “The truth is, I’ve wanted to do this ever since the Meeting of the Seven Kings was over on Sunday. To tell you that there is nothing for you to be afraid of.”

Haruyuki swallowed lightly and pushed out a hoarse voice. “That’s…I—I…” I’m fine. He tried to finish the sentence, but for some reason, his entire avatar was shaking like a leaf, preventing him from producing normal sound.

At the same time, he understood just how much pressure he had been under with the situation facing Silver Crow. The terror that he might not be able to stay in the Accelerated World, the way it pushed down to the depths of his soul without him being aware of it.

Haruyuki shook even more intensely, and Kuroyukihime, embracing him as though she were trying to wrap up his entire body with her arms, murmured smoothly by his ear.

“It’s okay, you’re not alone. I’m here. Your Legion comrades are here, too. And the Red King, Rain; Leopard; the Green Legion’s Ash Roller; the Blue Legion’s Frost Horn and the others; and so many more Burst Linkers are eagerly awaiting your return.”

“…Right. Right…” Nodding intently, Haruyuki realized that at some point his own short arms had pulled Kuroyukihime’s body closer as well. But he didn’t feel any embarrassment anymore. Their thought clocks, moving at a speed a thousand times that of reality, were synchronized; they melted into each other and became a single being, sharing even their emotions.

Several seconds passed, pregnant with curious emotion, until finally Kuroyukihime gently pulled away from him. Her face regained a slight bit of its usual severity, and eyes like the night sky also grew serious. When she spoke again, her words were entirely unexpected.

“Which is why, Haruyuki, there is no need to be afraid of strange rumors. It’s not possible that the ISS kits currently spreading the infection through the Accelerated World were generated from you.”

After taking a sharp breath of virtual air, Haruyuki asked in a small voice, “Did you already know about them, about the kits?”

“Mmm. Utai explained it to us when Fuko drove us home yesterday.”

“She did…huh? I’m sorry I was late to report—”

“No, actually, I should be reproached for not noticing what was happening sooner. After I got home yesterday, I hurried to collect information. Given the method and timing, we should suspect their participation. The Acceleration Research Society, the ones who destroyed the Hermes’ Cord race.”

As she spoke, Kuroyukihime moved toward a sofa set transformed into blue ice and sat Haruyuki down before taking the seat next to him.

Sitting neatly on his knees, Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down. “Yeah. That’s the same conclusion Taku and I came to yesterday. And Taku said he’d do some looking into it himself. But he’s actually home sick with a cold today.”

“What?” Kuroyukihime furrowed her brow and fell silent for a while, as if in thought. Looking up at that face, Haruyuki felt his earlier irrational unease filling his heart again.

I’ll try some tricks of my own to get information on the ISS kit thing.

That’s what Takumu had said at the end of their conversation yesterday before going home. Tricks of my own. Did that mean connections he alone in Nega Nebulus had—the pipeline with his old Legion, the Leonids?

The instant his thoughts reached this place, Blood Leopard’s words from that morning came back to life in his ears: The biggest risk for outing in the real is information leaked by a “parent” or “child.”

“Ah!” Haruyuki cried out, snapping to attention, and Kuroyukihime turned surprised eyes on him. Staring at her face, he gave voice to the idea welling up inside him. “Um…Kuroyukihime, Taku’s parent was someone fairly high up in the Blue Legion, but they’re already gone from the Accelerated World because of a Judgment Blow, right?”

“Oh, mm-hmm. I believe the one who reported that to me was you yourself. For the offense of distributing the backdoor program Takumu once used, that Burst Linker was beheaded by Blue Knight, the Blue King. I remember finding that altogether natural, since Knight’s very fastidious about such things.”

“Right. But I’m pretty sure at the time, they didn’t know who the first one to use the backdoor program was. In which case, maybe they’re still alive and well in the Accelerated World.” He broke off and squeezed Kuroyukihime’s hands tightly with his own hooves before continuing. “The problem is…the guy who created the program and gave it to Taku’s parent, he maybe cracked Taku’s parent in the real in the process. And if he did, it’s possible his reach would extend to Taku, who was at the same school and on the same kendo team.”

“That is a possibility, but it’s already been eight months since that incident. If whoever it was intended to out Takumu in the real, wouldn’t they have made some kind of move a long time ago?” Kuroyukihime’s argument was exceedingly reasonable.

But Haruyuki slowly shook his head and announced in a trembling voice the only bit of information Kuroyukihime likely didn’t know. “This morning, the reason Pard came to see me was to warn me. She said Supernova Remnant, the worst of the PK groups, might have their sights set on me.”

“What?!” Kuroyukihime’s eyes flew open, and she stretched out her arms as if to cling to him.

Haruyuki focused on forcing his frozen mouth to move. “If…if Taku faked sick to skip school and go to Shinjuku…and if those Remnant guys found him and attacked him outside the view of the cameras…” He blinked hard once. “Kuroyukihime, I have to leave school early and go look for Taku! Even if they try to steal his points with a direct duel, it’ll still take a fair bit of time to take them all. If…in the worst case, he has been attacked by a PK, I might still be in time if I go now—”

“You mustn’t!” She grabbed his shoulders as he stood up, about to shout the “burst out” command. “It’s too dangerous for you to leave school right now!”

“B-but Taku’s—! If he has Brain Burst force uninstalled, I—I—!”

“Calm down, Haruyuki! We have to first confirm the situation! He might really simply have caught a cold and be home in bed right now!”

“But to check that, we have to go outside the school and connect globally…”

“Don’t worry about it. The fixed terminal here in the student council office can connect to the global net if you make a request. First, we’ll try to get in touch with Takumu using that line. If we can’t connect with him, then…I will go to Shinjuku to look for him. If I bow my head to Knight, he should at least mobilize his subordinates for me.”

Surprised at these words from her, Haruyuki’s avatar froze.

The Blue King had been the sworn friend of the first-generation Red King, Red Rider. Haruyuki heard he had been incredibly furious when the Black Lotus took the Red King’s head in a surprise attack. At the Meeting of the Seven Kings the other day, the Blue King had maintained a calm demeanor, but deep down, he had to still be hiding hard-to-control feelings toward Kuroyukihime.

If she went to him with a request to help a member of her own Legion, Haruyuki very much doubted it would be taken care of by her simply bowing her head. She would definitely be asked to pay a price the help merited. Kuroyukihime was implying that she was prepared even for that.

Having instantly grasped all this, Haruyuki forced himself to hold strong against the urge to start running recklessly. He absolutely could not lose his cool here. Kuroyukihime’s hand still pressing down on his shoulders, he let out a deep breath and nodded. “I—I understand. First, we’ll try to contact him.”

“Mmm. All right, then, let’s stop accelerating for the moment.”

They stood facing each other and shouted, “Burst out,” at the same time. As soon as they returned to their real-world bodies, Kuroyukihime pulled out the direct cable and ran over to the work desk at the back of the student council office. She touched the extremely thin panel monitor there and tapped her fingers lightly along it. Bringing up the rear, Haruyuki stood next to her, and she grabbed at the cable still dangling from his Neurolinker and inserted the connector into a terminal embedded in the desk. When she did, a system message to the effect that Haruyuki was now connected globally scrolled past his eyes.

“You’re good.”

He nodded and moved his frozen mouth as fast as he possibly could. “Command, voice call, number zero three.”

A calling icon immediately started flashing in his field of view. At the very least, Takumu’s Neurolinker was online. If he was accelerating, though, message mode would answer, so Haru still wouldn’t know whether Taku was being attacked by PKs—or if it was all already over.

Sweat oozed from the palms of his hands, and he stared intently at the icon. It flashed five, six times…On the seventh time, it picked up.

“T-Taku?” he said hoarsely, nearly crushed by an enormous sense of dread. Whether he liked it or not, the conversation he had had with Dusk Taker, aka Seiji Nomi, after the other boy lost Brain Burst came back to life in the back of his mind. The first thing he had done was look at Haruyuki—who he had met and spoken with on any number of occasions—with an expression of doubt, as if to say, Who’s this again…? Related memories were erased together with total point loss, and Nomi hadn’t been able to remember Haruyuki right away, given that the majority of their interactions had been through the Accelerated World.

Of course, Haruyuki and Takumu were childhood friends; they had known each other a long, long time before they both became Burst Linkers. So even if he lost his memories of the Accelerated World, he shouldn’t completely forget who Haruyuki was.

Haruyuki understood this, but he couldn’t help being afraid. Takumu’s reply came a mere two seconds later, a span of time that felt light years longer.

“Haru? What’s up?”

“Oh…um…”

His friend’s voice, complete with its totally normal, amiable tone, echoed in Haruyuki’s brain. He almost staggered backward, his relief was so great. “I-it’s just, it’s weird for you to miss school. So I was wondering how you were feeling,” he replied awkwardly, putting a hand on the desk.

“Sorry to make you worry. I’m fine. It’s nothing big.”

Listening very, very carefully to Takumu, he could actually hear that his friend was not quite his usual lively self. But if he was sick, then that was only natural. Haru got worried about the cold again. “You have a fever? You gotta really rest. No moving around. Are you at home right now?”

“Ha-ha! Of course I am. I’m not like you, Haru. I took some medicine, and I’m resting like a good boy. I’ll never forget that time when you had the flu ages ago, and you had a fever of thirty-nine degrees, so me and Chii went to see you, and you were pretending to sleep but actually playing a full-dive game.”

“Well, you should forget that,” Haruyuki replied, and then, just in case, instructed, “Stay away from duels, and just work on getting better. After all, we have an important Legion mission again tomorrow.”

And there was the slightest pause before Takumu replied, “Yeah, I know. I’ll totally be better by tomorrow. It’s still lunch break, isn’t it? Thank Master for me, too, for letting you use the global connection.”

The person he referred to as “Master” was, of course, Kuroyukihime, the Legion Master of Nega Nebulus. In other words, this made it certain that he hadn’t lost his memories of the Accelerated World or anything.

Haruyuki breathed a sigh of relief. “What, you figured it out? Got it. I’ll tell her. Okay, see you tomorrow. Get better soon.”

Reluctant to make Takumu talk any longer when he could tell his friend was exhausted, Haruyuki cut the connection there. He lifted his face and turned to Kuroyukihime, next to him, with a sheepish smile.

“Uh, um. It looks like Taku really is resting with a cold. I’m sorry—this is all me jumping to the wrong conclusions.”

“No need to apologize.” Kuroyukihime shook her head with a warm smile. “I’m just glad it was nothing. But…” Her expression changed slightly, and when Haruyuki handed her the cable he had pulled from his Neurolinker and the desk, she continued as she put it away. “We can’t close our eyes to the fact that those Remnant Linkers might be moving. At the very least, here in Suginami, I don’t think they’ll have such an easy time of finding you or us in the real, but just in case, we should refuse standby duels for a while. And even when it comes to challenging someone, it would be better to refrain with opponents we don’t know very well. After all, it’s not necessarily the case that your real can’t be cracked from the position your avatar appears in.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell Chiyu and Taku.”

“Please. Well then, shall we have lunch? We should eat in the lounge together from time to time.” She patted him on the shoulder, and Haruyuki nodded, his face softening finally. Kuroyukihime also smiled brightly, and added casually, “We have to thank Blood Leopard for the information as well. In that case, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to meet in the real. You, set that up for us soon.”

“Okay…o-okay?” After he had already nodded in agreement, he imagined just what the mood would be at such a meeting and threw his whole upper body back with a start. “U-uh, I—I—I don’t know about that?” A shrill tone slipped out as he trailed after Kuroyukihime toward the door.

While they were having this back-and-forth, Haruyuki could feel that the strange uneasiness still hadn’t completely left him, perhaps because there had been a slight echo of something not normal in Takumu’s voice. If he had a cold and was just feeling sick, then that was only natural. But the weight in that voice, it sounded less like poor physical condition and more like a sort of emotional fluctuation. An instability that somehow made Haru remember Takumu from a certain period the year before.

It was just his imagination. Takumu was now an unshakable pillar supporting the Legion with his intellect and cool composure.

Reassuring himself with this thought, Haruyuki wiped the slight sweat coming up from the palms of his hands onto his pants once more and followed Kuroyukihime out of the student council office. Instantly, his apprehensions grew distant at the hustle and bustle of the lunch break that slammed up against him and the smell of spices coming down the hall from the distant cafeteria.

However…

A mere three hours later, Haruyuki was made aware of the fact that his apprehensions had been qualitatively correct to a certain extent. But quantitatively, they were wrong. The situation had already reached a point far beyond his or Kuroyukihime’s expectations.

The one bringing this directly to his attention was the youngest member of the Legion, come to Umesato Junior High to feed Hoo the northern white-faced owl after school: Utai Shinomiya.

After two afternoon classes, which gave him the chance to nicely digest the curry he’d had for lunch with Kuroyukihime, Haruyuki called, “I’ll mail later,” to Chiyuri on her way to practice and slipped outside. Although up until a week earlier he had raced to escape school and connect his Neurolinker globally so he could devour net information instead of a snack, he couldn’t do that now that he had been officially appointed the president of the Animal Care Club. That said, he was strangely not annoyed by it. In fact, he could even believe he was looking forward to his club work.

The sky above was cloudy as usual, but fortunately, there was no rain in the forecast again today. He should be able to finally bag up the mountain of leaves he had swept out of the animal hutch and put them in the garbage.

He went around the second school building and came out in the north yard at its back. Stepping along the mossy ground, he set his sights on the natural wood hutch in the northwest corner. The majority of the yard got no sunlight, but the school building ended and became a low grove of trees to the south of the hutch, allowing sunlight to reach in through the chicken wire.

There was no sign of anyone else at the hutch that came into view in front of him. The Animal Care Club also consisted of a boy, Hamajima, and a girl, Izeki, in the same grade as he was and selected by drawing lots, but Haruyuki currently had their participation set to voluntary. He had decided that rather than force them to work, it would be better to wait for them to join in of their own volition. He expected to be waiting a fairly long time.

When he arrived at the hutch, the white-faced owl with the rather cheap name of “Hoo” was taking a bath in the gold tray on the floor. He spread his wings fairly wide and pitched forward, sinking his chest up to his face in the shallow layer of water. He soon pulled himself up again, folded in wet wings, and rubbed them in tiny increments. Haruyuki couldn’t stop himself from laughing at this mannerism, so like a person washing their body.

“Ha-ha! That looks like it feels good.”

When Haruyuki spoke to him, Hoo whirled his head around and looked at his caretaker, a somehow awkward look coming across his face. He shook his whole body fiercely and sent droplets of water flying before taking off from the water. He carved out several large circles in the hutch and then landed on the left perch, apparently his preferred position, where he promptly began to smooth down the feathers on his chest.

There was a pressure sensor in that branch that could measure Hoo’s weight. Haruyuki manipulated his virtual desktop to open the club business tab from the local net browser and display the linked sensor value.

At that moment, a request window for an ad hoc connection popped up in his field of view. Looking to his right, he saw a small girl standing there smiling, clad in a snow-white dress-type uniform, brown backpack on her back.

“Oh. Hi, Me—I mean, Shinomiya.”

It was weird, but when he saw her like this in the real world, he always accidentally almost called her by her duel avatar name, and when they were in the Accelerated World, he almost called her by her real name. On the verge of referring to her as “Mei,” short for Ardor Maiden, but catching himself, Haruyuki tapped the YES button with his right hand as he scratched his head with his left.

The chat tool launched automatically, and Utai began to type on her holokeyboard at her usual speed of ultra. UI> HELLO, ARITA. HOW IS HOO’S WEIGHT, THEN?

“Oh! Um…It’s within normal range, but a little on the low side?”

UI> IT IS IMMEDIATELY AFTER HIS LIVING ENVIRONMENT CHANGED, SO THERE’S NO AVOIDING SOME AMOUNT OF STRESS. I BROUGHT A BIT ON THE EXTRA SIDE FOR TODAY’S DINNER. DID YOU WANT TO WATCH THE FEEDING FROM CLOSE UP?

“Y-yeah, totally!” he replied. Before he closed the browser window, he checked the club tab one more time. The only duty assigned by the system was normal cleaning of the hutch, with one person required. He went through the motions of checking Hamajima’s and Izeki’s names, but as expected, the status shown for both of them was DEPARTED.

Swallowing a sigh, Haruyuki watched as Utai unlocked the large electronic lock. Her small hand beckoned him over. They opened the chicken wire door the barest minimum and hurried inside.

After she shut the door and slid the inside lock closed, Utai took off her backpack. She first pulled out a light-brown leather gauntlet—no, glove. When she put it on, it covered her left arm up to her elbow. She reached into her bag once more, this time taking out a small cooler. She popped it open with her left hand, and he saw what appeared to be thin strips of raw meat inside.

Whoa, total bird-of-prey stuff.

As Haruyuki watched, impressed, Utai stood and held her left hand up toward the perch. Hoo spread his wings, like he had some kind of telepathic connection with her, and flapped them to move to her hand. Reddish-gold eyes open in perfect circles, he pushed his beak forward, practically telling her to hurry up.

Utai went to lean down to the cooler on the floor, so Haruyuki hurriedly lifted it up and held it in both arms. Utai smiled and plucked a strip of the dark-red meat from the cooler.

When she brought it near Hoo’s face, he quickly pecked at it with his sharp beak and ate it, basically swallowing it whole. It was utterly unlike pigeons or chickens pecking at food on the ground. Haruyuki was once more impressed, while Utai offered pieces of meat one after another to be promptly dispatched to Hoo’s stomach. Although he wondered what kind of meat it was; having never cooked in his life really, Haruyuki couldn’t tell just by looking.

In no time at all, the cooler, which looked like it held a lot in comparison with the owl’s twenty-centimeter body, was empty. Utai stroked his face as if to say, That’s all, and Hoo moved his head around, looking satisfied, before flying up to return to his original branch.

After Utai took off the glove and accepted the cooler from Haruyuki, she went outside the hutch and began to wash up with the tap attached to the hutch. While she did, Haruyuki changed the synthetic paper spread out around the perch. In the era when the daily news had been delivered on paper media, they had apparently used the stuff, known as newspaper, for this purpose and then thrown it away, but natural-fiber paper was now an expensive luxury item. He took turns with Utai, using running water to wash off the paper mats dirtied with Hoo’s droppings and then hanging them on the small hanger on the side of the hutch.

Once the job was finished, Haruyuki asked the question he had been dying to for a while now. “Hey, Shinomiya? What kind of meat was it you gave Hoo there?”

The fourth grader smiled and her hands flashed. UI> PLEASE TRY TO GUESS.

“Huh? Umm, chicken?”

Utai pushed at a spot in the air with her fingertip; Bzzt!—the sound of a wrong buzzer echoed in his hearing, the chat tool’s sound function at work.

“O-okay, then, pork?”

Bzzt!

“What? It can’t be beef?”

Bzzt!

“L-lamb?”

Bzzt!

“It can’t be fish?”

Bzzt!

Here, Haruyuki threw up his hands in surrender.

Utai tapped out unexpected words, smiling somehow meaningfully as she did. UI> WELL THEN, TOMORROW I WILL SHOW YOU FROM THE POINT OF DRESSING IT. A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF MENTAL DAMAGE CAN BE EXPECTED, SO PLEASE PREPARE YOURSELF.

“Uh…dress?”

UI> NOW THEN, BEFORE IT GETS TOO LATE, SHALL WE TAKE CARE OF THESE LEAVES? THEY APPEAR TO BE COMPLETELY DRIED. She grinned at him once more, and unable to pursue the matter further, he nodded.

“Y-yeah. I’ll go get some garbage bags.” He began to trot off toward the toolshed in the courtyard as he glanced at the inside of the hutch; the owl, belly full, had his eyes closed, seemingly asleep in his usual pose: ear coverts down, standing on one leg.

The work to stuff the old leaves piled up in the yard into semitransparent garbage bags, the design of which had not changed in who knew how many years, took nearly thirty minutes. If they could have built an enormous bonfire and roasted sweet potatoes and things over it—he had seen scenes like this in old movies and manga—then it might have been a fun and delicious process, but if a fire was set on school grounds, an alarm would sound, fleets of emergency vehicles would swarm the place, and with no exaggeration, the fire starter would be arrested by the police. But even before that, it was next to impossible for anyone underage to get ahold of any kind of fire-starting device like a lighter. The gang that had bullied Haruyuki so mercilessly the year before apparently never managed the Eternal Legend–level act of delinquency of smoking on school grounds.

Thus, they had to drag the eight bags they had worked hard to cram full of leaves over to the collection area in a corner of the front yard. When this task was complete, the time was 4:20 PM.

“Phew. Finally cleaned all that up, huh…”

UI> THANK YOU FOR YOUR HARD WORK.

They looked at each other and smiled before washing their hands in turn. And with that, the day’s duties were complete. He had promised to go visit Takumu with Chiyuri, but her practice usually ended around five, so he had a little time.

Just as he was wondering what he should do, Utai, having finished neatly drying her hands with a snow-white handkerchief, cocked her head lightly to one side and clicked on space. Manipulating a window with her right hand, she tapped deftly at her keyboard with just her left. UI> IT’S A MAIL FROM FU. IT’S TAGGED AS URGENT, SO I APOLOGIZE, BUT I’LL JUST TAKE A MOMENT TO READ IT.

The “Fu” Utai spoke of was Fuko Kurasaki, aka Sky Raker. He asked himself why she would be able to get an e-mail from Fuko, who attended a high school in Shibuya Ward, while on school grounds, before quickly answering his own question. When Haruyuki’s Neurolinker was connected to the Umesato local net, he was automatically disconnected from the global net, but Utai was treated as a guest user of the Umesato net, so that restriction didn’t apply. And because she used a brain implant chip for normal networking, even if she left her connection to the global net open, she wouldn’t be registered on the Brain Burst matching list.

“S-sure, go ahead.” Haruyuki nodded, and Utai quickly opened the mail and ran her eyes over it.

Instantly, her large eyes, irises tinged with a faint red, opened as wide as they could. Her lips sucked in air as if gasping and trembled lightly.

“Huh? Wh-what’s wrong?!” Stunned, Haruyuki took a step toward her.

The girl shifted the focus of her eyes from her virtual desktop to Haruyuki and tapped at her keyboard with fingers that were the slightest bit clumsy. UI> ARITA, DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SUPERNOVA REMNANT, JUDGED TO BE THE WORST OF THE PK GROUPS?

“……!!” He did know them. To be more precise, it was only that morning he had learned of them, but in the eight hours since, that name had been burned into Haruyuki’s brain together with an overwhelming terror. “Y-yeah…what about them?” he asked in a hoarse voice, a very bad feeling crawling up his spine.

UI> THIS MORNING, FOUR HIGH-LEVEL BURST LINKERS ASSUMED TO BE MEMBERS OF THIS REMNANT ATTACKED A LONE BURST LINKER IN THE UNLIMITED NEUTRAL FIELD IN SHINJUKU WARD—

Haruyuki screwed up his face and stared at the cherry-colored font scrolling across the window. It can’t be. No way. The thought chased out all others as it whirled around in his brain. It’s not Taku. I mean, Taku answered when I called at lunch and everything. And he totally remembered me and Kuroyukihime, didn’t he?

However, the several characters displayed in his field of view in the next instant gave an even more enormous shock, throwing him deeper into confusion.

UI> —AND APPARENTLY, THEY INSTEAD WERE COMPLETELY DESTROYED.

“Huh? D-destroyed?” Haruyuki parroted, dumbfounded, unable to grasp her meaning immediately. “Destroyed…So the worst PK Remnant was…done in by one person…?”

UI> IT APPEARS THAT WAY. AT THE TIME, THERE WAS A LEGION CAMPING OUT NEARBY ON A LONG-TERM ENEMY HUNT. THE BATTLE EFFECTS WERE SO VIOLENT THAT THEY NOTICED THE FIGHT AND WENT TO INVESTIGATE. WHILE THEY WATCHED, THE FOUR, WHO WERE ASSUMED TO HAVE BEEN THE SIDE TO ATTACK FIRST, WERE KNOCKED DOWN ONE AFTER ANOTHER, AND WHEN THEY DIED, IT WAS APPARENTLY A FINAL DISAPPEARANCE. IN OTHER WORDS, THE FOUR BURST LINKERS AND THE LONE BURST LINKER ARE THOUGHT TO HAVE WAGERED ALL THEIR POINTS ON A SUDDEN DEATH DUEL CARD.

“Uh, um. So is it like this? The four members of Remnant attacked someone in the real, threatened them to get them to agree to Sudden Death. But that someone fought back and brought them all to total point loss in one go?”

UI> THAT WAS THE HYPOTHESIS FU ALSO NOTED.

“Wh-who on earth could turn things around like that? One of the kings? A king used themselves as bait to call out Remnant and finish them off?” That was as far as Haruyuki could manage to guess.

But Utai, face still frozen, shook her head slowly from side to side and tapped at the air with even more awkward fingers. UI> NO. THIS LONE PERSON THE E NEMY-HUNTING LEGION SAW WAS A HEAVYWEIGHT CLASS WITH LIGHT-BLUE ARMOR, EQUIPPED WITH AN ENHANCED ARMAMENT WITH PIERCING CHARACTERISTICS ON THE RIGHT HAND. HE CARRIED THE LAST MEMBER OF THE GROUP HE WAS FIGHTING, SPEARED BY THE STAKE IN HIS RIGHT HAND, OVER TO THE WITNESSES AND ANNOUNCED THAT THIS BURST LINKER WAS A MEMBER OF SUPERNOVA REMNANT BEFORE STRIKING THE KILLING BLOW AND LEAVING THROUGH A PORTAL. FU SAYS IT MIGHT BE

After a moment’s hesitation, she continued, and the final words scrolled slowly before Haruyuki’s eyes.

UI> CYAN PILE.